Mind, consciousness, and experience.
Owen Flanagan reviews two new books about the mind-body problem, and runs through three theories of the mind and where its at. Interesting stuff. But is Andy Clark's "Extended Mind" theory as new and surprising as Flanagan says?
'Now a few edgy cognitive scientists and philosophers, including Clark and Alva Noë, claim that both Nearby and Brainbound get the location wrong. There is a third place where the mind might roam. The theory Clark calls Extended says that the mind is in space, as all sensible naturalists claim, but is smeared over more than brain space. "Certain forms of human cognizing include inextricable tangles of feedback, feed-forward and feed-around loops: loops that promiscuously criss-cross the boundaries of brain, body and world," he writes.'
Varela and Maturana were saying some of this stuff back in the 1980s, and Gregory Bateson at around the same time.
'Now a few edgy cognitive scientists and philosophers, including Clark and Alva Noë, claim that both Nearby and Brainbound get the location wrong. There is a third place where the mind might roam. The theory Clark calls Extended says that the mind is in space, as all sensible naturalists claim, but is smeared over more than brain space. "Certain forms of human cognizing include inextricable tangles of feedback, feed-forward and feed-around loops: loops that promiscuously criss-cross the boundaries of brain, body and world," he writes.'
Varela and Maturana were saying some of this stuff back in the 1980s, and Gregory Bateson at around the same time.