- School of Humanities and Social Inquiry, Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts University of Wollongong,
NSW 2522, Australia - +61 (0)2 4221 3987
Daniel D. Hutto
University of Wollongong, Philosophy, Faculty Member
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Cognitive Science, Philosophy of Mind, Perception, Internalism, Extended Mind, Metaphysics of Mind, and 48 morePhilosophy of Psychology, Semantic Internalism, Donald Davidson, Knowledge Of Other Minds, Semantic Externalism, Naturalization of Phenomenology, Natural (Naturalised) Philosophy, Pragmatism (Philosophy), Representationalism, Physicalism, Functionalism, Non-Conceptual Content, Intentionality, Mental Causation, Mental Representation and Content, Analytic Philosophy, History of Analytic Philosophy, Folk Psychology, Philosophy of Cognitive Science, Emotions (Philosophy), Early 20th Century Analytic Philosophy, Embodied Mind and Cognition, Evolutionary Psychology, Experimental philosophy, Disjunctivism, Connectionism, Philosophy Of Language, Philosophy, Daniel Dennett, Metaphysics of Consciousness, Philosophy of Agency, Mental Images, Child Development, Developmental Psychology, Embodied Embedded Cognition, Metaphysics, Neurophenomenology, Philosophy of perception, Psychology, Autism, Philosophy of the Emotions, Language of Thought and Connectionism, Meaning, Subject of Experience, Philosophy of Action, Imagination, Truth, and Wittgenstein edit
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Born and raised in New York, I finished my undergraduate degree as a study abroad student in St Andrews, Scotland whe... moreBorn and raised in New York, I finished my undergraduate degree as a study abroad student in St Andrews, Scotland where my maternal roots lie. I returned to New York to teach fourth grade in the Bronx for a year in order to fund my MPhil in Logic and Metaphysics. I then carried on my doctoral work in York, England. We, my wife and three boys, lived in England for over 20 years. Australia is our new home since I took up the position of Senior Professor of Philosophical Psychology at the University of Wollongong, Australia in 2014. Previously I worked at the University of Hertfordshire since 1993, where I served as Professor of Philosophical Psychology from 2002 and led the Philosophy unit from 1999 to 2005.
My research is a sustained attempt to understand human nature in a way which respects natural science but which nevertheless rejects the impersonal metaphysics of contemporary naturalism. My recent research focuses primarily on issues in philosophy of mind, psychology and cognitive science. I am best known for promoting thoroughly non-representational accounts of enactive and embodied cognition, and for having developed a hypothesis which claims that engaging with narratives, understood as public artefacts, plays a critical role in underpinning distinctively human forms of cognition.
Reaching beyond philosophy, I have often been invited to speak at conferences and expert meetings aimed at anthropologists, clinical psychiatrists/therapists, educationalists, narratologists, neuroscientists and psychologists.
I am called upon regularly to provide assessments for major research bodies worldwide. For example, I have done so for the European Research Council (ERC); Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC, UK); the National Science Foundation (NSF)/National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH, USA). Since migrating to Australia I have served for various terms on the Australian Research Council (ARC) College of Experts, and once Chaired its Humanities and Creative Arts Panel. edit
Research Interests:
Most of what sentient beings do and experience is best understood in terms of dynamically unfolding interactions with the environment. Many philosophers and cognitive scientists now acknowledge the critical importance of situated,... more
Most of what sentient beings do and experience is best understood in terms of dynamically unfolding interactions with the environment. Many philosophers and cognitive scientists now acknowledge the critical importance of situated, environment-involving embodied engagements as a means of understanding basic minds – including basic forms of human mentality. Yet many of these same theorists hold fast to the view that all minds are necessarily or essentially contentful – that they represent conditions the world might be in. In this book, Hutto and Myin promote the cause of a radically enactive, embodied approach to cognition which holds that some kinds of minds – basic minds – are neither best explained by processes involving the manipulation of contents nor inherently contentful. These authors oppose the widely endorsed thesis that cognition always and everywhere involves content. They defend the counter–thesis that there can be intentionality and phenomenal experience without content and demonstrate the advantages of their approach for thinking about scaffolded minds and consciousness.
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Established wisdom in cognitive science holds that the everyday folk psychological abilities of humans—our capacity to understand intentional actions performed for reasons—are inherited from our evolutionary forebears. In Folk... more
Established wisdom in cognitive science holds that the everyday folk psychological abilities of humans—our capacity to understand intentional actions performed for reasons—are inherited from our evolutionary forebears. In Folk Psychological Narratives, Daniel Hutto challenges this view (held in somewhat different forms by the two dominant approaches, "theory theory" and simulation theory) and argues for the sociocultural basis of this familiar ability. He makes a detailed case for the idea that the way we make sense of intentional actions essentially involves the construction of narratives about particular persons. Moreover he argues that children acquire this practical skill only by being exposed to and engaging in a distinctive kind of narrative practice.
Hutto calls this developmental proposal the narrative practice hypothesis (NPH). Its core claim is that direct encounters with stories about persons who act for reasons (that is, folk psychological narratives) supply children with both the basic structure of folk psychology and the norm-governed possibilities for wielding it in practice. In making a strong case for the as yet underexamined idea that our understanding of reasons may be socioculturally grounded, Hutto not only advances and explicates the claims of the NPH, but he also challenges certain widely held assumptions. For example, he targets the idea that the primary function of folk psychology is to enable us to predict the behaviors of others. In this way, Folk Psychological Narratives both clears conceptual space around the dominant approaches for an alternative and offers a groundbreaking proposal.
Hutto calls this developmental proposal the narrative practice hypothesis (NPH). Its core claim is that direct encounters with stories about persons who act for reasons (that is, folk psychological narratives) supply children with both the basic structure of folk psychology and the norm-governed possibilities for wielding it in practice. In making a strong case for the as yet underexamined idea that our understanding of reasons may be socioculturally grounded, Hutto not only advances and explicates the claims of the NPH, but he also challenges certain widely held assumptions. For example, he targets the idea that the primary function of folk psychology is to enable us to predict the behaviors of others. In this way, Folk Psychological Narratives both clears conceptual space around the dominant approaches for an alternative and offers a groundbreaking proposal.
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The human world is replete with narratives – narratives of our making that are uniquely appreciated by us. Some thinkers have afforded special importance to our capacity to generate such narratives, seeing it as variously enabling us to:... more
The human world is replete with narratives – narratives of our making that are uniquely appreciated by us. Some thinkers have afforded special importance to our capacity to generate such narratives, seeing it as variously enabling us to: exercise our imaginations in unique ways; engender an understanding of actions performed for reasons; and provide a basis for the kind of reflection and evaluation that matters vitally to moral and self development. Perhaps most radically, some hold that narratives are essential for the constitution of human selves. This volume brings together nine original contributions in which the individual authors advance, develop and challenge proposals of these kinds. They critically examine the place and importance of narratives in human lives and consider the underlying capacities that permit us to produce and utilise these special artifacts. All of the papers are written in a non-technical and accessible style.
Folk psychology refers to our everyday practice of making sense of actions, both our own and those of others, in terms of reasons. This volume contains new work by scholars from a range of disciplines (anthropology, neuroscience,... more
Folk psychology refers to our everyday practice of making sense of actions, both our own and those of others, in terms of reasons. This volume contains new work by scholars from a range of disciplines (anthropology, neuroscience, psychology, philosophy) whose aim is to clarify, develop and challenge the claim that folk psychology may be importantly perhaps even constitutively related to narrative practices.
This book also appears as a triple issue of the Journal Consciousness Studies, Vol. 16, no. 6-8, June/August 2009
This book also appears as a triple issue of the Journal Consciousness Studies, Vol. 16, no. 6-8, June/August 2009
"This collection is a much-needed remedy to the confusion about which varieties of enactivism are robust yet viable rejections of traditional representationalism approaches to cognitivism – and which are not. Hutto's paper is the pivot... more
"This collection is a much-needed remedy to the confusion about which varieties of enactivism are robust yet viable rejections of traditional representationalism approaches to cognitivism – and which are not. Hutto's paper is the pivot around which the expert commentators, enactivists and non-enactivists alike, sketch out the implications of enactivism for a wide variety of issues: perception, emotion, the theory of content, cognition, development, social interaction, and more. The inclusion of thoughtful replies from Hutto gives the volume a further degree of depth and integration often lacking in collections of essays. Anyone interested in assessing the current cutting-edge developments in the embodied and situated sciences of the mind will want to read this book."
Ron Chrisley, University of Sussex, UK
Ron Chrisley, University of Sussex, UK
There are a number of fundamental topics, including 'reality', 'meaning' and 'logic', that cannot be dealt with properly without an appropriate understanding of the end and limits of philosophy. In this book, Daniel D. Hutto draws on... more
There are a number of fundamental topics, including 'reality', 'meaning' and 'logic', that cannot be dealt with properly without an appropriate understanding of the end and limits of philosophy. In this book, Daniel D. Hutto draws on Wittgenstein's insights on how we must approach these topics to challenge the idea that we face a simple methodological choice in philosophy: to advance theory or to attempt therapy. Consideration of these topics tells against the prevalent opinion that philosophy is a kind of theorising, scientific or otherwise. Yet, this should not lead us to think that its business is purely therapeutic, designed to help rid us of such ambitions and attendant confusions. It is possible to deny that philosophy is progressive, according the standard conception, while also denying that it is wholly negative and deflationary. The author explores this third way by expounding, explicating and defending Wittgenstein's claim that philosophy clarifies our understanding of important philosophical matters.
Unlike standard attempts to address the so-called ‘hard problem’ of consciousness, which assume our understanding of consciousness is unproblematic, this book begins by focusing on phenomenology and is devoted to clarifying the relations... more
Unlike standard attempts to address the so-called ‘hard problem’ of consciousness, which assume our understanding of consciousness is unproblematic, this book begins by focusing on phenomenology and is devoted to clarifying the relations between intentionality, propositional content and experience. In particular, it argues that the subjectivity of experience cannot be understood in representationalist terms. This is important, for it is because many philosophers fail to come to terms with subjectivity that they are at a loss to provide a convincing solution to the mind-body problem. In this light the metaphysical problem is revealed to be a product of the misguided attempt to incorporate consciousness within an object-based schema, inspired by physicalism. A similar problem arises in the interpretation of quantum mechanics and this gives us further reason to look beyond physicalism, in matters metaphysical. Thus the virtues of absolute idealism are re-examined, as are the wider consequences of adopting its understanding of truth within the philosophy of science.
View SWIF Book forum with precis, commentaries and replies - link below.
View SWIF Book forum with precis, commentaries and replies - link below.
Will our everyday account of ourselves be vindicated by a new science? Or,will our self-understanding remain untouched by such developments? This book argues that beliefs and desires have a legitimate place in the explanation of action.... more
Will our everyday account of ourselves be vindicated by a new science? Or,will our self-understanding remain untouched by such developments? This book argues that beliefs and desires have a legitimate place in the explanation of action. Eliminativist arguments mistakenly focus on the vehicles of content not content itself. This book asks whether a naturalistic theory of content is possible. It is argued that a modest biosemantic theory of intentional, but nonconceptual, content is the naturalist’s best bet. A theory of this kind complements connectionism and recent work on embodied and embedded cognition. But intentional content is not equivalent to propositional content. In order to understand propositional content we must rely on Davidsonian radical interpretation. However, radical interpretation is shown to be at odds with physicalism. But if the best naturalised theory of content we are likely to get from cognitive science is only a theory of intentional content, then a naturalistic explanation of scientific theorising is not possible. It is concluded that cognitive science alone cannot explain the nature of our minds and that eliminativism is intellectually incoherent.
Focused on the idealist/realist dispute, contributors also discuss the relation of idealism to ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology. The volume also deals with the distinctions between ontological and conceptual forms of idealism, the... more
Focused on the idealist/realist dispute, contributors also discuss the relation of idealism to ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology. The volume also deals with the distinctions between ontological and conceptual forms of idealism, the place of idealism within the analytic tradition of philosophy, and the coherence of the idealist/realist distinction.
Contributors include: Donald Davidson, Tom Sorrell, T. L. S. Sprigge, Phillip Ferreira, Paul Coates, Daniel Hutto.
Contributors include: Donald Davidson, Tom Sorrell, T. L. S. Sprigge, Phillip Ferreira, Paul Coates, Daniel Hutto.
Enactivism has established itself as a force to be reckoned with in today's philosophy of mind and cognitive science. At root, enactivists promote ways of conceiving of minds and their place in nature that, if accepted, would have... more
Enactivism has established itself as a force to be reckoned with in today's philosophy of mind and cognitive science. At root, enactivists promote ways of conceiving of minds and their place in nature that, if accepted, would have revolutionary implications. This presentation introduces the animating ideas of enactivism and reveals how its radical variants fundamentally challenge the framework assumptions of mainstream cognitivist, representational and computational, conceptions of mind.
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Demarcating the limits of the natural continues to be topic of great philosophical controversy. This paper seeks to further clarify pivotal differences between Relaxed, Scientific and Liberal Naturalism on this important matter. It seeks... more
Demarcating the limits of the natural continues to be topic of great philosophical controversy. This paper seeks to further clarify pivotal differences between Relaxed, Scientific and Liberal Naturalism on this important matter. It seeks to show how and why Relaxed Naturalism starts and ends in different place these other forms of naturalism. It seeks to explicate why embracing Relaxed Naturalism is allows one to take up a different stance on what is involved in the philosophical endeavor of providing a philosophy of nature and deciding what comes naturally.
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fThe term ‘enaction’ was first introduced in The Embodied Mind, co-authored by Varela, Thompson, and Rosch and published in 1991. That seminal work provides the first original contemporary formulation of enactivism. Its authors define... more
fThe term ‘enaction’ was first introduced in The Embodied Mind, co-authored by Varela, Thompson, and Rosch and published in 1991. That seminal work provides the first original contemporary formulation of enactivism. Its authors define cognition as enaction, which they in turn characterize as the ‘bringing forth’ of domains of significance through organismic activity that has been itself conditioned by a history of interactions between an organism and its environment.
