Rowling’s description of thoughts in the wizarding world makes the idea of an extended mind even more plausible.12 The gossamer strands of memory belonging to Snape might be inside his skull, leaking out from his body, bottled up in a phial, or stored in the Pensieve. But wherever they are, these memories are Snape’s, just as the memories in Riddle’s diary are Voldemort’s. Their physical location is incidental to their ownership.
But what about in the nonwizarding world? To make their case for the extended mind idea, Clark and Chalmers give the example of Otto, an individual suffering from Alzheimer’s. Otto relies on a notebook to help him remember things. He writes down any new information that he learns, and when he needs to recall something, he consults his notebook. This notebook is always at hand, and he’s able to retrieve the information inside it immediately and efficiently. According to Clark and Chalmers, Otto’s notebook serves the same purpose as a biological memory. We call things up from memory, while Otto calls things up from his notebook; we keep our beliefs in our minds, while Otto keeps his on paper.
Confundus!
At first, the extended-mind theory may sound like something from a Quibbler story hatched by Xenophilius Lovegood. (If it were described to Ron, I can easily imagine him saying—no pun intended—“That’s mental.”) But it begins to make sense when we distinguish between what philosophers call occurrent and nonoccurrent beliefs. At any given time, the overwhelming majority of a person’s beliefs are not consciously available. Ron believes that Ireland won its match against Bulgaria at the 422nd Quidditch World Cup, but, presumably, that belief isn’t at the forefront of his mind—it’s not occurrent—while he and Hermione are racing to the Chamber of Secrets to retrieve the remaining Basilisk fang during the Battle of Hogwarts. At that point, all of his occurrent beliefs most likely concern the great danger of his present situation: the fastest path to Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom and how he’s going to manage to say “Open” in Parseltongue, a language he doesn’t speak.
Similarly, because the information in Otto’s notebook isn’t in the forefront of his mind, it doesn’t seem at all analogous to our occurrent beliefs. Rather, it functions like our nonoccurrent beliefs. Consider Rita Skeeter’s nonoccurrent belief that Bathilda Bagshot lives in Godric’s Hollow, which is stored somewhere in her memory, waiting to be accessed. When Rita decides to interview Bathilda in order to gather material for The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore, she must pause to think for a moment to recall where Bathilda lives. It’s only then that the belief becomes occurrent. Likewise, suppose that Otto has his old friend Bathilda’s address written in his notebook. When he decides to visit her, he has to take a moment to look up in his notebook where she lives. His belief is stored somewhere inside the notebook, waiting to be accessed. Just as it would be silly to deny that even before she consults her memory, Rita has the belief that Bathilda lives in Godric’s Hollow, we should accept that Otto has the same belief even before he consults his notebook.
Clark and Chalmers don’t go so far as to claim that every external support we rely on becomes part of the mind; rather, they see something special in Otto’s connection to his notebook. It’s not the same as Harry’s reliance on the marginal notes of the Half-Blood Prince in the Potions textbook he borrows from Horace Slughorn or Neville Longbottom’s dependence on a handwritten list to help him remember the frequently changing passwords when Sir Cadogan substitutes for the Fat Lady in guarding the entrance to the Gryffindor common room. Harry’s use of the textbook and Neville’s use of the list both occur only sporadically, and Neville even ends up losing his list. Otto’s connection to his notebook is not even like Hermione Granger’s reliance on Hogwarts, A History. Although Hermione consults the book regularly and even ends up bringing it along on the search for Voldemort’s Horcruxes because she wouldn’t feel right if she didn’t have it with her, the information in the book seems more like a supplement to the information in her mind, rather than an extension of her mind.13
What makes Otto’s notebook different from these and other ordinary cases is the way it’s integrated into his daily functioning. Even though the information kept in the notebook is external to his body, he always has his notebook with him, and he always consults it when trying to recall information. When using his notebook, he immediately accepts the information within it.14 There are no deep respects in which the information in the notebook is different from the information in our memories, except for the fact that it’s stored outside the boundaries of Otto’s skull and skin. According to Clark and Chalmers, that one difference alone isn’t enough to keep the information in Otto’s notebook from being part of his mind.
Mischief Managed
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that we accept the extended mind idea. Now consider Fred and George Weasley’s connection to the Marauder’s Map they stole from Argus Filch’s office in their first year at Hogwarts. Until they later bequeath it to Harry, they rely on it so heavily in their escapades that it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to see their relationship to it as analogous to Otto’s relationship to his notebook. The problem, however, is that there are two of them. If the map becomes not only part of Fred’s extended mind but also part of George’s extended mind, then the twins share even more in common than we’d realized. Their minds actually overlap.
This suggests one of the potentially disturbing ramifications of the extended mind idea.15 Once we accept that the mind extends beyond the boundaries of skin and skull, we open up the possibility that it extends into someone else’s mind. When this overlap occurs, we don’t need to be skilled at Legilimency to have the ability to extract thoughts from another person’s mind; those thoughts may already be part of our own.
