This article argues that psychological discourse fails miserably to provide an account of learning that can explain how humans come to understand, particularly understanding that has been grasped meaningfully. Part of the problem with psychological approaches to learning is that they are disconnected from the integral role embodiment plays in how I perceive myself, other persons and other things in the world. In this sense, it is argued that a central tenet of any educational learning involves being (...) taught to perceive, come to know ourselves and the world around us. This may seem like stating the obvious, but there is a general tendency to take the experience of perception for granted. Since phenomenology according to Merleau-Ponty recognises that perceptual experience is the basis of ‘all rationality’ makes it particularly apt for explaining the significant role embodiment plays in understanding what has been learned, and understanding that has been grasped meaningfully. What makes this account of embodied learning educationally significant is that the whole person is treated as a whole being, permitting the person to experience him or herself as a holistic and synthesised acting, feeling, thinking being-in-the-world, rather than as separate physical and mental qualities which bear no relation to each other. (shrink)

Developmental psychologists have long recognized the extraordinary influence of action on learning (Held & Hein, 1963; Piaget, 1952). Action experiences begin to shape our perception of the world during infancy (e.g., as infants gain an understanding of others’ goal-directed actions; Woodward, 2009) and these effects persist into adulthood (e.g., as adults learn about complex concepts in the physical sciences; Kontra, Lyons, Fischer, & Beilock, 2012). Theories of embodied cognition provide a structure within which we can investigate the mechanisms (...) underlying action’s impact on thinking and reasoning. We argue that theories of embodiment can shed light on the role of action experience in early learning contexts, and further that these theories hold promise for using action to scaffold learning in more formal educational settings later in development. (shrink)

This article analyses how difficulties are used as learning tools in the Feldenkrais Method of somatic education (FM), drawing on Moshe Feldenkrais’s theory and teachings, my experience as a practitioner since 2007 and my use of FM in postgraduate academic teaching. Performer training, particularly Eugenio Barba’s work, offers a wider context of embodied practice. FM challenges the parameters of difficulty, framing it as inherently productive. Key difficulties used productively in FM are the non-habitual, constraints, differentiation, diffuse attention and (...) disorientation. To demonstrate the connection between physical and intellectual difficulties, I draw on Sara Ahmed’s queer phenomenological approach to orientation and Maxine Sheets-Johnstone’s argument for the ‘primacy of movement’. I offer new ways of thinking about difficulty as emergent rather than intrinsic, expanding outwards from clearly embodied practices towards intellectual ones. To anchor this, I refer to an experiment in Israel aiming to integrate ‘organic’ and ‘scholastic’ learning through FM. (shrink)

The last decades have seen a rising philosophical interest in the phenomenology of skill acquisition. One central topic in this work is the relation between the athlete's background capacities and foreground attention as an invariant feature of skilful movements. The purpose of this paper is to examine further this gestalt relation from the perspective of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological account of embodied learning and a classical notion from philosophy of sport, namely ?sweet tension of uncertainty of outcome?. In the first (...) part we will explicate how Merleau-Ponty understands embodied learning as a form of gestalt switch that allows the athlete to perceive the world more meaningfully in relation to an ongoing movement project. That is, a skilled athlete perceives more and better opportunities for actions. In the second part, we revisit the classical notion of ?sweet tension of uncertainty of outcome? developed by Kretchmar. This phrase is attributed to the indeterminate back and forth rallies between sport contestants, and to persons facing a sport situation that produces an ambiguity as to whether one will succeed in one's task. In the third part, we then juxtapose Merleau-Ponty's notion of embodied learning and the notion of sweet tension from philosophy of sport in order to draw out the relations between the two notions. In addition, in much of the philosophical work on skill acquisition (for instance in Merleau-Ponty and his much-cited commentator, Hubert Dreyfus) the distinction between everyday skills (such as walking and opening doors) and sport skills is collapsed. Our discussion aims to show that by introducing the notion of ?sweet tension? to the literature on phenomenology of skill acquisition, we are able to highlight a phenomenological difference between everyday skills and sport skills. (shrink)

