Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

Jackie Gerstein summarizes a book and paper by Annie Murphy Paul and includes an embed in the post so you can read it for yourself. I think people will find both the discussion and the paper interesting. The idea is that there is a host 'extra-neural' resources that help us in our thinking - "the feelings and movements of our bodies, the physical spaces in which we learn and work, and the minds of those around us." We've seen this theme echo though the literature in forms such as 'embodied cognition' and even the 'outboard brain'. What Annie Murphy Paul seems to be doing here is not so much to 'extend' the mind as to use things like bodily awareness and context-sensitivity to enhance our receptivity to the environment and sharpen our perceptual awareness. Nothing wrong with that. It's just not the 'extended mind' as is usually conceived, where cognition actually takes place external to (what we think of as) the mind.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: Mar 29, 2024 11:41 a.m.

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