Synthese· 2026Q1
Cognitive enfeeblement by design
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- Q1SCImago
- 2026year
Short summary
Embedding ubiquitous, highly substitutive, and domain-general cognitive assistance into digital infrastructure is morally wrong for children as it undermines the development of self-governance skills.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Key points
- Extreme cognitive assistance is becoming the default mode of cognition embedded in digital infrastructure.
- Such assistance is characterized by ubiquity, high substitutivity, and domain-generality.
- Providing this assistance to children is morally wrong because it hinders the development of self-governance skills.
- Cognitive skills are built through exercise and lost without it; extreme assistance removes both opportunities and incentives for this exercise.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
Abstract Thinking hard is hard. Cognitive misers like us are therefore inclined to seek extreme cognitive assistance : assistance that is ubiquitously available, highly substitutive, and relatively domain-general. Increasingly, we are being offered assistance like this as the default mode of cognition – it is being embedded in the infrastructure of our digital lives. But whatever its merits for adults, providing extreme cognitive assistance to children is pro tanto morally wrong. This is because the cognitive capacities that make a person self-governing are skills: they are built through deliberate, regular exercise and lost without it. Extreme cognitive assistance removes both the opportunities for that exercise and the incentive to undertake it. Maybe this won’t matter: in a future awash with extreme cognitive assistance, maybe persons won’t need or want to think for themselves. But people should decide for themselves how much of their cognitive self-governance to hand over; and doing that requires having the capacity for cognitive self-governance in the first place.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Synthese, 2026 · DOI ↗
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Field: Computer Science Applications
Computer Science ApplicationsComputer Science