Forget thinking outside the box. Think outside your brain.

Andy Clark poses an interesting problem in Natural Born Cyborgs. A guy asks a woman on the street, “do you know what time it is?” She says, “Yes, I do.” She then looks quickly at her watch and says, “It’s 10:22.”

Is the woman telling the truth when she says she knows the time? I’m inclined to agree with Clark that she is.

But here’s the problem. A teacher asks his class, “Who knows the capital of Albania?” One student says, “I do.” He gets up, excuses himself, leaves the room, walks to the library reference section, and starts opening books. Forty-five minutes later, he walks back in the room and announces, “It’s Tirana.”

Is the student telling the truth when he says he knows the capital of Albania? most people would think he’s not.

Suppose someone asked you, “Do you know the Capital of Albania?” and you said, “Yes. It’s Tirana.” We’d probably all agree that you know the capital of Albania. You have the appropriate fact stored somewhere in your brain, and you can quickly reproduce it on demand. That’s what knowing something means, isn’t it?

Sure it is. And yet, I’m still inclined to agree that the woman who needs to glance at her watch knows what time it is. With Clark, I’d argue that it’s fair to say that you know the answer to a question if you know how to locate that answer quickly, whether you you have to look inside your own brain or elsewhere.

After all, it does take time to retrieve an answer from your brain. And sometimes it takes longer than others. If I were asked, “What’s the capital of Romania?” I might have to think for a moment or two before coming up with Bucharest. These days, I might even have to think a bit longer than a moment or two. But I’d get it in the end. And I think that should count as knowing, don’t you?

So if it’s not the fact that it takes some time to retrieve the answer that determines whether someone knows something or not, can it be that you have to get it from your own brain to count it as knowledge? That just doesn’t make sense to me. I believe, like Clark, that our minds extend beyond our brains. We ought to recognize that and take advantage of it.