SOCIAM all-hands meeting, September, University of Oxford

1. Human-Extended Machine
Cognition
September 2017
Oxford, UK
Paul Smart

2. The Extended Mind
• Clark & Chalmers (1998):
• Active externalism.
• The machinery of the (human) mind extends
beyond the bounds of skin and skull.
• Two flavours:
• Extended Mind Thesis (Mental States).
• Extended Cognition Thesis (Mental
Processes),

3. The Web-Extended Mind
Web-Based System
Extended Cognitive System

4. I

5. WWW
Smart
Sensors
Smart
Actuators
AI
AI

6. AI

7. If {feature} Then {Category}
Hard for humans
Easy for machines
Finch? Bunting?
Hard for humans
Hard for machines
Blue Belly? Conical Beak?
Easy for humans
Hard for machines

8. If {feature} Then {Category}
Hard for humans
Easy for machines
Finch? Bunting?
Hard for humans
Hard for machines
Blue Belly? Conical Beak?
Easy for humans
Hard for machines
WORLD WIDE WEB
Image Analysis
Feature
Selection
Classification
Feature
Extraction
Validation
MACHINE
HUMAN COMMUNITY

9. Cogs in the Machine?
• Extended Cognition:
• Technological resources form part of the
physical machinery of human mind.
• Human-Extended Machine Cognition:
• We humans form part of the physical
machinery that realizes the cognitive routines
of machines.
• We are part of their minds!
“In handicrafts and manufacture, the worker makes use of a
tool; in the factory, the machine makes use of him.”
- Karl Marx

10. So What?
• Interdisciplinary links between philosophy of
mind and computer science.
• Less controversial example of extended
cognition.
• Resolution of long-standing philosophical
problems:
• Better understanding of active externalism.
• Ethics:
• Tools ’r’ us.

11. Publications
• Smart, P. R. (2017) Situating Machine Intelligence
within the Cognitive Ecology of the Internet. Minds
and Machines, 27(2), 357-380.
• Smart, P. R. (2017) Extended Cognition and the
Internet: A Review of Current Issues and
Controversies. Philosophy & Technology, 30(3),
357-390.
• Smart, P. R. (submitted) Human-Extended Machine
Cognition. Cognitive Systems Research.
• Smart, P. R (in prep) The Extended Mind, Revisited.