The extended mind | David Chalmers | TEDxSydney

The human brain uses tools which help it function more effectively, such as technology devices like the iPhone and even other people, mostly for memory utilities. And these are the extensions of the mind.

David Chalmers is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Consciousness at the Australian National University. Chalmers is interested in the relationship between mind, brain and reality. He is best known for formulating the "hard problem" of consciousness and for his arguments against materialism. His 1996 book The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory was highly successful with both popular and academic audiences. In 2010 he gave the John Locke Lectures at the University of Oxford. These will shortly be published as his book Constructing the World . He also works on language, metaphysics, and artificial intelligence.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

Hi, everyone!

I want to talk to you
about a new way of looking at the mind.

What I call the extended mind is the idea

that the technology we use
becomes part of our minds,

extending our minds and indeed
ourselves into the world.

We'll start with something
that might be a little bit more familiar:

the extended body.

We are used to the idea
that we can extend our bodies

with technology.

We know about prosthetic limbs.

Here is the athlete Oscar Pistorius

running on his prosthetic legs.

You don't need prosthetic limbs
to extend your body.

Blind people say that their canes
serve as an extension of their body.

You know, it feels exactly
like a body from the inside,

or in more mundane everyday experience,

a car can feel like
an extension of your body,

a bike, or indeed, a musical instrument.

You saw a great illustration
of that a few minutes ago

with Tjupurru with his didjeribone,
a real extension of his body.

Well, so it is with the body,
so it is for the extended mind,

where technology gets incorporated
into our human minds.

You might think that to incorporate
technology into your mind

you'd have to turn yourself into a cyborg.

Something like that!

A whole bunch of, you know,
of pipes and tubes inside your head,

or at least you need a whole bunch
of fancy technology

like this on your head,

but I actually think there's
a more ordinary kind of mind extension,

which is happening to us
right now, all the time,

as we move into the technological future.

So take our friend the iPhone.

I've had one of these now
for maybe three or four years,

and it's basically started taking over

a whole bunch
of the functions of my brain.

(Laughter)

Things my brain used to do
are now done by my iPhone.

I mean, there's a million examples,

take memory:

How many people use their brains
to remember phone numbers anymore?

Not me!

You know, my iPhone does all the work.

It used to be, the biological memory
used to carry the load,

now the iPhone is carrying
the load for me,

acting as my memory.

The iPhone serves to control

planning functions
that my brain used to do.

Spatial navigation,

offloaded from my brain into Google Maps.

The iPhone even stores
as the repository of my desires.

I've got a program on the iPhone

that tells me my favorite dishes
at the local restaurant.

I go there and just look it up
and say this, this, this.

The iPhone is controlling
my desires for me.

It even makes decisions for me.

Here's the executive decision maker.

Am I going to go speak
at that TED conference?

Oh, definitely!

You might say, "Okay, well,
this is all a big metaphor,

and it's a little bit
like a mind in someways."

But I think there's actually

an interesting philosophical thesis here
that I want to defend,

that in some sense the iPhone
is literally becoming part of your mind.

Your mind is extending
from your brain into the world,

so the iPhone is actually part of it.

The iPhone hasn't been
implanted into your mind,

but you might think it's as if it were in.

Here's an iPhone implanted into your mind,

it's as if it was implanted
into your mind,

although it's actually
out there in the world.

That's the extended mind thesis.

So the iPhone's memory
is basically my memory.

The iPhone’s planning or navigation

is basically my planning and navigation
as if it had happened inside the brain.

Now for me as a philosopher,
this is really interesting

because one of the central
philosophical problems about the mind,

maybe the central philosophical
problem about the mind,

is what we call the mind-brain problem.

How does the mind - your thinking
and your feeling - relate to your brain,

this bunch of mushy neurons
you have inside your head?

Is it something more
or is it something less?

If you ask most people,
"Where is your mind?"

they'd point and say,
"Well, it's somewhere in there."

This extended mind thesis,

I think it's some transformed
vision of the mind,

but the mind is not just in the brain,

it's partly in the world around us,

in the environment that we interact with.

