The Extended Mind and the Cyborg

“Clark and Chalmers: 'Cognition does not stop at the boundary of the skull. When an external device reliably plays the functional role in a cognitive life that an internal brain state would play, storing information, solving problems, navigating the world, it is, functionally speaking, part of that cognitive system. The mind extends into the world.' [...] Haraway: 'A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction. [...] The boundary between science fiction and social reality is an optical illusion.' [...] Sandel: 'The drive to improvement reflects a kind of hyperagency, the Promethean desire to remake nature, including human nature, to serve our purposes and satisfy our desires. Such an attitude toward the world may miss the moral significance of giftedness.' [...] Savulescu: 'If we can use pharmacology to make ourselves more reliably kind, honest, and just, the authenticity objection is a fetish for our particular contingent characteristics, no more defensible than refusing glasses on grounds of natural vision.' — Clark and Chalmers, 'The Extended Mind' (1998); Haraway, A Cyborg Manifesto (1985); Sandel, The Case Against Perfection (2007); Savulescu and Persson, Unfit for the Future (2012); SEP 'Transhumanism'”