The Narrative Practice Hypothesis (NPH) is a recently conceived, late entrant into the contest of trying to understand the basis of our mature folk psychological abilities, those involving our capacity to explain ourselves and comprehend others in terms of reasons. This paper aims to clarify its content, importance and scientific plausibility by: distinguishing its conceptual features from those of its rivals, articulating its philosophical significance, and commenting on its empirical prospects. I begin by clarifying the NPH's target (...) explanandum and the challenge it presents to theory theory (TT), simulation theory (ST) and hybrid combinations of these theories. The NPH competes with them directly for the same explanatory space insofar as these theories purport to explain the core structural basis of our folk psychological (FP)-competence (those of the sort famously but not exclusively deployed in acts of third-personal mindreading). (shrink)

What defence does the Narrative Practice Hypothesis have against the charge that it is a covert form of externalist theory theory ? I discuss and reject Dan Hutto's own strategies and argue that the NPH remains vulnerable to a threat of collapse into externalist TT as long as narrative folk-psychological explanation is differentiated from simple belief-desire explanation merely by a degree of complexity, subtlety and/or context-sensitivity. It is entirely plausible, however, that there is a more principled (...) distinction between these two types of explanation of human behaviour. I defend such a distinction and show how it eliminates the threat of collapse into TT entirely. (shrink)

This paper promotes the view that our childhood engagement with narratives of a certain kind is the basis of sophisticated folk psychological abilities —i.e. it is through such socially scaffolded means that folk psychological skills are normally acquired and fostered. Undeniably, we often use our folk psychological apparatus in speculating about why another may have acted on a particular occasion, but this is at best a peripheral and parasitic use. Our primary understanding and skill in folk psychology derives from and (...) has its primary application in special kinds of second-personal engagements. (shrink)

Psychologically normal adult humans make sense of intentional actions by trying to decide for which reason they were performed. This is a datum that requires our understanding. Although there have been interesting recent debates about how we should understand ‘reasons’, I will follow a long tradition and assume that, at a bare minimum, to act for a reason involves having appropriately interrelated beliefs and desires. He left the party because he believed the host had insulted him. She will head for (...) the cabin in the woods because she wants peace and quiet. These are typical examples of reason explanations, one backward looking and the other future facing. Both imply more than they say. To leave a party because of a suspected insult suggests that one desires not to be insulted, or at least it implies that the desire to avoid insult is stronger than that for some other good on offer. Similarly, to seek tranquillity in an isolated cabin implies that one believes that it can be found there, or at least more so than elsewhere. Despite the fact that the situations and characters involved in these dramas are woefully under-described, we are able to ‘make sense’ of these actions in a basic manner using the belief/desire schema. This involves designating a particular pairing of a belief and a desire, each with its own specified propositional content, in a way that rests on a quiet understanding of the way propositional attitudes inter-relate. To understand which beliefs and desires were responsible for a person’s action is normally only to understand why they acted in a quite skeletal way. Maximally, to understand why someone acted requires a more or less detailed description of his or her circumstances, other propositional attitudes (hopes, fears), more basic perceptions and emotions and perhaps even his or her character, current situation and history. In short, to fully grasp why someone took action on a particular occasion requires relating that.. (shrink)

Herein developmental psychological research complementary to Hutto's narrative practices hypothesis is considered. Specifically, I discuss experiential development from the perspective of first, second and third person in the acquisition of knowledge and the con-struction and comprehension of narratives, with relevance for theo-ries of 'theory of mind' and in particular tests of the child's understanding of false belief. I propose that the development of distinct third person belief states requires significant developmental work, which is advanced through social sharing of (...) memory and knowledge, by means of linguistic representations especially through narrative practices of different kinds, personal narratives and story telling. The final sections summarize the view that these developments are part of a broader expansion of consciousness that is evident in many aspects of cognitive change during the later preschool years. (shrink)

We argue that theory-of-mind (ToM) approaches, such as “theory theory” and “simulation theory”, are both problematic and not needed. They account for neither our primary and pervasive way of engaging with others nor the true basis of our folk psychological understanding, even when narrowly construed. Developmental evidence shows that young infants are capable of grasping the purposeful intentions of others through the perception of bodily movements, gestures, facial expressions etc. Trevarthen’s notion of primary intersubjectivity can provide a theoretical framework for (...) understanding these capabilities and his notion of secondary intersubjectivity shows the importance of pragmatic contexts for infants starting around one year of age. The recent neuroscience of resonance systems (i.e., mirror neurons, shared representations) also supports this view. These ideas are worked out in the context of an embodied “Interaction Theory” of social cognition. Still, for more sophisticated intersubjective interactions in older children and adults, one might argue that some form of ToM is required. This thought is defused by appeal to narrative competency and the Narrative Practice Hypothesis (or NPH). We propose that repeated encounters with narratives of a distinctive kind is the normal route through which children acquire an understanding of the forms and norms that enable them to make sense of actions in terms of reasons. A potential objection to this hypothesis is that it presupposes ToM abilities. Interaction Theory is deployed once again to answer this by providing an alternative approach to understanding basic narrative competency and its development. (shrink)

