Brain, Mind and Internet

A Deep History and Future

D. Staley

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137460950
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This essay places the emerging brain-Internet interface within a broad historical context: that the Internet represents merely the next stage in a very long history of human cognition whereby the brain couples with symbolic technologies. Understanding this 'deep history' provides a way to imagine the future of brain-Internet cognition.

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Abstract: This chapter introduces the theory of the ‘extended mind,’ which holds that human cognition consists of both mental activities occurring in the biological brain in partnership with cognitive technologies outside of the brain. Unlike other species, humans have developed ‘symbolic technologies’ that enable us to engage in cognitive tasks that our biological brain alone would not be able to perform. The Internet represents the next stage in a long historical-evolutionary process whereby humans have expanded cognition via a symbiosis of the brain and a larger system of external, technologically enhanced memory storage.

Keywords: brain; cognition; culture; internet; mind; symbolic

Staley, David J. Brain, Mind and Internet: A Deep History and Future. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. DOI: 10.1057/9781137460950.0004.

The Internet represents the next stage in a long historical-evolutionary process of expanding the capacity of the mind via a symbiosis of the brain and a larger system of external, technologically enhanced memory storage.

If one accepts this formulation, it is in no small measure due to one’s acceptance of the seminal work of Andy Clark and David Chalmers. Their 1998 essay ‘The Extended Mind’ argued that human cognition has always consisted of both mental activities occurring in the biological brain accelerated with cognitive prostheses outside of the brain. Rejecting the Cartesian notion that cognition occurs only ‘inside the skull,’ Clark and Chalmers advanced what they termed ‘active externalism,’ meaning that the external environment (external to the brain) plays ‘an active role ... in driving cognitive processes.’¹ The external environment is a catch-all term for objects outside the human body that work in concert with the brain to perform cognitive tasks; these external objects are not merely aids to the brain but work in tandem with the brain to facilitate cognition. Thus, a pen and paper allow one to make complicated calculations, an example of ‘the general tendency of human reasoners to lean heavily on environmental supports.’ The use of slide rules, books, and diagrams are all instances where ‘the individual brain performs some operations, while others are delegated to manipulations of external media.’²

Those manipulations of external media, not only the activities of the biological brain, constitute cognition. ‘The human organism,’ in this view, ‘is linked with an external entity in a two-way interaction, created a coupled system that can be seen as a cognitive system in its own right ... If we remove the external component the system’s behavioral competence will drop, just as it would if we removed part of its brain.’³ Removing pen and paper from the equation does not imply that the brain alone merely carries out the same operations: the implication here is that the level of cognition that is possible can only occur when it is coupled and amplified with the aid of the external object. I would not be able to make long extended calculations without a slide rule, my biological brain alone limits the capacity of my cognition. The addition of pen and paper or a slide rule extends my cognitive capacity; thus, the slide rule, in Clark and Chalmer’s judgment, must be considered an integral part of the cognitive architecture of the mind. This is not to suggest, as critics attempted to contend, that the slide rule by itself is capable of autonomous cognition (although we will return to this point later: the stage at which our external objects start to behave in ‘autonomous’ ways). It is to suggest that, coupled with the brain, the tandem engages in a level of cognition not possible by either component alone.⁴

Clark and Chalmers were challenging the Cartesian view of cognition, which holds that cognition resides exclusively within the skull, and that cognition equates strictly to the activities of the brain. The assumption that the mind and all of its cognitive activities reside exclusively within the biological body, and in a highly localized portion of that body, has been influential for centuries among both philosophers and cognitive scientists. In contrast, the philosopher Mark Rowlands identifies what he terms a ‘new science of the mind,’ a new way of thinking about cognition ‘inspired by, and organized around, not the brain but some combination of the ideas that mental processes are (1) embodied, (2) embedded, (3) enacted, and (4) extended.’⁵ Rowlands’ non-Cartesian cognitive science is not yet a fully developed scientific approach; he is only identifying the philosophical and conceptual outlines of this new approach to cognitive science, one based not on the idea of a mind that resides exclusively in the brain, but which has for a very long time extended outward toward an information environment.⁶

