This study examines the spontaneous use of embodied egocentric transformation in understanding false beliefs in the minds of others. EET involves the participants mentally transforming or rotating themselves into the orientation of an agent when trying to adopt his or her visuospatial perspective. We argue that psychological perspective taking such as false belief reasoning may also involve EET because of what has been widely reported in the embodied cognition literature, showing that our processing of abstract, propositional (...) information is often grounded in concrete bodily sensations which are not apparently linked to higher cognition. In Experiment 1, an agent placed a ball into one of two boxes and left. The ball then rolled out and moved either into the other box or back into the original one. The participants were to decide from which box they themselves or the agent would try to recover the ball. Results showed that false belief performance was affected by increased orientation disparity between the participants and the agent, suggesting involvement of embodied transformation. In Experiment 2, false belief was similarly induced and the participants were to decide if the agent would try to recover the ball in one specific box. Orientation disparity was again found to affect false belief performance. The present results extend previous findings on EET in visuospatial perspective taking and suggest that false belief reasoning, which is a kind of psychological perspective taking, can also involve embodied rotation, consistent with the embodied cognition view. (shrink)

Embodying Transnational Yoga is a refreshingly original, multi-sited ethnography of transnational yoga that obliges us to look beyond postural practice (aasana) in modern yoga research. The book introduces readers to three alternative, understudied categories of transnational yoga practice which include food, music, and breathing. Studying these categories of embodied practice using interdisciplinary methods reveals transformative "engaged alchemies" that have been extensively deployed by contemporary disseminators of yoga. Readers will encounter how South Asian dietary regimens, musical practices, and breathing techniques (...) have been adapted into contemporaneous worlds of yoga practice both within, but also beyond, the Indian Ocean rim. The book brings the field of Modern Yoga Studies into productive dialogue with the fields of Indian Ocean Studies, Embodiment Studies, Food Studies, Ethnomusicology, and Pollution Studies. It will also be a valuable resource for both scholarly work and for teaching in the fields of Religious Studies, Anthropology, and South Asian Religions. (shrink)

researchers carolyn pedwell and shannon sullivan have begun to examine how habit can help us better understand the concept and lived experience of gender and how habit can act as a tool for enacting social change. John Dewey’s pragmatism also inquires into how individuals can and should act and respond to their conditions and peers in constantly changing times. Through bringing together Iris Marion Young’s analysis of feminine body comportment in her essay “Throwing Like a Girl: A Phenomenology of Feminine (...) Body Comportment, Motility, and Spatiality” and Dewey’s framework of habit that he develops in his book Human Nature and... (shrink)

Traditional cognitivism treats a situated agent's point of view in terms of deficit egocentrism. Can Ballard et al.'s framework remedy this characterization? And will its fusion of computational and enactivist explanations change assumptions about what cognition is? “Yes” is suggested by considering human infants' developing spatial knowledge, but further questions are raised by analysis of their robot counterparts.

How should accounts that stress the embodied, embedded and engaged character of human minds accommodate the role of rationality in human subjectivity? Drawing on Matthew Boyle’s contrast between ‘additive’ and ‘transformative’ conceptions of rationality, I argue that contemporary work on embodied cognition tends towards a problematic ‘additivism’ about the relationship between mature human capacities to think and act for reasons, and sensorimotor capacities to skillfully engage with salient features of the environment. Additivists view rational capacities to reason and (...) reflect as a distinct ‘layer’ or ‘storey’ of human cognition, with a normative structure that differs from that of the sensorimotor coping skills which support it. I argue that emphasizing the embodied and engaged character of human minds is better combined with a ‘transformative’ conception of rationality – one which holds that acquiring abilities to give and ask for reasons transforms the normative structure of our unreflective embodied dealings with the environment. And I argue that a transformative embodied cognitive science of human rationality is not only possible, but underway. Integrating existing work on embodied cognition with work on the cultural and developmental contexts that shape human minds suggests how human immersion in culture transforms the structure of sensorimotor engagements by bringing about the communicability and negotiability of the meanings to which those engagements attune us. (shrink)

Are churches missing some key aspects of discipleship? Are churches missing a primary way in which Jesus ushered people into a journey of personal renewal? I think that it is clearly the case, and that the transformative power that ecclesial communities seek is to be found in Jesus' invitations to follow. Jesus invited people in his day to 'Follow Me'. CONTRIBUTION: Implicit in these invitations are ideas like embodiment and movement, ideas that are vital in leading to deep and authentic (...) personal as well as communal, transformation. (shrink)

Volume 24, Issue 4, August 2019, Page 1-2.

