Knowledge is the centerpiece of the human cognitive machine. It guides thought and action, both necessitating and directing each successive iteration of the complex interplay between the cognitive and physical operations of the human person. In his book Natural Born Cyborgs, philosopher Andy Clark (2003) describes the tendency to incorporate external resources into the cognitive system as a defining characteristic of humanity and a central feature of our unique capabilities. “We are already primed by nature to dovetail our minds to our worlds.” he argues, “Once the world starts dovetailing back in earnest, the last few seams must burst, and we will stand revealed: cyborgs without surgery, symbionts without sutures.”
In Clark’s human/machine symbiosis, the human element of the system is constantly receiving information from both the biological brain and the technological world. Using the example of a man being asked for the time, and pointing out that he is apt to respond “Yes” when asked “Do you know the time?” even when he must consult his watch to retrieve that information, Clark argues that “the line between that which is easily and readily accessible and that which should be counted as part of the knowledge base of an active intelligent system is slim and unstable indeed”.
To Clark, information that is ready at hand should be considered part of the knowledge base of the individual, regardless of whether it originates in the biological brain or the technological world. However, Clark notes, there is a tendency to view knowledge in the brain as somehow more valuable or complete than knowledge stored in the environment. This tendency, he posits, arises from a commonly held illusion of the brain as “the sole and essentially insulated engine of mind and reason”. This conception, he argues, is effectively a physicalist extension of Cartesian dualism—“the old idea of spirit-stuff in modern dress”.
While the cognitive distinction between information from the brain and information from the environment does to a certain extent constitute an illusion, like many illusions I would argue that it likely has an underlying evolutionarily adaptive purpose. Just as the size-weight illusion provides a functional measure of the relative ease with which objects can be thrown, the common bias toward biologically held knowledge could well have been a function of the relative usability of information from biologically and ecologically based sources. In this context, the tendency to view the biological brain as a privileged operator among a host of slave systems could be seen as an artifact of the past and present state of the human-technology relationship. As knowledge stored in silicone becomes just as readily accessible as knowledge stored in brain tissue, this distinction may lose its functional relevance.