Meeting KI-Postdocs: 'The Tracking of Digital Footprints'

Full Title: "Extended Mindreading and the Tracking of Digital Footprints"
(Dr. Uwe Peters)

There has been much philosophical and empirical research on mindreading, our ability to attribute mental states to people to explain, predict, or influence their actions. It is commonly assumed that mindreading is situated within an individual’s head. Here I challenge this assumption by relating it to Clark and Chalmers’ hypothesis of extended cognition, the view that the physical realizers of cognition can include artefacts outside the body. I argue that if we endorse common conditions for extended cognition, then there is reason to believe that people’s mindreading is often partly realized by (vs. merely causally coupled to) artefacts, specifically, computer algorithms on the Internet that track our digital footprints to infer our preferences, interests, etc. from them to personalize websites.