Drawing on the author’s lifelong practice in the non-competitive and defensive Japanese art of Aikido, this book examines education as self-cultivation, from a Japanese philosophy perspective. Contemplative practices, such as secular mindfulness meditation, are being increasingly integrated into pedagogical settings to enhance social and emotional learning and well-being and to address stress-induced overwhelm due to increased pressures on the education system and its constituents. The chapters in this book explore the various ways, through the lens of this non-violent relational art (...) of Aikido, that pedagogy is always something being practiced and thus holding potential for transformation into being more relational, ecological-minded, and reflecting more ‘embodied attunement.’ Positioning education as a practice, one of self-discovery, the author argues that one can approach personal development as engaging in a spiritual process of integrating mind and body towards full presence of being and existence. (shrink)

Subtle bodily sensations such as itching or fluttering that occur in the absence of any external trigger may serve to locate the spatial boundaries of the body. They may constitute the normal counterpart of extreme conditions in which body-related hallucinations and perceptual aberrations are experienced. Previous investigations have suggested that situations in which the body is spontaneously experienced as being deformed are related to the ability to perform own-body transformations, i.e., mental rotations of the body requiring disembodiment. We therefore decided (...) to consider whether the perception of SPS might relate to embodiment as assessed through the ability to perform own-body transformations and schizotypal traits, since high degrees of schizotypy in the general population have been associated with more vivid perceptions and aberrant perceptual experiences. Then participants completed a standard SPS task. Our analysis revealed that the slower the response time in the OBT task, the more frequent the perception of SPS. This suggests that difficulties in disembodying and mentally transforming one’s own body facilitate feeling oneself. Furthermore, a greater number of correct responses in the OBT task was associated with less frequent perception of SPS. This suggests that finding it easier to disembody and perform mental own-body transformations interferes with the ability to sense oneself. The results also show that higher schizotypal traits, as assessed through the SPQ, are associated with more frequent perception of SPS. Taken together, these results provide a coherent picture and suggest that embodiment is required in order to correctly feel oneself, as expressed through the perception of SPS. The ability to easily experience disembodiment reduces the sense of feeling oneself, and proneness to schizotypal traits produces body misperceptions that enhance and amplify this feeling. The results are discussed in the light of current knowledge and theories about body representations, taking into account attention and interoception as factors that influence body awareness. We offer explanations for perceptual aberrations, body-related delusions, and hallucinations based on misperceived or misinterpreted SPS, and we discuss possible mechanisms that may contribute to feeling and misperceiving oneself. (shrink)

What principles and mechanisms allow humans to encode complex 3D information, and how can it be so fast, so accurately and so flexibly transformed into coordinated action? How do these processes work when developed to the limit of human physiological and cognitive capacity—as they are in high-speed sports, such as alpine skiing or motor racing? High-speed sports present not only physical challenges, but present some of the biggest perceptual-cognitive demands for the brain. The skill of these elite athletes is in (...) many ways an attractive model for studying human performance “in the wild”, and its neurocognitive basis. This article presents a framework theory for how these abilities may be realized in high-speed sports. It draws on a careful analysis of the case of the motorsport athlete, as well as theoretical concepts from: (1) cognitive neuroscience of wayfinding, steering, and driving; (2) cognitive psychology of expertise; (3) cognitive modeling and machine learning; (4) human-in-the loop modellling in vehicle system dynamics and human performance engineering; (5) experimental research (in the laboratory and in the field) on human visual guidance. The distinctive contribution is the way these are integrated, and the concept ofchunkingis used in a novel way to analyze a high-speed sport. The mechanisms invoked are domain-general, and not specific to motorsport or the use of a particular type of vehicle (or any vehicle for that matter); theegocentric chunking hypothesisshould therefore apply to any dynamic task that requires similar core skills. It offers a framework for neuroscientists, psychologists, engineers, and computer scientists working in the field of expert sports performance, and may be useful in translating fundamental research into theory-based insight and recommendations for improving real-world elite performance. Specific experimental predictions and applicability of the hypotheses to other sports are discussed. (shrink)