In this article, the notion of re-embodiment is developed to include the ways that rearrangement and renewals of body schema take place in rehabilitation. More specifically, the embodied learning process of acquiring wheelchair skills serves as a starting point for fleshing out a phenomenological understanding of incorporation of assistive devices. By drawing on the work of Merleau-Ponty, the reciprocal relation between acquisition habits and incorporation of instruments is explored in relation to the learning of wheelchair skills. On (...) the basis of this, it is argued that through learning to manoeuvre the wheelchair, a reversible relation between is established between the moving body-subject and the wheelchair. In this sense, re-embodiment involves a gestalt switch from body image to body schema. (shrink)

"This paper builds on John Dewey’s views on interactions to suggest pathways for enriching the study of philosophy. Along with the notions of body-mind and organism-environment transactions, interactions are part of a philosophical project with transformative implications for education as well. The first part of the paper will contextualize Dewey’s discussion of interactions with regard to his philosophy of experience and democratic theory. The second one will propose two criteria with regard to enriching philosophical training in ways that engage the (...) mind and the body - increasing sociocultural awareness and generating integrative learning experiences – and will add a few examples of how the study of philosophy could benefit from applying an interactionist perspective. Keywords: education, experience, interaction, philosophy, John Dewey. ". (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to propose that the notion of the conceptual metaphor, as defined in the theoretical framework of embodied learning, can have a role in the construction of children’s arithmetic and, in particular, in their invention of calculation strategies. In doing so it acknowledges the role of the sensory perceptual world in the development of children’s arithmetic. A Piagetian framework makes a distinction between an embodied world of learning and the operational world (...) of arithmetic. The two theoretical frameworks are compared in relation to children’s realisation of the equality of commuted pairs in addition. The proposal is that the conceptual metaphor can be seen as an additional cognitive tool to explore children’s analogous reasoning in abstractions from the results of operations. The potential of the conceptual metaphor in this role would be to provide a theoretical framework to explore children’s development of arithmetic in terms of their everyday, perceptual experiences. In doing so it supports the notion of analogy as a key part in the creative process of arithmetic. (shrink)

Women often embody the central values and practices of their religious tradition. When they leave their community, women find a part of the “religious tapestry” remaining with them long after their disengagement. In this article, we draw from research in the UK and Finland to explore women’s efforts to unlearn parts of their former religious belonging. We draw on in total thirty-five interviews with women who disengaged from the Mormon Church, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Conservative Laestadianism. We conceptualize un/learning as (...) a multi-layered process consisting of both un-learning and re-learning. We explore women’s narratives about negotiating bodily limits, conduct and belonging, and understand these as suggesting experiences of a threefold un/learning: gendered, spatial-social and epistemic. We argue that examining gendered and embodied un/learning helps to understand women’s disengagement processes from minority Christian traditions in Western and Northern European secularized contexts such as the UK and Finland. (shrink)

This paper offers an introduction to the philosophy and science of embodied learning, conceived as both the stabilizing and expansionary process that sustains order and novelty within learners’ worlds enacted through observing and describing. Embodied learning acknowledges stability and change as the purposeful conjoined characteristics that sustain learners. It is, in many respects, a composite theory that represents work from various disciplines. This ‘naturalized epistemology’ conceives a world of fact inevitably imbued with the values that our (...) own structural histories guarantee us observers, whether acknowledged or not within our reflective awareness. These values, however, are not simple sets of preferences, for they are constituted in our individual learning histories that, for good or bad, influence the course of future learning. This conservational element of our condition is only half the story, however. The more radical aspect resides in the expansionary capacity of embodied observers to change, to enact worlds that are not pre‐given but, rather, brought forth by learners as observers and describers. Furthermore, embodied learning seeks a grounding for understanding in the often‐unexplored epistemological terrain between positivist absolutism or its mirrored polar opposite, postmodern nihilism. Its epistemological stance derives from its ontology, which is grounded in the profound obviousness that ‘everything said is said by someone’. (shrink)

