Lecture | LUCL Colloquium
Mind tools, language and the origins of AI
- Date
- Tuesday 19 May 2026
- Time
- Serie
- LUCL Colloquium
- Address
-
Herta Mohr
Witte Singel 27A
2311 BG Leiden - Room
- 0.02
This talk offers a sideways look at language. It introduces the notion of a ‘mind tool’, an artefact that amplifies our cognition, with obvious canonical examples like calculating devices, navigation aids, time reckoners, measuring devices, etc. We can trace the very ancient origins of these devices, which are part of the secret of the success of our species.
We enquire how mind tools work psychologically, by transducing a cognitive problem into an alternative format, so that brain and external device mutually adapt to make what Andy Clark has called a ‘coupled device’, with profound cognitive consequences. Despite the more abstract nature, languages are also mind tools, sharing the same kind of psychological and partially externalized properties as material cognitive artefacts. Languages are as it were distinctive thought extruders, forcing expression into differing locally-adapted formats.
The development of mind tools like number and writing systems initiated their own technological streams, and it is the confluence of these tools with language that has given us the LLMs of current AI. These ruminations may offer a different way of looking at both language and AI, which inherits the general properties and limitations of mind tools.