To understand mentality, however complex and sophisticated it may be, it is necessary to appreciate how living beings dynamically interact with their environments. From an enactivist perspective, there is no prospect of understanding minds without reference to such interactions because interactions are taken to lie at the heart of mentality in all of its varied forms.
Since 1991, enactivism has attracted interest and attention from academics and practitioners in many fields, and it is a well-established framework for thinking about and investigating mind and cognition. It has been articulated into several recognizably distinct varieties distinguished by their specific commitments. Some versions of enactivism, such as those put forward by Thompson and Di Paolo and others, focus on expanding and developing the core ideas of the original formulation of enactivism advanced by Varela, Thompson, and Rosch. Other versions of enactivism, such as sensorimotor knowledge enactivism and radical enactivism incorporate other ideas and influences in their articulation of enactivism, sometimes leaving aside and sometimes challenging the core assumptions of the original version of enactivism.
To understand mentality, however complex and sophisticated it may be, it is necessary to appreciate how living beings dynamically interact with their environments. From an enactivist perspective, there is no prospect of understanding minds without reference to such interactions because interactions are taken to lie at the heart of mentality in all of its varied forms.
Since 1991, enactivism has attracted interest and attention from academics and practitioners in many fields, and it is a well-established framework for thinking about and investigating mind and cognition. It has been articulated into several recognizably distinct varieties distinguished by their specific commitments. Some versions of enactivism, such as those put forward by Thompson and Di Paolo and others, focus on expanding and developing the core ideas of the original formulation of enactivism advanced by Varela, Thompson, and Rosch. Other versions of enactivism, such as sensorimotor knowledge enactivism and radical enactivism incorporate other ideas and influences in their articulation of enactivism, sometimes leaving aside and sometimes challenging the core assumptions of the original version of enactivism.
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Relaxed naturalism and liberal naturalism both invite us to adopt a philosophy of nature that includes a range of nonscientific phenomena in its inventory while nevertheless keeping the supernatural at bay. This paper considers the... more
Relaxed naturalism and liberal naturalism both invite us to adopt a philosophy of nature that includes a range of nonscientific phenomena in its inventory while nevertheless keeping the supernatural at bay. This paper considers the question of how relaxed naturalism relates to liberal naturalism and what refinements are required if they are to succeed in their joint cause of developing a tenable alternative to scientific naturalism. Particular attention is given to what might be added to the naturalist's toolbox when it comes to identifying and dealing with supernatural excesses and clarifying how philosophers can do positive metaphysical work in support of the naturalistic project.
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This paper will argue that intellectualism about skill — the contention that skilled performance is without guided exception guided by proposition knowledge — is fundamentally flawed. It argues that intellectualism about skill is... more
This paper will argue that intellectualism about skill — the contention that skilled performance is without guided exception guided by proposition knowledge — is fundamentally flawed. It argues that intellectualism about skill is conceptually confused, empirically unmotivated, and explanatorily empty. In the final analysis, it will be argued that the position is, in any case, superfluous when it comes to accounting for the aspects of skilled performance it purports to explain.
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This paper will argue that intellectualism about skill — the contention that skilled performance is without guided exception guided by proposition knowledge — is fundamentally flawed. It exposes that intellectualism about skill run into... more
This paper will argue that intellectualism about skill — the contention that skilled
performance is without guided exception guided by proposition knowledge — is
fundamentally flawed. It exposes that intellectualism about skill run into intractable
theoretical problems in explicating a role for their novel theoretical conceit of practical
modes of presentation. It then examines a proposed solution by Carlotta Pavese which seeks to identify practical modes of presentation with motor representations as that guide skilled sensorimotor action. We argued that this proposed identification is problematic on empirical and theoretically grounds, and – as such – it fails to deliver on its explanatory promises. In the final analysis, it will be argued that intellectualism about skill is, in any case, superfluous when it comes to accounting for the aspects of skilled performance it purports to explain.
performance is without guided exception guided by proposition knowledge — is
fundamentally flawed. It exposes that intellectualism about skill run into intractable
theoretical problems in explicating a role for their novel theoretical conceit of practical
modes of presentation. It then examines a proposed solution by Carlotta Pavese which seeks to identify practical modes of presentation with motor representations as that guide skilled sensorimotor action. We argued that this proposed identification is problematic on empirical and theoretically grounds, and – as such – it fails to deliver on its explanatory promises. In the final analysis, it will be argued that intellectualism about skill is, in any case, superfluous when it comes to accounting for the aspects of skilled performance it purports to explain.
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A number of perceptual (exteroceptive and proprioceptive) illusions present problems for predictive processing accounts. In this chapter we'll review explanations of the Müller-Lyer Illusion (MLI), the Rubber Hand Illusion (RHI) and the... more
A number of perceptual (exteroceptive and proprioceptive) illusions present problems for predictive processing accounts. In this chapter we'll review explanations of the Müller-Lyer Illusion (MLI), the Rubber Hand Illusion (RHI) and the Alien Hand Illusion (AHI) based on the idea of Prediction Error Minimization (PEM), and show why they fail. In spite of the relatively open communicative processes which, on many accounts, are posited between hierarchical levels of the cognitive system in order to facilitate the minimization of prediction errors, perceptual illusions seemingly allow prediction errors to rule. Even if, at the top, we have reliable and secure knowledge that the lines in the MLI are equal, or that the rubber hand in the RHI is not our hand, the system seems unable to correct for sensory errors that form the illusion. We argue that the standard PEM explanation based on a short-circuiting principle doesn't work. This is the idea that where there are general statistical regularities in the environment there is a kind of short circuiting such that relevant priors are relegated to lower-level processing so that information from higher levels is not exchanged (Ogilvie and Carruthers, Review of Philosophy and Psychology 7:721-742, 2016), or is not as precise as it should be (Hohwy, The Predictive Mind, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013). Such solutions (without convincing explanation) violate the idea of open communication and/or they over-discount the reliable and secure knowledge that is in the system. We propose an alternative, 4E (embodied, embedded, extended, enactive) solution. We argue that PEM fails to take into account the 'structural resistance' introduced by material and cultural factors in the broader cognitive system.
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What is civility? What does it require of us? What does it do for us? What’s the point of being civil? In musing on how to best answer these questions, this paper draws on the valuable philosophical spadework and astute analyses of... more
What is civility? What does it require of us? What does it do for us? What’s the point of being civil? In musing on how to best answer these questions, this paper draws on the valuable philosophical spadework and astute analyses of Cheshire Calhoun (2000). It offers a new defence of the need to put civility first and to give it high status in our moral considerations. The real reason many are sceptical of regarding civility as a moral virtue is that it puts limits on how we might pursue no-holes-barred, radical moral critique. The tension is obvious: civility bids us to abide by existing social conventions, whereas radical moral critique bids us to be prepared to violate them in strongly calling out and condemning morally objectionable practices. Being civil not only constrains the style in which make such critiques but also, at least on some occasions, being civil might bring us into conflict with what a socially critical moral point of view demands of us. This paper responds to these concerns that acknowledging civility as an important virtue is not incompatible with the sort of authentic moral critique needed to produce morally sound activity, structures and practices.
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This paper argues that radical enactivism (RE) offers a framework with the required nuance needed for understanding of the full range of the various forms of pretense. In particular, its multi-storey account of cognition, which holds that... more
This paper argues that radical enactivism (RE) offers a framework with the required nuance needed for understanding of the full range of the various forms of pretense. In particular, its multi-storey account of cognition, which holds that psychological attitudes can be both contentless and contentful, enables it to appropriately account for both the most basic and most advanced varieties of pretense. By comparison with other existing accounts of pretense, RE is shown to avoid the pitfalls of representationalist theories while also allowing us to combine the best elements of the praxeological enactivist (Weichold & Rucińska 2021) and Langland-Hassan's (2020, 2021) proposals about pretense, while avoiding their key shortcomings.
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Clarke & Beck (C&B) argue convincingly that the ANS plays a vital role in allowing us to directly perceive number rather than numerosity, and we concur (Jones 2016, 2018). However, by adopting a representationalist stance and appealing to... more
Clarke & Beck (C&B) argue convincingly that the ANS plays a vital role in allowing us to directly perceive number rather than numerosity, and we concur (Jones 2016, 2018). However, by adopting a representationalist stance and appealing to the notion of “modes of presentation”, they unnecessarily incur a heavy theoretical cost. By eschewing representationalism and the idea that the function of the ANS is to represent number, and instead adopting a Radical Enactivist stance (Hutto & Myin 2012, 2017; Zahidi 2021; Zahidi & Myin 2016), one can explain our direct perception of number with less philosophical baggage.
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Radically enactive accounts of perceiving directly and diametrically oppose their representationalist rivals. This is true even of the most radical predictive processing theories of perception which embrace some enactivist assumptions yet... more
Radically enactive accounts of perceiving directly and diametrically oppose their representationalist rivals. This is true even of the most radical predictive processing theories of perception which embrace some enactivist assumptions yet retain some commitment to representationalism. Which framework should we prefer? This chapter seeks to make headway on this question by focusing on the special explanatory challenge that a certain class of perceptual illusions poses to predictive processing theories of perception. The perceptual illusions in question, of which the Müller-Lyer is the paradigm, reveal that what we see can systematically fail to update in light of what we know. We review and reject two prominent PP attempts to address this challenge-one conservative, one radical. We find both kinds of PP proposal wanting, for different reasons. In the end, we propose an alternative, simpler radical enactive, RE, explanation of the full pattern of effects of perceptual illusions: it is that our basic modes of perceiving take the form of contentless, non-inferential habits that are distinct from, and come before and below, our capacities for contentful perceptual judgement. We give reasons for thinking that this RE proposal can adequately and elegantly account for the full set of empirical findings about our patterns of response to perceptual illusions of the sort under scrutiny in this chapter.
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This paper responds to Alva Noë's general critique of Radical Enactivism. In particular, it responds to his claim that Radical Enactivism denies experience, presence and the world. We clarify Radical Enactivism's actual arguments and... more
This paper responds to Alva Noë's general critique of Radical Enactivism. In particular, it responds to his claim that Radical Enactivism denies experience, presence and the world. We clarify Radical Enactivism's actual arguments and positive commitments in this regard. Finally, we assess how Radical Enactvism stands up in comparison with Noë's own version of Sensorimotor Knowledge Enactivism.
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It can be compelling to think that remembering depends on – and is only possible due to – the existence of memory traces of some kind. This paper provides analyses that encourage us to look beyond memory traces in our attempts to... more
It can be compelling to think that remembering depends on – and is only possible due to – the existence of memory traces of some kind. This paper provides analyses that encourage us to look beyond memory traces in our attempts to understand episodic remembering. The main action unfolds as follows. Section one provides a review of memory traces and the explanatory work they were introduced to perform. This helps us to get a fix on their minimal defining characteristics. This section articulates what is at the core of contemporary attempts to provide workable theories of memory traces and highlights a crippling problem that all such theories face in light of their commitment to representationalism. Section two focuses on an inventive attempt to avoid that crippling problem in the shape of Werning’s (2020) minimal notion of a memory trace – a notion that does not presuppose the existence of any preserved representational content. Section three poses a dilemma for Trace Minimalism. In the final analysis, it is argued in section four that whichever path one chooses, there are compelling reasons to go one step beyond Trace Minimalism and to abandon all hope of concocting a naturalistically respectable and explanatorily robust notion of a memory trace.
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Eliminativists hold that folk psychology presents an inaccurate and misleading picture of what causes human behaviour – they regard its principles to be false and its ontology as an illusion (Churchland 1979, 1981, 1991). Even more to the... more
Eliminativists hold that folk psychology presents an inaccurate and misleading picture of what causes human behaviour – they regard its principles to be false and its ontology as an illusion (Churchland 1979, 1981, 1991). Even more to the point, given what we already know and are likely to discover they argue that folk psychology has no place in serious explanations of human action and behaviour. This paper aims to identify the scariest form of eliminativist threat and to show that there is a way not only to protect against it but, ultimately, defeat it. The action unfolds as follows. Section 1 provides an analysis of various eliminativist threats and identifies the scariest and most threatening version, dubbing it Big Bad Wolf Eliminativism. The rest of the paper then reviews three options that the friends of folk psychology have of potentially defusing the threat posed by Big Bad Wolf eliminativism. The first, explicated and examined in Section 2, proves woefully inadequate. The second, explicated and examined in Section 3, also proves inadequate. But the third, explicated and examined in Section 4, proves to be both secure and capable of not only protecting folk psychology but also of giving the means to defeat its opponent.
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Fundamental differences in philosophical outlook divide the more conservative and radical branches of the E-family. Yet the emergence of E-approaches to cognition, wherever they sit on the conservative-radical spectrum, represents an... more
Fundamental differences in philosophical outlook divide the more conservative and radical branches of the E-family. Yet the emergence of E-approaches to cognition, wherever they sit on the conservative-radical spectrum, represents an undeniably important development for understanding cognition. Educational research and practice should take serious stock of these approaches for the simple reason that questions of how to educate cannot be kept apart from questions about how we think and learn. This chapter reviews empirical findings in the E-cognition domain that lend credence to Shapiro and Stolz’s (2019) claim that, “the emerging research agenda of embodied cognition has much to offer educational practitioners, researchers, and/or policy-makers” (p. 34).
This chapter brackets question about the philosophical barriers that may, for some, block the acceptance of E-approaches and how to deal with them. It focuses instead on possible practical outcomes of such acceptance. Taking an imaginative leap, it asks: Assuming one adopted either a more conservative or more radical E-framework, how would that choice matter to one’s thinking about educational research and practice?
This chapter brackets question about the philosophical barriers that may, for some, block the acceptance of E-approaches and how to deal with them. It focuses instead on possible practical outcomes of such acceptance. Taking an imaginative leap, it asks: Assuming one adopted either a more conservative or more radical E-framework, how would that choice matter to one’s thinking about educational research and practice?