This chapter offers an indirect defence of the Evansian conception of egocentric space, by showing how it resolves a puzzle concerning the unity of egocentric spatial perception. The chapter outlines several common assumptions about egocentric perspectival structure and argues that a subject’s experience, both within and across her sensory modalities, may involve multiple structures of this kind. This raises the question of how perspectival unity is achieved, such that these perspectival structures form a complex whole, rather than (...) merely disunified set of individually, distinctively structured experiences. The shortcomings of variety of accounts are considered: switch accounts ; sensory accounts; transformation accounts; and ultimate accounts. These shortcomings are addressed by a further kind of account provided by the Evansian conception – an agentive account – according to which egocentrically structured experiences present the world in relation to parts of a single thing, the body as a dynamic unity. (shrink)

This paper employs ethnographic research methods to study a Buddhist meditation practice that takes the walking body as its object. The mundane act of walking is transformed into a meditative object for the purpose of refining states of embodied consciousness. This meditation practice offers a glimpse of the relationship of body to mind, a fundamental concern within the philosophy of mind. The analytic focus of this paper is the practical nature of meditation work. Aspects of Buddhist Philosophy are explored (...) and compared to analytic themes within Phenomenology and Ethnomethodology. (shrink)

We present a spatial system called Specialized Egocentrically Coordinated Spaces embedded in an embodied cognitive architecture (ACT-R Embodied). We show how the spatial system works by modeling two different developmental findings: gaze-following and Level 1 perspective taking. The gaze-following model is based on an experiment by Corkum and Moore (1998), whereas the Level 1 visual perspective-taking model is based on an experiment by Moll and Tomasello (2006). The models run on an embodied robotic system.

I will argue that the asynchronous discussion format commonly used in online courses has little hope of bringing about transformative learning, and that this is because engaging with another as a person involves adopting a personal stance, comprised of affective and bodily relatedness (Ratcliffe 2007, 23). Interpersonal engagement ordinarily is fully embodied to the extent that communication relies heavily on individuals’ postures, gestures, and facial expressions. Subjects involved in face-to-face interaction can perceive others’ desires and feelings on the basis (...) of their expressions and movements, to which they become attuned by way of bodily resonance. Moreover, social cognition is enactive in the sense that parties do not passively receive information from their environments, but instead actively participate in the generation of meaning. They do so not in isolation, but instead via ongoing engagement and coordination with their interaction partners, so that sense-making becomes a shared activity. This paves the way for what I will call ‘participatory sense-making.’ To the extent that it involves asynchronous discussion and disembodied social engagement, online learning severs these interactive links between students and makes this sort of participatory sense-making unlikely. (shrink)

By “essentially embodied Kantian selves,” I mean necessarily and completely embodied rational conscious, self-conscious, sensible (i.e., sense-perceiving, imagining, and emoting), volitional or willing, discursive (i.e., conceptualizing, judging, and inferring) animals, or persons, innately possessing dignity, and fully capable not only of free agency, but also of a priori knowledge of analytic and synthetic a priori truths alike, with egocentric centering in manifestly real orientable space and time. The basic theory of essentially embodied Kantian selves was spelled (...) out by Kant over the course of slightly less than two decades, between 1768 and 1787, but above all, it flows from an empirical realist and metaphysical reading of the “Refutation of Idealism” that Kant inserted into the Postulates of Empirical Thought section in the 1787 edition of the first Critique. In my opinion, all rational but also “human, all-too-human” creatures like us are, synthetic a priori necessarily, essentially embodied Kantian selves. Let’s call that the essentially embodied Kantian selves thesis, or for short, EEKST. If EEKST is true, then it’s synthetic a priori impossible for the selves of creatures like us to exist independently of our own living organismic animal bodies or beyond the deaths of those bodies, whether temporarily or permanently, by any means whatsoever. Indeed, the very ideas of disembodied selves, their survival after death, and of human immortality, while minimally logically consistent, are in fact conceptually empty and incoherent, even over and above the synthetic a priori impossibility of such things, since the term “myself” indexically picks out an essentially embodied Kantian self, all of whose core features require grounding in a particular living organismic animal body. According to the recent and contemporary movement of transhumanism, the selves of creatures like us can not only exist independently of our bodies, as functional systems of representational content that are inherently able to be implemented or realized in digital-mechanical technology and uploadable to servers, but also to survive accidental or natural human death in server-limbo, then be downloaded into technologically enhanced partially mechanical humanoid bodies or even into wholly artificially-created completely mechanical non-humanoid bodies, survive in these new implementations or realizations for an indefinitely long time, repeat that process, and possibly even become immortal. Transhumanism is in fact metaphysically equivalent to Swedenborgianism, which Kant so effectively criticizes and wittily derides in his 1766 book, Dreams of a Spirit-Seer Elucidated by Dreams of Metaphysics. Moreover, and more importantly, if EEKST is true, then, just like Swedenborgianism, transhumanism is not only conceptually empty and incoherent, but also synthetic a priori impossible. And what’s more, it’s also existentially and morally reprehensible. In short, then, the belief in transhuman selves is nothing but a reprehensible noumenal fantasy or Hirngespinst. (shrink)