This paper offers an introduction to the philosophy and science of embodied learning, conceived as both the stabilizing and expansionary process that sustains order and novelty within learners’ worlds enacted through observing and describing. Embodied learning acknowledges stability and change as the purposeful conjoined characteristics that sustain learners. It is, in many respects, a composite theory that represents work from various disciplines. This ‘naturalized epistemology’ ( ) conceives a world of fact inevitably imbued with the values (...) that our own structural histories guarantee us observers, whether acknowledged or not within our reflective awareness. These values, however, are not simple sets of preferences, for they are constituted in our individual learning histories that, for good or bad, influence the course of future learning. This conservational element of our condition is only half the story, however. The more radical aspect resides in the expansionary capacity of embodied observers to change, to enact worlds that are not pre‐given ( ) but, rather, brought forth by learners as observers and describers. Furthermore, embodied learning seeks a grounding for understanding in the often‐unexplored epistemological terrain between positivist absolutism or its mirrored polar opposite, postmodern nihilism. Its epistemological stance derives from its ontology, which is grounded in the profound obviousness that ‘everything said is said by someone’ (, p. 27). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Learning Music:Embodied Experience in the Life-WorldEva Alerby and Cecilia FermIn the present age, which is often signified as post-modern or knowledge-intensive, the calls for learning echo loud. Discussions of learning, as well as teaching, permeate almost all levels and arenas of our society, and have a sure place in every-day conversation as well as scientific debate. The concept of learning can be understood and (...) explained in many different ways. Our intention in this article is to make visible and discuss how learning music can be understood and explained from a life-world approach.By life-world approach we mean that learning is constituted by the experiences that we are having in the world. From that perspective it can be seen as a process which leads to some kind of change, whose utmost purpose is—consciously or unconsciously—to create meaning and make managing the world possible. In addition, we stress that learning does not arise nor is formed in a vacuum, but instead is found in complex contexts. In turn this creates the necessity of making learning situated and contextualized.1How one understands how music is learned is consequently influenced not only by what fundamental assumptions one holds about learning but also by prevailing views of music. Furthermore, how musical ability is regarded and whether musicality is accepted as an emotional or cognitive phenomenon is also [End Page 177] important. Other assumptions that need to be considered are whether or not it is possible to divide musicality into smaller parts and if that is the case, what is the relationship between these parts. One further question that has to be illuminated is the question about biological and social influences on musicality.2 According to Sture Brändström,3 musicality is sometimes divided into two categories—absolute contra relativistic musicality. The first category implies that musicality is regarded as a native ability, already existing within the human being, an ability that some people have and others lack. The second category reflects an approach that assumes that musicality is something everybody can acquire, it can be learned and appropriated. We will return later to this issue.These questions reveal a dualistic approach, specifically: whether musicality is an emotional or a cognitive phenomenon, or absolute or relative, which in turn leads to the question of whether or not learning music is constituted within or outside the human being. To expose problems related to this dualistic approach in music education, we will examine musical learning using life-world phenomenology as a theoretical framework, a brief description of which follows.Phenomenology: A Way of ThinkingAt the turn into the twentieth century, the German philosopher, Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), named his philosophical approach phenomenology, and with that the development of modern phenomenology began. Phenomenology is both a method and a way of thought.4 He distinguished the fundamental principle of phenomenology as—'back to the things themselves.' According to Husserl it is through experiences that we gain access to things themselves. The concept of experience was essential to his formulation, and it became a key signature for the whole of phenomenology. His starting-point was how the world is experienced in a subjective way, and the aim was to find a way to describe the meaning of these subjective experiences. In other words, phenomenology has been summarized as a description of how the world is experienced by the person in the world.Various thinkers have interpreted phenomenology in different ways. Jan Bengtsson5 emphasized that phenomenological method should be named in the plural as methods. The phenomenology of the life-world, which was developed as an alternative to the so-called epoché, the special method of transcendental phenomenology, is a philosophy of the life-world without transcendental reduction. It is the life-world that constitutes the basis of our lives. It is the everyday world of our experiences, which we take for granted and where we live our lives. In other words it is the life-world that constitutes people's being-in-the-world.6 Through our existence we experience the concrete world in all its complexity, which is both historically and contextually dependent. Consequently... (shrink)

