Andy Clark
Philosophy / Neuroscience / Psychology Program Washington University in St. Louis

Reasons, Persons and Cyborgs

The scientific image of the nature of human reason is in a state of flux. Insights from Cognitive Psychology, Artificial Neural Networks, Neuroscience, Cognitive Anthropology and Robotics are converging on a model of human reason in which reliable environmental context, inorganic props and tools, emotional responses and (other) so-called 'fast and frugal' heuristics all play pivotal roles in the mediation of effective adaptive response. Moving in the space of reasons, it increasingly seems, is as much about moving in the space of objects as in the space of ideas. Embodied action is part and parcel of the mechanism of reason itself. The cognitive architecture that makes us what we are involves heterogeneous, shifting webs of structure and process which criss-cross the (cognitively marginal) boundaries of the squishy biological organism.
    In the talk I further defend this viewpoint and ask what (if anything) follows for our conceptions of persons and agency. I depict the thoughtful agent as in part constituted by her non-biological 'tools for thought'. Near-future implant technologies will, of course, try to push some of this extended cognitive architecture back inside the biological membrane. But this buys easier portability without (I shall argue) fundamentally changing the nature of the thoughtful agent. We are already cyborgs. Indeed, that is (oddly) what is most distinctively human about us!