Does technology function as a part of the mind?

That’s a question this year’s Crom Visiting Philosopher Andy Clark will be discussing this week.

Clark chairs the logic and metaphysics department at the University of Edinburgh where he also teaches. He was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 2015 and is credited with having co-created the extended mind hypothesis, an important theory in cognitive science and philosophy that claims the mind is not contained within the brain or body, but is in part literally constituted by the environment in which it finds itself. He works primarily within the philosophy of mind and has written extensively on connectionism and robotics within artificial intelligence.

Robin Zebrowski, chair of the cognitive science program and associate professor in the department, says she’s taught a popular Beloit course on Clark’s work for the nearly a decade.

“Every year, it seems to get more exciting because technology evolves and his theory looks more right over time,” says Robin.

Recently Clark was featured in the April edition of The New Yorker. “I like to see a bunch of things and see how they might fit together into a story, and the more bits of human experience that story can touch the more I’m going to like it,” he told the magazine.

Clark’s keynote lecture is Wednesday, April 4 at 7:30 p.m. in Moore Lounge.