Weather experiences are currently surprisingly under-explored and under-theorised in sociology and sport sociology, despite the importance of weather in both routine, everyday life and in recreational sporting and physical–cultural contexts. To address this lacuna, we examine here the lived experience of weather, including ‘weather work’ and ‘weather learning’, in our specific physical–cultural worlds of distance-running, triathlon and jogging in the United Kingdom. Drawing on a theoretical framework of phenomenological sociology, and the findings from five separate auto/ethnographic projects, we explore (...) the ‘weather-worlds’ and weather work involved in our physical–cultural engagement. In so doing, we address ongoing sport sociological concerns about embodiment and somatic, sensory learning and ways of knowing. We highlight how weather work provides a key example of the phenomenological conceptualisation of the mind–body–world nexus in action, with key findings delineating weather learning across the meteorological seasons that contour our British weather-related training. (shrink)

Over the past 25 years, UK government policy exhortations to promote and increase exercise and physical activity levels in the population have increased in volume. In recent years, too, there has been growing sociological interest in exercise and physical activity embodiment issues, including within phenomenologically-inspired research into lived-body experiences. This article contributes original insights to a developing body of phenomenological-sociological empirical work in this domain, in addressing the lived experience of organised exercise in outdoor environments, and specifically in theorising the (...) role of ‘lived weather’ in contouring these experiences. It thus addresses the call by Vannini et al. (2012) to remedy the notable ‘absent-presence’ of weather in much social science research. Drawing upon data from a two-year multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional ethnographic study of a nationwide exercise programme in Wales, UK, this article examines participants’ (n = 146) lived experience of weather, and theorises their ‘weather learning’, and ‘weather work’, both of which emerged as highly salient in the findings. (shrink)

Embodiment as a compelling way to rethink the nature of teaching and learning asks participants to see fundamentally what is at stake within teaching/learning situations, encountering ourselves and our relations to others/otherness. Drawing predominantly on the thinking of John Dewey and Maurice Merleau-Ponty the body's role within teaching and learning is enfleshed through the concrete experiences of one middle-school science teacher attempting to teach for greater student inquiry. Personal, embodied understandings of the lived terms of inquiry (...) enable the science teacher to seek out the lived terms of inquiry in her classroom alongside students. Theories are taken up as working notions for the teacher to examine as philosophical/theoretical/pragmatic processes to be worked with, and concomitantly, working as dynamic practice at the core of the teacher's thinking and experiences. The theory/practice conjuncture of inquiry is thus enfleshed, gaining embodied understandings. Embodiment as the medium enhancing comprehension is evidenced as holding worthy implications for teacher education. Teacher education must fall into trust with the body's role in teaching and learning. (shrink)

Successful social functioning requires quick and accurate processing of emotion and generation of appropriate reactions. In typical individuals, these skills are supported by embodied processing, recruiting central and peripheral mechanisms. However, emotional processing is atypical in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Individuals with ASD show deficits in recognition of briefly presented emotional expressions. They tend to recognize expressions using rule-based, rather than template, strategies. Individuals with ASD also do not spontaneously and quickly mimic emotional expressions, unless the task (...) encourages engagement. When processing emotional scenes, ASD individuals show atypical basic motivational responses, despite intact ability to verbally determine stimulus valence. We discuss how these findings highlight the contribution of both embodied and disembodied mechanisms to typical and atypical emotional functioning. (shrink)

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)

Embodiment as a compelling way to rethink the nature of teaching and learning asks participants to see fundamentally what is at stake within teaching/learning situations, encountering ourselves and our relations to others/otherness. Drawing predominantly on the thinking of John Dewey and Maurice Merleau‐Ponty the body's role within teaching and learning is enfleshed through the concrete experiences of one middle‐school science teacher attempting to teach for greater student inquiry. Personal, embodied understandings of the lived terms of inquiry (...) enable the science teacher to seek out the lived terms of inquiry in her classroom alongside students. Theories are taken up as working notions for the teacher to examine as philosophical/theoretical/pragmatic processes to be worked with, and concomitantly, working as dynamic practice at the core of the teacher's thinking and experiences. The theory/practice conjuncture of inquiry is thus enfleshed, gaining embodied understandings. Embodiment as the medium enhancing comprehension is evidenced as holding worthy implications for teacher education. Teacher education must fall into trust with the body's role in teaching and learning. (shrink)