Folk psychological practices are arguably the basis for our articulate ability to understand why people act as they do. This paper considers how social neuroscience could contribute to an explanation of the neural basis of folk psychology by understanding its relevant neural firing and wiring as a product of enculturation. Such a view is motivated by the hypothesis that folk psychological competence is established through engagement with narrative practices that form a familiar part of the human niche. Our (...) major aim is to establish that conceiving of social neuroscience in this wider context is a tenable and promising alternative to characterizing its job as understanding mentalizing as a wholly brain-based form of ‘theory of mind’ activity. To promote this change of view, it is shown that understanding folk psychology as a narrative practice can accommodate the known evidence from social neuroscience, developmental and cross-cultural psychology, and cognitive archaeology at least as adequately, if not better than its main rivals, modularist accounts of theory of mind. (shrink)

Understanding social cognition referring to narratives without relying on mindreading skills has been the main aim of the Narrative Practice Hypothesis proposed by Daniel Hutto and Shaun Gallagher. In this paper, I offer a semiotic reformulation of the NPH, expanding the notion of narrative beyond its conventional common-sense understanding and claiming that the kind of social cognition that operates in implicit false belief task competency is developed out of the narrative logic of interaction. I will (...) try to show how experience is shaped through meaning by the structure of narrativity and the way this can account for how narrative competencies do not just depend on language acquisition, but permeate the interactive competencies of pre-linguistic children and some social non-human animals. Developing during primary and secondary intersubjectivity and rooted in the semiotic ability to deceive and manipulate others, semiotic narrativity is the key bridge that leads us to mind and beliefs starting from basic perceptions, emotions and embodied enactive interactions. I will test my Narrative Practice Semiotic Hypothesis on Autism spectrum disorders, where social cognition skills don’t work properly, connecting NPSH to the Social Motivation Theory of Autism. I will finally answer some criticisms towards the original NPH, connecting its semiotic reformulation to early mindreading in infants and to some very recent experiments by Krupeneye et al. and Buttelmann et al. about false beliefs understanding in primates. (shrink)

In this paper, I aim to determine to what extent contemporary cross-cultural and developmental research can shed light on the role that narrative practices might play in the development of folk psychology. In particular, I focus on the role of narrative practices in the development of false belief understanding, which has been regarded as a milestone in the development of folk psychology. Second, I aim to discuss possible cognitive procedures that may underlie successful performance in false belief tasks. (...) Methodologically, I distinguish between two kinds of narrative practices: ‘mentalistic narrative practice’, and ‘behavioral-contextual narrative practice’ behavior of another person in a specific socio-situational context). Whereas the former is more prevalent in Western cultures than in Eastern cultures, the latter is predominantly used by members of Eastern cultures. Mentalistic narrative practices correlate with cultural divergences in the development of false belief understanding throughout ontogeny but do not seem to play the key role. The analysis shows that conceptual change and the acquisition of mental state terms is essential for passing the false belief task, and that theory is likely to be the cognitive mechanism involved here such as proposed by Theory Theory. However, Hutto’s Narrative Practice Hypothesis trumps over Theory Theory to account for the varieties and ambiguities people typically meet when understanding each other in everyday life. (shrink)

In this contribution I outline some ideas on what the pragmatist model of habit ontology could offer us as regards the appreciation of the constitutive role that imagery plays for social action and cognition. Accordingly, a Deweyan understanding of habit would allow for an understanding of imagery in terms of embodied cognition rather than in representational terms. I first underline the motor character of imagery, and the role its embodiment in habit plays for the anticipation of action. Secondly, I reconstruct (...) Dewey's notion of imaginative rehearsal in light of contemporary, competing models of intersubjectivity such as embodied simulation theory and the narrative practice hypothesis, and argue that the Deweyan model offers us a more encompassing framework which can be useful for reconciling these approaches. In this text I am mainly concerned with sketching a broad picture of the lines along which such a project could be developed. For this reason not all questions are given equal attention, and I shall concentrate mainly on the basic ideas, without going directly into the details of many of them. (shrink)

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 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. Its core claim is that direct encounters with stories about persons who act for reasons 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. In this way, _Folk Psychological Narratives_ both clears conceptual space around the dominant approaches for an alternative and offers a groundbreaking proposal. (shrink)

E-approaches to the mind stress the embodied, embedded and enactive nature of mental phenomena. In their more radical, non-representational variants these approaches offer innovative and powerful new ways of understanding fundamental modes of intersubjective social interaction: I-approaches. While promising, E and I accounts have natural limits. In particular, they are unable to explain human competence in making sense of reasons for actions in folk-psychological terms. In this paper I outline the core features of the 'Narrative Practice Hypothesis' (...) (NPH), showing how it might take up that burden in a way which complements non-representationalist E and I accounts. I conclude by addressing a new-order eliminativist challenge from Ratcliffe that questions, inter alia, the very idea that there is anything like a well-defined folk-psychological competence that needs explaining, thereby rendering the NPH otiose. Additionally, I respond to Ratcliffe's claim that the relevant structures needed for the development of that competence do not reveal themselves in relevant narratives, rendering the NPH's developmental story impossible. (shrink)