A related worry is the potential threat that an extended mind poses to one’s sense of self. Compared to the ordeals that Harry Potter has to endure and the greatness he achieves in spite of them, both the trials and the triumphs experienced by most witches and wizards (and certainly most Muggles and Squibs) seem trivial. But just as Harry’s experiences make him the person he is, the personal experiences that each of us undergoes make us who we are. Many philosophers endorse some version of the memory theory of personal identity, which dates back at least to the British philosopher John Locke (1632-1704). According to this theory, our continuing identity over time consists in the continuity of memory.16 It’s the chains of memory connecting them that makes the adult Harry who watches his children board the Hogwarts Express the same person as the teenager who faces Voldemort in the Forbidden Forest and the same person as the orphaned infant taken in by the Dursleys. According to the memory theory, our memories are at the very foundations of our identities. If these same memories can be shared with someone else and can even become part of someone else, then how do we know who we really are?
At various times during his Hogwarts career, Harry shares the memories of several other individuals, including three of his professors (Dumbledore, Snape, and Slughorn). And indeed, in almost every instance, he is greatly affected by his forays into the Pensieve. Tortured by the look he got via Snape’s memory of his own father’s arrogant and unappealing behavior while at Hogwarts, Harry reevaluates not only his sense of his father but also his sense of himself: “For nearly five years the thought of his father had been a source of comfort, of inspiration. Whenever someone had told him he was like James, he had glowed with pride inside. And now . . . now he felt cold and miserable at the thought of him.”17 When he learns, again from Snape’s memory, that a part of Voldemort’s soul lives within himself, he’s forced to reshape his sense of his place in the world: “Finally, the truth . . . Harry understood at last that he was not supposed to survive.”18 In each of these cases, Harry’s use of the Pensieve leads to a sort of identity crisis.
But now think about what else can happen in the wizarding world. Physical appearance can be replicated via Polyjuice Potion. Memories can be almost completely erased by a flick of the wand and an incantation of “Obliviate!” False memories ca
n also be implanted. Each of these magical possibilities poses a great threat to the integrity of an individual’s identity—much greater, in fact, than the threat of memory-sharing via Pensieve. When Barty Crouch Jr. imprisons Moody in a trunk and uses Polyjuice Potion to impersonate him, he’s really engaged in identity theft. Gilderoy Lockhart steals countless identities via memory charms before becoming his own victim through his use of a malfunctioning wand. Hermione has much purer motives when she tampers with her parents’ memories, making them believe that they’re Wendell and Monica Wilkins, a childless couple fulfilling their lifelong dream of moving to Australia. But her good intentions don’t change the fact that her actions deprive the Grangers of their identities.
Clearly, Harry’s experiences with the Pensieve don’t fall into this same category. What makes his previous experiences with the Pensieve so difficult is the content of the memories he’s shared, not the memory sharing itself. Seeing Snape’s worst memory is an unpleasant experience for Harry because of the painful facts it reveals, not because it somehow causes his identity to merge with that of the Potions Master. Had Snape been a good storyteller and had Harry been able to trust him, the same awful knowledge that Harry gains from the Pensieve could theoretically have been gained from an oral recounting. Using the Pensieve is more effective, because it allows Harry to see the past events for himself, and is more objective, because Snape’s own testimony would probably be tinged with sneering subjectivity. But in principle, any knowledge conveyed via the Pensieve could be conveyed another way.
Lumos!
There are several different sorts of memories. Some are know-how memories, memories of skill, as when an aging wizard who hasn’t used a broomstick since his Quidditch days remembers how to ride it. Some are factual memories, as when Hermione can report the properties of the Mandrake during Herbology. Distinct from both of these are experiential memories, memories from the first-person point of view, as when Harry remembers the searing pain caused by Dolores Umbridge’s quill as it carved words into his right hand.
The memories that Otto keeps in his notebook are factual memories. When memory theorists invoke memory in explanations of personal identity, however, they’re interested in first-person, experiential memories. It is important to note that memories reviewed in a Pensieve are not of this sort. The Pensieve replays memories from the third-person perspective.19 When Dumbledore thinks about the trial and sentencing of Bellatrix Lestrange, his memory is presumably from the personal perspective that he had on it at the time, from his seat on the highest bench in the gallery of spectators. But when he reviews the memory in the Pensieve, the memory no longer has this—or any—particular point of view. In fact, given what we know about the Pensieve, the memory that Dumbledore shares with Harry should already be shared by all of the spectators at Lestrange’s trial.
These facts about the Pensieve are crucial for understanding why its use poses no threat to our individual identities. What’s important for personal identity are our first-person memories. Just as using a Time-Turner to revisit past events doesn’t jeopardize who you are, neither does sharing memories via a Pensieve.20 And just as sharing an experience with someone else doesn’t threaten your sense of self, sharing one of your memories in a Pensieve with someone else shouldn’t either.
