Andy Clark

Agora

Andy Clark

b. 1957

A first way ina deliberate simplification – the portrait says more

The mind does not stop at the skull – notebooks, phones and tools can be part of our thinking – and the brain is above all a prediction machine.

Placement

Analytic Philosophy · Northern Europe · Mind & Consciousness, Science, Epistemology

Philosopher of cognitive science at Sussex: the mind extends beyond the skull into notebooks and tools – we are “natural-born cyborgs” – and the brain is a prediction machine.

Key ideas

Extended mind (with Chalmers)
Embodied cognition
Predictive processing

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Influence

Influenced by 4

Martin Heidegger

influenced by
Clark drew on Heidegger’s analysis of ready-to-hand equipment, used fluently without being represented, for his action-oriented account of embodied cognition (Being There, 1997). A. Clark, Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again (1997); M. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (1927); SEP “Embodied Cognition”
Evidence: AI draft
Martin Heidegger › 1889–1976
Lev Vygotsky

influenced by
Clark took up Vygotsky’s view of speech as a tool that guides thought, treating public language as external scaffolding for cognition (Being There, 1997). A. Clark, Being There (1997); L. S. Vygotsky, Myshlenie i rech’ (1934; Engl. Thought and Language, 1962)
Evidence: AI draft
Lev Vygotsky › 1896–1934
Maurice Merleau-Ponty

influenced by
Clark took up Merleau-Ponty’s view of the body as the subject of skilled engagement with the world for an embodied, action-oriented cognitive science (Being There, 1997). A. Clark, Being There (1997); M. Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception (1945); SEP “Embodied Cognition”
Evidence: AI draft
Maurice Merleau-Ponty › 1908–1961
Daniel Dennett

influenced by
Clark took up Dennett’s picture of words as tools that augment cognition, treating public language as an external artefact that reshapes the brain’s computational tasks (‘Magic Words’, 1998). A. Clark, “Magic Words: How Language Augments Human Computation”, in P. Carruthers and J. Boucher (eds.), Language and Thought (1998); D. C. Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (1995)
Evidence: also in InPhO · InPhO
Daniel Dennett › 1942–2024

Criticism

Criticizes 2

René Descartes

criticised
Clark rejected the Cartesian picture of the mind as an inner, disembodied reasoner: cognition is embodied and can extend into tools and environment (Being There, 1997). A. Clark, Being There (1997); A. Clark & D. J. Chalmers, “The Extended Mind”, Analysis 58 (1998); Supersizing the Mind (2008)
Evidence: AI draft
René Descartes › 1596–1650
Jerry Fodor

criticised
Clark defended connectionist models against Fodor and Pylyshyn’s claim that only a classical language of thought can explain the systematicity of cognition (Microcognition, 1989). A. Clark, Microcognition (1989); Associative Engines (1993); J. Fodor & Z. Pylyshyn, “Connectionism and Cognitive Architecture”, Cognition 28 (1988)
Evidence: AI draft
Jerry Fodor › 1935–2017

Position

Clark is a leading advocate of the view that cognition is embodied, embedded and extended. “Being There”, drawing on robotics and developmental psychology as well as on Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, argued that minds evolved not to build detailed inner models of the world but to guide action, letting the body and the environment do part of the work. “The Extended Mind”, written with David Chalmers, argued that when an external resource plays the same role as an inner process – Otto’s notebook standing in for Inga’s biological memory – it is literally part of the mind. “Natural-Born Cyborgs” holds that humans have always been cyborgs, creatures whose thinking incorporates tools, from writing to smartphones. His later work champions predictive processing: the brain is fundamentally a prediction machine that constantly anticipates incoming signals and learns from its errors, so that perception is a kind of controlled hallucination checked by the senses, and action a way of making predictions come true. “The Experience Machine” draws out what this means for pain, placebo effects, mental health and self-knowledge.

Life & context

Andy Clark (born 1957 in London) studied at the University of Stirling, where he took his doctorate in 1984. He taught at Glasgow and Sussex, directed the Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology programme at Washington University in St. Louis from 1993 and the cognitive science programme at Indiana University from 2002, and in 2004 became professor of logic and metaphysics at the University of Edinburgh. Since 2019 he has been professor of cognitive philosophy at the University of Sussex. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and in 2025 he received the inaugural Dennett Prize.