How do people learn to talk about the causal and temporal relations between events, and the motivation behind why people do what they do? The narrative practice hypothesis of Hutto and Gallagher holds that children are exposed to narratives that provide training for understanding and expressing reasons for why people behave as they do. In this context, we have recently developed a model of narrative processing where a structured model of the developing situation is built up (...) from experienced events, and enriched by sentences in a narrative that describe event meanings. The main interest is to develop a proof of concept for how narrative can be used to structure, organize and describe experience. Narrative sentences describe events, and they also define temporal and causal relations between events. These relations are specified by a class of narrative function words, including “because, before, after, first, finally.” The current research develops a proof of concept that by observing how people describe social events, a developmental robotic system can begin to acquire early knowledge of how to explain the reasons for events. We collect data from naïve subjects who use narrative function words to describe simple scenes of human-robot interaction, and then employ algorithms for extracting the statistical structure of how narrative function words link events in the situation model. By using these statistical regularities, the robot can thus learn from human experience about how to properly employ in question-answering dialogues with the human, and in generating canonical narratives for new experiences. The behavior of the system is demonstrated over several behavioral interactions, and associated narrative interaction sessions, while a more formal extended evaluation and user study will be the subject of future research. Clearly this is far removed from the power of the full blown narrative practice capability, but it provides a first step in the development of an experimental infrastructure for the study of socially situated narrative practice in human-robot interaction. (shrink)

I argue that the task of describing our so-called 'folk psychology' requires difficult philosophical work. Consequently, any statement of the folk view is actually a debatable philosophical posi-tion, rather than an uncontroversial description of pre-philosophical commonsense. The problem with the current folk psychology debate, I suggest, is that the relevant philosophical work has not been done. Consequently, the orthodox account of folk psychology is an uninfor-mative caricature of an understanding that is implicit in everyday discourse and social interaction, and also (...) in literary narratives. I conclude by considering two recent departures from it, so-called 'experimental philosophy' and Daniel Hutto's 'narrative practice hypothesis'. Both, I claim, take steps in the right direction but retain unhelpful assumptions that they inherit from the orthodox view. (shrink)

The article describes an extension of the original idea of the fifth dimension model to pre-school age. We found out that small schildren are not able to use in their activity the tasks formulated by the adults. Learning tasks inbedded in different narratives were used in 5D environments. Experimental research lead to a hypothesis on the status of narrative learning as ”transitory activity system” between play and school learning. The hypothesis is presented and a transitory model sketched. (...) Examples on children’s sense making and narrative learning in problem situations are are offered at the end of the article. (shrink)

This study analyzed the relation between mental time travel (MTT) and the ability to produce a storytelling focusing on global coherence, which is one of the most notable characteristics of narrative discourse. As global coherence is strictly tied to the temporal sequence of the events narrated in a story, we hypothesized that the construction of coherent narratives would rely on the ability to mentally navigate in time. To test such a hypothesis, we investigated the relation between one component (...) of MTT—namely, episodic future thinking (EFT)—and narrative production skills by comparing the narratives uttered by 66 children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder (ASD) with those produced by 66 children with typical development. EFT was assessed by administering a task with minimal narrative demands, whereas storytelling production skills were assessed by administering two narrative production tasks that required children to generate future or past episodes with respect to the target stimuli. The results showed that EFT skills were impaired only in a subgroup of children with ASD and that such subgroup performed significantly worse on the narrative production task than ASD participants with high EFT skills and participants with typical development. The practical and theoretical implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

Osteopathy is a person-centred healthcare discipline that emphasizes the body’s structure-function interrelationship—and its self-regulatory mechanisms—to inform a whole-person approach to health and wellbeing. This paper aims to provide a theoretical framework for developing an integrative hypothesis in osteopathy, which is based on the enactivist and active inference accounts. We propose that osteopathic care can be reconceptualised under active inference as a unifying framework. Active inference suggests that action-perception cycles operate to minimize uncertainty and optimize an individual’s internal model of (...) the lived world and, crucially, the consequences of their behaviour. We argue that active inference offers an integrative framework for osteopathy, which can evince the mechanisms underlying dyadic and triadic exchanges and osteopathic care outcomes. We propose that this theoretical framework can underpin osteopathic care across the lifespan, from preterm infants to the elderly and those with persistent pain and other physical symptoms. In situations of chronicity, as an ecological niche, the patient-practitioner dyad provides the osteopath and the patient with a set of affordances, i.e., possibilities for action provided by the environment, that through shared intentionally, can promote adaptations and restoration of productive agency. Through a dyadic therapeutic relationship, as they engage with their ecological niche’s affordances—a structured set of affordances shared by agents—osteopath and patient actively construct a shared sense-making narrative and realise a shared generative model of their relation to the niche. In general, touch plays a critical role in developing a robust therapeutic alliance, mental state alignment, and biobehavioural synchrony between patient and practitioner. However, its role is particularly crucial in the fields of neonatology and paediatrics, where it becomes central in regulating allostasis and restoring homeostasis. We argue that from an active inference standpoint, the dyadic shared ecological niche underwrites a robust therapeutic alliance, which is crucial to the effectiveness of osteopathic care. Considerations and implications of this model—to clinical practice and research, both within- and outside osteopathy—are critically discussed. (shrink)