Now, I don't know.

You might think this is kind of crazy
or even totally mad.

When my collaborator, Andy Clark, and I

first put this thesis forward
back in the mid 1990s,

we came across a bit of resistance then;

a lot of people made objections.

Back then, we didn't have iPhones.

Our central example was a notebook.

People writing stuff down in the notebook

and using that as a memory.

And indeed, you don't need high-tech

to get the idea
of the extended mind going.

The very first time
somebody counted on their fingers,

that was a kind of mind extension.

A kind of addition that could have
been taking place in your head

is happening on your fingers,
but technology really amplifies

this extension of our mind.

And I think it's made the thesis
ring true for more people as well,

because we experience
this actually happening to us.

But still you might object
in various ways.

This iPhone is just a tool,
it's not really part your mind.

For it really to become part of your mind,
you'd have to implant it like this.

To be in your mind it's got to be
on the inside of your skull.

Or maybe, it can't be part of your mind:

it's metal.

Minds are biological.

They involve a soul or something.

Now, I think it's a tricky issue,

but I think this kind
of reaction which you get

involves a kind of a brain chauvinism.

It's like a gender chauvinism,
or race chauvinism, or species chauvinism.

What's so special about the brain?

What's so special
about the inside of the brain,

compared to the outside?

For a start, it's like,

if you've got stuff that's going on
on the inside of the brain,

the same stuff could in principle go on
on the outside of the brain.

We want to say [there's]
no difference in principle

as long as it's driving
the processes inside the brain,

the action, the consciousness,

in the same way
that would happen otherwise.

There's no principle barrier
about the skull;

that would be skull chauvinism.

Likewise, metal versus biology.

If the metal does the same job
the biology is doing,

that would also count
as part of the mind.

Otherwise it would be
biology, DNA chauvinism.

So I think that objection can be rejected.

You might think that -

Somehow consciousness
is at the very center of the mind,

and I've got some sympathy with this.

Consciousness is
this deeply internal state.

But I think what we're thinking,
what we're feeling

right in the present moment
is at the core of the mind,

but there's always
a whole lot to our minds

which is outside our consciousness.

What we think, our innermost desires,
our hopes, our fears,

our personality traits,

most of this is not passing through
your mind at any given moment.

Any given moment is just
a tiny little snapshot.

What makes you you
is a whole bunch of stuff

which is outside your consciousness
available to affect us.

So your memories are mostly
outside your consciousness.

The view here is it doesn't matter

whether it's stored somewhere deep
in your brain or out there in the world.

If it's out there, accessible to you,
driving your state,

then it counts as part of your mind.

There is still a brain
at the core of all this.

I'm not saying
the iPhone is itself a mind.

You are still the mind with your brain
and your consciousness at the core.

But the iPhone is part of it.

It's kind of an extension, if you like.

What was that?

That's right, my iPhone begs to differ.

It thinks it's the mind
and I'm the extension.

(Laughter)

So this thesis I think is not just -
it's a new way of looking at the world,

a new way of looking at the mind.

But I think it actually makes a difference
to some of our practices.

In Alzheimer's disease,

when people describe themselves
as losing their minds.

And one thing we found works really well

in handling people with Alzheimer
and slowing the decline

is the use of mind extension technology.

People use notes
in the environment, for example,

to act as a kind of memory,
external memory, with labels everywhere.

This really serves to slow down
the loss of mental function,

keeping some aspect of their minds
out there in the world.

There are issues about -

It makes a difference to education.

There are debates
about open book examinations

and the use of calculators in exams.

Well, if you take
the extended mind thesis,

you ought to be testing
the whole extended self.

If a calculator or a computer
is going to be with you,

coupled with you,
reliably available in the future,

it is part of your extended self,

and you ought to be testing
the whole extended self.

Here's a case of extended perception.

A blind person who starts
using his iPhone as a vision tool.

This is the color identification program,

Color ID.

You can download it.

It basically reads out colors.

