The Mindsized Mashup Mind Isn’t Supersized After All

摘要

I rather like Andy Clark’s book, Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, andnCognitive Extension, but it certainly hasn’t put my mind at rest.1 As always Clark’s writing is uncomplicated and energetic, managing to make everything, from the physiologynof the moving body, through an analysis of the scaffolding role which, henmaintains, is played by language, to the strategic use of representation, computationnand control by the biological brain, both intelligible and interesting. And I have angreat deal of sympathy with his main thesis: That we must consider the whole body,nrather than merely the brain, as the locus where sensing and acting are synthesizednand through which cognitive systems can engage with their world. But still I find thatnI have a couple of rather fundamental reservations, alongside a number of ancillaryncomments that arise from my own puzzlement with some – of what can at first glancenseem – disarmingly simple claims.