The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain

by Annie Murphy Paul

habits of mind

Habits of Mind

offload information,

Offloading need not require written language, either. At times, offloading may be embodied: when we gesture, for example, we permit our hands to “hold” some of the thoughts we would otherwise have to maintain in our head.

offloading may be social:

Onward to the second principle: whenever possible, we should endeavor to transform information into an artifact,

Humans evolved to handle the concrete, not to

We evolved to handle the concrete. Not to contemplate the abstract.

contemplate the abstract.

third principle: whenever possible, we should seek to productively alter our own state when engaging in mental labor.

The way we’re able to think about information is dramatically affected by the state we’re in when we encounter it.

Deliberately altering our own state could entail taking a walk in a nearby park when our frazzled attention requires restoration, or seeking out a sparring partner with whom to argue when we want to make sure our ideas are sound. Instead of heedlessly driving the brain like a machine, we’ll think more intelligently when we treat it as the context-sensitive organ it is.

The brain as a "context-sensitive" organ

fourth principle: whenever possible, we should take measures to re-embody the information we think about.

it might take the form of attending to our own and others’ gestures, tuning back in to what was humanity’s first language, present long before speech.

Gestures!

The fifth principle emphasizes another human strength: whenever possible, we should take measures to re-spatialize the information we think about.

researchers report that learning in a spatial mode can also help students think in more advanced ways about topics including chemistry, biology, and history.

The sixth principle rounds out the roster of our innate aptitudes: whenever possible, we should take measures to re-socialize the information we think about.

Research we’ve reviewed demonstrates that the brain processes the “same” information differently, and often more effectively, when other human beings are involved—whether

We can pass our thoughts through the portal of our bodies: seeking the verdict of our interoception, seeing what our gestures have to show us, acting out our ideas in movement, observing the inspirations that arise during or after vigorous exercise. We can spread out our thoughts in space, treating the contents of the mind as a territory to be mapped and navigated, surveyed and explored. And we can run our thoughts through the brains of the people we know, gathering from the lot of them the insights no single mind could generate. Most felicitous of all, we can loop our thoughts through all three of these realms. What we shouldn’t do is keep our thoughts inside our heads, inert, unchanged by encounters with the world beyond the skull.

eighth principle: whenever possible, we should manage our thinking by creating cognitively congenial situations.

The art of creating intelligence-extending situations is one that every parent, teacher, and manager needs to master.

The final principle of extension doubles back on itself with a self-referential observation. What kind of creatures are we? The kind who extend, eagerly and energetically, when given the chance. Consider: research from neuroscience and cognitive psychology indicates that when we begin using a tool, our “body schema”—our sense of the body’s shape, size, and position—rapidly expands to encompass it, as if the tool we’re grasping in our hand has effectively become an extension of our arm.

Accordingly, the ninth principle: whenever possible, we should manage our thinking by embedding extensions in our everyday environments.

“There but for the grace of God go I.” Acknowledging the reality of the extended mind might well lead us to embrace the extended heart.