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Narrative practices can support mental health. Or so this paper argues. It offers a way of defending at least some narrative-based therapies from three crippling challenges. Its action unfolds as follows: Section 1 considers, in detail, a... more
Narrative practices can support mental health. Or so this paper argues. It offers a way of defending at least some narrative-based therapies from three crippling challenges. Its action unfolds as follows: Section 1 considers, in detail, a particular philosophical analysis of the aims of narrative therapy and how it is assumed to work. It gives close attention to McConnell & Snoek’s (2018) account of how narrative interventions might positively influence the prospects of recovery from addiction. Section 2 details three sceptical challenges that threaten to cast doubt on the acceptability of the aims and methods of narrative therapy, as depicted by McConnell & Snoek (2018) as well as, potentially, casting doubt on the acceptability of other, similar narrative-based approaches to mental health. Finally, Section 3 makes an effort to show that it is possible to address these trio of challenges by recasting certain assumptions about the core aims and methods of narrative therapy. It is proposed that by focusing on the ‘fictive’ rather than the ‘factual’ character of its narrative practices, it is possible to rethink how narrative therapy might work in practice in such a way that would protect it from the sceptical challenges outlined in Section 2. To achieve this outcome, it is proposed that we adjust the way we understand that aims and methods of narrative therapy, and potentially other narrative-based approaches to mental health. In the end, it is concluded that there is a way to see off the three sceptical challenges identified in this chapter and thus improve the philosophical credibility of narrative-based approaches in mental health, opening the path for their wider uptake.
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Tn this paper, we present our collective effort to tackle various dimensions of the challenge of understanding minds in ski lied performance. Jt is hased on the plenary symposi,lm on "Phenomenology of Skilled Performance" which took place... more
Tn this paper, we present our collective effort to tackle various dimensions of the challenge of understanding minds in ski lied performance. Jt is hased on the plenary symposi,lm on "Phenomenology of Skilled Performance" which took place in !he 40th Annual Meeting of the
Phenomenological Association of Japan. We argue that the concept of embodied mind plays a key role in clarifying the mentality needed for skilled performance: The concept allows for theoretical
sensitivity to its special features while avoiding both over-intellectualization and mechanical reduction. Such concept of mind and cognition is vigorously developed in recent embodiedenactive
approaches, but is also prefigured in Continental phcnomcnologist, American pragmatist, and East Asian traditions of thinking. We actively seek to engage with and benefit from these different traditions of thought in developing our philosophical investigation.
Phenomenological Association of Japan. We argue that the concept of embodied mind plays a key role in clarifying the mentality needed for skilled performance: The concept allows for theoretical
sensitivity to its special features while avoiding both over-intellectualization and mechanical reduction. Such concept of mind and cognition is vigorously developed in recent embodiedenactive
approaches, but is also prefigured in Continental phcnomcnologist, American pragmatist, and East Asian traditions of thinking. We actively seek to engage with and benefit from these different traditions of thought in developing our philosophical investigation.
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A great deal of ink has been split trying to establish which, if either, of the competing visions of mind – the cognitivist or the enactivist – is better justified. Which will ultimately carry the day in the long run? Turning aside from... more
A great deal of ink has been split trying to establish which, if either, of the competing visions of mind – the cognitivist or the enactivist – is better justified. Which will ultimately carry the day in the long run? Turning aside from those questions, this short piece explores a more Jamesian one: What is the upshot for philosophy if we take an extensive enactivist conception of mind very seriously?
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A Relaxed Naturalism provides a framework for respecting scientific findings without deferring wholly to the hard, natural sciences or giving them sole and final say about what the natural world contains and how we should study it. This... more
A Relaxed Naturalism provides a framework for respecting scientific findings without deferring wholly to the hard, natural sciences or giving them sole and final say about what the natural world contains and how we should study it. This paper supplies reason for thinking that to succeed in a project of constructing an adequate philosophy of nature we need to liberate our thinking about the nature of philosophy itself, freeing it from purely scientistic conceptions. Focusing on new proposals about the forms naturalised conceptual analysis and conceptual engineering might take as a test case this paper defends the view that if we are to clarify and evaluate our concepts we must delve into and attend to the history of ideas when doing philosophy. Exposing the deep-rooted ways that we tend to think about specific topics can be part and parcel of what is needed to clarify, liberate and advance our thinking about those topics.
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This paper aims to set the record straight about special sort of intelligence exhibited by habitual doings. It defends an enactivist account of habitual doings which, at its core, depicts habits as flexible and adjustable modes of... more
This paper aims to set the record straight about special sort of intelligence exhibited by habitual doings. It defends an enactivist account of habitual doings which, at its core, depicts habits as flexible and adjustable modes of response that are world-directed and context-sensitive. So understood, habits are wholly unlike the exercise of blind mechanisms or mindless reflexes. Nevertheless, we resist the familiar forced choice of thereby understanding habits in standard cognitivist terms. Our proposal aims to avoid the twin mistakes of either underintellectualizing or overintellectualizing habits. In tune with our enactivist elucidation of the core character of habits, the paper also explicates how habits, so conceived, can support and thwart our larger projects.
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Daniel D. Hutto is Professor of Philosophical Psychology at the University of Wollongong. He is a leading figure in the development of enactivist philosophy of mind, which moves away from the intellectualist idea that minds essentially... more
Daniel D. Hutto is Professor of Philosophical Psychology at the University of Wollongong. He is a leading figure in the development of enactivist philosophy of mind, which moves away from the intellectualist idea that minds essentially represent and compute, and promoting in its place the a vision of minds as fundamentally embedded in and interactively engaged with the world. Dan was previously at the University of Hertfordshire, where he was involved with Mark McKergow in setting up the HESIAN research hub connecting enactive theory with solution-focused (SF) narrative and interactional practices. Together they see the enactivist movement in the philosophy of mind as being very congenial for understanding SF practice and its effectiveness. Dan recently moved to Australia and began the interview by giving a Skype tour of his new house complete with palm trees and a swimming pool. He mentioned that while enactivist ideas have gained some acceptance in Europe, there are special advantages to bringing them to the closer attention of the Australian philosophical community, given that so many of its senior figures are committed to natural-istic approaches to mind. Hence the move to Australia has provided an opportunity for interesting debate and a way of extending the enactivist movement.
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Mathematical cognition is widely regarded as the epitome of the kind of cognition that systematically eludes enactivist treatment. It is the parade example of abstract, disembodied cognition if ever there was one. As it is such an... more
Mathematical cognition is widely regarded as the epitome of the kind of cognition that systematically eludes enactivist treatment. It is the parade example of abstract, disembodied cognition if ever there was one. As it is such an important test case, this paper focuses squarely on what Gallagher has to say about mathematical cognition in Enactivist Interventions. Gallagher explores a number of possible theories that he holds could provide useful fodder for developing an adequate enactivist account of mathematical cognition. Yet if the analyses of this paper prove sound, then some of the central approaches he considers are simply not fit for such service. That said, in the final analysis, if crucial additions and subtractions are made, there is a real chance of fashioning a promising enactivist account of mathematical cognition.
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Similarity-based cognition is commonplace. It occurs whenever an agent or system exploits the similarities that hold between two or more items — e.g., events, processes, objects, and so on— in order to perform some cognitive task. This... more
Similarity-based cognition is commonplace. It occurs whenever an agent or system exploits the similarities that hold between two or more items — e.g., events, processes, objects, and so on— in order to perform some cognitive task. This kind of cognition is of special interest to cognitive neuroscientists. This paper explicates how similarity-based cognition can be understood through the lens of radical enactivism and why doing so has advantages over its representationalist rival which posits the existence of structural representations or S-representations. Specifically, it is argued that there are problems both with accounting for the content of S-representations and with understanding how neurally-based structural similarities can work as representations (even if contentless) in guiding intelligent behavior. Finally, with these clarifications in place, it is revealed how radically enactivism can commit to an account of similarity-based cognition in its understanding of neurodynamics.
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This paper argues that empathy comes in different forms: it isn’t all of a piece. It seeks to cast light on that variety of forms by focusing on the characteristic features of different forms of empathy, which we take to exist along a... more
This paper argues that empathy comes in different forms: it isn’t all of a piece. It seeks to cast light on that variety of forms by focusing on the characteristic features of different forms of empathy, which we take to exist along a continuum. We initially show the special advantages of thinking of empathy as enactive, drawing on phenomenologically-inspired analyses of empathy offered by and Zahavi (2017) and Ratcliffe (2017). We propose modest adjustments to those treatments, showing how, despite some apparent differences, they can be drawn together and augmented. Finally, we defend our account of enactive empathy against arguments for thinking that its more sophisticated forms – those that involve understanding others – must incorporate the mental simulation of those other minds.
The action of the paper unfolds as follows: Section 1 makes a case for conceiving of empathy as enactive and exploratory, but also draws on Ratcliffe (2017) and Zahavi (2017) to distinguish between basic and more discursive varieties of empathy. Section 2 defends the idea that when empathising we understand others by exploring their narratives and clarifies what this involves. Section 3 provides fresh arguments for thinking that there is no need to augment the type of narrativist account we advance in Section 2 by appeal to the idea that empathising requires mental simulation of the other. In particular, we explain how to account for imaginative resistance that may occur during empathising and also our foundational co-cognizing with others without leaning on the idea that we mentally simulate other minds. We defend the view that empathy, understood by our lights, does not reduce to or depend on any kind of mindreading.
The action of the paper unfolds as follows: Section 1 makes a case for conceiving of empathy as enactive and exploratory, but also draws on Ratcliffe (2017) and Zahavi (2017) to distinguish between basic and more discursive varieties of empathy. Section 2 defends the idea that when empathising we understand others by exploring their narratives and clarifies what this involves. Section 3 provides fresh arguments for thinking that there is no need to augment the type of narrativist account we advance in Section 2 by appeal to the idea that empathising requires mental simulation of the other. In particular, we explain how to account for imaginative resistance that may occur during empathising and also our foundational co-cognizing with others without leaning on the idea that we mentally simulate other minds. We defend the view that empathy, understood by our lights, does not reduce to or depend on any kind of mindreading.
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Focusing on the contemporary scene, this paper argues against some detractors that answering the RTM-question matters. Far from being merely semantic or inconsequential, the answer we give to the RTM-question makes a difference to how we... more
Focusing on the contemporary scene, this paper argues against some detractors that answering the RTM-question matters. Far from being merely semantic or inconsequential, the answer we give to the RTM-question makes a difference to how we conceive of minds. How we answer determines which theoretical framework the sciences of mind ought to embrace. In making this case, the structure of this paper is as follows. Section 1 outlines Rowlands’s (2017) argument that the RTM-question is a bad question and that attempts to answer it, one way or another, have neither practical nor theoretical import. Rowlands concludes this because, on his analysis, there is no non-arbitrary fact of the matter about which properties something must possess in order to qualify as a mental representation. By way of reply, we admit that Rowlands’s analysis succeeds in revealing why attempts to answer the RTM question simpliciter are pointless. Nevertheless, we show that if specific formulations of the RTM question are stipulated then it is possible conduct substantive RTM debates that do not collapse into merely verbal disagreements. Combined, Sections 2 and 3 demonstrate how, by employing specifying stipulations, we can get around Rowland’s arbitrariness challenge. Section 2 reveals why RTM, as canonically construed in terms of mental states exhibiting intensional (with-an-s) properties, has been deemed a valuable explanatory hypothesis in the cognitive sciences. Targeting the canonical notion of mental representations, Section 3 articulates a rival non-representational hypothesis that, we propose, can do all the relevant explanatory work at much lower theoretical cost. Taken together, Sections 2 and 3 show what can be at stake in the RTM debate when it is framed by appeal to the canonical notion of mental representation and why engaging in it matters. Section 4 extends the argument for thinking that RTM debates matter. It provides reasons for thinking that, far from making no practical or theoretical difference to the sciences of the mind, deciding to abandon RTM would constitute a revolutionary conceptual shift in those sciences.
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Basic Emotion Theory, or BET, has dominated the affective sciences for decades (Ekman 1972, 1992, 1999; Ekman and Davidson 1994; Scarantino and Griffiths 2011). It has been highly influential, driving a number of empirical lines of... more
Basic Emotion Theory, or BET, has dominated the affective sciences for decades (Ekman 1972, 1992, 1999; Ekman and Davidson 1994; Scarantino and Griffiths 2011). It has been highly influential, driving a number of empirical lines of research (e.g. in the context of facial expression detection, neuroimaging studies and evolutionary psychology). Nevertheless, BET has been criticized by philosophers, leading to calls for it to be jettisoned entirely (Colombetti 2014; Hufendiek 2016). This paper defuses those criticisms. In addition, it shows that we have good reason to retain BET. Finally, it reviews and puts to rest worries that BET’s commitment to affect programs renders it outmoded. We propose that, with minor adjustments, BET can be avoid such criticism when conceived under a radically enactive account of emotions. Thus, rather than leaving BET behind, we show how its basic ideas can be revised, refashioned and preserved. Hence, we conclude, our new BET is still a good bet.
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This paper explicates Wittgenstein vision of our place in nature and show in what ways it is unlike and more fruitful than the picture of nature promoted by exclusive scientific naturalists. Wittgenstein’s vision of nature is bound up... more
This paper explicates Wittgenstein vision of our place in nature and show in what ways it is unlike and more fruitful than the picture of nature promoted by exclusive scientific naturalists. Wittgenstein’s vision of nature is bound up with and supports his signature view that the task of philosophy is distinctively descriptive rather than explanatory. Highlighting what makes Wittgenstein’s vision of nature special, it has been claimed that to the extent that he qualifies as a naturalist of any sort he ought to be regarded as a liberal naturalist (Macarthur, forthcoming). We argue, by contrast, that focusing solely on the liberality of Wittgenstein’s view of nature risks overlooking and downplaying the ways in which his philosophical clarifications can act as platform for productively engaging with the sciences in their explanatory endeavors. We argue that Wittgenstein’s vision of nature allows for a more relaxed form of naturalism in which philosophy can be a productive partner for scientific inquiry and investigation. Although this feature of Wittgenstein’s vision of nature is not something that he himself emphasized, given his interests and concerns, it is an inspiring vision in an age in which philosophy must find its feet with and alongside the sciences.