This also sheds light, more broadly, on why we needn’t be threatened by the thesis of the extended mind. The mind is indeed mysterious, and there’s much about it we don’t know. But one thing that we can be sure of is that whether your thoughts are kept in a Pensieve, in a mind, or in your notebook, those thoughts are still your own. The Pensieve is a truly magical device, and if I ever see one come up for auction on eBay, I’ll bid on it without hesitation or limit. Still, however magical it is, it can’t make you someone you’re not.
NOTES
1 Goblet of Fire, p. 597.
2 Order of the Phoenix, p. 530.
3 Since ghosts in Harry’s world are described as “pearly-white and slightly transparent,” this seems a pretty plausible claim about them; see Sorcerer’s Stone, p. 115.
4 Deathly Hallows, p. 705.
5 René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy with Selections from the Objections and Replies, translated by John Cottingham (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 56.
6 Goblet of Fire, p. 583.
7 Half-Blood Prince, p. 500.
8 Andy Clark and David Chalmers, “The Extended Mind,” Analysis 58 (1998): 7-19. Clark’s later work, Natural-Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and the Future of Human Intelligence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), covers many of the same ideas in an especially accessible and engaging way.
9 Clark and Chalmers, “The Extended Mind,” p. 8.
10 Ibid., p. 10.
11 Dumbledore supports this way of looking at the relationship between wand and wizard when he explains his theory of what happened the night that Harry and Voldemort fought in the graveyard of Little Hangleton: “I believe that your wand imbibed some of the power and qualities of Voldemort’s wand that night, which is to say that it contained a little of Voldemort himself,” Deathly Hallows, p. 711.
12 Moreover, the creation of Horcruxes would allow not only for an extended mind but also for an extended soul.
13 Deathly Hallows, p. 96.
14 Clark and Chalmers, “The Extended Mind,” p. 17. See also Clark, Natural-Born Cyborgs, pp. 5-6.
15 For other objections to the extended-mind thesis, see, for example, Brie Gertler, “The Overextended Mind,” in Brie Gertler and Lawrence Shapiro, eds., Arguing about the Mind (New York: Routledge, 2007); also Fred Adams and Kenneth Aizawa, “The Bounds of Cognition,” Philosophical Psychology 14 (2001): 43-64. Clark surveys many of the most common criticisms and attempts to address them in Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).
16 For Locke’s development of the memory theory, see his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, edited by Peter Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), Book III, chap. XXVII, sec. 9. A more recent development of the view can be found in Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984).
17 Order of the Phoenix, pp. 653-654.
18 Deathly Hallows, p. 691.
19 This was confirmed by J. K. Rowling in a 2005 interview with the fansites Mugglenet and the Leaky Cauldron (available at www.mugglenet.com/jkrinterview.shtml). When asked whether the memories stored in a Pensieve are truthful reflections of reality or merely interpretations of it from the rememberer’s subjective perspective, Rowling was adamant that they’re accurate representations from the third-person perspective. According to Rowling, part of the magic of the Pensieve is that you can go back and examine your memories in it and discover all sorts of details that you hadn’t noticed at the time:Otherwise it really would just be like a diary, wouldn’t it? Confined to what you remember. But the Pensieve recreates a moment for you, so you could go into your own memory and relive things that you didn’t notice at the time. It’s somewhere in your head, which I’m sure it is, in all of our brains. I’m sure if you could access it, things that you don’t know you remember are all in there somewhere.
20 I don’t mean here to deny that there are all sorts of paradoxes posed by time travel, including paradoxes of identity. But those paradoxes are typically caused by actions a time traveler might take or prevent when he travels to the past—he might kill his own grandfather, for example, preventing himself from being born (or, as Professor McGonagall warns Hermione, he might kill his own past or future self by mistake). Nothing seems paradoxical, in and of itself, about a time-traveler being able to view past events that would otherwise have been inaccessible to him.
15
A HOGWARTS EDUCATION
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Gregory Bassham
What kid wouldn’t love to go to Hogwarts? Boarding school in a really cool castle; tons of adventures; great camaraderie and a sense of b
elonging; wonderful all-you-can-eat meals (“roast beef, roast chicken, pork chops and lamb chops, sausages, bacon and steak, boiled potatoes, roast potatoes, fries, Yorkshire pudding”).1 And best of all, no boring math, French, or science classes. Pretty much all you learn is—how to do magic! You learn how to fly, to travel instantly from point to point, to conjure things out of thin air, to transfigure objects into whatever you want them to be, to make potions that cure diseases or bring good luck, to defend yourself against dark wizards, creepy dementors, and obnoxious gits like Draco Malfoy. Heck, Hogwarts is like a camp for future superheroes! From a kid’s point of view, what could be cooler?
The Ultimate Harry Potter and Philosophy: Hogwarts for Muggles Page 22
