McDowell and Dreyfus on Unreflective Action
In: Inquiry: an interdisciplinary journal of philosophy and the social sciences, Band 53, Heft 2, S. 183-207
ISSN: 1502-3923
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In: Inquiry: an interdisciplinary journal of philosophy and the social sciences, Band 53, Heft 2, S. 183-207
ISSN: 1502-3923
In: Sociologija vlasti: naučnyj i obščestvenno-političeskij žurnal, Band 36, Heft 2, S. 170-206
ISSN: 2413-144X
In: Synthese: an international journal for epistemology, methodology and philosophy of science, Band 198, Heft S1, S. 175-194
ISSN: 1573-0964
AbstractCognition has traditionally been understood in terms of internal mental representations, and computational operations carried out on internal mental representations. Radical approaches propose to reconceive cognition in terms of agent-environment dynamics. An outstanding challenge for such a philosophical project is how to scale-up from perception and action to cases of what is typically called 'higher-order' cognition such as linguistic thought, the case we focus on in this paper. Perception and action are naturally described in terms of agent-environment dynamics, but can a person's thoughts about absent, abstract or counterfactual states of affairs also be accounted for in such terms? We argue such a question will seem pressing so long as one fails to appreciate how richly resourceful the human ecological niche is in terms of the affordances it provides. The explanatory work that is supposedly done by mental representations in a philosophical analysis of cognition, can instead be done by looking outside of the head to the environment structured by sociomaterial practices, and the affordances it makes available. Once one recognizes how much of the human ecological niche has become structured by activities of talking and writing, this should take away at least some of the motivation for understanding linguistic thinking in terms of content-bearing internal representations. We'll argue that people can think about absent, abstract or counterfactual because of their skills for engaging with what we will call "enlanguaged affordances". We make use of the phenomenological analysis of speech in Merleau-Ponty to show how the multiple affordances an individual is ready to engage with in a particular situation will typically include enlanguaged affordances.
In: Creativity and Innovation Management, Band 29, Heft 1, S. 99-111
SSRN
In: Phenomenology and the cognitive sciences
ISSN: 1572-8676
AbstractImagination is often considered the pinnacle of representational cognition. Looking at the concrete details of imagining in context, this paper aims to contribute to the emerging literature that is challenging this representational view by offering a relational and radically situated alternative. On the basis of observing architects in the process of making an architectural art installation, we show how to consider imagination not as de-contextualized achievement by an individual but as an opening up to larger-scale "affordances," i.e. the unfolding possibilities for action. We show how the architects coordinate the enactment of multiple affordances across different timescales, from small-scale affordances of picking up a mobile phone to the large-scale affordance of making the installation that takes months to unfold. These affordances get co-determined as they are jointly enacted. It is within this determining process that imagination too finds its place. On our view it is the indeterminacy of multiple affordances unfolding in action simultaneously that can be experienced as imaginative. The indeterminate character of this coordinative process allows activities to widen and open up, letting new possibilities for action enter into them.
In: Synthese: an international journal for epistemology, methodology and philosophy of science, Band 198, Heft 1, S. 349-371
ISSN: 1573-0964
AbstractIn cognitive science, long-term anticipation, such as when planning to do something next year, is typically seen as a form of 'higher' cognition, requiring a different account than the more basic activities that can be understood in terms of responsiveness to 'affordances,' i.e. to possibilities for action. Starting from architects that anticipate the possibility to make an architectural installation over the course of many months, in this paper we develop a process-based account of affordances that includes long-term anticipation within its scope. We present a framework in which situations and their affordances unfold, and can be thought of as continuing a history of practices into a current situational activity. In this activity affordances invite skilled participants to act further. Via these invitations one situation develops into the other; an unfolding process that sets up the conditions for its own continuation. Central to our process account of affordances is the idea that engaged individuals can be responsive to the direction of the process to which their actions contribute. Anticipation, at any temporal scale, is then part and parcel of keeping attuned to the movement of the unfolding situations to which an individual contributes. We concretize our account by returning to the example of anticipation observed in architectural practice. This account of anticipation opens the door to considering a wide array of human activities traditionally characterized as 'higher' cognition in terms of engaging with affordances.