This paper takes an embodied and extended cognition perspective to ER integration – a cognitive process through which a learner integrates external representations in a domain, with her internal model, as she interacts with, uses, understands and transforms between those ERs. In the paper, I argue for a theoretical as well as empirical shift in future investigations of ER integration, by proposing a model of cognitive mechanisms underlying the process, based on recent advances in extended and embodied cognition. (...) I present this new model in contrast to the still dominant classical cognitivist approaches to ER integration, and the educational technology intervention designs such approaches inspire. I then exemplify this distinction between the information processing model and the new model through a case of arithmetic problem solving. Corroborative neuroscience evidence presented in relation to this case provides empirical support for the new model by showing how bodily actions are critical to ER integration and learning. Finally, as educational implications of the new model, I demonstrate the need for: re-viewing the development of ER integration and expertise as fine-tuning of the learner's action or sensorimotor system, and a shift of focus in new-media intervention design principles based on this newer understanding of ER integration in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. (shrink)

This book offers a rich collection of voices from diverse settings and illustrates ways in which lectio divina as a contemplative practice can transform teaching and learning. Drawing on holistic education and embodied learning, lectio divina empowers teachers and roots students in their own meaning making.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Learning Music:Embodied Experience in the Life-WorldEva Alerby and Cecilia FermIn the present age, which is often signified as post-modern or knowledge-intensive, the calls for learning echo loud. Discussions of learning, as well as teaching, permeate almost all levels and arenas of our society, and have a sure place in every-day conversation as well as scientific debate. The concept of learning can be understood and (...) explained in many different ways. Our intention in this article is to make visible and discuss how learning music can be understood and explained from a life-world approach.By life-world approach we mean that learning is constituted by the experiences that we are having in the world. From that perspective it can be seen as a process which leads to some kind of change, whose utmost purpose is—consciously or unconsciously—to create meaning and make managing the world possible. In addition, we stress that learning does not arise nor is formed in a vacuum, but instead is found in complex contexts. In turn this creates the necessity of making learning situated and contextualized.1How one understands how music is learned is consequently influenced not only by what fundamental assumptions one holds about learning but also by prevailing views of music. Furthermore, how musical ability is regarded and whether musicality is accepted as an emotional or cognitive phenomenon is also [End Page 177] important. Other assumptions that need to be considered are whether or not it is possible to divide musicality into smaller parts and if that is the case, what is the relationship between these parts. One further question that has to be illuminated is the question about biological and social influences on musicality.2 According to Sture Brändström,3 musicality is sometimes divided into two categories—absolute contra relativistic musicality. The first category implies that musicality is regarded as a native ability, already existing within the human being, an ability that some people have and others lack. The second category reflects an approach that assumes that musicality is something everybody can acquire, it can be learned and appropriated. We will return later to this issue.These questions reveal a dualistic approach, specifically: whether musicality is an emotional or a cognitive phenomenon, or absolute or relative, which in turn leads to the question of whether or not learning music is constituted within or outside the human being. To expose problems related to this dualistic approach in music education, we will examine musical learning using life-world phenomenology as a theoretical framework, a brief description of which follows.Phenomenology: A Way of ThinkingAt the turn into the twentieth century, the German philosopher, Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), named his philosophical approach phenomenology, and with that the development of modern phenomenology began. Phenomenology is both a method and a way of thought.4 He distinguished the fundamental principle of phenomenology as—'back to the things themselves.' According to Husserl it is through experiences that we gain access to things themselves. The concept of experience was essential to his formulation, and it became a key signature for the whole of phenomenology. His starting-point was how the world is experienced in a subjective way, and the aim was to find a way to describe the meaning of these subjective experiences. In other words, phenomenology has been summarized as a description of how the world is experienced by the person in the world.Various thinkers have interpreted phenomenology in different ways. Jan Bengtsson5 emphasized that phenomenological method should be named in the plural as methods. The phenomenology of the life-world, which was developed as an alternative to the so-called epoché, the special method of transcendental phenomenology, is a philosophy of the life-world without transcendental reduction. It is the life-world that constitutes the basis of our lives. It is the everyday world of our experiences, which we take for granted and where we live our lives. In other words it is the life-world that constitutes people's being-in-the-world.6 Through our existence we experience the concrete world in all its complexity, which is both historically and contextually dependent. Consequently... (shrink)

