Too Much Mind Extension? Towards a Virtue Ethics of the Extended Mind

Historically, technological advancements allowed us to extend our capacities. However, too much reliance on technology can undermine essential cognitive functions. As we extend our minds, we can also overextend them. In this paper, we elaborate on what it means to dilute our minds in the context of the age of generative artificial intelligence (gAI), with a special focus on computationally understood reasoning, which guides most of our decisions and actions in the environment. While gAI can be a powerful ally in enhancing productivity, careless offloading to gAI bypasses the very cognitive processes required for retaining deep understanding and problem-solving. We introduce the concept of optimally extended mind, which relies on technology to augment rather than substitute cognitive processing, thereby maintaining cognitive wellness. Our framework of cognitive wellness elucidates why some mind-extending practices are detrimental, describing the mechanism of cognitive dilution. To mitigate these risks, we propose a virtue ethics approach to gAI usage. Cultivating virtues such as prudence and temperance, we argue, can protect our reasoning capacities while still allowing us to benefit from gAI assistance.