In: Phenomenology and the cognitive sciences, Band 16, Heft 3, S. 545-564
ISSN: 1572-8676
In: Synthese: an international journal for epistemology, methodology and philosophy of science, Band 196, Heft 12, S. 5231-5251
ISSN: 1573-0964
In: Phenomenology and the cognitive sciences, Band 18, Heft 1, S. 299-316
ISSN: 1572-8676
In: Synthese: an international journal for epistemology, methodology and philosophy of science, Band 196, Heft 7, S. 2847-2869
ISSN: 1573-0964
In: Synthese: an international journal for epistemology, methodology and philosophy of science, Band 195, Heft 6, S. 2417-2444
ISSN: 1573-0964
In: Phenom Cogn Sci (2010) 9:53-73
SSRN
In: Phenomenology and the cognitive sciences, Band 9, Heft 1, S. 53-73
ISSN: 1572-8676
In: Synthese: an international journal for epistemology, methodology and philosophy of science, Band 198, Heft S9, S. 2279-2296
ISSN: 1573-0964
AbstractThe smooth integration of the natural sciences with everyday lived experience is an important ambition of radical embodied cognitive science. In this paper we start from Koffka's recommendation in his Principles of Gestalt Psychology that to realize this ambition psychology should be a "science of molar behaviour". Molar behavior refers to the purposeful behaviour of the whole organism directed at an environment that is meaningfully structured for the animal. Koffka made a sharp distinction between the "behavioural environment" and the "geographical environment". We show how this distinction picks out the difference between the environment as perceived by an individual organism, and the shared publicly available environment. The ecological psychologist James Gibson was later critical of Koffka for inserting a private phenomenal reality in between animals and the shared environment. Gibson tried to make do with just the concept of affordances in his explanation of molar behaviour. We argue however that psychology as a science of molar behaviour will need to make appeal both to the concepts of shared publicly available affordances, and of the multiplicity of relevant affordances that invite an individual to act. A version of Koffka's distinction between the two environments remains alive today in a distinction we have made between the field and landscape of affordances. Having distinguished the two environments, we go on to provide an account of how the two environments are related. Koffka suggested that the behavioural environment forms out of the causal interaction of the individual with a pre-existing, ready-made geographical environment. We argue that such an account of the relation between the two environments fails to do justice to the complex entanglement of the social with the material aspects of the geographical environment. To better account for this sociomaterial reality of the geographical environment, we propose a process-perspective on our distinction between the landscape and field of affordances. While the two environments can be conceptually distinguished, we argue they should also be viewed as standing in a relation of reciprocal and mutual dependence.
In: Synthese: an international journal for epistemology, methodology and philosophy of science, Band 199, Heft 5-6, S. 12819-12842
ISSN: 1573-0964
AbstractIn everyday situations, and particularly in some sport and working contexts, humans face an inherently unpredictable and uncertain environment. All sorts of unpredictable and unexpected things happen but typically people are able to skillfully adapt. In this paper, we address two key questions in cognitive science. First, how is an agent able to bring its previously learned skill to bear on a novel situation? Second, how can an agent be both sensitive to the particularity of a given situation, while remaining flexibly poised for many other possibilities for action? We will argue that both the sensitivity to novel situations and the sensitivity to a multiplicity of action possibilities are enabled by the property of skilled agency that we will callmetastable attunement. We characterize a skilled agent's flexible interactions with a dynamically changing environment in terms of metastable dynamics in agent-environment systems. What we find in metastability is the realization of two competing tendencies: the tendency of the agent to express their intrinsic dynamics and the tendency to search for new possibilities. Metastably attuned agents are ready to engage with a multiplicity of affordances, allowing for a balance between stability and flexibility. On the one hand, agents are able to exploit affordances they are attuned to, while at the same time being ready to flexibly explore for other affordances. Metastable attunement allows agents to smoothly transition between these possible configurations so as to adapt their behaviour to what the particular situation requires. We go on to describe the role metastability plays in learning of new skills, and in skilful behaviour more generally. Finally, drawing upon work in art, architecture and sports science, we develop a number of perspectives on how to investigate metastable attunement in real life situations.