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Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences

ISSN 1568-7759, 1572-8676

113 papers in the library · 1,008 citations · publishing 2007-2026

Papers

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Mechanistic explanation for enactive sociality

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences June 7, 2018 Ekaterina Abramova, Marc Slors 31 citations

In this article we analyze the methodological commitments of a radical embodied cognition (REC) approach to social interaction and social cognition, specifically with respect to the explanatory framework it adopts. According to many representatives of REC, such as enactivists and the proponents of dynamical and ecological psychology, sociality is to be explained by (1) focusing on the social...

Thinking through enactive agency: sense-making, bio-semiosis and the ontologies of organismic worlds

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences March 2, 2018 Paulo De Jesus 40 citations

According to enactivism all living systems, from single cell organisms to human beings, are ontologically endowed with some form of teleological and sense-making agency. Furthermore, enactivists maintain that: (i) there is no fixed pregiven world and as a consequence (ii) all organisms “bring forth” their own unique “worlds” through processes of sense-making. The first half of the paper takes...

Playing with clay and the uncertainty of agency. A Material Engagement Theory perspective

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences December 7, 2017 Paul Louis March 49 citations

I describe how close attention to the process of sculpting clay from the perspective of Material Engagement Theory can create a detailed description of a mutable sense of agency and of self. First, I show that sculpting is associated with a loss of sense of agency and self. Second, that to sense agency as a systemic phenomenon (rather than a personal attribute) creates anxiety. Third, that...

Enactive individuation: technics, temporality and affect in digital design and fabrication

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences November 18, 2017 Kåre Stokholm Poulsgaard 25 citations

The nature of creative engagement with computers and software presents a number of challenges to 4E cognition and requires the development of analytical frameworks that can encompass cognitive processes as they extend across material and informational realms. Here I argue that an enactive view of mind allows for better understanding of digital practice by advancing a dynamic, transactional, and...

Phenomenological constraints: a problem for radical enactivism

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences May 30, 2017 Michael P. Roberts

This paper does two things. Firstly, it clarifies the way that phenomenological data is meant to constrain cognitive science according to enactivist thinkers. Secondly, it points to inconsistencies in the ‘Radical Enactivist’ handling of this issue, so as to explicate the commitments that enactivists need to make in order to tackle the explanatory gap. I begin by sketching the basic features of...

Bodily skill and internal representation in sensorimotor perception

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences March 16, 2017 David Silverman 15 citations

The sensorimotor theory of perceptual experience claims that perception is constituted by bodily interaction with the environment, drawing on practical knowledge of the systematic ways that sensory inputs are disposed to change as a result of movement. Despite the theory’s associations with enactivism, it is sometimes claimed that the appeal to ‘knowledge’ means that the theory is committed to...

Non-representational approaches to the unconscious in the phenomenology of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences December 24, 2016 Anastasia Kozyreva 24 citations

There are two main approaches in the phenomenological understanding of the unconscious. The first explores the intentional theory of the unconscious, while the second develops a non-representational way of understanding consciousness and the unconscious. This paper aims to outline a general theoretical framework for the non-representational approach to the unconscious within the...

Reconstructing the minimal self, or how to make sense of agency and ownership

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences September 1, 2010 S. Haan, L. Bruin 40 citations

We challenge Gallagher’s distinction between the sense of ownership (SO) and the sense of agency (SA) as two separable modalities of experience of the minimal self and argue that a careful investigation of the examples provided to promote this distinction in fact reveals that SO and SA are intimately related and modulate each other. We propose a way to differentiate between the various notions...

The unity of hallucinations

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences May 4, 2010 Fabian Dorsch 15 citations

My primary aim in this article is to provide a philosophical account of the unity of hallucinations, which can capture both perceptual hallucinations (which are subjectively indistinguishable from perceptions) and non-perceptual hallucinations (all others). Besides, I also mean to clarify further the division of labour and the nature of the collaboration between philosophy and the cognitive...

Neural resonance: Between implicit simulation and social perception

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences September 15, 2009 Marc Slors 9 citations

Shaun Gallagher and Dan Zahavi have recently argued against a simulationist interpretation of neural resonance. Recognizing intentions and emotions in the facial expressions and gestures of others may be subserved by e.g. mirror neuron activity, but this does not mean that we first experience an intention or emotion and then project it onto the other. Mirror neurons subserve social cognition,...

Inviting complementary perspectives on situated normativity in everyday life

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences June 2, 2009 Pim Klaassen, Erik Rietveld, Julien Topal 20 citations

In everyday life, situations in which we act adequately yet entirely without deliberation are ubiquitous. We use the term “situated normativity” for the normative aspect of embodied cognition in skillful action. Wittgenstein’s notion of “directed discontent” refers to a context-sensitive reaction of appreciation in skillful action. Extending this notion from the domain of expertise to that of...

Consciousness, self-consciousness, and meditation

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences April 18, 2008 Wolfgang Fasching 40 citations

Many spiritual traditions employ certain mental techniques (meditation) which consist in inhibiting mental activity whilst nonetheless remaining fully conscious, which is supposed to lead to a realisation of one’s own true nature prior to habitual self-substantialisation. In this paper I propose that this practice can be understood as a special means of becoming aware of consciousness itself as...

Mathematizing phenomenology

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences July 1, 2007 Jeffrey Yoshimi

Husserl is well known for his critique of the “mathematizing tendencies” of modern science, and is particularly emphatic that mathematics and phenomenology are distinct and in some sense incompatible. But Husserl himself uses mathematical methods in phenomenology. In the first half of the paper I give a detailed analysis of this tension, showing how those Husserlian doctrines which seem to...

DOI: 10.1007/s11097-007-9052-4 (opens in new tab) Full text (opens in new tab) Edmund husserl Mathematization Dynamical systems theory Formalization +1