This article deals with the integration of ethical reflection into the research practices of the project at the Lille Nord-Pas-de-Calais genopole: “Multifactorial genetic pathologies and therapeutic innovations”. The general hypothesis of this text is that changes in research practices in biology (mainly through the use of bioinformatics) imply changes in medical practices, which require critical reflection. This hypothesis could be broken down into three sub-hypotheses: (1) Research in biology is undergoing a complete transformation; (2) Research in biology is (...) a cultural practice, which cannot be reduced to a simple cognitive action; (3) Research in biology is a techno-scientific practice. As for the method, the aim of our research at the Medical Ethics Centre is to elucidate the philosophical and ethical range of biomedical practices. This work entails a double task for reflection. On the one hand, from the revelation of ethical tensions present in these practices, we have to think about what is at stake in these practices, and more broadly in society. On the other hand, we have to analyse the conditions enabling the actors to assume the significance of ethical reflection in their practices. The method set up to undertake this double task could be qualified as “narrative hermeneutics”, as its aim is to attempt to interpret the stakes in practices from proximity with these practices and from what their actors have to say about them. The text then goes on to analyse more specifically the emergence and place of bioinformatics in present-day biomedical research. (shrink)

I discuss the Narrative Practice Hypothesis (NPH) as a new approach to folk psychology, by highlighting some of the main differences between the NPH and so-called 'principled approaches' and elaborating on the importance of the distinction between intentional and propositional attitudes. Furthermore, I address the question whether reason explanations as understood by the NPH constitute a distinctive and autonomous kind of explanation.

There has been a long-standing interest in the putative roles that various so-called ‘theory of mind’ abilities might play in enabling us to understand and enjoy narratives. Of late, as our understanding of the complexity and diversity of everyday psychological capacities has become more nuanced and variegated, new possibilities have been articulated: (i) that our capacity for a sophisticated, everyday understanding of actions in terms of reason (our folk psychology) may itself be best characterized as a kind of narrative (...) practice and (ii) that acquiring the capacity for supplying and digesting reasons explana- tions might (at least normally) depend upon having a special training with narratives. This introductory paper to the volume situates the claims of those who support the narrative approach to folk psychology against the backdrop of some traditional and new thinking about intersubjectivity, social cognition and ‘theory of mind’ abilities. Special emphasis is laid on the different reasons for being interested in these claims about narrative practice and folk psychology in light of various empirical and philosophical agendas. (shrink)

IntroductionIn this study, we tested a simple, active “ethical consistency” intervention aimed at reducing researchers’ endorsement of questionable research practices (QRPs).MethodsWe developed a simple, active ethical consistency intervention and tested it against a control using an established QRP survey instrument. Before responding to a survey that asked about attitudes towards each of fifteen QRPs, participants were randomly assigned to either a consistency or control 3–5-min writing task. A total of 201 participants completed the survey: 121 participants were recruited from a (...) database of currently funded NSF/nih scientists, and 80 participants were recruited from a pool of active researchers at a large university medical center in the southeastern US. Narrative responses to the writing prompts were coded and analyzed to assist post hoc interpretation of the quantitative data.ResultsWe hypothesized that participants in the consistency condition would find ethically ambiguous QRPs less defensible and would indicate less willingness to engage in them than participants in the control condition. The results showed that the consistency intervention had no significant effect on respondents’ reactions regarding the defensibility of the QRPs or their willingness to engage in them. Exploratory analyses considering the narrative themes of participants’ responses indicated that participants in the control condition expressed lower perceptions of QRP defensibility and willingness.ConclusionThe results did not support the main hypothesis, and the consistency intervention may have had the unwanted effect of inducing increased rationalization. These results may partially explain why RCR courses often seem to have little positive effect. (shrink)

The gap between the limited human sense of how living entities change over time and the ways in which living systems change is one of the most potent uncertainties in ecological knowledge. This gap remains a significant source of problems and errors for those working with the transformations of living systems. This article foregrounds Mary Catherine Bateson’s cybernetic practice of working with narratives in order to cultivate better understanding and responses to change, at the level of both societies and (...) individuals. To do so, I investigate some significant moments, encounters and projects that connect her practice to the ecological ideas of her father, Gregory Bateson and situate their ideas on abduction, metaphor, recursion and narrative within broader discussions of ecological change. The Batesons did not seek a particular attitudinal change towards the transformation of selves, cities and worlds but rather sought to change the very understanding of what an attitude towards change should be, a distinction that is worth pondering given the challenges of attending to change within the present ecological crisis. (shrink)

