How Wide Am I? Asks the Mind

How Wide Am I? Asks the Mind

Art
Kim Salac
Media Staff

I am what you call ‘a mind.’ It is hard to believe that there are people that have spent hundreds of years asking those questions: What am I? Where am I? What is my relationship with the body? How do I interact with it? What do I encompass? I suppose I am indeed very mysterious, because even after these hundreds of years, they still cannot find a definite answer.

Recently, two philosophers, Andy Clark and David Chalmers, have argued that one's being resides not just inside the body, that one exists outside of skin and skull. They think things like phones or notebooks can also be extended parts of me, the mind. For example, a person with Alzheimer’s disease might store his beliefs in his notebook (things like what he has to do today, how to go to a certain place), consulting the notebook whenever he needs it.

I suppose I am indeed very mysterious, because even after these hundreds of years, they still cannot find a definite answer.

These beliefs are non-occurrent beliefs—which means the person is not consciously aware of them when he is not accessing them by reading his notebook. Still, these "notebook beliefs" are equivalent to non-occurrent beliefs in the man's brain, which he is also unaware of most of the time.

Being just “a mind,” I do not fully know what to think about Clark and Chalmer's "extended mind theory," so I consulted a few people, and here is the summary of our conversations:

Against It

Some people strongly disagree that the mind extends to the devices we use. They think that in this way I will be too wide (me: not too wild? A wild mind seems cool!). Brie Gertler, for example, proposes the opposite of an extended mind theory—a narrow-mind theory. She likes how Clark and Chalmers do not use skin and skull as the boundary of mind, but she thinks this proves that even things inside the brain should not be counted as parts of the mind, if the person is not conscious of these thoughts. In other words, she believes that only what a person can introspect of belongs to the mind.

Some people strongly disagree that the mind extends to the devices we use. They think that in this way I will be too wide...

One does not have unique access to one’s notebook, because when others read it, they can get exactly the same information from it. But as for mind, people usually think that they have unique access to their own minds—they can introspect into their minds and thus know their current thoughts, desires, and beliefs in a way that other people simply cannot. In this way, wouldn’t it be absurd to argue that a notebook is an extended part of the mind? You cannot possibly access it in an introspective way.

Another philosopher likes this view but sees a Cartesian divide in suggesting that “sensory processing is part of your body (rather than part of your mind),” while “the mind needs to be introspective."

A third philosopher holds that extended-mind theory is either trivially true, or interesting but false. If you say the book or phone or notebook is an extended mind because you can consult them for information you want, yes that is definitely true. But if you say these external things are doing the cognitive process that I, the mind, am carrying out then what you are saying is simply false.

For It

First, as a mind, I’m totally in for extended mind theory!

I guess I prefer to be “wide” over being “narrow,” and I like how it is possible for me to embrace this world rather than only embracing stuff inside a single body! Even though that means some parts of me are out of my control—wait, I actually love being out of control?

An anthropologist I talked with said to me: “What are you if not that through which we experience, feel, and process information in the world? It is not only through the conscious part of the brain that we experience things.” She thinks there are things you simply cannot put into words, but these things are also important. Sometimes you cannot articulate your emotions, and sometimes you cannot even consciously think of them. Apart from that, you have experiences which you forget and non-occurrent beliefs that are lurking inside/outside you.

More than this, do you know who you are—do you really have a static, essential self? Are you not constantly being shaped and affected and constructed and created by others with whom you interact and the environment which surrounds you? Are you not seeing yourselves, and knowing who you are, only through others’ perceptions of you?

Why would I be different? If I am you, or the mind is the self, then am I not also co-constructed by creatures and non-creatures outside the boundaries of my skin and skull, by the environment I reside in? How could I possibly be narrowed down to a certain part of the brain?

How could I possibly be narrowed down to a certain part of the brain?

Does the mind need to be introspective? That is, is it necessary or plausible that only the conscious, occurrent states of the brain can be considered as mind (that is, as part of me)?

A religious studies scholar also answers “no.” He says that the miracle of language is the miracle of making one’s own mind accessible to others and vice versa—the idea that the mind is a pristine interiority is an illusion. The mind is spread out bodily and also socially; for example, you do not know about your own mind until you talk to another person about it. There are lots of things you don’t know you remember but that pop up when you talk with other people. Mind is developing in a sense that self is also developing, no matter whether it is in performance, self-presentation, or something else.

Perhaps Walt Whitman knew me, the mind, best, when he said, "I contain multitudes."  I am inside and outside myself, connected to all and contained by none. What am I? What are you? What are we?

We contain a multiverse of multiplicities...

We are cosmos.