Part I, The Spark that Lit the Hybrid Fire
Unthinkable thoughts, cognitive revolutions, natural born cyborgs, extended mind theory, and building better worlds to think in
Richard Hamming, a mathematician, computer scientist, and Manhattan Project member, once suggested that just like there are sounds we cannot hear, waves of light we cannot see, and flavours we cannot taste, there could be thoughts we cannot think:
“Evolution, so far, may possibly have blocked us from being able to think in some directions, there could be unthinkable thoughts.” — Richard Hamming
How do we know waves of light, flavours, particles, and other invisible units of reality exist?
We build tools.
We build tools outside of our immediate senses to adapt to our bodies. Telescopes, microscopes, radiography, etc. are all examples of increasing our technological capacities to better understand the world around us.
So, what about our thoughts? How do we tap into “unthinkable thoughts”?
Cognitive Revolutions
Let’s start with history. The “Axial Age” refers to the mid-first millennium BCE during which a cluster of changes in cultural traditions occurred in different places around the world. These changes most notably included the emergence of moralizing religions and philosophies like Platonism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, and Judaism. One view of Axial Age scholarship considers the period to be a “cognitive revolution” — an era that saw these changes due to the invention of writing and codification of knowledge in written texts propelling what is known as “second order thinking”.
Of course, the Axial Age is not without dispute and there are other views of cognitive revolutions in history happening before the advent of writing. One of the most popularized is outlined in Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens which paints human history as one of three major revolutions: the Cognitive Revolution, Agricultural Revolution, and the Scientific Revolution. He argues that these revolutions set us apart from other mammals because we were able to create and connect ideas that do not exist, and yet have come to define us — religion, capitalism, money, and politics. Harari argues that our most persistent cognitive technology, the myth, enabled us to coordinate with each other through a common aim allowing us to overcome natural forces no other mammal has.
I’ve simplified, but this is the Harari argument for the Cognitive Revolution occurring between 70,000 to 30,000 years ago (well before the Axial Age). Myth-making not only scaled coordination between humans, but it also scaled imagination. We became story-tellers. Narration became the default mode for understanding the world — if you could speak it, persuade it, sell it, it became reality. This is the world of myth, legend, and fantasy upon which collective beliefs were built and defines how we shape reality to this day.
Natural Born Cyborgs
While this formalized “Cognitive Revolution’’ occurred tens of thousands of years ago, the malleability of the human mind that powered it provides a medium for constant adaptation.
First, the very structure of the brain reveals one that is more like a system of brains that has evolved over time and can be viewed from different perspectives — right and left hemispheres with different modes of function, as well as your cortex and neocortex, lizard brain and developed brain, cerebellum vs front lobe, System I and II, etc.
Second, the brain is a “constructive learning system”, one whose own basic computational and representational resources alter and expand (or contract!) as the system learns. These systems use early learning to build new basic structures upon which to base later learning.
Third, there’s sufficient evidence to suggest we have parallel information processes occurring and that nonconscious information processing happens throughout the body through interoception. This allows us to process larger and more complex pieces of information through unconscious channels in the body, conserving energy for others.
Cognition, thus, is highly malleable and adaptive. This gets to the question inherent in defining cognition and shifts within in it — if the mind is constantly adapting in response to our environment, where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begins?
In 1998, two cognitive scientists, Andy Clark and David Chalmers, published a paper opening with exactly this question, suggesting that our cognition isn’t just a process that happens in our head, but that the extended mind is increasingly entangled with technology. Extended Mind Theory (EMT) proposes that cognition is not confined to a person’s physical brain but also includes external elements in their environment. Clark’s later book, Natural-Born Cyborg, paints the very essence of humanity as being defined by the evolving relationships between mind and tool. Forces traditionally viewed as opposed, he argues that technology is essentially human.
“With speech, text, and the tradition of using them as critical tools under our belts humankind entered the first phase of its cyborg existence.”
“As a result, it would invite us to systematically and repeatedly build better worlds to think in… Public language was the spark that lit the hybrid fire.”
- Natural Born Cyborg
Language was our first cognitive tool that extended our minds. It was the first spark that gave us unthinkable thoughts.
While the thought of homo sapiens as “natural born cyborgs” might make some uncomfortable, there’s ample evidence to suggest that the development of our psychology has transformed over time from shared storytelling to one that is much more individual and internal due to our technology. In a prolific overview of the development of “WEIRD” psychology (Western Educated Industrialized Rich and Democratic), Joseph Henrich argues in his book that Westerners are uniquely individualistic, analytical, and think in terms of individual responsibility in comparison to most other cultures that identify with family first, think more “holistically”, and take responsibility as a group. This difference is one of psychology and culture driven by the printing press and spread of literacy. With writing came reading through books, a new mode of thought that emphasized internal vs shared cognition — a change that was frowned upon at the time.
This kind of individualized, WEIRD thinking has also motivated the use of contained analogies and metaphors in an effort to better understand how our own black box of a brain works. From “brains as computers” to “brains as muscles”, we make the mistake of restricting an expansive computational system to any kind of box at all. Most of our early human history as oral storytellers shows us it’s not.
Over two decades since “the extended mind” was proposed, author Annie Murphy Paul gives an updated view of the research in her recent book, The Extended Mind, arguing that evidence for their theory has only grown stronger:
“… thought happens not only inside the skull but out in the world, too; it’s an act of continuous assembly and reassembly that draws on resources external to the brain… the kinds of materials available to “think with” affect the nature and quality of the thought that can be produced. The capacity to think well — that is, to be intelligent — is not a fixed property of the individual, but rather a shifting state that is dependent on access to extra-neutral resources and the knowledge of how to use them.” — The Extended Mind
The capacity to think well is not a fixed state, but a dynamic one dependent on 1) tools to extend the mind and 2) knowledge of how to use them.
Understanding this, EMT gives us a more applicable lens to better understand the transformative benefits of an evolving human-machine symbiosis emerging before us today. A symbiosis we were well-designed for as natural born cyborgs.
Mirror Mirror
But, there is also a loud and emerging view that says we’re not…
