Our Cyborg selves

Chimps were trained to associate a plastic token, such as a red triangle, with any pair of identical objects (such as two shoes) and to associate a differently shaped token with any pair of different objects (such as a beer can and a banana). The chimps could then solve the more complex problem of categorising pairs-of-pairs of objects in terms of higher-order sameness or difference. They could, for example, classify shoe-and-cup (different) as the same higher order relationship as beer-can-and-banana (also different). They could do this because both pairs would get the same kind of token. All they had to do was to compare the tokens.

Clark thinks that words work in the same way. They label complex concepts and enable us to "freeze" our thoughts, enabling us to think about them. (Is this a good idea? Should I put it into action?)

Language is what Clark calls a “transparent technology”. We are so well integrated with it that it is almost invisible in use. We are surrounded by such technologies (pens, watches, computers, telephones … ) and are rapidly developing new ones. “Pseudo-neural” implants in our bodies will communicate with one-another - where we are and how we are. Augmented reality will overlay our experience of the world with personalised information, beamed to us by satellite. Lost on campus we will enter “library”, don an eyeglass and see a green arrow pointing to the library.

Extended systems

Clark claims that we are so well integrated with these technologies that the problem-solving system is the biological system plus the technology. Suppose someone asks you if you know the time. You say that you do and then you look at your watch. You say that you know it because you know that you can easily find it out. And what does the knowing is the extended system of you-and-your-watch.

Suppose you have a chip on your shoulder that gives you easy access to information about women basketball players. Clark says that there is no relevant difference between accessing the information on the chip and accessing it in long-term memory. You know the information because you have easy access to it - and what does the knowing is you-and-the-chip.

Here is another example. At some time in the future you are in a car accident and suffer brain damage. You wake up in hospital and a doctor tells you that some of the information that was stored in the wetware of your brain has been transferred to silicon chips that have been implanted into your brain. From your point of view, however, nothing has changed. Your memories are intact.

If this happened we would say that some of the cognitive states that were in the wetware of your brain are now in the silicon chips that have been implanted in your head. It would make no difference to you, just so long as you had the same, easy access to the information.

Now suppose the chips weren’t put into your head but were implanted in your shoulder, or put in a safe place, such as a bank vault and kept in radio contact with your brain. So long as you had easy access to the information it wouldn’t matter where the chips were - in head, shoulder or bank vault. If they were outside your head some of your cognitive states would be outside your head - in your shoulder or in the bank vault.

Another example is Otto’s notebook. Otto suffers from Alzheimer's disease. He hears that there is an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. He consults his notebook, which says that the museum is on 53rd Street. He walks to 53rd Street and goes to the museum. The argument says that the notebook plays the same role for Otto that biological memory plays for the rest of us. It just happens that “this information lies beyond the skin”.

The claim is not only that Otto’s belief is out there in the world. It is that Otto believed the museum was on 53rd Street before he looked it up, courtesy of the functional isomorphism between the notebook entry and a corresponding “entry” in biological memory. If something is stored in biological memory we say that someone knows it before they access it. What difference does it make if it is stored in a notebook, rather than in biological memory?

Our Cyborg selves

Our effortless integration with our technologies makes us characteristically and distinctively human. It gives us much that we cherish about our species, including art, science and creativity, and the ability to explore the universe and ourselves.

Imagine what it would be like to lose these technologies. Alzheimer sufferers often live alone, quite successfully. They do so by leaving props and reminders everywhere: photographs of family and friends; labels and pictures on doors; “memory books” to record new events, meetings and plans. These things are always on open view, never hidden away. Putting these people into hospital can have tragic consequences. They are so integrated with their home environments that moving them inflicts a new damage, akin to brain damage, on an already compromised host.

It is the same with us. Our papers, pens, notebooks, diaries and computers complement our biological abilities. We would be impoverished - and less human - without them.