The attempt to appropriate Heidegger’s thinking in order to found environmental ethics continues to pose challenges both for understanding the premise of an ethic, and, conversely, for unfolding the importance of his thought in the effort to displace the anthropocentric focus of modern philosophy. These challenges must be taken up on a methodological as well as a thematic level, in order to show how a claim of being can implicate a reciprocal guidance pertaining to our treatment of the earth, nature, (...) and animals. An appeal to the ethos of situated dwelling is not sufficient to ground a transhuman ethic; rather, a precursory step must be taken to uncover a common space of embodiment, thereby marking a jointure whereby habitats fostering the potential for animals to “flourish” can be cultivated in concert with our own capacity to dwell. When viewed through this prism of our “incarnality,” the stewardship that we practice in dwelling on the earth can also “formally indicate” a sense of proportionality, e.g., a “measure,” counter balancing the interests of animals with humans. Conversely, the search for a trans-human ethic calls for a further transformation of phenomenology through its interface with hermeneutics. (shrink)

This study elaborates on narrative resources emerging in the treatment of longlasting musculoskeletal and psychosomatic disorders in Norwegian psychomotor physiotherapy. Patients’ experiences produced in focus group interviews were analyzed from a narrative perspective, combining common themes across groups with in depth analysis of selected particular stories. NPMP theory expanded by Løgstrup’s and Ricoeur’s philosophy, and Mattingly’s and Frank’s narrative approach provided the theoretical perspective. Patients had discovered meaning imbued in muscular tension. Control shifted from inhibiting discipline and cognitive strategies, towards (...) more contingence with gravity and sensation, and increased freedom to be what and who they were. Trust, time, open speech, and being respectfully listened to were described as therapeutic pre-conditions. The body was experienced as the source of their voice as their own. As tension patterns transformed, novel experience in sensation appeared to feed narrative imagination, reshaping past plots, embodied identity and future prospects. NPMP was disclosed as a treatment integrating detection, battle and repair as narrative subplots, but the core narrative was the journey of transformation. Novel embodied narrative resources nourished the quest for a life and identity in tune with the body as one’s own. (shrink)

Embodied cognitive science holds that cognitive processes are deeply and inescapably rooted in our bodily interactions with the world. Our finite, contingent, and mortal embodiment may be not only supportive, but in some cases even constitutive of emotions, thoughts, and experiences. My discussion here will work outward from the neuroanatomy and neurophysiology of the brain to a nervous system which extends to the boundaries of the body. It will extend to nonneural aspects of embodiment and even beyond the boundaries (...) of the body to prosthetics of various kinds, including symbioses with a broad array of cultural artifacts, our symbolic niche, and our relationships with other embodied human beings. While cognition may not always be situated, its origins are embedded in temporally and spatially limited activities. Cognitive work also can be off-loaded to the body and to the environment in service of action, tool use, group cognition, and social coordination. This can blur the boundaries between brain areas, brain and body, and body and environment, transforming our understanding of mind and personhood to provide a different grounding for faith traditions in general, and of the historically dualist Christian tradition in particular. (shrink)