You point it at something
and it reads it out.

He said he used this to see
a sunset for the first time.

He held it up and it said,
"Red, orange, yellow, azure, crimson."

He was moved to tears.

It felt like he was seeing
the sunset for the first time

using this as an extended
vision mechanism,

extended perception mechanism.

And as wearable computing becomes
more and more ubiquitous in our lives,

this is just going, I think,
to become more and more common.

Here we've got glasses that compute stuff
for us through extended perception.

There's also the socially extended mind.

We all know when other people
become extensions of your mind.

We all know long-term couples

where one person acts
as another person's memory.

You know, reminding them
things at the right time,

or when they finish
each other's sentences

or speak as a single
individual in a conversation.

In effect, what's happening now
is one person is becoming

part of, an extension of
another person's mind or vice versa.

I'll be in my mind if -

I'll be in your mind if you'll be in mine.

I think Bob Dylan said that.

Also, social networking
is really amplifying this.

So, when I was preparing
this talk about a month ago,

I sent a note out to Facebook.

"I've got to give a 15 minute TED Talk
in Sydney next month,

on the extended mind.

Any ideas on how to approach it?"

And I got a whole lot of responses,

some pretty useful responses
from this social network,

which is kind of surrounding us,
becoming part of our extended mind.

There were more, and there were more,
and there were more,

(Laughter)

including of a whole bunch of useful
suggestions, I stole a bunch of them.

Not least of them, this one,

"Exciting, maybe you could
work Facebook in?"

(Laughter)

Or, "Well you could start by mentioning
you crowdsourced the whole talk ..."

Thanks guys, that was handy.

Now there are some downsides and dangers
to this whole extended mind thesis.

And one is that as our minds
move into the world,

we become more vulnerable to their loss

than when they are protected
on the inside of the skull.

This is already something familiar
from things like the floods in Queensland

or there are bushfires in Victoria.

We often talk about the greatest tragedy
being that people lose their memories.

Their houses and their
possessions and so on

have basically become part of them.

The loss of them really feels
like the loss of one's self.

And as more of one's mind gets extended,
the more there is vulnerability.

Just say somebody steals my iPhone.

[IF YOU CAN READ THIS,
SOMEBODY STOLE MY iPHONE]

(Laughter)

You might think that's a form of theft
and they should be punished for this.

But if I'm right, that should
actually be reconceived

as a really vicious form of assault.

Like getting into my brain
and messing with my neurons.

And that really does kind of capture
the attitude I have to my iPhone.

You might worry this is going
to turn us into robots.

Remember the guy from Lost in Space?

"Danger," Will Robinson!

But I think we have to remember

we still always have consciousness
at the middle of this, and judgement,

and the extension of our minds doesn't
abrogate us from using our judgement.

With better and better technology,
which becomes more and more flexible,

there's the hope that the interplay
of judgement and technology

might move us forward in interesting ways.

So, I actually think then, to conclude,

this extended mind thesis offers us
some hope of an optimistic worldview.

People say, "Is Google making us stupid?"

This is a debate which has been
out there in the media.

Well, if I'm right
about the extended mind thesis,

there's a sense in which
Google is actually making us smarter.

Google is getting inside our minds.

And I don't know about you,
but I heard someone saying,

"When I sit down and Google,
I feel like my IQ goes up 30 points."

(Laughter)

It's like all that knowledge -
and they say knowledge is power of a kind,

so it leads to a kind of
potential democratization, too,

of the powers of the mind.

As technology becomes cheaper
and available to more, and more advanced,

it's going to spread.

Phones are already spreading.

Google is spreading.

With time, this becomes
available to everyone.

In a way I think what's going on here

is a trend which is
in the very early stages

of turning us into
superheroes of the mind.

Technology is gradually
giving us these superpowers,

turning us into cognitive
super geniuses, if you like,

and it is going to go more
and more this way in the future.

The question is, will we use
these powers for good or for evil?

That's the gift of the extended mind
and the challenge it presents

as we move into our extended future.

Thank you very much.

(Applause)