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This paper explicates how we might positively understand the distinctive, nonconceptual experience of our own actions and experiences, by drawing on insights from a radically enactive take on phenomenal experience. We defend a late... more
This paper explicates how we might positively understand the distinctive, nonconceptual experience of our own actions and experiences, by drawing on insights from a radically enactive take on phenomenal experience. We defend a late developing relationalism about the emergence of explicit, conceptually based self awareness, proposing that the latter develops in tandem with the mastery of self reflective narrative practices. Focusing on the case of human newborns, Section 1 reviews and rejects claims that the capacities of actors to keep track of aspects of themselves -e.g. their bodies, body parts, movements, activities, actions and experiences- when coordinating what they do equates to or is best explained by positing minimal, tacit awareness of their experiences as their own. Section 2 then considers and resists more familiar arguments, based on the so called reflexivity thesis, that take such minimal self-awareness to be implied wherever there is any kind of phenomenal experience. In place of these ideas, we promote an alternative proposal of what is involved when agents keep track of aspects of themselves, drawing on a radically enactive conception of basic experience. Section 3 concludes by proposing that our first conceptual, explicit sense of self is something that only arrives on the scene once we become able to hold our own -through the support of others- in discursive, narrative practices that give us a conceptual grip on what it is to be a temporally extended self that persists over time.
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Advancing a radically enactive account of cognition, we provide arguments in favour of the possibility that cultural factors permeate rather than penetrate cognition, such that cognition extensively and transactionally incorporates... more
Advancing a radically enactive account of cognition, we provide arguments in favour of the possibility that cultural factors permeate rather than penetrate cognition, such that cognition extensively and transactionally incorporates cultural factors rather than there being any question of cultural factors having to break into the restricted confines of cognition. The paper reviews the limitations of two classical cognitivist, modularist accounts of cognition and a revisionary, new order variant of cognitivism – a Predictive Processing account of Cognition, or PPC. It argues that the cognitivist interpretation of PPC is conservatively and problematically attached to the idea of inner models and stored knowledge. In abandoning that way of understanding PPC, it offers a radically enactive alternative account of how cultural factors matter to cognition – one that abandons all vestiges of the idea that cultural factors might contentfully communicate with basic forms of cognition. In place of that idea, the possibility that culture permeates cognition is promoted.
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Representationalists are on the run. One of cognitive science’s traditional foundations –its cognitivist cornerstones- has been brought into question. Ultimately, this threatens its commitment to a united... more
Representationalists are on the run. One of cognitive science’s traditional foundations –its cognitivist cornerstones- has been brought into question. Ultimately, this threatens its commitment to a united representational-cum-computational theory of mind. What’s the worry, we may ask? Serious doubts have been raised about whether mental representational content lies at the roots of cognition – about whether mental representational contents will feature in our mature accounts of the basis of cognition. If mental representational content is the source of so much trouble, a tempting move might be to ditch it. But can this be done while keeping faith with the assumption that explanations in cognitive science, foundationally, involve representations of some sort? Deflationists think so. They seek to retain mental representations in their ground floor theorizing about the nature of cognition while abandoning any ontological commitment to the existence of mental representational contents. Hence, deflationists about mental representations seek to retain a commitment to representationalism while at the same time denying that mental representational contents – with the aforementioned set of troublesome properties – figure in explanations of intelligent activity.
In what follows, we will review in turn, and deflate, the most promising deflationist approaches on today’s market.
In what follows, we will review in turn, and deflate, the most promising deflationist approaches on today’s market.
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Naturalism comes in many stripes and strengths. At one extreme, naturalists of a super strict sort advance a unification agenda along combined methodological and ontological fronts. At the other extreme, by way of response to the... more
Naturalism comes in many stripes and strengths. At one extreme, naturalists of a super strict sort advance a unification agenda along combined methodological and ontological fronts. At the other extreme, by way of response to the confining and austere conception of nature proposed by strict naturalists, liberal naturalists are pluralists who accept the existence of diverse ways of knowing and entities other those recognized by the sciences. Neither of these naturalisms is satisfactory – the first its too hard, the latter too soft. In Wittgenstein's philosophy we find inspiration for a Liberating, Relaxed version of naturalism that proves more habitable and viable – one that occupies a Goldilocks Zone and offers the right conditions for understanding how philosophy and the sciences can be distinct and yet productively connected.
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This paper argues that it is possible to show how content could have arisen in the natural world without gaps following some of Davidson central ideas but also adjusting them to a different framework. Crucially, by expanding our thinking... more
This paper argues that it is possible to show how content could have arisen in the natural world without gaps following some of Davidson central ideas but also adjusting them to a different framework. Crucially, by expanding our thinking about the character of the mental it becomes possible to defend some of Davidson’s most important insights about minds while also promoting a satisfactory and demystifying naturalism.
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New theories of remembering cast it as dynamic and, sometimes, wide-reaching. They not only challenge the idea that remembering is a type of passive recollection but that it always takes place wholly and solely inside the head. Yet a... more
New theories of remembering cast it as dynamic and, sometimes, wide-reaching. They not only challenge the idea that remembering is a type of passive recollection but that it always takes place wholly and solely inside the head. Yet a common feature of many of these new theories of remembering, in line with information processing paradigm, is their conservative endorsement of the traditional assumption that interesting forms of remembering are rooted in the retrieval of some kind of remembered content. This paper reviews various contemporary theories of memory that make the content assumption and shows how they can be modified by an alternative vision that is both empirically adequate and yet avoids having to face up to the Hard Problem of Content. We demonstrate how the radically enactive account of the roots of remembering on offer can successfully handle classic cases discussed in the extended memory literature as well as explain experientially rich forms of episodic memory.
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Any naturalist worth his or her salt, even if methodologically non-reductionist, should make the connections between contentful thought and the natural world non-mysterious. Davidson’s signature ideas on the holism and autonomy of... more
Any naturalist worth his or her salt, even if methodologically non-reductionist, should make the connections between contentful thought and the natural world non-mysterious. Davidson’s signature ideas on the holism and autonomy of propositional thought have led some exegetes to hold that he advances a kind of transcendentalism that is discordant with a satisfactory naturalism We argue that by expanding our thinking about the character of the mental it becomes possible to defend some of Davidson’s most important insights about minds while also promoting a satisfactory and demystifying naturalism.
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Being a competent narrator matters. It matters for understanding and engaging with others, and it also matters for shaping ourselves, to see ‘live options’ and to improve our chances of flourishing and living well. The importance of... more
Being a competent narrator matters. It matters for understanding and engaging with others, and it also matters for shaping ourselves, to see ‘live options’ and to improve our chances of flourishing and living well. The importance of developing narrative skills and their transformative potential is becoming more recognized. This paper examines two important movements – narrative medicine and narrative therapy – that aim to put narrative practices at the heart of medicine and therapeutic practices. It exposes the core assumptions of these movements and identifies ways in which attention to those assumptions can benefit from philosophical clarification and further investigation.
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There are other forms of therapeutic practice – those that operate under the banner of body or body-oriented psychotherapy– which assume that narratives of another special sort also matter for our mental wellbeing. Body psychotherapists... more
There are other forms of therapeutic practice – those that operate under the banner of body or body-oriented psychotherapy– which assume that narratives of another special sort also matter for our mental wellbeing. Body psychotherapists invoke the, albeit relatively underdeveloped, notion of a body narrative as a central construct. A body narrative is not a narrative about a body (as in e.g., Charon 2006; Scholz 2000; Ling and Liu 2008) but a narrative generated by the body. While we believe the idea of a body narrative points to an important phenomenon, our aim is to cast philosophical light on the nature of that phenomenon while avoiding theoretical difficulties and puzzles that arise from assuming that bodies narrate. As such we explore whether the notion of body narratives per se is really necessary for, or even the best way to, make sense of practices of body psychotherapy. We propose an alternative way of understanding what goes on in such therapy, which we think is both philosophically safe and yet still serviceable to therapists. Thus, in the final analysis, we hold that it is possible to replace the notion of body narratives with talk of structured, embodied activity – activity that is ripe for and benefits from narration in therapeutic contexts – without loss in all cases.
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In Emotion, Imagination and the Limits of Reason, Morag (2016) offers up serious challenges to the popular view that emotions are best understood as contentful states of mind – states of mind that are directed at specific targets and... more
In Emotion, Imagination and the Limits of Reason, Morag (2016) offers up serious challenges to the popular view that emotions are best understood as contentful states of mind – states of mind that are directed at specific targets and which always involve evaluative appraisal. She supplies an updated Freudian view of the emotions as an antidote to cognitivism: one that places emphasis on unconscious imaginative processes to serve as a corrective to cognitivism's over-rationalizing tendencies. While agreeing with Morag's (2016) primary objections to cognitivism, this commentary suggests that it possible, and beneficial, to hold that basic emotions can target worldly offerings without presupposing conceptual or other contents, and that emotional appraisals take the form of embodied evaluations that, though they aren't judgments, are not dumb at all. It is shown that such a view can complement Morag's (2016) idea that imaginative processes add an important dimension to our emotional lives. It is concluded we can take Morag's lesson and her positive proposal about unconscious imaginative processes seriously while adopting a more multi-layered, enactivist approach to the emotions.
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The mainstream view in cognitive science is that computation lies at the basis of and explains cognition. Our analysis reveals that there is no compelling evidence or argument for thinking that brains compute. It makes the case for... more
The mainstream view in cognitive science is that computation lies at the basis of and explains cognition. Our analysis reveals that there is no compelling evidence or argument for thinking that brains compute. It makes the case for inverting the explanatory order proposed by the computational basis of cognition thesis. We must reverse the polarity of standard thinking on this topic, and ask how it is possible that computation, natural and artificial, might be based in cognition and not the other way around.
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To understand Wittgenstein’s stance on psychology it is necessary to understand his broader approach to philosophy. Philosophy, according to Wittgenstein, is a sort of rescue operation. Its main task is to “bring words back from their... more
To understand Wittgenstein’s stance on psychology it is necessary to understand his broader approach to philosophy. Philosophy, according to Wittgenstein, is a sort of rescue operation. Its main task is to “bring words back from their metaphysical to their ordinary use” (PI §116). The recovery process of which he speaks is anything but easy: it requires us to break free –often, over and over again– from certain compelling but distorting pictures or ways of thinking about various subject matters – ways of thinking that irresistibly attract us and “bewitch our intelligence” (PI §109).
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Current methods to study the brain are under stress. The emerging difficulties in attributing functions to brain regions call for a reconsideration of our cognitive ontology to rethink what goes into the theoretical toolbox that we use to... more
Current methods to study the brain are under stress. The emerging difficulties in attributing functions to brain regions call for a reconsideration of our cognitive ontology to rethink what goes into the theoretical toolbox that we use to understand cognition. More and less radical revisions to our cognitive ontology have been proposed (Price & Friston 2005, Klein 2012, Anderson 2014). This paper provides reasons for taking seriously the possibility that brains are basically protean: that they make use of neural structures in inventive, on-the-fly improvisations to suit circumstance and context. Hence with respect to their native ontology, we should not always and everywhere expect brains to divide into natural, functionally stable parts and pieces. We argue that to deny this possibility at the outset is to invite the real danger that we may be imposing an assumed cognitive ontology onto the brain rather than discovering it within it.
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Commentary submitted to Brains Blog (philosophyofbrains.com) for a Mind and Language, symposia on Katharina Helming, Brent Strickland, and Pierre Jacob's "Solving the puzzle about early belief-ascription," which will appear in M&L''s... more
Commentary submitted to Brains Blog (philosophyofbrains.com) for a Mind and Language, symposia on Katharina Helming, Brent Strickland, and Pierre Jacob's "Solving the puzzle about early belief-ascription," which will appear in M&L''s September 2016 issue. The symposium is scheduled to run in mid-October 2016. Katharina, Brent, and Pierre will prepare a brief introduction to their paper, which will be followed by several critical commentaries of about 1,000-3,000 words. They will then write replies to these commentaries, and there will be an opportunity to discuss matters further on the blog. Wiley-Blackwell will make the paper itself freely available for the duration of the symposium, so that all interested parties can read it.
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Predictive Processing accounts of Cognition, PPC, promise to forge productive alliances that will unite approaches that are otherwise at odds (see Clark 2016). Can it? This paper argues that it can’t – or at least not so long as it sticks... more
Predictive Processing accounts of Cognition, PPC, promise to forge productive alliances that will unite approaches that are otherwise at odds (see Clark 2016). Can it? This paper argues that it can’t – or at least not so long as it sticks with the cognitivist rendering that Clark (2016) and others favor. In making this case the argument of this paper unfolds as follows: Section 1 describes the basics of PPC – its attachment to the idea that we perceive the world by guessing the world. It then details the reasons why so many find cognitivist interpretations to be inevitable. Section 2 examines how prominent proponents of cognitivist PPC have proposed dealing with a fundamental problem that troubles their accounts – the question of how the brain is able to get into the great guessing game in the first place. It is argued that on close inspection Clark’s (2016) solution, which he calls bootstrap heaven is – once we take a realistic look at the situation of the brain – in fact bootstrap hell. Section 3 argues that it is possible to avoid dwelling in bootstrap hell if one adopts a radically enactive take on PPC. A brief sketch of what this might look like is provided.
