Cognitive Prostheses

The sense-represent-plan-act picture is a heroic one, but it is biologically implausible. I don't need to memorize the layout of the physical environment around me — this desk, this room, this city, this country. After all, the desk, room, city are there before me and we are built — through evolution — to have ready sensory access to it. Shut your eyes. Can you remember the detailed layout around you? It turns out that beyond the broad outlines — the basic schematic organization of...