Rowlands observes that human beings often ‘offload’ portions of our cognitive activities to technologies residing in this external environment. His example is a GPS system or a Mapquest map, which Rowlands accesses rather than retaining spatial directions solely within his biological memory. He terms technologies like GPS systems ‘external forms of information storage,’ observing that they ‘reduce the burden on my biological memory.’⁷ But to reiterate: this off-loading of cognitive activity did not begin with Mapquest or even with the recent electronic communications revolution. The human mind has always been so extended and embodied, at least since the development of writing (although we can extend this cognitive off-loading even further in our history). It is a conceit of Western thought since Descartes that the mind is sheltered and isolated within the cathedral of the brain. The Internet, in this reading, is simply the next feature of our external environment onto which we are off-loading cognitive activity. The Internet and brain are forming yet another coupled system of cognition.⁸

Ours has long been a ‘hybrid mind.’ Humanity, unlike any other species, has developed symbols that take material form outside of the body, symbolic objects that allow us to store in permanent forms thoughts and ideas that we cannot store in our biological brain alone. These external forms of memory afford humans the opportunity to reflect upon, exchange, and elaborate on the thoughts and ideas so encapsulated in material form.⁹

Our ‘symbolic technologies’ enable us to engage in cognitive tasks that our biological brain alone would not be able to perform, either because its storage capacity is too limited or because we would not be able to conceive of a thought without the partnership of some cognitive prosthesis. The printed book, paintings, and maps are such symbolic technologies that extend our cognitive ability.¹⁰ These symbolic technologies allow humans to escape the bonds and limitations of the nervous system, in Merlin Donald’s interesting phrasing. And these technologies are not in opposition to human needs and goals, but are interwoven in the very fabric of our minds. I view the Internet as the next great symbolic technology so interwoven with the mind. I distance myself from those who would argue that the Internet is somehow robbing us of our humanity: the Internet, like all symbolic technologies, is our humanity.

The embodied, extended mind has long been a feature of our species. The archeologist and prehistorian Colin Renfrew argues that our encounter with the physical objects that we have fashioned from the material world has been so central to our cognition that such cultural development is what has driven our evolutionary development. Genetic change being a relatively slower process means that it alone is insufficient an explanation for the explosion of creativity and innovation that has marked our species, especially since the Neolithic Age. Indeed, Renfrew and other prehistorians have described the process of the brain coupling with objects of material culture for purposes of cognition as ‘co-evolution.’¹¹

Renfrew suggests that the discovery (or is it invention?) of the concept of weight provides an example of this co-evolutionary interaction between the brain and the material environment surrounding the brain. Archeologists have found among the artifacts of prehistoric sites a number of shaped objects that clearly ascend in weight according to a patterned order. Humans formed these objects, it appears, in order to discern different qualities of ‘heaviness.’¹² Before the mind could conjure the concept of weight, humans first had to have a physical experience of weight, and that experiences came from the objects fashioned by human hands. That is, you would need to have a body in space that had encountered the experience of lifting a heavy object: the brain could not invent the concept without the bodily experience.

If you have such a symbolic relationship, the stone weight has to relate to some property that exists out there in the real world. In a sense these stone cubes serving as weights are symbolic of themselves: weight as a symbol of weight. It may be appropriate here to use the term constitutive symbol, where the symbolic or cognitive elements and the material element coexist. The one does not make sense without the other.¹³ (emphasis mine)

The weights fashioned by the human hand allow the mind to engage in cognition, an interesting prehistoric example of the coupled cognitive process involved between the brain and material objects outside the brain. The archeologist Lambros Malafouris would argue that there is no Platonic concept of ‘weight’ waiting for the mind to perceive it. There cannot be a concept of ‘weight’ to be understood by the brain without the existence (manufacture) of the material objects that connote weight. There is a symbiosis here between the material object and the brain acting upon that material object: remove the material object from the equation and there is a different process of cognition. Unlike other species, humans rely on the things that we have fashioned to engage in cognition. If cognition is extended, it is extended outward into a material environment of things and objects created by the human brain. Malafouris maintains that our brains cannot function the way they do without a larger ‘cognitive ecology’ made up of material things, an external space that provides the context for brains to engage in cognition.¹⁴ Indeed, he contends that the brain – ‘seen as internal assemblies of neurons’ – and culture – ‘seen as external assemblies of material structures and scaffoldings’ – by themselves are ‘lifeless.’ Both come to life only when in interaction with each other.¹⁵ Early in prehistory – a very long time before the emergence of the Internet – humans were developing an intimate relationship with things of their own creation as a way to engage in cognition.

The human mind cannot conceive of the concept of weight without an external ‘thing to think with.’¹⁶ Those weights are not ‘nat...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  Extend
• 2  Reconfigure
• 3  Query
• 4  Interface
• 5  Limit
• Conclude
• Bibliography
• Index