Recent work on enculturation suggests that our cognitive capacities are significantly transformed in the course of the scaffolded acquisition of cognitive practices such as reading and writing. Phylogenetically, enculturation is the result of the co-evolution of human organisms and their socio-culturally structured cognitive niche. It is rendered possible by evolved cerebral and extra-cerebral bodily learning mechanisms that make human organisms apt to acquire culturally inherited cognitive practices. In addition, cultural learning allows for the intergenerational transmission of relevant knowledge and skills. (...) Ontogenetically, enculturation is associated with neural plasticity and the development of new motor routines and action schemas. It relies on scaffolded learning that structures novice-teacher interactions. The acquisition of reading and writing are paradigm examples of enculturation. Based on an empirically informed analysis of the components of enculturation, I will apply the emerging account of enculturated cognition to narrative practices. To date, research on the impact of narratives on the constitution of the self and our understanding of folk psychology has not paid much attention to the question how narratives are influenced by cumulative cultural evolution and our capacity to acquire reading and writing during ontogeny. I will argue that textual narratives, above and beyond oral narratives, provide genuinely new ways of narration. Therefore, the enculturated interaction with textual narratives has the potential to contribute to a better understanding of ourselves and other cognitive agents. (shrink)

Many psychopathological disorders – clinical depression, borderline personality disorder, schizophrenia and autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) – are commonly classified as disorders of the self. In an intuitive sense this sort of classification is unproblematic. There can be no doubt that such disorders make a difference to one’s ability to form and maintain a coherent sense of oneself in various ways. However, any theoretically rigourous attempt to show that they relate to underlying problems with say, such things as minimal selves or, (...) even, so-called narrative selves – where these latter constructs are invoked to do genuine explanatory work – would require, inter alia, philosophical clarification of what it is that one is precisely committed to in talking of such things (if things they be). It would also require justification for believing in selves of these various kinds. I have elsewhere put on record some of my worries about proposed justifications for believing in minimal selves (Hutto 2008b). But – lest I be accused of favouritism – it should be noted that I also have concerns about the very idea of narrative selves. Several authors have made strong claims about the role of narratives in self constitution (e.g. Dennett 1991, Flanagan 1996, Schechtman 1996). Under standard interpretations these proposals are ambiguous, underdeveloped in key respects, embed obvious tensions or generate puzzles. For these reasons I think we should be cautious of lax talk of selves that are woven from narrative cloth. This is not to say that I agree with Strawson (2004) that adopting a narrative perspective might not be essential for being a self (or at least being a self of a certain sort – even an ethically interesting sort).1 It is rather that I think that before we get around to assessing such claims we need a better understanding of just what we are committed to in talking of selves in general. This is a major philosophical programme, and not one with which I will attempt to engage in this paper – not even in passing.. (shrink)

