Andy Clark
Professor of Cognitive Psychology
University of Sussex, United Kingdom
Profile – Andy Clark (b. 1957)
Andy Clark wants to extend our notion of mind far beyond our brains and even our bodies. Human minds can be ‘extended minds’, he says, realised by neuronal, bodily, and even technological elements, such as smartphones and good old-fashioned pencil and paper. He believes that the drive towards cognitive extension is so deeply ingrained that we are natural-born cyborgs: beings whose minds and selves arise at the changing intersections between biology and technology. More recently he has come to believe that work on the ‘predictive brain’ – with feedback between top-down expectations and bottom-up inputs – holds the key to the delicate dance between brain, body, and world. He loves electronic music (especially old-school techno), American comics, and pulp detective fiction. He owns a 47-foot houseboat, Love and Rockets, named after the comic, and decorated (like his own body) with tattoo art. He has held posts in St Louis and Bloomington, and now holds the Chair in Logic and Metaphysics at the University of Edinburgh.
More biographical information
Twitter (@fluffycyborg)
Interviews with Andy Clark
Brain Science, January 2016
Publications
Citations on Google Scholar
Selected publications relevant to consciousness
Clark, A. (1997). Being there: Putting brain, body, and world together again. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Google Books preview here.
Clark, A. (2008). Supersizing the mind: Embodiment, action, and cognitive extension. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Books preview here.
Clark, A. (2013). Whatever next? Predictive brains, situated agents, and the future of cognitive science. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 36(3), 181–253 (incl. commentaries and author’s response). Open-access full text here.
Clark, A. (2015). Surfing uncertainty: Prediction, action, and the embodied mind. New York: Oxford University Press. Google Books preview here.
Clark, A., and Chalmers, D. (1998). The extended mind. Analysis, 58, 7–19. Reprinted in Chalmers, D. (2002), Philosophy of mind: Classical and contemporary readings (pp. 643–651). New York: Oxford University Press. Also reprinted in in Clark, A. (2008), Supersizing the mind: Embodiment, action, and cognitive extension (pp. 220–232).Oxford: Oxford University Press. Paywall-protected journal record here. Unformatted full text here. Google Books preview here.
Clarke, C.J.S. (1995). The nonlocality of mind. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 2(3), 231–240. Reprinted in Shear J. (1997), Explaining consciousness – The ‘hard problem’ (pp. 165–175). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Paywall-protected journal record here.
Haggard, P., and Clark, S. (2003). Intentional action: Conscious experience and neural prediction. Consciousness and Cognition, 12, 695–707. Paywall-protected journal record here. Direct PDF download (final version) here.
Wheeler, M., and Clark, A. (2008). Culture, embodiment and genes: Unravelling the triple helix. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 363, 3563–3575.
Video
Happily entangled. Lecture in Edinburgh, May 2017
Trusting the new you. Lecture on extended mind in Edinburgh, February 2016
The dark side of the predictive mind. The Brains Blog, December 2015
Interview with Sue Blackmore, June 2015
Being and computing. Lecture in Edinburgh, November 2014
Interview with Howard Rheingold on extended mind, September 2012