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In this interview with Robert Lawrence Kuhn for the PBS series Closer to Truth, the UK philosopher, writer and retired neuroscientist Raymond Tallis offers his nuanced view of the extended mind thesis, proposed by Andy Clark and David Chalmers in 1998. Their paper ‘The Extended Mind’ shifted the bedrock of modern philosophy, psychology and neuroscience, and eventually became the most cited philosophy paper of the decade. Its thesis was that our consciousnesses are constantly integrating and being moulded by outside objects, including other people, in ways that suggest that the mind extends far beyond the confines of the skull, or even the skin. Somewhat controversial upon its publication, the paper’s central idea gained greater popular traction as innovations in technologies such as medical implants and smart devices seemed to narrow the gap between human cognition and external objects. Two decades on from the paper’s publication, Tallis finds much to admire and to critique in its central contention, embracing the notion that our minds are in no way constrained to the brain, while rejecting the idea that devices such as smartphones open up novel pathways for understanding consciousness.
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Food and drink
Local tensions simmer amid a potato salad contest at the Czech-Polish border
14 minutes
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Technology and the self
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Knowledge
An Indigenous myth and a geological survey elicit two ways of knowing one place
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Technology and the self
How the magic of photography brought Victorian England closer to the spirit realm
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Neuroscience
Dog vision is a trendy topic, but what can we really know about how they see?
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Biology
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Art
Creating art that was aware of itself – and the viewer – made Manet the first modernist
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War and peace
A century later, can poetry help us make sense of the First World War’s horrors?
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Language and linguistics
The little Peruvian guide to public speaking that conjures up a grandiose world
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