**Main ideas** - [[Things extend the mind, tools are mental prostheses]] - [[Making artefacts involves thinking with and through them, and thinking about them]] The book is structured in the following way: the [[Material Engagement Theory]] is presented, built from three main components: - [[Extended Mind Thesis (EMT)]] - [[The Enactive Sign]] - [[Material Agency]] The main objective of [[Material Engagement Theory]] is to build a bridge between brains, bodies and things, and between the material history and the cognitive domain. The central question is how do things shape the mind. By extension, we are asking: where does the mind end and the rest of the world begin. For Malafouris, the answer is not in the skull. As an introductory illustration, Malafouris borrows from Bateson's blind man's stick: ![[Pasted image 20211125113059.png]] The blind man integrates the stick as part of itself, the brain extends its propioception to the stick. This lays the foundation for a complex [[Cognitive Ecology]] by [[Edwin Hutchins]]. [[Cognitive Ecology]] invites us to look at the mind in context. For me, this means that the way the mind perceives the world, and thus the mind itself, is determined by its [[Affordances]] which includes the body itself and the particular environment. Hutchins, as quoted by Malafouris in this book. ![[Pasted image 20211125115847.png]] Malafouris's effort seeks to go beyond enactivism, which took out the mind of the skull into the body, and into the environment. Even in these conception, the material world is rarely seen as a constitutive part of the mind. Against representation For Malafouris, the problem with representational views of the mind is that it has an internalist bias, lacks embodiement, and leads to a brain in a vat rather than emergent representations. ![[Pasted image 20211125115206.png]] ## Ideas for connections [[Gordon Pask]] conversation as extension of cognition Tools for thought and second brain[[Andy Matuschak]] Wittgenstein: lanquage determines tour world. Language is a form of materiality. Idea: the mind can externalise memory, representation and processing. Piece of paper is an example of memory. Another example is the Linear Tablet B. A calculator an example of processing. Creativity can also be externalised, partly outsourced to an external processing device, be it other person, or a computer. Pask talks about externalising cognition through dialogue. Human are a social species, and their brains very clearly necessitate the interaction with others. By default, human brains rely on external units of cognition, they are an extension, the mind is made up of those relationships.Parts of the brain can communicate with other processes via neural connections, or via action in the world. This is called the partita principle. For a given brain region, another brain region is almost functionally equivalent to an external processing device. For example, if the prefrontal lobe realises it needs to remember a phone number, it can either go find it in memory, located likely in a different area of the brain, or find it in your contact book. ![[8C63A636-8702-488B-8273-AD5E630A191A.jpeg]] Buscar: Mark Rowlands As described by Mark Rowlands, mental processes are: Embodied involving more than the brain, including a more general involvement of bodily structures and processes. Embedded functioning only in a related external environment. Enacted involving not only neural processes, but also things an organism does. Extended into the organism's environment. This "4E" view of cognition contrasts with the view of the mind as a processing center that creates mental representations of reality and uses them to control the body's behaviour. Idea: la cognición y la conciencia no son lo mismo. Tal vez la conciencia requiere neuronas, pero la cognición no. Cuando Inga recuerda la dirección, no esta cociente de el proceso que sucede para obtener ese información. **Ideas while reading** For the [[Birch installation]] can we bring some of[[Lambros Malafouris]] ideas of the space as an extension of the mind Definitely look up Clarke for cognitive ecology La aritmética viene de una habilidad Hinata que tienen los seres humanos y otras especies en detectar cambios en cantidades. Como tal que es una habilidad visual espacial depende del entorno dado que otros animales tienen también estas capacidades especiales de percepción no resulta absurdo pensar que algunos otros animales tengan una forma básica de aritmética Percibir intuitivamente tres objetos es una tarea cognitiva diferente que contar 10. La primera principalmente involucra percepción espacial, la segunda la memoria. El ejemplo de la cognición numérica y el conteo vs percepción espacial de cantidades ilustra perfectamente como nuestro entorno ha determinado totalmente nuestras capacidades cognitivas. Nuestro pensamiento evoluciono habilidades simples espaciales, visuales y temporales, etc. Y luego esas habilidades se combinan progresivamente para formas habilidades cognitivas mas complejas. Pero por mas que consideremos avanzadas a las matemáticas derivan de habilidades espaciales y otras sencillas evolved to adapt to our given environment. If we were creatures that inhabited in 5 dimensions, our cognitive systems, our way of thinking, would be entirely different. No es el lenguaje el único que determina el pensamiento, también el entorno. Por ejemplo, la aritmética no solo involucra habilidades de lenguaje para realizar habilidades complejas, también habilidades espaciales que evolucionaron en un entorno dado. Very relevante for agency as well An important theme I should include in my[[Literature Review]] is [[agency]] For intention you need representation of the world and for that you need engagement, engagement and representation happens before intention.