To explain why students learn effectively by teaching, explaining to others in particular, Koh and colleagues advanced the retrieval practice hypothesis, which attributes the learning benefits entirely to the effect of practicing retrieval, that is, effortfully recalling to-be-taught information for the provision of instructional explanations. After delineating the rationale behind the retrieval practice hypothesis, the current situation of research, and the limitations of the existing approach, this paper proposes three tests for the evaluation of the (...) class='Hi'>hypothesis that address whether explaining to others after initial studying surpasses restudying in learning performance, whether the amount of effort to retrieve to-be-taught information from memory moderates the learning effects of explaining to others, and whether the degree of elaboration during retrieval practice positively predicts the outcomes of learning by merely recalling to-be-taught information. Evidence is examined regarding whether each test is passed, and future directions for research on the retrieval practice hypothesis are discussed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reconquest Colonialism and Andalusī Narrative Practice in the Conde LucanorDavid A Wacks (bio)In the tenth century, when Cordova was the richest and most populous city in Europe, and the Umayyad Caliphate was setting the standard for cultural florescence in the Islamic world, a group of Christian nobles in the rocky precincts of northernmost Spain sought to expand their territorial holdings southward, into al-Andalus. Their aim was to (...) unseat Islamic political power on the Iberian Peninsula, and they sought to authorize this project by discrediting Muslim leaders as the usurpers of lands to which the Christians were rightful heirs. In their view, Christian conquests of al-Andalus were the recuperation of lands that, in the eyes of God himself, belonged to them.Spanish culture as we know it today is the product of this medieval frontier society, in which Christians and Muslims—during a span of some 700 years—continuously negotiated a political border that was culturally quite porous. By the middle of the thirteenth century, Christian rulers had gained control of the large majority of the Iberian Peninsula, including the populous and important cities of Cordova and Seville in the south. The Christians who populated these newly conquered lands found themselves in close contact with a sizeable population of Andalusī Muslims (and Jews and Christians) who had remained. The conquering Christians were great consumers of Andalusī culture in general, especially arts and sciences, and even literature. At the same time, they viewed Islam, the dominant religion of al-Andalus, as a purely illegitimate basis for political power and social organization. If the official narrative of Reconquest argues for tidy cultural purity and conformity, the reality on the ground is, in contrast, a messy and emergent pluralism, one that resonates with early modern and modern colonial experiences.1While medievalists have been slower to embrace postcolonial theoretical approaches than their colleagues working on modern and contemporary texts, they have begun to adapt the ideas of thinkers such as Fanon, Memmi, Bhabha, Spivak, and others to medieval European perceptions of and experience in the East.2 However, it is curious [End Page 87] that Hispanists (with what may be the sole exception of David Hanlon) have completely avoided reading the Christian conquest of al-Andalus as a colonial project. Despite the substantial differences between medieval and modern colonialisms as regards political reality, public discourse, and the construction of subjectivity, one may safely argue that the Christian conquests of al-Andalus were a colonial endeavor, one of several studied by historians of medieval Europe.3 The case of medieval Christian Iberian colonialism was distinct from other medieval colonialisms (such as French and English crusading in the Middle East) in that it contributed fundamentally to the formation of a Spanish national identity, and served as a domestic proving ground for the conquest of Spanish territories in the Americas.Don Juan Manuel, author of the Conde Lucanor (1340) [CL],4 was the most powerful nobleman of his time. He held extensive lands in Murcia, which retained a far higher proportion of its preconquest Muslim population than did neighboring Castile and Leon [O’Callaghan, History 459]. While his military and political career depended on eradicating Islam from the Iberian Peninsula, he earned his literary renown—in part—by imitating and incorporating Andalusī narrative tradition and history into his own writings. In Juan Manuel’s adaptation of the frametale genre, the CL, this dissonance between the religious and political agendas of the Reconquest manifests in narrative. If the CL shows us the ideology of the Reconquest, it also offers the reader a reflection of the more complicated and nuanced reality of daily life and human behavior characteristic of Reconquest-era Castile-Leon [Linehan, “At the Spanish Frontier” 53]. In it, Juan Manuel distills the political realities, religious discourse, and cultural interaction of the time into the first original frametale in any European vernacular.5Juan Manuel’s religious agenda and frontier political philosophy come across quite clearly in the 50 exemplos of the CL. The idea of the Christian nobleman’s duty to wage war against Islam permeates the work, most starkly in these words of the Count’s advisor Patronio: “... Dios vos poblo... (shrink)

Joint attention is the ability to intentionally co-orient towards a common focus. This ability develops in a protracted, mosaic fashion in humans. We review evidence of joint attention in humans and great apes, finding that great apes display every phenomenon described as joint attention in humans, although there is consid-erable variation among apes of different rearing histories. We conclude that there is little evidence for human species-unique cognitive adaptations in the non-verbal communication of humans in the first 18 months of (...) life. This conclusion is consistent with the Narrative Practice Hypothesis because the NPH posits training in folk psychological narratives as a basis for folk psychological competence. (shrink)

This paper spells out just how the Narrative Practice Hypothesis, if true, undercuts any need to appeal to either theory or simulation when it comes to explaining the basis of folk psychological understanding: these heuristics do not come into play other than in cases of in which the framework is used to speculate about why another may have acted. To add appropriate force to this observation, I first say something about why we should reject the widely held (...) assumption that the primary business of folk psychology is to provide third-personal predictions and explanations. I then go on to demonstrate how the NPH can account for (i) the structural features of folk psychology and (ii) its staged acquisition without buying into the idea that it is a theory, or that it is acquired by means of constructing one. This should expose the impotence of the standard reasons for believing that folk psychology must be a kind of theory. In the concluding postscript, I acknowledge that we need more than the folk psychological framework to understand how we understand reasons, but I deny that this something more takes the form of a theory about propositional attitudes or simulative procedures for manipulating them. For example, I claim it rests in part on a capacity for co-cognition, inter alia, since that ability is necessary for understanding another’s thoughts. Nevertheless, I deny that co-cognition equates to simulation proper or that it plays anything more than a supporting role in understanding reasons for action. (shrink)

Much attention has been drawn to the cognitive basis of innovation. While interesting in many ways, this poses the threat of falling back to traditional internalist assumptions with regard to cognition. We oppose the ensuing contrast between internal cognitive processing and external public practices and technologies that such internal cognitive systems might produce and utilize. We argue that innovation is best understood from the gibsonian notion of affordance, and that many innovative practices emerge from the external scaffolding of cognitive processes. (...) The public engageability that allows the disclosure of hidden affordances is not only –not even primarily– a property of cognitive products, but of cognitive processes. We elaborate on this claims by drawing on Dutilh Novaes’ account of formal languages as cognitive technologies and Hutto’s Narrative Practice Hypothesis. This paves the way to sketch some general principles on how to strategically seek for innovation by targeting hidden affordances. (shrink)

