At the beginning of this year Evan Thompson whose thinking has been very influential upon me gave this lecture. Bumping into Evan the other day reminded me of the forthcoming book he mentioned then, which upon its publication, I’ll have reviewed in The Journal of Mind and Behavior where his superb Mind in Life was reviewed by Dorothée…
Shaun Gallagher talk: I argue that the extended mind hypothesis requires an enactive, neo-pragmatic concept of intentionality if it is to develop proper responses to a variety of objections. This enactive concept of intentionality is based on the phenomenological concept of a bodily (or motor or operative) intentionality outlined by Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. I explore…
Commemorating a landmark book The Future of the Embodied Mind The summer school focuses on cognition in artificial and biological systems from a theoretical perspective that considers embodiment, situatedness, and action-relatedness as key elements in understanding and implementing cognitive systems. The school will be held in San Sebastián, Spain 5th – 9th September 2011 The school will…
Maturana and Varela’s classic Autopoiesis and Cognition is freely available here (H/T to Paul Loader). What makes a living system a living system? What kind of biological phenomenon is the phenomenon of cognition? These two questions have been frequently considered, but, in this volume, the authors consider them as concrete biological questions. Their analysis is bold and…
Check out this special issue (Ed. Tobias Schlicht) of Journal of Consciousness Studies devoted to Evan Thompson’s Mind in Life. Participants include Dennett, Grush, Hutto, Siewert, Van Gulick, Wheeler, Zahavi and others. Journal of Consciousness Studies
Here is my introduction to the themed issue of Cognitive Systems Research. The full collection is now available here.
I’ve just completed reading Evan Thompson’s Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind, a work which I heartily endorse as the best statement yet of the enactivist theory of mind. I especially like his taking on the philosopher’s zombie and his chapter on Empathy and Enculturation. Last, but by no means least,…
Here’s a freely available download of an article entitled “Embodied economics: how bodily information shapes the social coordination dynamics of decision-making” from the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. The article references many of the major embodiment theorists and refreshingly there is much on Hayek and of course The Sensory Order.
I want to bring your attention to two superb reviews on the work of Evan Thompson and Galen Strawson. These very thoughtful reviews are not space fillers nor point scoring exercises, but represent a close engagement with the material. If you would like a copy of either review please don’t hesitate to get in touch with…
Galen Strawson, while thinking there is much to be said for non-Cartesianism, doesn’t think that the radical turn taken by the extended mind hypothesis, is fruitful nor indeed really all that new. Stay tuned for an excellent review by Chris Onof of Strawson’s Consciousness and Its Place in Nature: Does physicalism entail panpsychism? in The Journal…
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