Much of our everyday, embodied action comes in the form of smooth coping. Smooth coping is skillful action that has become habituated and ingrained, generally placing less stress on cognitive load than considered and deliberative thought and action. When performed with skill and expertise, walking, driving, skiing, musical performances, and short-order cooking are all examples of the phenomenon. Smooth coping is characterized by its rapidity and relative lack of reflection, both being hallmarks of automatization. Deliberative and reflective actions provide (...) the contrast case. In Dreyfus’ classic view, smooth coping is “mindless” absorption into action, being in the flow, and any reflective thought will only interrupt this flow. Building on the pragmatist account of Dewey, others, such as Sutton, Montero, and Gallagher, insist on the intelligent flexibility built into smooth coping, suggesting that it is not equivalent to automatization. We seek to answer two complementary challenges in this article. First, how might we model smooth coping in autonomous agents at fine granularity? Second, we use this model of smooth coping to show how we might implement smooth coping in artificial intelligent agents. We develop a conceptual model of smooth coping in LIDA. LIDA is an embodied cognitive architecture implementing the global workspace theory of consciousness, among other psychological theories. LIDA’s implementation of consciousness enables us to account for the phenomenology of smooth coping, something that few cognitive architectures would be able to do. Through the fine granular analysis of LIDA, we argue that smooth coping is a sequence of automatized actions intermittently interspersed with consciously mediated action selection, supplemented by dorsal stream processes. In other words, non-conscious, automatized actions often require occasional bursts of conscious cognition to achieve the skillful and flexible adjustments of smooth coping. In addition, never-conscious dorsal stream information and associated sensorimotor processes provide further online adjustments during smooth coping. To achieve smooth coping in LIDA we introduce a new module to the LIDA cognitive architecture the Automatized Action Selection sub-module. Our complex model of smooth coping borrows notions of “embodied intelligence” from enactivism and augments these by allowing representations and more detailed mechanisms of conscious control. We explore several extended examples of smooth coping, starting from basic activities like walking and scaling up to more complex tasks like driving and short-order cooking. (shrink)

Ostension is bodily movement that manifests our engagement with things, whether we wish it to or not. Gestures, glances, facial expressions: all betray our interest in something. Ostension enables our first word learning, providing infants with a prelinguistic way to grasp the meaning of words. Ostension is philosophically puzzling; it cuts across domains seemingly unbridgeable -- public--private, inner--outer, mind--body. In this book, Chad Engelland offers a philosophical investigation of ostension and its role in word learning by infants. Engelland (...) discusses ostension (distinguishing it from ostensive definition) in contemporary philosophy, examining accounts by Quine, Davidson, and Gadamer, and he explores relevant empirical findings in psychology, evolutionary anthropology, and neuroscience. He offers original studies of four representative historical thinkers whose work enriches the understanding of ostension: Wittgenstein, Merleau-Ponty, Augustine, and Aristotle. And, building on these philosophical and empirical foundations, Engelland offers a meticulous analysis of the philosophical issues raised by ostension. He examines the phenomenological problem of whether embodied intentions are manifest or inferred; the problem of what concept of mind allows ostensive cues to be intersubjectively available; the epistemological problem of how ostensive cues, notoriously ambiguous, can be correctly understood; and the metaphysical problem of the ultimate status of the key terms in his argument: animate movement, language, and mind. Finally, he argues for the centrality of manifestation in philosophy. Taking ostension seriously, he proposes, has far-reaching implications for thinking about language and the practice of philosophy. (shrink)