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There is more to skillful performance in sport than technical proficiency. How an athlete feels – whether he or she is confident, elated, nervous or fearful – also matters to how they perform in certain situations. Taking stock of this,... more
There is more to skillful performance in sport than technical proficiency. How an athlete
feels – whether he or she is confident, elated, nervous or fearful – also matters to how
they perform in certain situations. Taking stock of this, some sports psychologists have
begun to develop techniques for ensuring more robust, reliable performances by
focusing on how athletes respond emotionally to situations while, at the same time,
training their action-oriented skills. This chapter adds theoretical insight to those efforts, offering reasons to endorse a radically enactivist framework when it comes to thinking about: the basic characteristics of emotions; how emotions are involved in skilled performance; and how they integrate with the sort of intelligence that informs the skilled execution of action exhibited in embodied expertise.
feels – whether he or she is confident, elated, nervous or fearful – also matters to how
they perform in certain situations. Taking stock of this, some sports psychologists have
begun to develop techniques for ensuring more robust, reliable performances by
focusing on how athletes respond emotionally to situations while, at the same time,
training their action-oriented skills. This chapter adds theoretical insight to those efforts, offering reasons to endorse a radically enactivist framework when it comes to thinking about: the basic characteristics of emotions; how emotions are involved in skilled performance; and how they integrate with the sort of intelligence that informs the skilled execution of action exhibited in embodied expertise.
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This chapter canvases a range of compelling empirical and theoretical grounds for thinking that one familiar kind of memory – autobiographical memory – depends upon the mastery and exercise of narrative capacities. It is structured as... more
This chapter canvases a range of compelling empirical and theoretical grounds for thinking that one familiar kind of memory – autobiographical memory – depends upon the mastery and exercise of narrative capacities. It is structured as follows: Section 1 contrasts features of utterly non-narrative forms of purely enactive and embodied remembering with that of the declarative variety required for autobiographical memory. Section 2 explicates the core tenets of the Social Interactionist Theory, SIT, of autobiographical memory, highlighting differences between possible weaker and stronger formulations and the roles that the mastery of narrative practices plays in both. Section 3 address a challenge to SIT, exploring how it is possible to understand pure episodic remembering which apparently operates before and below the capacity to autobiographically narrate the past in a way that is compatible even with its strongest version. Section 4 concludes by considering arguments, motivated by empirical findings, which are compelling a rethink of what the primary function of autobiographical memory may be that speaks in SIT's favour.
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We respond to three main challenges that the commentaries have raised. First, we argue that to deal successfully with the hard problem of consciousness, it is not enough to posit a remedy by which to move beyond the hard problem. Second,... more
We respond to three main challenges that the commentaries have raised. First, we argue that to deal successfully with the hard problem of consciousness, it is not enough to posit a remedy by which to move beyond the hard problem. Second, we argue that it makes no sense to explain identity. Yet this does not commit us to definitions by fiat. The strategy we pursue here, and in the target article, is not to explain identity but to explain away the appearance of non-identity. Finally, while we are sympathetic to Varela’s call for a paradigm shift in consciousness studies, we argue here, and in the target article, that this call can only be properly successful if the hard problem is dismantled.
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Radically Enactive Cognition, REC, holds that not all forms of cognition are content involving and, especially, not root forms. According to radical enactivists, only minds that have mastered special kinds of socio-cultural practice are... more
Radically Enactive Cognition, REC, holds that not all forms of cognition are content involving and, especially, not root forms. According to radical enactivists, only minds that have mastered special kinds of socio-cultural practice are capable of content involving forms of cognition. This paper addresses criticisms that have been leveled at REC’s vision of how content-involving cognition may have come on the scene. It responds, in the first section, to the charge that REC faces a fatal dilemma when it comes to accounting for the origins of content in naturalistic terms – a dilemma that arises from REC’s own acknowledgment of the existence of a Hard Problem of Content. In subsequent sections, the paper addresses the charge that REC entails continuity scepticism, reviewing this charge in its scientific and philosophical formulations. It is concluded that REC is not at odds with evolutionary continuity, when both REC and evolutionary continuity are properly understood. It is also concluded that although REC cannot completely close the imaginative gap that is required to answer the philosophical continuity sceptic it is, in this respect, in no worse a position than its representationalist rivals and their naturalistic proposals about the origins of content.
Philosophy of psychiatry faces a tough choice between two competing ways of understanding mental disorders. The folk psychology or FP view puts our everyday normative conceptual scheme in the driver’s seat – on the assumption that it, and... more
Philosophy of psychiatry faces a tough choice between two competing ways of understanding mental disorders. The folk psychology or FP view puts our everyday normative conceptual scheme in the driver’s seat – on the assumption that it, and it only, tells us what mental disorders are (Graham 2009). Opposing this, the scientific image or SI view (Murphy 2006, Gerrans 2014) holds that our understanding of mental disorders must come, wholly and solely, from the sciences of the mind, unfettered by FP. This paper argues that the FP view is problematic because it is too limited: there is more to the mind than FP allows, hence we must look beyond FP for properly deep and illuminating explanations of mental disorders. SI promises just this. But when cast in its standard cognitivist formulations SI is unnecessarily and unjustifiably neurocentric. After rejecting both the FP view, in its pure form, and SI, in its popular cognitivist renderings, this paper concludes that a more liberal version of SI can accommodate what is best in both views – once SI is so formulated and the FP view properly edited and significantly revised, the two views can be reconciled and combined to provide a sound philosophical basis for a future psychiatry.
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Brains do not sit back and receive information from the world, form truth evaluable representations of it, and only then work out and implement action plans. Instead, tirelessly and proactively, our brains are forever trying to look ahead... more
Brains do not sit back and receive information from the world, form truth evaluable representations of it, and only then work out and implement action plans. Instead, tirelessly and proactively, our brains are forever trying to look ahead in order to ensure that we have an adequate practical grip on the world in the here and now. Focused primarily on action and intervention, their basic work is to make the best possible predictions about what the world is throwing at us. The job of brains is to aid the organisms they inhabit, in ways that are sensitive to the regularities of the situations those organisms inhabit. Brains achieve this by driving activity that is dynamically and interactively bound up with and sensitive to the causal structure of the world on multiple spatial and temporal scales. Understanding brains as doing fundamentally predictive work of this sort – as 'action oriented engagement machines' (cf. p. 300) – is perfectly in tune with the recent trends of conceiving of cognition as embodied, ecologically situated, extended and enculturated. These are the main messages of Surfing Uncertainty.
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Narrative and Narratology
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In remembrance of a philosophical great.
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Fodor was forever forecasting and combating a doom-and-gloom return to, what he regarded, as the dark days of behaviourism. Yet he never mentioned the darkness that would befall philosophy at the loss of his systematic exploration and... more
Fodor was forever forecasting and combating a doom-and-gloom return to, what he regarded, as the dark days of behaviourism. Yet he never mentioned the darkness that would befall philosophy at the loss of his systematic exploration and defence of controversial lines of argument, his inexhaustible intellectual energy, and his playful wit. Sadly, that day has finally come.
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In embracing a relaxed naturalism, philosophy can cooperate in a reciprocal fashion not only with the natural sciences but also the arts, humanities, social sciences and other fields. On the one hand, it can be empirically informed and... more
In embracing a relaxed naturalism, philosophy can cooperate in a reciprocal fashion not only with the natural sciences but also the arts, humanities, social sciences and other fields. On the one hand, it can be empirically informed and constrained. On the other hand, it can also inform and constrain empirical inquiry, as well as influencing our wider practices and thinking. Philosophy, so conceived, seeks to provide conceptual clarifications that matter. Done well, it can enter into productive relationships with other domains of inquiry in ways that make a relevant difference.
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We address some frequently encountered criticisms of Radical Embodied/Enactive Cognition. Contrary to the claims that the position is too radical, or not sufficiently so, we claim REC is just radical enough.
E is the letter, if not the word, in today’s sciences of mind. E adjectives proliferate. Nowadays it is hard to avoid claims that cognition – perceiving, imagining, decision-making, planning – is best understood in E terms of some sort.... more
E is the letter, if not the word, in today’s sciences of mind. E adjectives proliferate. Nowadays it is hard to avoid claims that cognition – perceiving, imagining, decision-making, planning – is best understood in E terms of some sort. The list of E-terms is long: embodied, enactive, extended, embedded, ecological, engaged, emotional, expressive, emergent and so on.
This short piece explains: the big idea behind this movement; how it is inspired by empirical findings; why it matters; and what questions the field will face in the future. It focuses on the stronger and weaker ways that different E-approaches understand cognition as depending deeply on the dynamic ways in which cognizers use their bodies to engage with wider world.
This short piece explains: the big idea behind this movement; how it is inspired by empirical findings; why it matters; and what questions the field will face in the future. It focuses on the stronger and weaker ways that different E-approaches understand cognition as depending deeply on the dynamic ways in which cognizers use their bodies to engage with wider world.
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of enactivist philosophy of mind, which moves away from the intellectualist idea that minds essentially represent and compute, and promoting in its place the a vision of minds as fundamentally embedded in and interactively engaged with... more
of enactivist philosophy of mind, which moves away from the intellectualist idea that minds essentially represent and compute, and promoting in its place the a vision of minds as fundamentally embedded in and interactively engaged with the world. Dan was previously at the University of Hertfordshire, where he was involved with Mark McKergow in setting up the HESIAN research hub connecting enactive theory with solution-focused (SF) narrative and interactional practices. Together they see the enactivist movement in the philosophy of mind as being very congenial for understanding SF practice and its effectiveness. Dan recently moved to Australia and began the interview by giving a Skype tour of his new house complete with palm trees and a swimming pool. He mentioned that while enac-tivist ideas have gained some acceptance in Europe, there are special advantages to bringing them to the closer attention of the Australian philosophical community, given that so many of its senior figures are committed to natural-istic approaches to mind. Hence the move to Australia has provided an opportunity for interesting debate and a way of extending the enactivist movement.
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Ludwig Wittgenstein worked out how language has meaning, twice. He also thought that some of the most important things we can know we can’t express at all. Grant Bartley from Philosophy Now (and author of The Metarevolution) finds out the... more
Ludwig Wittgenstein worked out how language has meaning, twice. He also thought that some of the most important things we can know we can’t express at all. Grant Bartley from Philosophy Now (and author of The Metarevolution) finds out the meaning and limits of language from guest Daniel Hutto from the University of Wollongong, NSW. First broadcast on 22 June 2014 on Resonance FM.
Our minds are in our heads; their contents are furnished by our senses. Our eyes and ears transmit information from the world that is received by the brain. Our brains compile this information to construct models and representations of... more
Our minds are in our heads; their contents are furnished by our senses. Our eyes and ears transmit information from the world that is received by the brain. Our brains compile this information to construct models and representations of the outer world, allowing us to deal with it intelligently. This has been the standard view in the sciences of the mind for centuries. But what if it isn’t so? What if it isn’t possible to ‘pick up’ information from the world? What if we can’t really 'handle truth’ or information? We would need to rethink our age-old picture of the mind, fundamentally. Perhaps brains do not really take in and process any information at all. Perhaps having a mind is more a matter of continually and actively engaging with selective aspects of our environment in sensitive ways. In this talk, Professor Daniel Hutto will promote such a major rethink about thinking itself, which should make a practical difference to how we approach the training and embedding of skills, both in adults and children, and provide a basis for new therapies in mental health.
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Making sense of each other's reasons is a cornerstone of human social life. It involves attributing beliefs, desires and hopes - in complex ways. Our capacity to do this is unique: we do not share it with animals or very young children.... more
Making sense of each other's reasons is a cornerstone of human social life. It involves attributing beliefs, desires and hopes - in complex ways. Our capacity to do this is unique: we do not share it with animals or very young children. It is so deeply ingrained in our daily existence that we tend only to notice it, and its critical importance, when it is damaged or absent altogether - as it is for severely autistic individuals. What is the basis of this competence? How do we come by it?
In this lecture Professor Hutto introduces the idea that this remarkable ability is essentially a skill in producing and consuming a special sort of narrative, acquired by engaging in storytelling practices. As Waterhouse’s A Tale from the Decameron (1916) reminds us beautifully, narrative practices have been at the heart of human society throughout our history. Dan defended the stronger claim that they might be absolutely central for stimulating important aspects of our social understanding and noted that, if true, it excludes the prospect that this crucial ability is one which is built-in to members of our species. Knowing the answer matters, fundamentally, when it comes to deciding which therapies are the most promising and appropriate for treating certain mental health disorders and which sorts of educational opportunities should be provided for younger children. Equally, it matters when thinking about whether and how we, as adults, might improve abilities to understand ourselves and others.
In this lecture Professor Hutto introduces the idea that this remarkable ability is essentially a skill in producing and consuming a special sort of narrative, acquired by engaging in storytelling practices. As Waterhouse’s A Tale from the Decameron (1916) reminds us beautifully, narrative practices have been at the heart of human society throughout our history. Dan defended the stronger claim that they might be absolutely central for stimulating important aspects of our social understanding and noted that, if true, it excludes the prospect that this crucial ability is one which is built-in to members of our species. Knowing the answer matters, fundamentally, when it comes to deciding which therapies are the most promising and appropriate for treating certain mental health disorders and which sorts of educational opportunities should be provided for younger children. Equally, it matters when thinking about whether and how we, as adults, might improve abilities to understand ourselves and others.
Research Interests:
The cognitive revolution deposed behaviourist thinking (in both philosophy and psychology) and licensed a return to active theorizing about mental states and their place in nature. Promoting representational and computational theories of... more
The cognitive revolution deposed behaviourist thinking (in both philosophy and psychology) and licensed a return to active theorizing about mental states and their place in nature. Promoting representational and computational theories of mind, many researchers in diverse fields have assumed that the contentful properties of such mental states play critical causal roles in computational processes enabling intelligent activity. But serious problems have been identified with the very idea that contentful mental representations (of the kind that might do such work) exist. Moreover, new, non-representationalist approaches in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science – enactive, embodied approaches – have emerged and are growing in popularity. These developments suggest that the time is ripe for a complete re-think of the cognitive revolution. Against this backdrop, I give reasons to preferring radically embodied/enactive accounts of cognition than abandon traditional assumptions of classical cognitive science, proposing a fundamentally shift in how we might conceive of the basic nature of minds.
