A Distributed-but-Unified Mind

초록

Alva Noe’s Out of Our Heads (2009) delivers his idea on the relation among brain, body, and its environment. As an externalist he maintains that a whole bundle of intracranial processes is not sufficient for making a mind. He seems nevertheless to stand by the idea that unity of biological-physiological processes is an essential prerequisite for establishment of a mind. (Along this line of thought he makes speculation that artificial mind might be possible only via artificial life.) The evolution of the most biological species including homo sapiens has made the organisms spatially unified bodies. But this type of unification is not a necessary condition for unity of a physiological system. If just energy and information can be transferred through empty space, as already realized by technology today (e.g., wireless energy transfer via electromagnetic induction or –radiation), a set of spatially distributed bodies can exhibit such degree of unity that Noe expects from an artificial life which can manifest mental aspects. We can build such an integrated system with spatially distributed (i.e. scattered) but informationally unified parts. Maybe such a distributed system does not amount to be a genuine biological entity since it lacks its own history of evolution. But whether it can be a mental being is another question, to which I will answer in the positive. The obstacles toward such a scattered-but-unified mind are not philosophical ones but ones of scientists and engineers.