Complex, mature cognition is the endpoint of a develop-mental process in which elementary capacities interact with the environment and with each other in predictable ways that depend on appropriate inputs. 'Theory of mind', the capacity to attribute thoughts and beliefs to other persons, is characterised by the Narrative Practice Hypothesis as emerging from the interactive experience of stories about people acting for reasons. The case of autism has been cited in support of the contrary view, that 'theory (...) of mind' is an innately specified cognitive module, because the surface characteristics of autistic behaviour seem explicable as a circumscribed failure of such a module. So if one accepts the Narrative Practice Hypothesis, is one then robbed of an explanation for autism? The answer is an emphatic no: 'theory of mind' dysfunction is not universal in autism, and is developmentally preceded and predicted by abnormalities of attention, executive function and language consonant with the Narrative Practice Hypothesis. (shrink)

This comment on Stueber’s article clarifies the nature of the core disagreement between his approach to understanding reasons and mine. The purely philosophical nature of the dispute is highlighted. It is argued that understanding someone’s narrative often suffices for understanding the person’s reasons in ordinary cases. It is observed that Stueber has yet to provide a compelling counter case. There is also a brief clarification of some of the empirical commitments of the narrative practice hypothesis.

This comment on Stueber’s article clarifies the nature of the core disagreement between his approach to understanding reasons and mine. The purely philosophical nature of the dispute is highlighted. It is argued that understanding someone’s narrative often suffices for understanding the person’s reasons in ordinary cases. It is observed that Stueber has yet to provide a compelling counter case. There is also a brief clarification of some of the empirical commitments of the narrative practice hypothesis.

Narrative is now a commonly used term in medical education, ethics, and practice. Yet the concept of narrative defies singular definition, and definitional and functional pluralism about narrative in health care remains underappreciated. Diverse conceptualizations of narrative are generically grouped under umbrella terms like “medical humanities” or “narrative medicine.” Such broad grouping risks undermining attention to relevant differences in use, meaning, or theory of narrative, overestimating the scope of certain criticisms of narrative (...) practice or use, while overlooking more insidious concerns. This essay moves toward a conceptual clarification of narrative in medicine through a process of naming and sorting. Narrative conceptualizations are grouped into narrative premises which include descriptive and normative claims about narrative, and narrative practices, which put narrative into action as process, method, or tool. A philosophical pragmatist approach to narrative in medicine reworks narrative anxieties about fact and fiction, truth or falsehood, in terms of the justifiability of belief, the inclusion or exclusion of experience, and the rationality of practices that are never perfect and always up for revision. (shrink)

Recent studies have identified practical wisdom as a critical area for exploration in the domains of management and leadership. This paper delves into the cultivation and manifestation of practical wisdom in leadership, emphasizing the potential of narratives as an efficacious tool, as corroborated by academic literature. Employing practical wisdom theory and a refined analytical model, we examine the role of narratives as a key instrument for practically wise leaders. Through the provision of theoretical underpinnings and empirical evidence, our study seeks (...) to elucidate the tripartite interconnectedness of practical wisdom, narratives, and leadership. Subsequently, a conceptual model is developed and illustrated, outlining the relationship between narratives and practical wisdom across diverse leadership contexts. This analysis positions practical wisdom as a fundamental guidance for leaders’ narrative practices. Acknowledging the paper’s conceptual focus, we discuss the practical and theoretical implications of the proposed model and advocate for empirical inquiry to further enhance understanding of narrative practices in practically wise leadership. (shrink)

Narrative views of the self argue that we constitute our self in self-narratives. Embodied views hold that our self is shaped through embodied experiences. In that case, what is the relation between embodiment and narrativity in the process of self-constitution? The question demands a clear definition of embodiment, but existing studies remains unclear on this point (section 2). We offer a correction to this situation by drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of the body that highlights its habituality. On this account, (...) the body has an inherent tendency to cultivate an organization of habits through its history of engagement with the world (section 3). Next, we explore its role in narrative self-constitution by distinguishing between two aspects of the narrative self, the narrated I and the narrating I (section 4). We argue on phenomenological grounds that self-narratives are informed by bodily perspectives in both respects. Furthermore, a focus on the habituality of the body allows for a better explanation of self-constitution than those based on implicit self-narratives (section 5). For these phenomenological and theoretical reasons, we conclude that narrative self-constitution is an embodied and embedded practice (section 6). (shrink)

The essays collected in this volume address a range of issues that arise when the focus of philosophical reflection on identity is shifted from metaphysical to practical and evaluative concerns. They also explore the usefulness of the notion of narrative for articulating and responding to these issues. The chapters, written by an outstanding roster of international scholars, address a range of complex philosophical issues concerning the relationship between practical and metaphysical identity, the embodied dimensions of the first-personal perspective, the (...) kind of reflexive agency involved in the self-constitution of one’s practical identity, the relationship between practical identity and normativity, and the temporal dimensions of identity and selfhood. In addressing these issues, contributors engage with debates in the literatures on personal identity, phenomenology, moral psychology, action theory, normative ethical theory, and feminist philosophy. (shrink)

This book is part of the growing field of practical approaches to philosophical questions relating to identity, agency and ethics, working across continental and analytical traditions. Kim Atkins explains and justifies the basis of the practical approach through an explication of the structures of human embodiment and an account of how those structures necessitate a narrative model of selfhood, understanding and ethics. She highlights how recent work on agency and autonomy implicitly draws upon conceptions of embodiment and intersubjectivity that (...) underpin the narrative view. (shrink)

This book is part of the growing field of practical approaches to philosophical questions relating to identity, agency and ethics--approaches which work across continental and analytical traditions and which Atkins justifies through an explication of how the structures of human embodiment necessitate a narrative model of selfhood, understanding, and ethics.

