The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain

In order to think the intelligent, informed, original thoughts we’re capable of, we can’t rely on the brain alone. We have to think outside the brain.

So often, we assume that real thinking—serious thinking—is done alone, bent over a book or a notepad. But in fact, humans think best when they are interacting with others. Social activities like debating, storytelling, and teaching activate mental processes that remain

A laptop operates the same whether it is open on a desk in an office or on a bench in a park. But human brains aren’t like that—they are exquisitely sensitive to context. One of the most fertile and fruitful places to “think with” is nature. That’s because, over eons of evolution, our brains were tuned to the kind of sensory information available

We in the West are used to thinking of the mind and the body as separate. But a burgeoning field called “embodied cognition” is demonstrating that thinking is actually a full-body experience.

More than 20 years ago, two philosophers, Andy Clark and David Chalmers, wrote a journal article that opened with a question: “Where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin?” Now, that question would seem to have an obvious answer, right? The mind stops at the head. It’s contained within the skull. But Clark and Chalmers maintained that

“It’s common in our culture to compare the brain to a computer, but this is a deeply flawed analogy.”