Studies of mind, thought and reason have tended to marginalize the role of bodily form, real-world action, and environmental backdrop. In recent years, both in philosophy and cognitive science, this tendency has been identified and, increasingly, resisted. The result is a plethora of work on what has become known as embodied, situated, distributed, and even ''extended'' cognition. Work in this new, loosely knit field depicts thought and reason as in some way inextricably tied to the details of our gross bodily form, our habits of action and intervention, and the enabling web of social, cultural, and technological scaffolding in which we live, move, learn, and think. But exactly what kind of link is at issue? And what difference might such a link or links make to our best philosophical, psychological, and computational models of thought and reason? These are among the large unsolved problems in this increasingly popular field. Drawing upon recent work in psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, robotics, human-computer systems, and beyond, Supersizing the Mind offers both a tour of the emerging landscape, and a sustained argument in favor of one approach to the key issues. That approach combines the use of representational, computational, and information-theoretic tools with an appreciation of the importance of context, timing, biomechanics, and dynamics. More controversially, it depicts some coalitions of biological and non-biological resources as the extended cognitive circuitry of individual minds. With a substantial foreword by David Chalmers, Supersizing the Mind is essential reading for all those interested in embodied cognition, the extended mind, and the likely shape of twenty-first century cognitive scientific explanation.
Industry Reviews
"In Supersizing the Mind, Clark furthers the debate marvelously. He manages to engage, in a detailed and focused way, with the most active and prominent philosophers writing about situated cognition, while also introducing the empirical work and big picture ideas that animate the subject. I highly recommend this book." --Journal of Mind and Behavior
"Supersizing the Mind is an important book for cognitive-science theorists of all stripes.... Although traditional and radical theorists are likely to remain unconvinced, there can be no doubt that Supersizing the Mind will set the terms for many of the coming debates."--Evan Thompson, Times Literary Supplement
"...it offers original thinking in the philosophy of mind, and it is highly recommended for academic collections in that subject."--Library Journal
"In Supersizing the Mind, philosopher Andy Clark makes the compelling argument that the mind extends beyond the body to include the tools, symbols and other artefacts we deploy to engage the world.... Supersizing the Mind is a treat to read. It is brimming with remarkable ideas, novel insights and amusing language."--Nature
"Supersizing the Mind is tantalizing in many respects, and Clark's ingenuity is always on display. Just as his earlier Being There launched many a research project, we expect that Supersizing the Mind will inspire a new generation of philosophers, psychologists, and artificial intelligence researchers to reconsider some basic assumptions about the mind."--Lawrence Shapiro and Shannon Spaulding, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
"This is an important book; it provides compelling and empirically well-supported argument; it offers a survey of the state-of-play in contemporary cognitive science; it directs our attention to the most pressing foundational issue in the study of mind, that of how to reconcile the information-processing perspective with the growing recognition that action and the body, not to mention technology, have a crucial role in our mental lives."--Trends in
Cognitive Sciences
