February Reading; “Mind Extension”
Added 2023-02-10 20:15:31 +0000 UTC“Get out of your head” is every acting teacher’s favorite shouted command (and a sure-fire way to trigger theater-school-trauma from any graduate). But Anna Murphy Paul has a much broader vision for what that means.
“The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain”
Annie Murphy Paul
I had the pleasure of spending some time with the good folks at the Future of Storytelling last year, and they were very excited about this book from author Annie Murphy Paul. In it, she explores the ways that humans use their bodies, surroundings and relationships to think more deeply and expansively. As a creator with a notable bias towards verbal communication, I’m hoping to better understand the ways to engage a participant’s entire mind, and not just the one between their ears—but more so, to think into the ways that art (and responsive participatory art in particular) might serve as another means for extending the mind.
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Future Of Storytelling, Hosted by Charles Melcher, in collaboration with Charts & Leisure
“That sounds interesting enough,” you confess; “but I doubt I’ll actually read it.” Well Charles Melcher read it, and he loved it, and he brought Annie Murphy Paul on his podcast to talk all about it. So feel free to do what most people do with books slanted towards self-improvement, and outsource the process of discovery to receive a summary of potential benefits instead. You won’t even have to wait until the end of the month for me to pull out some choice excerpts for you. Efficiency!
Andy Clark & David J. Chalmers,* 1995
“*[[Authors are listed in order of degree of belief in the central thesis.]]”
“Where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin?” So begins the academic paper that inspired Murphy Paul’s book (and will probably churn it’s way into being a piece of mine someday, being as it is so exceptionally on brand). As Murphy Paul summarizes:
“Clark and Chalmers initially focused their analysis on the way technology can extend the mind - a proposal that quickly made the leap from risibly preposterous to self-evidently obvious, once their readers acquired smartphones and began offloading large chunks of their memories onto their new devices. (Fellow philosopher Ned Block likes to say that Clark and Chalmers’s thesis was false when it was written in 1998 but subsequently became true - perhaps in 2007, when Apple introduced the first iPhone).”
Prologue, xi, “The Extended Mind,” Anna Murphy Paul
Twyla Tharp would advise us to read “archaeologically,” first seeing what Murphy Paul has made then reading the source text. I advise you to start wherever you interest is and skip around whenever it wanders.
And if you’re wondering; yes, that fascinating footnote on the authors is a direct quote from the formatting of the paper. Bizarre.
~
Thanks for reading along, and for playing a role as an extension of my mind.
Sincerely,
Yannick Trapman-O’Brien