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Very young infants possess impressive mind minding abilities – this is clearly demonstrated by recent experimental research. What is not clear is how best to characterize these capacities. In this short presentation, focusing on the issue... more
Very young infants possess impressive mind minding abilities – this is clearly demonstrated by recent experimental research. What is not clear is how best to characterize these capacities. In this short presentation, focusing on the issue of mental content, I briefly raise a fundamental theoretical concern about attempts to understand the basis of such capacities in high level cognitivist terms, i.e. by attributing children some or other sort of ‘theory of mind’ capacity. Over and against this, commenting on emerging empirical data, I defend the possibility that we start out with non-representational capacities for engaging with other minds and only gradually develop our folk psychological competence by engaging with communal artifacts – stories with special properties – in our shared storytelling practices. It is by this means that we gradually acquire our articulate capacity for making sense of ourselves and others in terms of reasons.
This talk will address some fundamental questions about how best to understand the contemporary enactivist proposals about the nature of experiencing. Ultimately, it is argued that the most tenable versions of enactivism are radical,... more
This talk will address some fundamental questions about how best to understand the contemporary enactivist proposals about the nature of experiencing. Ultimately, it is argued that the most tenable versions of enactivism are radical, non-representationalist and non-cognitivist renderings. The driving insights behind all enactivist approaches will be examined before reviewing the particularities of Noë’s (2004) conservative version of enactivism about experience. Certain problems with that approach will be identified. Finally, it will be shown that such problems can be avoided by adopting a more radical form of enactivism. Thankfully, I believe this is not only a possible, but a wholly compelling option on independent grounds.
Hutto & Myin are going to present and discuss their forthcoming new book “Radicalizing Enactivism. Basic Minds without Content” (MIT Press 2013). We invite Graduate/PhD students and Post-docs to submit papers on topics related to the... more
Hutto & Myin are going to present and discuss their forthcoming new book “Radicalizing Enactivism. Basic Minds without Content” (MIT Press 2013).
We invite Graduate/PhD students and Post-docs to submit papers on topics related to the theme of the workshop. Talks will be 20 min. (plus 10 min. discussion). We will financially support the presenters. The manuscript will be available for participants upon request by email to nike.zohm@rub.de. The preface can be downloaded at http://herts.academia.edu/DanielDHutto/Books.
Please submit your papers by sending an abstract (1000 words), making thesis and argument transparent, by email to nike.zohm@rub.de before August 31st, 2012! Further information: www.tobiasschlicht.com
Organization:
Prof. Dr. Tobias Schlicht
Institut für Philosophie II
Ruhr-Universität Bochum, GA3/29
44780 Bochum
We invite Graduate/PhD students and Post-docs to submit papers on topics related to the theme of the workshop. Talks will be 20 min. (plus 10 min. discussion). We will financially support the presenters. The manuscript will be available for participants upon request by email to nike.zohm@rub.de. The preface can be downloaded at http://herts.academia.edu/DanielDHutto/Books.
Please submit your papers by sending an abstract (1000 words), making thesis and argument transparent, by email to nike.zohm@rub.de before August 31st, 2012! Further information: www.tobiasschlicht.com
Organization:
Prof. Dr. Tobias Schlicht
Institut für Philosophie II
Ruhr-Universität Bochum, GA3/29
44780 Bochum
Compelling empirical evidence shows that acts of gesturing do not simply serve to express contentful thoughts – i.e. that they do not merely serve to enable the communication of pre-formed form thoughts: gestures fulfill unique cognitive... more
Compelling empirical evidence shows that acts of gesturing do not simply serve to express contentful thoughts – i.e. that they do not merely serve to enable the communication of pre-formed form thoughts: gestures fulfill unique cognitive functions in their own right (McNeill 1992, 2002; Goldin-Meadow 2003). Building on such findings, Clark (forthcoming) has recently argued that if gestures are partially constitutive of certain acts of thinking then they provide a pervasive and concrete example of the ‘Extended Mind’. While there is much to recommend taking gesture seriously as a basic, embodied forms of cognition I provide general reasons for thinking that we must surrender the idea that gestures “expands the set of representational tools available to speakers and listeners” (2003 p.186). For although gestures ought to be understood as embodied and cognitive they are mischaracterized when conceived of as being representational or contentful in nature. I argue that gestures are best understood under the auspices of Radically Enactive/Embodied Cognition as opposed to Conservative Enactive/Embodied Cognition. But, if so, contra Clark, gestures provide a parade case of basic extensive, and not merely, extended mentality.
If these arguments are accepted then questions loom large about how non-contentful gestures interact with, influence and may have helped to make possible contentful speech and thought. In my concluding remarks I take up the last issue – suggesting that our non-verbal ancestors’ first communions may have depended upon mimetic capacities and embodied intersubjective engagements in which gestures played a central role but while ‘theory of mind’ abilities played none at all. Further, I expound reasons for thinking that this same proposal offers an adequate and theoretically well-motivated way of understanding how human children manage to take their first steps into more sophisticated linguistic and narrative practices.
If these arguments are accepted then questions loom large about how non-contentful gestures interact with, influence and may have helped to make possible contentful speech and thought. In my concluding remarks I take up the last issue – suggesting that our non-verbal ancestors’ first communions may have depended upon mimetic capacities and embodied intersubjective engagements in which gestures played a central role but while ‘theory of mind’ abilities played none at all. Further, I expound reasons for thinking that this same proposal offers an adequate and theoretically well-motivated way of understanding how human children manage to take their first steps into more sophisticated linguistic and narrative practices.
The cognitive revolution deposed behaviourist thinking (in both philosophy and psychology) and licensed a return to active theorizing about mental states and their place in nature. Promoting representational and computational theories of... more
The cognitive revolution deposed behaviourist thinking (in both philosophy and psychology) and licensed a return to active theorizing about mental states and their place in nature. Promoting representational and computational theories of mind, many researchers in diverse fields have assumed that the contentful properties of such mental states play critical causal roles in computational processes enabling intelligent activity. But serious problems have been identified with the very idea that contentful mental representations (of the kind that might do such work) exist. Moreover, new, non-representationalist approaches in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science – enactive, embodied approaches – have emerged and are growing in popularity. These developments suggest that the time is ripe for a complete re-think of the cognitive revolution. Against this backdrop, I give reasons to preferring radically embodied/enactive accounts of cognition than abandon traditional assumptions of classical cognitive science, proposing a fundamentally shift in how we might conceive of the basic nature of minds.
What is the basis of this competence? How do we come by it? This lecture introduces the idea that this remarkable ability is essentially a skill in producing and consuming a special sort of narrative, acquired by engaging in storytelling... more
What is the basis of this competence? How do we come by it? This lecture introduces the idea that this remarkable ability is essentially a skill in producing and consuming a special sort of narrative, acquired by engaging in storytelling practices. Narrative practices have been at the heart of human societies throughout our history. This lecture defends the stronger claim that they might be absolutely central for engendering important aspects of our social understanding. If true, this precludes the possibility that this crucial ability is one which is built-into members of our species. Knowing the answer matters, fundamentally, when it comes to deciding which therapies are the most promising and appropriate for treating certain mental health disorders and which sorts of educational opportunities should be provided for younger children. Equally, it matters when thinking about whether and how we – as adults - might improve abilities to understand ourselves and others. Making sense of each other's reasons is a cornerstone of human social life. It involves attributing beliefs, desires and hopes - in complex ways. Our capacity to do this is unique: we do not share it with animals or very young children. It is so deeply ingrained in the warp and weft of our daily existence that we tend only to notice it, and its critical importance, when it is absent or impaired - as is the case for severely autistic individuals.
The cognitive revolution deposed behaviourist thinking (in both philosophy and psychology) and licensed a return to active theorizing about mental states and their place in nature. Promoting representational and computational theories of... more
The cognitive revolution deposed behaviourist thinking (in both philosophy and psychology) and licensed a return to active theorizing about mental states and their place in nature. Promoting representational and computational theories of mind, many researchers in diverse fields have assumed that the contentful properties of such mental states play critical causal roles in computational processes enabling intelligent activity. But serious problems have been identified with the very idea that contentful mental representations (of the kind that might do such work) exist. Moreover, new, non-representationalist approaches in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science – enactive, embodied approaches – have emerged and are growing in popularity. These developments suggest that the time is ripe for a complete re-think of the cognitive revolution. Against this backdrop, I give reasons to preferring radically embodied/enactive accounts of cognition than abandon traditional assumptions of classical cognitive science, proposing a fundamentally shift in how we might conceive of the basic nature of minds.
Radically Embodied/Enactive accounts of Cognition, REC, propose to fundamentally shift the way cognitive scientists think about the basic nature of mentality. This paper argues that focusing on the sophisticated but unplanned character of... more
Radically Embodied/Enactive accounts of Cognition, REC, propose to fundamentally shift the way cognitive scientists think about the basic nature of mentality. This paper argues that focusing on the sophisticated but unplanned character of human manual activity enables such accounts to address a standard worry about their scope and reach. A counter proposal for handling such cases by defenders of Conservative Embodied/Enactive account of Cognition, CEC, is examined and found wanting. CEC accounts make appeal to Action Oriented Representations (AORs) to do the work that fans of REC argue is done without representational mediation. It is argued that naturalistically inclined defenders of CEC face a crippling dilemma - which I call the Hard Problem of Content.
The recent corporeal turn in cognitive science is marked by a renewed interest in, and appreciation of, the importance of embodied interactions in substantially shaping, if not providing the very basis for, mentality. Anyone who promotes... more
The recent corporeal turn in cognitive science is marked by a renewed interest in, and appreciation of, the importance of embodied interactions in substantially shaping, if not providing the very basis for, mentality. Anyone who promotes the fortunes of embodied cognition challenges orthodox thinking to some extent. Nevertheless some who have taken up this sword adopt a conservative stance when it comes to thinking about the role of bodily interactions play in making mentality possible. Thus some hold that extended bodily states or processes might serve as representational or information-carrying vehicles or formats – playing unique computational roles in enabling some acts or forms of cognition (Clark 2008a, Goldman and Vignemont 2009). Others have pursued a more radical line – holding that there are no mental contents – hence there is no vehicle/content distinction – hence, biologically basic minds are extensive - reaching across brains, bodies and the environment – not occasionally extended. A standard worry about the more radical versions of the embodiment thesis is that it cannot accommodate off–line imaginings and fancies – those cases in which the activity of minds appears to be wholly internal. This talk sets the stage for this debate and defends the view that imaginings can be embodied without threatening the more radical thesis about the extensive nature of basic minds.
At a time when anxiety about how public money is spent is at its peak, the stage i set to question if the arts have any special place in human life. Are they just for our entertainment or does our relationship with them go deeper? Even if... more
At a time when anxiety about how public money is spent is at its peak, the stage i set to question if the arts have any special place in human life. Are they just for our entertainment or does our relationship with them go deeper? Even if music, painting and narrative played important roles for our prehistoric ancestors would that be a reason to value the arts today? Or might it be that their importance derives from the fact that they are expressive of a human nature that is not fixed but still unfolding?
Very young infants possess impressive mind minding abilities – this is clearly demonstrated by recent experimental research. What is not clear is how best to characterize these capacities. In this short presentation, focusing on the issue... more
Very young infants possess impressive mind minding abilities – this is clearly demonstrated by recent experimental research. What is not clear is how best to characterize these capacities. In this short presentation, focusing on the issue of mental content, I briefly raise a fundamental theoretical concern about attempts to understand the basis of such capacities in high level cognitivist terms, i.e. by attributing children some or other sort of ‘theory of mind’ capacity. Over and against this, commenting on emerging empirical data, I defend the possibility that we start out with non-representational capacities for engaging with other minds and only gradually develop our folk psychological competence by engaging with communal artifacts – stories with special properties – in our shared storytelling practices. It is by this means that we gradually acquire our articulate capacity for making sense of ourselves and others in terms of reasons.
What role, if any, do mirror neurons play in enabling action understanding? This has been the topic of a number of recent papers (Borg 2007, Jacob 2008, Goldman 2009). The general consensus s that if ‘mirroring processes’ play any role... more
What role, if any, do mirror neurons play in enabling action understanding? This has been the topic of a number of recent papers (Borg 2007, Jacob 2008, Goldman 2009). The general consensus s that if ‘mirroring processes’ play any role at all in action understanding it is a very restricted one. A number of researchers assume that mirroring processes might, at most, play a causal role in, say, initiating or triggering bona fide mentalizing activity but they do not constitute such activity. In slogan, mirroring is not mindreading – not even of a low-level sort (see Gallese 2006, 2007, Gallagher 2007a, 2007b, Gallagher and Zahavi 2008, Goldman 2006, 2009, Gordon 2008, Sinigaglia 2008, 2009). This is because "[I]t looks implausible that motor mirroring events are states of attribution [i.e. representations] (of beliefs) containing mentalistic contents" (Goldman 2009, p. 238).
On the assumption that action understanding requires mental attribution it follows that mirroring is not any kind of action understanding.
Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia (2006) reject this conclusion. They maintain that mirror neurons play the central role in our ground floor capacity for action understanding. They believe that there is a quite distinctive, non-folk psychological, kind of action understanding. They claim that although “we can use our higher cognitive faculties to reflect on what we have perceived and infer –the intentions, expectations, or motivations of others that would provide us with a reason for their acts ... our brain is able to understand these latter immediately on the basis of our motor competence alone, without the need for any kind of reasoning” (Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia 2006, p. xi). These authors insist that the immediate understanding of the acts of others is sui generis - neither a form of mentalizing nor based upon it (Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia 2006, p.131). Might there be a quite different and more fundamental kind of action understanding that is sponsored by the activity of mirror neurons alone? This paper explores this possibility.
