Pragmatics & Cognition
July 26, 2011
Tom Froese, Ezequiel Alejandro di Paolo
285 citations
There is a small but growing community of researchers spanning a spectrum of disciplines which are united in rejecting the still dominant computationalist paradigm in favor of the enactive approach . The framework of this approach is centered on a core set of ideas, such as autonomy, sense-making, emergence, embodiment, and experience. These concepts are finding novel applications in a diverse...
Pragmatics & Cognition
December 31, 2010
Jonathan Cole
3 citations
This paper introduces the background to the debate addressed by the papers of this Special Issue of Pragmatics & Cognition. Starting with a definition of consciousness it traces some ways in which the term is applied; from clinical medicine, where it relates somewhat crudely to responsiveness to external stimuli, to more cognitive and philosophical aspects such as higher order consciousness and...
Pragmatics & Cognition
December 31, 2010
Julian Kiverstein
InHow the Mind Uses the BrainRalph Ellis and Natika Newton develop a novel embodied, enactive theory of consciousness, according to which consciousness has its basis in neural systems that prepare the system to perform actions of emotional significance to the organism. Consciousness emerges out of self-organising processes which function in such a way as to contribute to, and maintain, the...
Pragmatics & Cognition
December 31, 2010
Christopher D Frith
In the first talk I discuss recent experiments designed to elucidate the neural correlates of consciousness. Implicit in this discussion are operational definitions of what I mean by consciousness. In the second talk I explore the extent to which we are conscious of being in control of our actions, our sense of agency. I raise the question of why we need to be aware of actions at all since we...
Pragmatics & Cognition
December 31, 2010
Shaun Gallagher
I review the problem of how to define consciousness. I suggest that rather than continuing that debate, we should turn to phenomenological description of experience to discover the common aspects of consciousness. In this way we can say that consciousness is characterized by intentionality, phenomenality, and non-reflective self-awareness. I explore this last characteristic in detail and I...
Pragmatics & Cognition
August 13, 2010
Joel Parthemore, Anthony F. Morse
16 citations
Understanding the relationship between concepts and experience seems necessary to specifying the content of experience, yet current theories of concepts do not seem up to the job. With Peter Gärdenfors’s conceptual spaces theory as a foundation and with enactivist philosophy as inspiration, we present a proposed extension to conceptual spaces theory and use it to outline a model of the...
Pragmatics & Cognition
December 4, 2009
Sune Vork Steffensen
After a brief summary of Andy Clark’s book, Supersizing the Mind (2008) I address Clark’s approach to language which I argue to be inadequate. Clark is criticized for reifying language, thus neglecting that it is an interpersonal activity, not a stable system of symbols. With a starting point in language as a social phenomenon, I suggest an ecological approach to the extended mind hypothesis,...
Pragmatics & Cognition
1993
Natika W Newton
The sensorimotor theory of cognition holds that human cognition, along with that of other animals, is determined by sensorimotor structures rather than by uniquely human linguistic structures. The theory has been offered to explain the use of bodily terminology in nonphysical contexts, and to recognize the role of experienced embodiment in cognition. This paper defends a version of the theory...