Mapping the mind: A technophilosophical probe

This article describes a long-standing conceptual impasse regarding the ontological status of ‘mind’ at least since the time of Descartes. While this impasse finds root in a problematic mind-body dualism, a more recent and tenacious scientific preoccupation seeks to locate representational features of memory, cognition and consciousness in the biological substrate of the brain. The emergence and utility of a non-representational theory is then discussed as an alternative to the representational theory. The article concludes by proffering a new mapping or ‘topography of mind’ which points to the return of a peculiar species of representationalism. However, this much more nuanced and non-localized theory suggests that the nature and extent of mind has shifted through time, and in predictable ways, in a world increasingly constituted by technologies of various kinds.