On the assumption that action understanding requires mental attribution it follows that mirroring is not any kind of action understanding.
Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia (2006) reject this conclusion. They maintain that mirror neurons play the central role in our ground floor capacity for action understanding. They believe that there is a quite distinctive, non-folk psychological, kind of action understanding. They claim that although “we can use our higher cognitive faculties to reflect on what we have perceived and infer –the intentions, expectations, or motivations of others that would provide us with a reason for their acts ... our brain is able to understand these latter immediately on the basis of our motor competence alone, without the need for any kind of reasoning” (Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia 2006, p. xi). These authors insist that the immediate understanding of the acts of others is sui generis - neither a form of mentalizing nor based upon it (Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia 2006, p.131). Might there be a quite different and more fundamental kind of action understanding that is sponsored by the activity of mirror neurons alone? This paper explores this possibility.
Summer School 2011 The school is open to all researchers within cognitive science (Ph.D. students and persons who already have a doctorate). The number of available places is limited. If necessary, a certain preference of admission will... more
Summer School 2011
The school is open to all researchers within cognitive science (Ph.D. students and persons who already have a doctorate). The number of available places is limited. If necessary, a certain preference of admission will be given to Ph.D. students. Participation and travel will be paid by the Swedish Graduate School in Cognitive Science, SweCog.
Place: Marston Hill, Mullsjö
Time: 14-20 August, 2011.
Dead line for application: May 10, 2011
Program
The program contains a mixture of lectures, workshops and hands-on assignments. This year we will have a special focus on research methods, and (computer) tools for analysis of research data. Participants are encouraged to bring their own data, problems, suggestions for discussion of methods etc. for exchange of ideas and advice.
Active participation in the program can, if your advisor agrees, be the basis for a graduate course in the theory of cognitive science.
Lecture 1: Basic Minds
There is a tradition for thinking about the nature of mind that is alive and well in many quarters of Anglophone philosophy of mind and cognitive science. That tradition – which finds succor in orthodox, standard or classical cognitive science – takes it as read that “the manipulation and use of representations is the primary job of the mind” (Dretske 1995, p. xiv). This commitment is the defining feature of what I will call intellectualism. Unqualified, intellectualism about the mind is the view that mentality, always and everywhere, entails the existence of contentful mental representations. Accordingly, even the phenomenal characters of experiences are assumed to reduce to, or are exhausted by, representational properties of mental states; absolutely nothing mental escapes the representationalist net. Simply stated, the intellectualist credo is: no mentality without representation.
In opposition to intellectualism, there has been a anti-representationalist turn in cognitive science. This is associated with the rise of enactivism and its associated ideas that minds are embodied, embedded and extensive. This lecture lays out more and less radical versions of both intellectualism and enactivism to reveal that these frameworks are only incompatible when advanced in their uncompromising and most extreme versions – or when they conflict over the explanation of some or other specific domain. Coming off the fence, I will provide reasons for thinking that a radical enactivism may be true of the basic nature of minds. The implication this has for cognitive science will be examined.
Lecture 2: Scaffolded Minds
Sterelny (2010) recently advanced the Scaffolded Mind Hypothesis (SMH). It holds that some “human cognitive capacities both depend on and have been transformed by environmental resources” (p. 472). This lecture explicates and defends a special case of this hypothesis - one concerning the cognitive underpinnings of our 'theory of mind' or folk psychological abilities. Building on a de-intellectualized characterization of what basic human interpersonal relations involve, it is argued that familiarity with traditions, institutions, roles and local norms play a large part in moulding our everyday expectations and ground much human interpersonal relating (Gallagher and Hutto 2008). In the human case, it is conjectured that the mastery of more sophisticated social practices, involving pretence, conversation and narratives, make different kinds of interpersonal relating and ways of understanding others possible. Highlighting this, Bruner (1990) argues convincingly that folk psychology is an instrument of culture. The Narrative Practice Hypothesis (NPH) is an advance on Bruner’s idea. It shows why that proposal deserves a place at the table in current debates about the basis of our folk psychological abilities (Hutto 2008). The NPH says that our high level capacity for making sense of others is normally acquired through engagement in narrative practices. It is by engaging in narrative practices (in which the participants jointly attend to stories about people who act for reasons) that children gradually come to see the connections between mental states and thereby acquire their full-fledged folk psychological competence. This occurs over the course of later childhood, especially from age five years onwards. Through participating in narrative practices children gradually come by an articulate understanding of intentional attitudes such as beliefs, desires, hopes, and their possible relations.
The NPH will be pitted against more traditional rivals – standard variants Theory Theory (TT) and Simulation Theory (ST) – that argue for the existence of biologically inherited representational device to do the relevant explanatory work. The NPH recognizes that folk psychology is a highly structured, conceptually based, competence. But it assumes that it is an environmentally scaffolded competence and, hence, implies that it does not have a wholly internal, neural basis. The methodological implications the NPH has for investigating the basis of our folk psychological capacity will be explored. This if a first step in understanding the implications of the SMH should it turn out to be true more generally.
The school is open to all researchers within cognitive science (Ph.D. students and persons who already have a doctorate). The number of available places is limited. If necessary, a certain preference of admission will be given to Ph.D. students. Participation and travel will be paid by the Swedish Graduate School in Cognitive Science, SweCog.
Place: Marston Hill, Mullsjö
Time: 14-20 August, 2011.
Dead line for application: May 10, 2011
Program
The program contains a mixture of lectures, workshops and hands-on assignments. This year we will have a special focus on research methods, and (computer) tools for analysis of research data. Participants are encouraged to bring their own data, problems, suggestions for discussion of methods etc. for exchange of ideas and advice.
Active participation in the program can, if your advisor agrees, be the basis for a graduate course in the theory of cognitive science.
Lecture 1: Basic Minds
There is a tradition for thinking about the nature of mind that is alive and well in many quarters of Anglophone philosophy of mind and cognitive science. That tradition – which finds succor in orthodox, standard or classical cognitive science – takes it as read that “the manipulation and use of representations is the primary job of the mind” (Dretske 1995, p. xiv). This commitment is the defining feature of what I will call intellectualism. Unqualified, intellectualism about the mind is the view that mentality, always and everywhere, entails the existence of contentful mental representations. Accordingly, even the phenomenal characters of experiences are assumed to reduce to, or are exhausted by, representational properties of mental states; absolutely nothing mental escapes the representationalist net. Simply stated, the intellectualist credo is: no mentality without representation.
In opposition to intellectualism, there has been a anti-representationalist turn in cognitive science. This is associated with the rise of enactivism and its associated ideas that minds are embodied, embedded and extensive. This lecture lays out more and less radical versions of both intellectualism and enactivism to reveal that these frameworks are only incompatible when advanced in their uncompromising and most extreme versions – or when they conflict over the explanation of some or other specific domain. Coming off the fence, I will provide reasons for thinking that a radical enactivism may be true of the basic nature of minds. The implication this has for cognitive science will be examined.
Lecture 2: Scaffolded Minds
Sterelny (2010) recently advanced the Scaffolded Mind Hypothesis (SMH). It holds that some “human cognitive capacities both depend on and have been transformed by environmental resources” (p. 472). This lecture explicates and defends a special case of this hypothesis - one concerning the cognitive underpinnings of our 'theory of mind' or folk psychological abilities. Building on a de-intellectualized characterization of what basic human interpersonal relations involve, it is argued that familiarity with traditions, institutions, roles and local norms play a large part in moulding our everyday expectations and ground much human interpersonal relating (Gallagher and Hutto 2008). In the human case, it is conjectured that the mastery of more sophisticated social practices, involving pretence, conversation and narratives, make different kinds of interpersonal relating and ways of understanding others possible. Highlighting this, Bruner (1990) argues convincingly that folk psychology is an instrument of culture. The Narrative Practice Hypothesis (NPH) is an advance on Bruner’s idea. It shows why that proposal deserves a place at the table in current debates about the basis of our folk psychological abilities (Hutto 2008). The NPH says that our high level capacity for making sense of others is normally acquired through engagement in narrative practices. It is by engaging in narrative practices (in which the participants jointly attend to stories about people who act for reasons) that children gradually come to see the connections between mental states and thereby acquire their full-fledged folk psychological competence. This occurs over the course of later childhood, especially from age five years onwards. Through participating in narrative practices children gradually come by an articulate understanding of intentional attitudes such as beliefs, desires, hopes, and their possible relations.
The NPH will be pitted against more traditional rivals – standard variants Theory Theory (TT) and Simulation Theory (ST) – that argue for the existence of biologically inherited representational device to do the relevant explanatory work. The NPH recognizes that folk psychology is a highly structured, conceptually based, competence. But it assumes that it is an environmentally scaffolded competence and, hence, implies that it does not have a wholly internal, neural basis. The methodological implications the NPH has for investigating the basis of our folk psychological capacity will be explored. This if a first step in understanding the implications of the SMH should it turn out to be true more generally.
In naturalistic settings, great apes exhibit impressive social intelligence. Despite this, experimental findings are equivocal about the extent to which they aware of other minds. At the high level, there is only negative evidence that... more
In naturalistic settings, great apes exhibit impressive social intelligence. Despite this, experimental findings are equivocal about the extent to which they aware of other minds. At the high level, there is only negative evidence that chimpanzees and orangutans understand the concept of belief, even when simplified non-verbal versions of the ‘location change’ false belief test (Call & Tomasello, 1999). More remarkably, even the evidence that they are aware of simpler mental states – such as seeing – is equivocal and ‘decidedly mixed’ (Call & Tomasello 2005, p. 61). At best, there appear to be signature limits to simian capacities in this regard. In addition, there are a range of proposals about what lies behind their particular form of social intelligence. Within the cognitivist camp, these range from positing a Naïve, Weak, or Minimal Theory of Mind (Bogdan 2009, Tomasello, Call and Hare 2003, Apperly and Butterfill 2009); Perceptual Mindreading (Bermúdez 2009); an Early Mindreading System (Nichols and Stich 2003); or a Theory of Behaviour (Povinelli and Vonk 2004). In line with the experimental evidence, this contribution motivates a different explanatory possibility. It defends the view that the basic ways that apes and humans (both children and adults) engage with other minds is emotionally charged, enactive and non-representational. If true, this would be important for thinking about moral status of animals capable of such mind minding. This is not only because it would identify an important cross species commonality, but also especially because it would promote the importance of non-cognitive aspects of such engagements. For example, it is at odds with the idea that having a ‘theory of mind’ is required for being phenomenally conscious (Carruthers 2000).
This presentation defends the view that the simplest forms of mind minding – those of the sort required for engaging with and keeping track of another’s mental states – are best understood and explained in non-representational, enactivist... more
This presentation defends the view that the simplest forms of mind minding – those of the sort required for engaging with and keeping track of another’s mental states – are best understood and explained in non-representational, enactivist terms. There is no doubt that in many cases it would not be possible to attend to other minds if we did not bring our full-fledged folk psychological skills to bear. But it is far from obvious that all, or even the most common, forms of mind minding requires this. For example, the ways in which pre-verbal infants initially begin to triangulate and engage with adults around the time of their first birthday arguably do not. This seems equally true of the ways in which adult humans jointly attend to, and engage with, other minds in many cases of on-line, fast and efficient social interaction. An enactivist account of elementary mind minding is shown to be a live conceptual possibility by demonstrating how it can coherently derived by abandoning three representationalist commitments of existing cognitivist models. And it will also be shown why doing so is well motivated if it should turn out that there is (1) no reason to believe that basic forms of mentality are representational (in a semantically contentful way) and (2) if no good theory is likely to explain how they could be so.
Making sense of each other's reasons is a cornerstone of human social life. It involves attributing beliefs, desires and hopes - in complex ways. Our capacity to do this is unique: we do not share it with animals or very young children.... more
Making sense of each other's reasons is a cornerstone of human social life. It involves attributing beliefs, desires and hopes - in complex ways. Our capacity to do this is unique: we do not share it with animals or very young children. It is so deeply ingrained in the warp and weft of our daily existence that we tend only to notice it, and its critical importance, when it is absent or impaired - as is the case for severely autistic individuals.
What is the basis of this competence? How do we come by it? This professorial lecture introduces the idea that this remarkable ability is essentially a skill in producing and consuming a special sort of narrative, acquired by engaging in storytelling practices. As Waterhouse’s A Tale from the Decameron (1916) reminds us, beautifully, narrative practices have been at the heart of human society throughout our history. This lecture defends the stronger claim that they might be absolutely central for engendering important aspects of our social understanding. If true, this precludes the possibility that this crucial ability is one which is built-into members of our species. Knowing the answer matters, fundamentally, when it comes to deciding which therapies are the most promising and appropriate for treating certain mental health disorders and which sorts of educational opportunities should be provided for younger children. Equally, it matters when thinking about whether and how we – as adults - might improve abilities to understand ourselves and others.
What is the basis of this competence? How do we come by it? This professorial lecture introduces the idea that this remarkable ability is essentially a skill in producing and consuming a special sort of narrative, acquired by engaging in storytelling practices. As Waterhouse’s A Tale from the Decameron (1916) reminds us, beautifully, narrative practices have been at the heart of human society throughout our history. This lecture defends the stronger claim that they might be absolutely central for engendering important aspects of our social understanding. If true, this precludes the possibility that this crucial ability is one which is built-into members of our species. Knowing the answer matters, fundamentally, when it comes to deciding which therapies are the most promising and appropriate for treating certain mental health disorders and which sorts of educational opportunities should be provided for younger children. Equally, it matters when thinking about whether and how we – as adults - might improve abilities to understand ourselves and others.
