Andrew Inkpin
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780262033916
- eISBN:
- 9780262333955
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262033916.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Language
This book examines the disclosive function of language—what language does in revealing or disclosing the world. It takes a phenomenological approach to this question, defined by the need to accord ...
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This book examines the disclosive function of language—what language does in revealing or disclosing the world. It takes a phenomenological approach to this question, defined by the need to accord with the various experiences speakers can have of language. Based on this commitment, it develops a phenomenological conception of language with important implications for both the philosophy of language and recent work in the embodied-embedded-enactive-extended (4e) tradition of cognitive science. The book draws extensively on the work of Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, showing how their respective conceptions of language can be combined to complement each other within a unified view. From the early Heidegger, it extracts a basic framework for a phenomenology of language, comprising both a general overall picture of the role of language and a more specific model of the disclosive function of words. Merleau-Ponty’s views are used to explicate the generic “pointing out”—or presentational—function of linguistic signs in more detail, while the late Wittgenstein is interpreted as providing versatile means to describe their many pragmatic uses. Having developed this unified phenomenological view, the book then explores its broader significance, arguing that it goes beyond the conventional realism/idealism opposition, that it challenges standard assumptions in mainstream post-Fregean philosophy of language, and that it makes a significant contribution not only to the philosophical understanding of language but also to 4e cognitive science.Less
This book examines the disclosive function of language—what language does in revealing or disclosing the world. It takes a phenomenological approach to this question, defined by the need to accord with the various experiences speakers can have of language. Based on this commitment, it develops a phenomenological conception of language with important implications for both the philosophy of language and recent work in the embodied-embedded-enactive-extended (4e) tradition of cognitive science. The book draws extensively on the work of Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, showing how their respective conceptions of language can be combined to complement each other within a unified view. From the early Heidegger, it extracts a basic framework for a phenomenology of language, comprising both a general overall picture of the role of language and a more specific model of the disclosive function of words. Merleau-Ponty’s views are used to explicate the generic “pointing out”—or presentational—function of linguistic signs in more detail, while the late Wittgenstein is interpreted as providing versatile means to describe their many pragmatic uses. Having developed this unified phenomenological view, the book then explores its broader significance, arguing that it goes beyond the conventional realism/idealism opposition, that it challenges standard assumptions in mainstream post-Fregean philosophy of language, and that it makes a significant contribution not only to the philosophical understanding of language but also to 4e cognitive science.
Christoph Durt, Thomas Fuchs, and Christian Tewes (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780262035552
- eISBN:
- 9780262337120
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262035552.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
Recent accounts of cognition attempt to overcome the limitations of traditional cognitive science by reconceiving cognition as enactive and the cognizer as an embodied being who is embedded in ...
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Recent accounts of cognition attempt to overcome the limitations of traditional cognitive science by reconceiving cognition as enactive and the cognizer as an embodied being who is embedded in biological, psychological, and cultural contexts. Cultural forms of sense-making constitute the shared world, which in turn is the origin and place of cognition. This volume is the first interdisciplinary collection on the cultural context of embodiment, offering perspectives from the neurophilosophical to the anthropological.
The contributors explore conceptual foundations, drawing on work by Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Sartre, and respond to recent critiques. They consider whether there is something in the self that precedes intersubjectivity and inquire into the relation between culture and consciousness, the nature of shared meaning and social understanding, the social dimension of shame, and the nature of joint affordances. They apply the notion of radical enactive cognition to evolutionary anthropology, and examine the concept of the body in relation to culture in light of studies in such fields as phenomenology, cognitive neuroscience, psychology, and psychopathology. The book covers the interplay of embodiment, enaction, and culture.
Contributors
Mark Bickhard, Ingar Brinck, Anna Ciaunica, Hanne De Jaegher, Nicolas de Warren, Ezequiel Di Paolo, Christoph Durt, John Z. Elias, Joerg Fingerhut, Aikaterini Fotopoulou, Thomas Fuchs, Shaun Gallagher, Vittorio Gallese, Duilio Garofoli, Katrin Heimann, Peter Henningsen, Daniel D. Hutto, Laurence J. Kirmayer, Alba Montes Sánchez, Dermot Moran, Maxwell J. D. Ramstead, Matthew Ratcliffe, Vasudevi Reddy, Zuzanna Rucińska, Alessandro Salice, Glenda Satne, Heribert Sattel, Christian Tewes, Dan ZahaviLess
Recent accounts of cognition attempt to overcome the limitations of traditional cognitive science by reconceiving cognition as enactive and the cognizer as an embodied being who is embedded in biological, psychological, and cultural contexts. Cultural forms of sense-making constitute the shared world, which in turn is the origin and place of cognition. This volume is the first interdisciplinary collection on the cultural context of embodiment, offering perspectives from the neurophilosophical to the anthropological.
The contributors explore conceptual foundations, drawing on work by Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Sartre, and respond to recent critiques. They consider whether there is something in the self that precedes intersubjectivity and inquire into the relation between culture and consciousness, the nature of shared meaning and social understanding, the social dimension of shame, and the nature of joint affordances. They apply the notion of radical enactive cognition to evolutionary anthropology, and examine the concept of the body in relation to culture in light of studies in such fields as phenomenology, cognitive neuroscience, psychology, and psychopathology. The book covers the interplay of embodiment, enaction, and culture.