Embodied knowledge in chronic illness and injury When people experience chronic illness or serious injury, changes occur not just within their physical bodies but also in their embodiments, that is, how they view the world through their bodies. For such patients, dualistic (mind–body) notions of the body as object and the mind as subject can devalue experiences that are necessary for healing and for managing everyday problems related to their illness or injury. Nurses need to be able to guide (...) people with illness or injury to new levels of wellness, but may lack appropriate theoretical conceptualizations. Philosophies that underlie embodied knowledge — in particular, philosophies of Merleau‐Ponty and Polanyi — were explored yielding two new ways to understand the body. The body as ‘silent partner’ fosters an appreciation of the body's own subjectivity that can be enhanced in nursing care through sensitivity, listening, and creative coaching. Nurses can assist their patients to identify new and positive understandings of what their bodies mean to them after bodily changes. The body as ‘informant’ holds much promise for solving some of the everyday problems that people with chronic illness or injury experience. By using phenomenological and other naturalistic methods, researchers and patients can find clues to solving such problems, clues that are known through daily living but hidden beneath conscious awareness. As a result, some of the practical know‐how of the body as ‘informant’ can be transformed into testable nursing interventions. (shrink)

This paper reports on a weekend performance event at the Tate Modern that explored how the senses of sound and movement can be used to apprehend geometrical and topological shapes and mathematical concepts. The sound sculpture Knots and Donuts spatialized sound and sonified space. It attuned the ‘mind’s ear’ and the auditory imagination to conceive of a Borromean Knot and a torus within an immersive three-dimensional sound field. Through dance movement, the choreography of Ordinal 5 actualized the specific mathematical entity (...) as understood in category theory. Both parts of the programme are considered as a performance as research experiment with an audience. Its aim was to understand how the sensory experience of the embodied mind might provide a basis of rationality in which meaning is not restricted to text and image, that is, an embodied topology. (shrink)

The last ten years have seen an increasing interest, within cognitive science, in issues concerning the physical body, the local environment, and the complex interplay between neural systems and the wider world in which they function. --œPhysically embodied, environmentally embedded--� approaches thus loom large on the contemporary cognitive scientific scene. Yet many unanswered questions remain, and the shape of a genuinely embodied, embedded science of the mind is still unclear. I begin by sketching a few examples of the (...) approach, and then raise a variety of critical questions concerning its nature and scope. A distinction is drawn between two kinds of appeal to embodiment: 'simple' cases, in which bodily and environmental properties merely constrain accounts that retain the focus on inner organization and processing, and more radical appeals, in which attention to bodily and environmental features is meant to transform both the subject matter and the theoretical framework of cognitive science. (shrink)

This paper presents an account of empathy as the form of experience directed at embodied unities of expressive movement. After outlining the key differences between simulation theory and the phenomenological approach to empathy, the paper argues that while the phenomenological approach is closer to respecting a necessary constitutional asymmetry between first-personal and second-personal senses of embodiment, it still presupposes a general concept of embodiment that ends up being problematic. A different account is proposed that is neutral on the explanatory (...) role of the first-person sense of embodiment, which leads to an emphasis on the transformative nature of empathy and a broadening of the scope of possible targets of empathic awareness. (shrink)

Embodied cognitive science has argued that cognition is embodied principally in virtue of grossmorphological and sensorimotor features. This thesis argues that cognition is also internally embodied in affective and fine-grained physiological features whose transformative roles remain mostly unnoticed in contemporary cognitive science. I call this ‘proper embodiment’. I approach this larger subject by examining various emotion theories in philosophy and psychology. These tend to emphasise one of the many gross components of emotional processes, such as ‘feeling’ or (...) ‘judgement’ to the detriment of the others, often leading to an artificial emotion-cognition distinction even within emotion science itself. Attempts to reconcile this by putting the gross components back together, such as JessePrinz’s “embodied appraisal theory”, are, I argue, destined to failure because the vernacular concept of emotion which is used as the explanandum is not a natural kind and is not amenable to scientific explication.I examine Antonio Damasio’s proposal that emotion is involved in paradigmatic ‘cognitive’ processing such as rational decision making and argue (1) that the research he discusses does not warrant the particular hypothesis he favours, and (2) that Damasio’s account, though in many ways a step in the right direction, nonetheless continues to endorse a framework which sees affect and cognition as separate (though now highly interacting) faculties. I further argue that the conflation of ‘affect’ and 'emotion' may be the source of some confusion in emotion theory and that affect needs to be properly distinguished from ‘emotion’. I examine some dissociations in the pain literature which give us further empirical evidence that, as with the emotions, affect is a distinct component along with more cognitive elements of pain. I then argue that affect is distinctive in being grounded in homeostatic regulative activity in the body proper. With the distinction between affect, emotion, and cognition in hand, and the associated grounding of affect in bodily activity, I then survey evidence that bodily affect is also involved in perception and in paradigmatic cognitive processes such as attention and executive function. I argue that this relation is not ‘merely’ casual. Instead, affect (grounded in fine-grained details of internal bodily activity) is partially constitutive of cognition, participating in cognitive processing and contributing to perceptual and cognitive phenomenology. Finally I review some work in evolutionary robotics which reaches a similar conclusion, suggesting that the particular fine details of embodiment, such as molecular signalling between both neural and somatic cells matters to cognition. I conclude that cognition is properly embodied’ in that it is partially constituted by the many fine-grained bodily processes involved in affect (as demonstrated in the thesis) and plausibly by a wide variety of other fine-grained bodily processes that likewise tend to escape the net of contemporary cognitive science. (shrink)