The Narrative Practice Hypothesis (NPH) is a recently conceived, late entrant into the contest of trying to understand the basis of our everyday capacity for supplying and digesting explanations in terms of reasons – i.e. our folk... more
The Narrative Practice Hypothesis (NPH) is a recently conceived, late entrant into the contest of trying to understand the basis of our everyday capacity for supplying and digesting explanations in terms of reasons – i.e. our folk psychological competence. It emphasizes the importance of structured, socio-culturally grounded practices such as storytelling in enabling and engendering this ability. This presentation introduces and situates this proposal, clarifying its core claims, demonstrating its wider relevance for narratology. Central assumptions of its rival approaches are challenged, showing the ways in which the NPH is at odds with explanatory variants of Theory Theory (TT) and Simulation Theory (ST) and their hybrid combinations.
I conclude by examining and questioning some assumptions at play in narratological approaches that make uncritical use of the notion that in understanding fiction we make use of ‘theory of mind’ abilities.
I conclude by examining and questioning some assumptions at play in narratological approaches that make uncritical use of the notion that in understanding fiction we make use of ‘theory of mind’ abilities.
Different versions of the idea that folk psychological comptence is or depends upon having a 'theory of mind' are distinguished. On the one hand, it is argued that version of this claim that might be analytic true operate with an overly... more
Different versions of the idea that folk psychological comptence is or depends upon having a 'theory of mind' are distinguished. On the one hand, it is argued that version of this claim that might be analytic true operate with an overly dilluted and explantorily uninteresting notion of 'theory'. On the other hand, it is argued that more explanatorily robust versions are empirically implausible. Against this backdrop, the virtues of the Narrative Practice Hypothesis are promoted. In the final sections of the talk I take up a challenge from Maibom (2009). She offers a new order version of 'theory theory' - a kind of model theory - that she claims is superiiour to the NPH and can answer the Application Challenge, faced by more traditional versions of theory theory. Part of Maibom's argument is that there is nothing that makes folk psychological narratives essential practice tools for developing theory of mind abilities. Against this backdrop, I explore the idea that only folk psychological narratives can provide an understanding of the teleological, future-facing aspects of what it is to act for a reason.
Synesthesia literally means ‘joined sensing’. The most typical forms – involving experiences of coloured hearing and coloured symbols – are not easy to characterize, let alone explain. In philosophy, the phenomenon has been used to try to... more
Synesthesia literally means ‘joined sensing’. The most typical forms – involving experiences of coloured hearing and coloured symbols – are not easy to characterize, let alone explain. In philosophy, the phenomenon has been used to try to promote certain theories of phenomenal consciousness above others. For example, friends of Relational approaches appeal to the idea that synesthetic experiences introduce extra perceptual qualia into the mix in order to upset those who defend Representationalism about the phenomenal character of experience. This talk reviews reasons why objections based on the existence of ‘extra qualia’ are not decisive. In fact, there seems to be no argument from the special features of synesthesia that would settle the debate between Relationalists and Representationalists about the phenomenal character of experience. Instead of pursuing this sort of line, I supply some general reasons for preferring a Responsive – Radically Enactive – approach for understanding the phenomenal character of experience. With this in hand, I return to the question of how Radically Enactivism could accommodate synesthesia. In considering this, the reasons for thinking that it might be an imaginative and not a purely perceptual phenomenon are reviewed.
The Narrative Practice Hypothesis (NPH) is a recently conceived, late entrant into the contest of trying to understand the basis of our everyday capacity for supplying and digesting explanations in terms of reasons – i.e. our folk... more
The Narrative Practice Hypothesis (NPH) is a recently conceived, late entrant into the contest of trying to understand the basis of our everyday capacity for supplying and digesting explanations in terms of reasons – i.e. our folk psychological competence. It emphasizes the importance of structured, socio-culturally grounded practices such as storytelling in enabling and engendering this ability. This presentation introduces and situates this proposal, clarifying its core claims, demonstrating its wider interest and scientific plausibility. Central assumptions of its rival approaches are challenged, showing the ways in which the NPH is at odds with explanatory variants of Theory Theory (TT) and Simulation Theory (ST) and their hybrid combinations.
This talk examines Prinz's (2004) attempt to understand emotions as embodied appraisals by appeal to teleosemantics to account for their world-directed content. I argue that, although on the right lines, this approach requires a crucial... more
This talk examines Prinz's (2004) attempt to understand emotions as embodied appraisals by appeal to teleosemantics to account for their world-directed content. I argue that, although on the right lines, this approach requires a crucial technical tweak. As a naturalized account of semantic content teleosemantics fails. But Prinz's idea can be defended if we switch to a content-free teleosemiotics, as offered by Radical Enactivsm. After having made this adjustment I defend the view, against critics, that a modified embodied appraisal theory can be supplemented to adequately account for the intentionality and phenomenality of emotional engagements.
It is widely supposed that beliefs, whatever other features they may possess, are necessarily contentful attitudes of some sort. Philosophers who disagree about other important properties of beliefs agree about this. For example, some... more
It is widely supposed that beliefs, whatever other features they may possess, are necessarily contentful attitudes of some sort. Philosophers who disagree about other important properties of beliefs agree about this.
For example, some insist that to be a believer requires “the gift of tongues” (Davidson 1985, 473). They offer a variety of arguments for thinking that mastery of complex language is necessary for having thoughts with the requisite structure and content - for being capable making truth evaluable claims and judgements about how things stand with the world.
Others deny this. They hold that even creatures lacking language can have beliefs with full fledged propositional content. Bids to explain how this can be so generally make appeal to some or other naturalized theory of psychosemantic content. It is assumed that some such theory explains how non-linguistic believing is possible. The most extreme defenders of this view reverse the linguistic thesis about content, holding that only non-verbal mental states have the right kind of properties and play the right sorts of causal roles so as to counted as true beliefs. On this basis they even go so far as to claim that “distinctively human thoughts are mere faux-thoughts compared to those that we share with non-human animals” (Carruthers 2009 p. 106).
What interests me is the assumption, made by philosophers on both sides of this divide, that beliefs are necessarily contentful attitudes. In this presentation I argue that there are powerful reasons to think that non-linguistic forms of cognition are contentless. Despite this, they exhibit a basic kind of intentional directedness. Moreover, in making everyday attributions, when the other’s responses are sophisticated enough, we readily regard such contentless attitudes as doxastic states of mind – i.e. as beliefs. Appealing to both everyday practice and philosophical-scientific considerations, I argue that our notion of belief is broad church. At root beliefs are at best understood as intentional attitudes of some sort, where this is an Ur-category that encompasses both contentless and contentful stances towards possible situations. This provides a means of responding to Ratcliffe’s (2007) objection that there is no core, unified notion of belief used by ordinary folk.
For example, some insist that to be a believer requires “the gift of tongues” (Davidson 1985, 473). They offer a variety of arguments for thinking that mastery of complex language is necessary for having thoughts with the requisite structure and content - for being capable making truth evaluable claims and judgements about how things stand with the world.
Others deny this. They hold that even creatures lacking language can have beliefs with full fledged propositional content. Bids to explain how this can be so generally make appeal to some or other naturalized theory of psychosemantic content. It is assumed that some such theory explains how non-linguistic believing is possible. The most extreme defenders of this view reverse the linguistic thesis about content, holding that only non-verbal mental states have the right kind of properties and play the right sorts of causal roles so as to counted as true beliefs. On this basis they even go so far as to claim that “distinctively human thoughts are mere faux-thoughts compared to those that we share with non-human animals” (Carruthers 2009 p. 106).
What interests me is the assumption, made by philosophers on both sides of this divide, that beliefs are necessarily contentful attitudes. In this presentation I argue that there are powerful reasons to think that non-linguistic forms of cognition are contentless. Despite this, they exhibit a basic kind of intentional directedness. Moreover, in making everyday attributions, when the other’s responses are sophisticated enough, we readily regard such contentless attitudes as doxastic states of mind – i.e. as beliefs. Appealing to both everyday practice and philosophical-scientific considerations, I argue that our notion of belief is broad church. At root beliefs are at best understood as intentional attitudes of some sort, where this is an Ur-category that encompasses both contentless and contentful stances towards possible situations. This provides a means of responding to Ratcliffe’s (2007) objection that there is no core, unified notion of belief used by ordinary folk.
Different naturalistic projects are discussed. It is argued that commitment to a popular sort of presumptuous naturalism promotes the idea that folk psychology names an implicit theory – one that regards beliefs and desires as posits... more
Different naturalistic projects are discussed. It is argued that commitment to a popular sort of presumptuous naturalism promotes the idea that folk psychology names an implicit theory – one that regards beliefs and desires as posits denoting inner, causally efficacious mental states. By examining the assumptions of this sort of framework I will show how philosophical trouble ensues through becoming attached to certain misleading pictures of our everyday practices. Using Kim’s work on mental causation as a foil I show how this can generate intractable problems – problems that only admit, it seems, of very particular solutions. Focusing on this case I intend to show how our imaginations become limited and blinded to other possibilities in this process. Against this, I underline the need to start in a different place – by looking more closely at the nature of our everyday practices. I suggest that this wholly compatible with understanding such practices under the auspices of a more unassuming variety of naturalism. Lessons are offered not just about this important topic in the philosophy of mind but about philosophical methodology as well.
This talk will look at the implications of the 'Narrative Practice Hypothesis' for new thinking about education . Recent studies reveal that the theory of mind abilities of young children predicts their later academic performance as... more
This talk will look at the implications of the 'Narrative Practice Hypothesis' for new thinking about education . Recent studies reveal that the theory of mind abilities of young children predicts their later academic performance as adolescents. New arguments have been offered for the commonsense intuition that effective teaching requires small class sizes. These are based on the fact that good teachers must be good ‘mind managers' and they can only be so if they have a limited number of minds to attend to. It will be considered how it might be possible for children and teachers to develop their theory of mind abilities. Rival proposals about the basis of this competence will be compared with respect to their implications for such development.
Different naturalistic projects are discussed. It is argued that commitment to a popular sort of presumptuous naturalism promotes the idea that folk psychology names an implicit theory – one that regards beliefs and desires as posits... more
Different naturalistic projects are discussed. It is argued that commitment to a popular sort of presumptuous naturalism promotes the idea that folk psychology names an implicit theory – one that regards beliefs and desires as posits denoting inner, causally efficacious mental states. By examining the assumptions of this sort of framework I will show how philosophical trouble ensues through becoming attached to certain misleading pictures of our everyday practices. Using Kim’s work on mental causation as a foil I show how this can generate intractable problems – problems that only admit, it seems, of very particular solutions. Focusing on this case I intend to show how our imaginations become limited and blinded to other possibilities in this process. Against this, I underline the need to start in a different place – by looking more closely at the nature of our everyday practices. I suggest that this wholly compatible with understanding such practices under the auspices of a more unassuming variety of naturalism. Lessons are offered not just about this important topic in the philosophy of mind but about philosophical methodology as well.
The cognitive revolution deposed behaviourist thinking (in both philosophy and psychology) and licensed a return to active theorizing about mental states and their place in nature. Promoting representational theories of mind, many... more
The cognitive revolution deposed behaviourist thinking (in both philosophy and psychology) and licensed a return to active theorizing about mental states and their place in nature. Promoting representational theories of mind, many researchers in diverse fields have assumed that the contentful properties of such mental states play critical causal roles in enabling intelligent activity. Initially, it was thought that this proposal did not conflict with a mechanical-computational understanding of the mind. But serious problems have been identified with the very idea that contentful mental representations (of the kind that might do such work) exist. Moreover, new, non-representationalist approaches in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science – enactive, embodied approaches – have emerged and are growing in popularity. These developments suggest that the time is ripe for a complete re-think of the cognitive revolution. Against this backdrop, I will describe why and how giving attention to enactive and embodied engagements and socio-cultural practices from a new philosophical perspective is required if we are to make sense of experiential consciousness and centrally important human activities, such as our everyday capacity to make sense of reasons for action. Mention will be made of the practical implications of a re-think along these lines.
The Narrative Practice Hypothesis (NPH) is a recently conceived, late entrant into the contest of trying to understand the basis of our everyday capacity for supplying and digesting reasons explanations – i.e. our folk psychological... more
The Narrative Practice Hypothesis (NPH) is a recently conceived, late entrant into the contest of trying to understand the basis of our everyday capacity for supplying and digesting reasons explanations – i.e. our folk psychological competence. It emphasizes the importance of structured, socio-culturally grounded practices such as storytelling in enabling and engendering this ability. This presentation introduces and situates this proposal, clarifying its core claims, demonstrating its wider philosophical interest and scientific plausibility. Central assumptions of its rival approaches are challenged, showing precisely the ways in which the NPH is at odds with psychologistic variants of Theory Theory (TT) and Simulation Theory (ST) (and their hybrid combinations). Several objections that are regularly raised against the NPH will be addressed.
The Narrative Practice Hypothesis (NPH) is a recently conceived, late entrant into the contest of trying to understand the basis of our everyday capacity for supplying and digesting reasons explanations – i.e. our folk psychological... more
The Narrative Practice Hypothesis (NPH) is a recently conceived, late entrant into the contest of trying to understand the basis of our everyday capacity for supplying and digesting reasons explanations – i.e. our folk psychological competence. It emphasizes the importance of structured, socio-culturally grounded practices such as storytelling in enabling and engendering this ability. This presentation introduces and situates this proposal, clarifying its core claims, demonstrating its wider philosophical interest and scientific plausibility. Central assumptions of its rival approaches are challenged, showing precisely the ways in which the NPH is at odds with psychologistic variants of Theory Theory (TT) and Simulation Theory (ST) (and their hybrid combinations). Several objections that are regularly raised against the NPH will be addressed.
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In this paper, we present our collective effort to tackle various dimensions of the challenge of understanding minds in skilled performance. It is based on the plenary symposium on “Phenomenology of Skilled Performance” which took place... more
In this paper, we present our collective effort to tackle various dimensions of the challenge of understanding minds in skilled performance. It is based on the plenary symposium on “Phenomenology of Skilled Performance” which took place in the 40th Annual Meeting of the Phenomenological Association of Japan. We argue that the concept of embodied mind plays a key role in clarifying the mentality needed for skilled performance.