The study of imitation and other mechanisms of social learning is an exciting area of research for all those interested in understanding the origin and the nature of animal learning in asocial context. Moreover, imitation is an increasingly important research topic in Artificial Intelligence and social robotics which opens up the possibility ofindividualized social intelligencein robots that are part of a community, and allows us to harness not only individual learning by the single robot, but also the (...) acquisition of new skills by observing other members of the community. After an introduction to the main research issues in research on imitation in various fields, we motivate the particular focus of this work, namely thecorrespondence problem. We describeAction Learning for Imitation via Correspondences between Embodiments, an implemented generic framework for solving the correspondence problem between differently embodied robots. Alice enables a robotic agent to learn a behavioral repertoire suitable to performing a task by observing a model agent. Importantly, the model agent could possibly possess a different type of body, e.g. a different number of limbs or joints, a different height, different sensors, a different basic action repertoire, etc. Previously, in a test-bed where the agents differed according to their possible movement patterns, we demonstrated that the character of imitation achieved will depend on the granularity of subgoal matching, and on the metrics used to evaluate success.In our current work, we implemented Alice in a new test-bed calledRabitwhere simple simulated robotic arm agents use various metrics for evaluating success according to actions, states, effects, or weighted combinations.We examine the roles ofsynchronization,looseness of perceptual matching, and ofproprioceptive matchingby a series of experiments. Also, we study how Alice copes withchanges in the embodimentof the imitator during learning. Our simulation results suggest thatsynchronizationandloose perceptual matchingallow for faster acquisition of behavioral compentencies at low error rates.Social learning plays a role as areplicationmechanism for behaviors and results invariabilitywhen the transmitted behavior differs from the model’s behavior, thus providing theevolutionary substrate for cultureand its pre-cursors. Social learning in robotics could therefore serve as the basis for culture in societies whose members include artificial agents. We address the use of imitative social learning mechanisms like Alice for transmission of skills between robots, and give first examples of transmission of a skill despite differences in embodiment of agents involved. In the particular setup, transmission occurs through a chain, as well as emerging in cyclic arrangements of robots. These simple examples demonstrate that by using social learning and imitation,cultural transmissionis possible among robots, even in heterogeneous groups of robots. (shrink)

Cognitively-oriented theories have dominated the recent history of the study of emotion. However, critics of this perspective suggest the role of the body in the experience of emotion is largely ignored by cognitive theorists. As an alternative to the cognitive perspective, critics are increasingly pointing to William James’ theory, which emphasized somatic aspects of emotions. This emerging emphasis on the embodiment of emotions is shared by those in the field of AI attempting to model human emotions. Behavior-based agents in AI (...) are attempts to model the role the body might play in the experiencing of emotions. Progress in creating such behavior-based models that function in their environments has been slow, suggesting some potential problems with Jamesian alternatives to cognitive perspectives of emotions. Heidegger’s and Merleau-Ponty’s conceptions of embodiment are suggested as alternatives to James’ and as means for addressing the shortcomings of the cognitive perspective. (shrink)

An exploration of somatic awareness and embodied intuition and a guide to how conscious movement practices can help us be more present, be more grounded and intentional, and claim bodily autonomy.

The article explores ethical conceptualisations of time that take the existence of the embodied Other in education into consideration. Kristeva’s time/memory paradox is discussed with regard to teachers’ everyday judgements in relation to student learning. In conclusion, learning as an unruptured endeavour is impossible when the time of the embodied Other is taken into account. In this sense, teachers need to be aware of: 1) the time gap between people, 2) the time gap between the conscious (...) and subconscious, 3) the fact that teachers’ and students’ meaning-making is always tainted by past memory, 4) the ways in which the timelessness of the subconscious crashes into conscious meaning-making in the present and creates ruptures that affect the content of learning and the life conditions of Others, 5) how frozen time can be used as a way of learning from ruptures, and 6) that processing time is just as important as ‘progressing in it’. (shrink)

The procedures used to ensure reliable occurrences of the A-not-B error distort and miss essential features of Piaget's original observations. A model that meshes a mental event, highly restricted by testing procedures, to the dynamics of bodily movement is of limited value. To embody more than just perseverative reaching, the formal model must incorporate Piaget's essential features.