The essays collected in this volume address a range of issues that arise when the focus of philosophical reflection on identity is shifted from metaphysical to practical and evaluative concerns. They also explore the usefulness of the notion of narrative for articulating and responding to these issues. The chapters, written by an outstanding roster of international scholars, address a range of complex philosophical issues concerning the relationship between practical and metaphysical identity, the embodied dimensions of the first-personal perspective, the (...) kind of reflexive agency involved in the self-constitution of one’s practical identity, the relationship between practical identity and normativity, and the temporal dimensions of identity and selfhood. In addressing these issues, contributors engage with debates in the literatures on personal identity, phenomenology, moral psychology, action theory, normative ethical theory, and feminist philosophy. (shrink)

This volume serves as a reference on the field of cognitive semantics. It offers a systematic and original discussion of the issues at the core of the debate in semiotics and the cognitive sciences. It takes into account the problems of representation, the nature of mind, the structure of perception, beliefs associated with habits, social cognition, autism, intersubjectivity and subjectivity. The chapters in this volume present the foundation of semiotics as a theory of cognition, offer a semiotic model of cognitive (...) integration that combines Enactivism and the Extended Mind Theory, and investigate the role of imagination as the origin of perception. The author develops an account of beliefs that are associated with habits and meaning, grounded in Pragmatism, testing his Narrative Practice Semiotic Hypothesis on persons with autism spectrum disorders. He also integrates his ideas about the formation of the theory of mind with a theory of subjectivity, understood as self-consciousness which derives from semiotic cognitive abilities. This text appeals to students, professors and researchers in the field. (shrink)

It is generally accepted among philosophers of science that hypothesis testing is a key methodological feature of science. As far as philosophical theories of confirmation are con...

Although science supplies medicine's “gold standard,” knowledge exercised in the care of patients is, like moral knowing, a matter of narrative, practical reason. Physicians draw on case narrative to store experience and to apply and qualify the general rules of medical science. Literature aids in this activity by stimulating moral imagination and by requiring its readers to engage in the retrospective construction of a situated, subjective account of events. Narrative truths are provisional, uncertain, derived from narrators whose (...) standpoints are always situated, particular, and uncertain, but open to comparison and reinterpretation. Reading is thus a model for knowing in both morality and clinical medicine. While principles remain essential to bioethics and science must always inform good clinical practice, the tendency to collapse morality into principles and medicine into science impoverishes both practices. Moral knowing is not separable from clinical judgment. While ethics must be open to discussion and interpretation by patients, families, and society, it is nevertheless substantively and epistemologically an inextricable part of a physician's clinical practice. (shrink)

The concept of personal identity is one of the most sensitive questions in Paul Ricoeur’s oeuvre. In this article we show what makes originality of Ricoeur’s conception of narrative identity by analyzing the way it is presented in Oneself as Another and by pointing out the difference between the ricoeurian concept and the concept of narrative identity, introduced by Alasdair MacIntyre. For this reason we would like to focus on the analysis of configuration and refiguration, studied by Ricoeur (...) in his oeuvre Time and Narrative. We would also include the notion of narrative identity into the conception of hermeneutics and demonstrate that the originality of the ricoerian concept is based on the possibilities offered by the theory of narration explicated in the debates with structuralism and literary theory. This sets the issue of subjectivity, in which the problematic of narrative identity is inscribed. This “philosophy of the first person” makes the key object of the second part of the research. The article shows how the self applies the narrative intrigue to his/her own life by identifying himself with a storyteller or with a character. A reader or a storyteller constructs his/her narrative identity so that the process of self-understanding becomes possible. (shrink)

Significant work in the philosophy of history has focused on the writing of historiographical narratives, isolated from the rest of what historians do. Taking my cue from the philosophy of science in practice, I suggest that understanding historical narratives as embedded within historical practice more generally is fruitful. I illustrate this by bringing a particular instance of historical practice, Natalie Lawrence’s explanation of the sad fate of Winston the platypus, into dialogue with some of Louis Mink’s arguments (...) in favour of anti-realism about historical events. Attending to how historians seek out and utilize archival resources puts serious pressure on these arguments, motivates realist positions, and re-focuses the philosophy of history towards making sense of historiography as a part of the diversity of historians’ interests. (shrink)

Narrative Medicine in Hospice Care argues that the models of selfhood and care found in the work of Paul Ricoeur can serve as a framework for clinicians, caregivers, and end-of-life patients regardless of the patients’ verbal and cognitive capabilities.