The Ultimate Artifact / Rooms remember who we are

Andy Clark calls language 'the ultimate artefact'. The imposition of a shared language on our human nervous system augments our cognitive capacity to such an extent that it is not entirely clear how or if we could think without it. The ability to encode our knowledge in symbols, be they external or internal, and then to be able to manipulate these symbols, means that our ideas can 'die in our stead'. We don't need to go through costly and dangerous manipulations of the environment to figure out what the outcome might be, as we can use representations which we can manipulate to predict likely outcomes. We can control and coordinate our behaviour, with lists and inner and outer prompts. We can communicate our ideas to others, and plan and coordinate large and complex group activities. And perhaps most important for our uniquely human faculties, suggests, Clark, we can have thoughts about our thoughts. A thought captured in language then becomes like any other object in the world, something we can think about. This is indeed something the animals can't do, for language, gives us the ability to self-reflect, to consider the present thoughts in our head, to distil the past into propositions and conclusions and use them to interpret the present and predict the future, to time travel. Language and representation is what allows us to pause for thought, to act well or badly, to deliberate, to the human. Indeed, Daniel Dennett goes so far as to suggest that it is the imposition of culture and language on our brains that gives rise to consciousness and to our sense of self. For if language and symbols are what allow us to think, to deliberate and reflect in the here and now, they are also what allow us to put together a thing called a self, and for that self to become another thing that we can think about.

Our passage through the world leaves an impression, a record written in language and symbols. Over time, in these memories and records, we have written the biography of us. And not just, of course in internal symbols, but in our rooms and the thing we accumulate within them.

Through all of these, in all of these, we accumulate a biography and write a story about ourselves. Rooms remember who we are. ~ Page 66/67