Leverhulme Lecture | Cognitive Symbiosis: Humans, Objects and Surfaces

Cognitive Symbiosis: Humans, Objects and Surfaces

Abstract

Professor David Kirsh presents a version of the extended mind thesis, which states that minds can extend beyond the nervous system to include external memory systems, external controls and external computations. The key is establishing the right coupling. Professor Kirsh discusses the nature of this coupling and shows how we humans, at certain moments, think with things, control our activities and feelings externally, and generally embed ourselves with the materials and processes around us.

Our immediate environment functions like a cognitive biome. Because of that we are shape-shifting cyborgs – cognitive symbionts. This has significant implications for the design of structures, surfaces and objects. Architecture must ready itself for the new forms of activities that the digital and AI revolution is bringing. Our cognitive biome is transforming fast.  

Professor David Kirsh

David is a Professor/past chair of the Department of Cognitive Science/UCSD. He is Visiting Professor at The Bartlett School of Architecture (MSc Architectural Computation). He has written on situated and embodied cognition, how environments can be shaped to simplify/extend cognition, and how space, external representations, our bodies and even manipulable objects become interactive tools for thought.

David is co-Director of the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination and on the Board of Directors for the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture. He is Adjunct Professor at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance.

This is the first a series of four Leverhulme Lectures at UCL. The lecture is open to all.