A recent paradigm shift in music research has allowed scholars to examine the macro- and micro-processes taking place within musical performance and underlying cognitive processes. Tying in with phenomenological theories of embodied perception and cognition, this paper focuses on bodily musical activity relevant to the acquisition of instrumental musical skills—the process of learning music. Dynamic interaction with musical instruments, accompanied by the interplay of action and passion, involves body image and body schema, whose status oscillates in different phases (...) of the acquisition of instrumental musical skills; this interaction allows humans to direct attention from their bodily states—the proximal—to the quality of musical sounds and a unity of musical experience—the distal. It is thus argued that shaping music by means of playing a musical instrument can be conceived of as an embodied process, of understanding the forms of one’s own experience as related to the musical world that is created by one’s bodily activity. (shrink)

In this paper I highlight the significance of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s contribution to the study of teacher learning. I particularly draw on his notion of embodiment to show that professional knowledge is embodied knowledge and that teachers make sense of their professional world through their embodied action. I contrast my interpretation with a professional learning model that has been influential in Canada, the US, the UK, Australia and other countries. I suggest that policy makers interested in education (...) reform initiatives would benefit from interrogating the nature of professional practices in education. (shrink)

What significance does the body have in the process of teaching and learning? In what way can the thoughts of a contemporary junior-level teacher in this regard be connected to the theory of the lived body formulated by the French phenomenologist philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), and vice versa? The aim of this paper is to illuminate, enable understanding and discuss the meaning of the body in the learning process, with specific focus on the learning of writing as (...) embodied experience. In the process, the boundaries of learning are also explored. While understanding the significance both of learning as embodied experience and of the boundaries of learning is essential within the educational field, in this paper the discussion is limited to exploring how learning as embodied experience and the boundaries of learning can be viewed by taking Merleau-Ponty's notions as theoretical starting points. In an attempt to answer the aim and connect the paper's theoretical point of departure with a voice from a teacher, an interview with a junior-level teacher was conducted. The paper thus offers a theoretical contribution to the field of educational research, but one in which the theory is exemplified by, and connected to, a teacher's voice. Accordingly, the paper concludes by summarising the common understandings of learning held theoretically by Merleau-Ponty and made real in the activities of the contemporary junior-level teacher. (shrink)

What significance does the body have in the process of teaching and learning? In what way can the thoughts of a contemporary junior-level teacher in this regard be connected to the theory of the lived body formulated by the French phenomenologist philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and vice versa? The aim of this paper is to illuminate, enable understanding and discuss the meaning of the body in the learning process, with specific focus on the learning of writing as (...) class='Hi'>embodied experience. In the process, the boundaries of learning are also explored. While understanding the significance both of learning as embodied experience and of the boundaries of learning is essential within the educational field, in this paper the discussion is limited to exploring how learning as embodied experience and the boundaries of learning can be viewed by taking Merleau-Ponty’s notions as theoretical starting points. In an attempt to answer the aim and connect the paper’s theoretical point of departure with a voice from a teacher, an interview with a junior-level teacher was conducted. The paper thus offers a theoretical contribution to the field of educational research, but one in which the theory is exemplified by, and connected to, a teacher’s voice. Accordingly, the paper concludes by summarising the common understandings of learning held theoretically by Merleau-Ponty and made real in the activities of the contemporary junior-level teacher. (shrink)

This note examines two recent judgements of theEnglish Court of Appeal, Re S.L. and ReA., concerning the sterilisation of a womanand a man with learning disabilities. The casesare significant for health care lawyers in thatthey effect a reworking of the common lawdoctrine of necessity, which serves as thelegal justification for providing medicaltreatment to adults lacking capacity to giveconsent. The cases are also significant forfeminist scholars engaged in the project of`sexing' the subjects of legal discourse (forexample, Naffine and Owens, 1997). (...) Thejudgments of Re S.L. and Re A.,consistent with earlier sterilisation cases,fail to offer a conception of learning disabledsubjects as `sexed'. (shrink)

In this article, we explore the learning of newcomers in a religious community through a micro-sociological approach, making use of Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger’s (1991) notion of “legitimate peripheral participation” to conceptualize initial stages of inclusion and involvement in social practice. Our case study concerns Orthodox Christianity and is based on material gathered through fieldwork in a course targeting potential new members organized by a Finnish Orthodox parish. In the analysis, we inquire into how beginners learn skilful participation (...) in Orthodox liturgical life, and specifically embodied ritual conduct. This learning takes place primarily through participation in real-life divine services. The article highlights challenges faced by beginners in acquiring the embodied repertoire of Orthodox ritual, including adapting to the artistic use of ritual gestures, and negotiating the meanings produced through them. Furthermore, it also illustrates how nuanced dynamics between newcomers and old-timers influence the learning process. (shrink)