In higher education, the conventional design of educational programs emphasises imparting knowledge and skills, in line with traditional Western epistemology. This emphasis is particularly evident in the design and implementation of many undergraduate programs in which bodies of knowledge and skills are decontextualised from the practices to which they belong. In contrast, the notion of knowledge as foundational and absolute has been extensively challenged. A transformation and pluralisation has occurred: knowledge has come to be seen as situated and localized (...) into various 'knowledges', and the status of the body has taken on renewed significance in epistemological debates. Rather than thinking of knowledge as transcending the body, the embodiment of knowledge has become a key factor in understanding the nature of knowledge and what it means to know. In this paper, we adopt a phenomenological perspective in exploring the notion of embodied knowing as it relates to higher education programs and, more specifically, the ways in which information and communication technologies (ICTs) are used in these programs. (shrink)

This dissertation integrates the work of feminist care theorists such as Carol Gilligan with the phenomenological work on embodiment of Maurice Merleau-Ponty as well as the social philosophy of Jane Addams to create an approach to morality that I call, "Embodied Care." I define embodied care as an approach to morality that shifts ethical considerations to context, relationships, and affective knowledge in a manner that can only be fully understood if its embodied dimension is recognized. Care is (...) exhibited through habits that are an expression of embodied knowledge and contribute to a caring imagination. Care is committed to the flourishing and growth of individuals yet acknowledges our interconnectedness and interdependence. This dissertation aims to contribute two ideas to existing care discourse: Care cannot be fully understood without attending to its embodied dimension and that care can be a viable component of a social ethic but only if its corporeal aspect is addressed. ;The introduction contains my definition of care that will be explicated throughout the dissertation. The opening chapter reviews the current literature on care ethics and organizes various positions held to help clarify the assertion I will make throughout the dissertation: care is more foundational than an ethical theory because it is rooted in the body. Largely drawing upon the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, chapter two establishes how the body is "built for caring" by exploring caring knowledge and caring habits. Chapter three bridges individual and social considerations through the notion of a caring imagination which employs corporeal resources to transcend distance and time to understand and empathize with others. In chapter four the work of Jane Addams is used to understand how attending to embodiment can contribute to social habits of care that build a caring society. The final chapter explores how embodied care transforms the moral landscape on a personal and a social level. ;Rather than providing the definitive answers desired by traditional ethical systems, embodied care points to the kinds of questions and issues that should be attended to. Embodied care is not about "getting it right," but about "making it better" for those involved. (shrink)

This essay is an introduction to the cluster on Latina feminism published in Hypatia (Spring 2016), Vo. 31 (2), which features essays on various areas of Latina feminisms as well as discussions on the intersection of Latina feminisms and the work of thinkers such as Mikhail Bakhtin, Simone de Beauvoir, Enrique Dussell, Immanuel Kant, Édouard Glissant, Walter Mignolo, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Contributors to the cluster include Stephanie Rivera Berruz, Cynthia M. Paccacerqua, Andrea J. Pitts, Monique Roelofs, Susan C. Méndez, Gabriela (...) Veronelli, and Elena Flores Ruiz. (shrink)

Although people can take spatial perspectives different from their own, it is widely assumed that egocentric perspectives are natural and have primacy. Two studies asked respondents to describe the spatial relations between two objects on a table in photographed scenes; in some versions, a person sitting behind the objects was either looking at or reaching for one of the objects. The mere presence of another person in a position to act on the objects induced a good proportion of respondents (...) to describe the spatial relations from that person’s point of view. When the query about the spatial relations was phrased in terms of action, more respondents took the other’s perspective than their own. The implication of action elicits spontaneous spatial perspective-taking, seemingly in the service of understanding the other’s actions. (shrink)

