Abstract

In this talk, Professor Andy Clark, author (amongst other books) of Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again, and Natural-Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and the Future of Human Intelligence, will ask two basic questions apt to impact our thinking about technologies that may assist the ‘mind’s work’ in the future. The first is: Why does embodiment matter for understanding the mind? The second is: What about ‘higher cognition’? If embodiment matters, does it matter ‘all the way up’?

Andy Clark is Professor of Philosophy in the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, at Edinburgh University. He is the author of several books including Being There: Putting Brain, Body And World Together Again (MIT Press, 1997) and Natural-Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies And The Future Of Human Intelligence (Oxford University Press, 2003). His research interests include robotics and artificial life, the cognitive role of human-built structures, specialization and interactive dynamics in neural systems, and the interplay between language, thought and action.