Contributors
Mark Bickhard, Ingar Brinck, Anna Ciaunica, Hanne De Jaegher, Nicolas de Warren, Ezequiel Di Paolo, Christoph Durt, John Z. Elias, Joerg Fingerhut, Aikaterini Fotopoulou, Thomas Fuchs, Shaun Gallagher, Vittorio Gallese, Duilio Garofoli, Katrin Heimann, Peter Henningsen, Daniel D. Hutto, Laurence J. Kirmayer, Alba Montes Sánchez, Dermot Moran, Maxwell J. D. Ramstead, Matthew Ratcliffe, Vasudevi Reddy, Zuzanna Rucińska, Alessandro Salice, Glenda Satne, Heribert Sattel, Christian Tewes, Dan Zahavi
Daniel D. Hutto and Erik Myin
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780262036115
- eISBN:
- 9780262339773
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262036115.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
Evolving Enactivism argues that cognitive phenomena—perceiving, imagining, remembering—can be best explained in terms of an interface between contentless and content-involving forms of cognition. ...
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Evolving Enactivism argues that cognitive phenomena—perceiving, imagining, remembering—can be best explained in terms of an interface between contentless and content-involving forms of cognition. Building on their earlier book Radicalizing Enactivism, which proposes that there can be forms of cognition without content, Daniel Hutto and Erik Myin demonstrate the unique explanatory advantages of recognizing that only some forms of cognition have content while others—the most elementary ones—do not. They offer an account of the mind in duplex terms, proposing a complex vision of mentality in which these basic contentless forms of cognition interact with content-involving ones. Hutto and Myin argue that the most basic forms of cognition do not, contrary to a currently popular account of cognition, involve picking up and processing information that is then used, reused, stored, and represented in the brain. Rather, basic cognition is contentless—fundamentally interactive, dynamic, and relational. In advancing the case for a radically enactive account of cognition, Hutto and Myin propose crucial adjustments to our concept of cognition and offer theoretical support for their revolutionary rethinking, emphasizing its capacity to explain basic minds in naturalistic terms. They demonstrate the explanatory power of the duplex vision of cognition, showing how it offers powerful means for understanding quintessential cognitive phenomena without introducing scientifically intractable mysteries into the mix.Less
Evolving Enactivism argues that cognitive phenomena—perceiving, imagining, remembering—can be best explained in terms of an interface between contentless and content-involving forms of cognition. Building on their earlier book Radicalizing Enactivism, which proposes that there can be forms of cognition without content, Daniel Hutto and Erik Myin demonstrate the unique explanatory advantages of recognizing that only some forms of cognition have content while others—the most elementary ones—do not. They offer an account of the mind in duplex terms, proposing a complex vision of mentality in which these basic contentless forms of cognition interact with content-involving ones. Hutto and Myin argue that the most basic forms of cognition do not, contrary to a currently popular account of cognition, involve picking up and processing information that is then used, reused, stored, and represented in the brain. Rather, basic cognition is contentless—fundamentally interactive, dynamic, and relational. In advancing the case for a radically enactive account of cognition, Hutto and Myin propose crucial adjustments to our concept of cognition and offer theoretical support for their revolutionary rethinking, emphasizing its capacity to explain basic minds in naturalistic terms. They demonstrate the explanatory power of the duplex vision of cognition, showing how it offers powerful means for understanding quintessential cognitive phenomena without introducing scientifically intractable mysteries into the mix.
Karen Neander
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780262036146
- eISBN:
- 9780262339865
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262036146.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
How do thoughts get to be about the world, how do they refer to their contents? This book tackles the most tractable part of this ancient problem by offering a theory of original intentionality for ...
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How do thoughts get to be about the world, how do they refer to their contents? This book tackles the most tractable part of this ancient problem by offering a theory of original intentionality for (nonconceptual) sensory-perceptual representations. To pave the way, Neander discusses the role played by the notions of representation and representational content in cognitive science, and explain how it stems from combining a standard biological strategy for explaining how bodies and brains operate or function with a mainstream information-processing approach to explaining cognitive (including perceptual) capacities. The author also argues that this supports an informational version of teleosemantics, and develops the theory of content in three stages. First she elucidates how sensory-perceptual systems have response functions, and why the sensory-perceptual representations they produce may be said to refer to the causes in response to which they are, in that sense, supposed to be produced. Second, she explains how sensory-perceptual systems might therefore have functions to produce inner state changes that are both caused by and the analogs of their contents, and thus how analog relations (i.e., relations of second-order similarity) as well as causal-information relations can be content-constitutive. Finally, she discusses the notorious problem of distal content and offers a solution that ismost suited for (nonconceptual) sensory-perceptual representations. Along the way, the author solves six aspects of the content-indeterminacy problem.Less
How do thoughts get to be about the world, how do they refer to their contents? This book tackles the most tractable part of this ancient problem by offering a theory of original intentionality for (nonconceptual) sensory-perceptual representations. To pave the way, Neander discusses the role played by the notions of representation and representational content in cognitive science, and explain how it stems from combining a standard biological strategy for explaining how bodies and brains operate or function with a mainstream information-processing approach to explaining cognitive (including perceptual) capacities. The author also argues that this supports an informational version of teleosemantics, and develops the theory of content in three stages. First she elucidates how sensory-perceptual systems have response functions, and why the sensory-perceptual representations they produce may be said to refer to the causes in response to which they are, in that sense, supposed to be produced. Second, she explains how sensory-perceptual systems might therefore have functions to produce inner state changes that are both caused by and the analogs of their contents, and thus how analog relations (i.e., relations of second-order similarity) as well as causal-information relations can be content-constitutive. Finally, she discusses the notorious problem of distal content and offers a solution that ismost suited for (nonconceptual) sensory-perceptual representations. Along the way, the author solves six aspects of the content-indeterminacy problem.
Action, Ethics, and Responsibility
Addiction and Responsibility
Aesthetic Animism
Against Facts
Against Moral Responsibility
The Architecture of Cognition
Austere Realism
Becoming Human
Being Amoral