Recent years have seen the emergence of a new interdisciplinary field called embodied or enactive cognitive science. Whereas traditional representationalism rests on a fixed inside–outside distinction, the embodied cognition perspective views mind and brain as a biological system that is rooted in body experience and interaction with other individuals. Embodiment refers to both the embedding of cognitive processes in brain circuitry and to the origin of these processes in an organism’s sensory–motor experience. Thus, action and perception are no (...) longer interpreted in terms of the classic physical–mental dichotomy, but rather as closely interlinked. This paper describes the cycles of brain–organism interaction, of sensory–motor interaction with the environment and of embodied interaction with others. The brain is then interpreted as an organ of modulation and transformation that mediates the cycles of organism–environment interaction. Finally, consequences of the embodied and enactive approach for psychiatry are pointed out, in particular for a circular concept of mental illness. (shrink)

This article focuses on the transformation of the female reproductive body with the use of assisted reproduction technologies under neo-liberal economic globalisation, wherein the ideology of trade without borders is central, as well as under liberal feminist ideals, wherein the right to self-determination is central. Two aspects of the body in western medicine—the fragmented body and the commodified body, and the integral relation between these two—are highlighted. This is done in order to analyse the implications of local and global (...) transactions in women’s reproductive body parts for their right to self-determination and individual agency and what this means for their embodiment. We conclude by exploring whether women can become embodied subjects by exercising their proprietary right to their bodies through directing technology to achieve their own goals, while at the same time being fragmented into parts and losing their personhood and bodily integrity. (shrink)

Education theorists have emphasized that transformative learning is not simply a matter of students gaining access to new knowledge and information, but instead centers upon personal transformation: it alters students’ perspectives, interpretations, and responses. How should learning that brings about this sort of self-transformation be understood from the perspectives of philosophy of mind and cognitive science? Jack Mezirow has described transformative learning primarily in terms of critical reflection, meta-cognitive reasoning, and the questioning of assumptions and beliefs. And within (...) mainstream philosophy of mind, there has been a long-standing assumption that cognition and thought are brain-based, computational, disembodied processes that occur separately from emotion and affect. According to this view, selftransformation might be construed as the forging of new neural connections and the development of new cognitive “programs.” However, I will argue that the literature on embodiment and enactivism that has emerged in recent years offers us a different and more productive way to conceptualize the intended effects of transformative learning. From the standpoint of enactivism, the experience of transformative learning is thoroughly bound up with the cognitive shifts that it involves, and it also involves significant changes to the neurobiological dynamics of the living body. Moreover, personal transformation is not simply something that happens to subjects, but rather a process in which they are actively and dynamically engaged. In addition, this enactivist approach emphasizes that the learning process is fully embodied and fundamentally affective. From a phenomenological perspective, personal transformation can be understood as a pronounced alteration in cognitive-affective orientation; and from a neurobiological perspective, the development of new habits of mind can be understood as the formation of highly integrated patterns of bodily engagement and response. The upshot is that it is not just subjects’ brains that are altered over the course of transformative learning, but also their overall bodily and affective attunement to their surroundings. (shrink)

In this article, our concern is to describe how body(ies) and self are performed in women’s birth narratives through the mediation of a number of significant elements, including technical devices. We will show how, in these narratives, (1) action is distributed among a series of actants, including professionals and technology; (2) that dichotomies appear which cannot be reduced to one of body/mind, but are more adequately described in terms of ‘body-in-labour’/’embodied self’, each of them being locally performed through the (...) mediation of medical practices, knowledge and technologies, the definition of these elements and of their relations being specific to each obstetrical configuration; (3) that part of professionals’ activities is devoted to the detailed management of the articulation between the body-in-labour and the embodied self, and to monitoring their joint transformations. (shrink)

