Working Notes: a commonplace notebook for recording & exploring ideas.
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— Kunal
This was a fascinating book that I ended up reading over several months: mainly because each chapter is fairly self contained and captures one way in which having access to notebooks has affected human behavior. Most of the conceits that went into treating this website as notebook were inspired by reading this book at the same time.
Notae propriae, notae optimae: 'your own notes are the best notes'
- Jeremias Drexel; Ch. 9
There are several fun quotes on the value of having a notebook, but I most appreciated the repeated emphasis on the fact that we can use notebooks to think -- and it affects how we think. Particularly the last chapter that talks about the notebook as a extended mind; referred to as active externalism in that paper.
Epistemic action, we suggest, demands spread of epistemic credit. If, as we confront some task, a part of the world functions as a process which were it done in the head, we would have no hesitation in recognizing as part of the cognitive process, then that part of the world is (so we claim) part of the cognitive process.
- Andy Clark, David Chalmers; Conclusion
The extended mind paper is available online and poses fascinating questions; particularly on what can be considered part of a person.