This paper aims to clarify Merleau-Ponty’s contribution to an embodied-enactive account of mathematical cognition. I first identify the main points of interest in the current discussions of embodied higher cognition and explain how they relate to Merleau-Ponty and his sources, in particular Husserl’s late works. Subsequently, I explain these convergences in greater detail by more specifically discussing the domains of geometry and algebra and by clarifying the role of gestalt psychology in Merleau-Ponty’s account. Beyond that, I explain how, (...) for Merleau-Ponty, mathematical cognition requires not only the presence and actual manipulation of some concrete perceptible symbols but, more strongly, how it is fundamentally linked to the structural transformation of the concrete configurations of symbolic systems to which these symbols appertain. Furthemore, I fill a gap in the literature by explaining Merleau-Ponty’s claim that these structural transformations are operated through motor intentionality. This makes it possible, in turn, to contrast Merleau-Ponty’s approach to ontologically idealistic and realistic views on mathematical objects. On Merleau-Ponty’s account, mathematical objects are relational entities, that is, gestalts that necessarily imply situated cognizers to whom they afford a specific type of engagement in the world and on whom they depend in their eventual structural transformations. I argue that, by attributing a strongly constitutive role to phenomenal configurations and their motor transformation in mathematical thinking, Merleau-Ponty contributes to clarifying the worldly, historical, and socio-cultural aspects of mathematical truths without compromising what we perceive as their universality, certainty, and necessity. (shrink)

During the Covid-19 pandemic we increasingly turned to technology to stay in touch with our family, friends, and colleagues. Even as lockdowns and restrictions ease many are encouraging us to embrace the replacement of face-to-face encounters with technologically mediated ones. Yet, as philosophers of technology have highlighted, technology can transform the situations we find ourselves in. Drawing insights from the phenomenology of sociality, we consider how digitally-enabled forms of communication and sociality impact our experience of one another. In particular, we (...) draw attention to the way in which our embodied experience of one another is altered when we meet in digital spaces, taking as our focus the themes of perceptual access, intercorporeality, shared space, transitional spaces, and self-presentation. In light of the way in which technological mediation alters various dimensions of our social encounters, we argue that digital encounters constitute their own forms of sociality requiring their own phenomenological analysis. We conclude our paper by raising some broader concerns about the very framework of thinking about digitally and non-digitally mediated social encounters simply in terms of replacement. (shrink)

In higher education, the conventional design of educational programs emphasises imparting knowledge and skills, in line with traditional Western epistemology. This emphasis is particularly evident in the design and implementation of many undergraduate programs in which bodies of knowledge and skills are decontextualised from the practices to which they belong. In contrast, the notion of knowledge as foundational and absolute has been extensively challenged. A transformation and pluralisation has occurred: knowledge has come to be seen as situated and localized (...) into various ‘knowledges’, and the status of the body has taken on renewed significance in epistemological debates. Rather than thinking of knowledge as transcending the body, the embodiment of knowledge has become a key factor in understanding the nature of knowledge and what it means to know. In this paper, we adopt a phenomenological perspective in exploring the notion of embodied knowing as it relates to higher education programs and, more specifically, the ways in which information and communication technologies (ICTs) are used in these programs. (shrink)

This article presents a new approach to understanding ritual: embodied world construction. Informed by phenomenology and a philosophy of embodiment, this approach argues that rituals can (re)shape the structure of an individual's perceptual world. Ritual participation transforms how the world appears for an individual through the inculcation of new perceptual habits, enabling the perception of objects and properties which could not previously be apprehended. This theory is then applied to two case studies from an existing ethnographic study of North (...) American evangelicalism, indicating how the theory of embodied world construction can shed new light on how individuals are shaped by ritual practice. (shrink)

While the emphasis on embodiment and situatedness is strong in contemporary philosophy and cognitive sciences, its implications for the practice of critical thinking are just beginning to be taken seriously. The challenge is to think with the richness and the intricacy that come along with embodiment of situated knowers and on the basis of the experiential turn. Even though the embodied and experiential dimension is operative and continuously present all the time in thought and action, it is hardly acknowledged, (...) cared for, or made transparent in academic philosophical training. In doing philosophy we are actually rather trained to detach ourselves from the experiential basis of our thinking. In this paper we claim that by doing so we cut ourselves off from important sources of what it means to think for oneself. We argue that the more embodied context one dares to include in critical thinking, the more critique becomes personally and politically transformative. This has major methodological implications: one needs to learn “reading” embodied, felt experience as carefully and closely as the texts. The methods of Embodied Critical Thinking presented here are based on the micro-phenomenological approach of Claire Petitmengin and the Thinking at the Edge method developed by Eugene Gendlin and Mary Hendricks. (shrink)