Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

May be repeated for credit. Writing.

COURSE DETAILS:

Selected Topics: 4E Cognition: Embedded, Embodied, Extended and Enactive

[Note: this course is to be taught concurrently with PHIL 805.]

Prerequisites: It is strongly advised that all students have taken at least one general philosophy of mind course prior to this seminar.  Please contact the instructor if you are unsure whether you have the background for this seminar. We also welcome and encourage students in Cognitive Science to enroll in this course. 

More than 30 years ago, philosophers, linguists, psychologists and computer scientists began to talk about embodied or embedded cognition as a response to the computational theory of mind.  As there were multiple sources of discontent, there was a variety of ideas about what aspects of the computational theory ought to be rejected and the sorts of theoretical constructs that should replace them.  Some theorists took issue with rule-governed symbol-processing as a whole; others focused upon what was represented, how those representations arose, and/or the sense in which rules governed cognitive processes.  Still others took our interactions with the environment—i.e. the constraints and possibilities of a given body interacting with a particular environment relative to its goals—as essential to understanding perception.  Following Gibson, these views often included assertions that perception was ‘immediate’ and that our concepts were shaped by our interaction with the world.  Almost all 4E advocates argued against qualia—purely qualitative states—but in favour of an intentional phenomenology as a legitimate avenue of investigation of, e.g. perceptual states.  Famously, Andy Clark advocated ‘extended cognition’, the integration of external media such as tools as integral to our thinking.  In short, even the theorists at the center of the movement had a difficult time distinguishing between the various threads of ‘embodied cognition’—including the instructor of this seminar!  

The purpose of this seminar is to examine where the movement has gone since 2007, when the first and last book that attempted to untangle the various strands of debate was published—Larry Shapiro’s Embodied Cognition.  Our readings will focus around the new Oxford Handbook on the movement, printed in November, 2018, The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition.  Much of the volume is devoted to a new direction in this research, namely towards the embodied nature of social cognition/practices—i.e. on social interactions, emotion, language, learning and culture.  For myself, at least, this represents a welcome change in emphasis. We will be concentrating largely upon these new issues given, well, their newness.
 
For those of you that have seen this Handbook, it would make a lovely doorstop for that recalcitrant closing door on the 5th floor landing, just outside the philosophy Seminar Room.  Unsurprisingly, we will not be reading, individually, every article within it.  Instead, the trimester will begin with a few lectures on the historical landscape.  We will then turn to a selected group of the Handbook readings supplemented by scientific and/or philosophical papers that present evidence/arguments.  Note that because the volume is a handbook, the articles are short, filled with citations, and present their arguments in broad, non-technical strokes.  Thus, they offer the perfect format for judicious supplementation with both scientific and philosophical articles for longer grad-student lead presentations.  This is one ‘thread’ of the seminar, graduate student presentations on ‘expanded’ handbook chapters.  All students will also present short, critical summaries of the chapters that we cannot cover in detail.  This is the collective part of the seminar in preparation for a final project: A joint book review suitable for submission for publication (if the students desire).  Time will be allotted in class, during the semester, for group work—to begin outlining the review, vote on the most important essays for inclusion, decide who will write which sections, etc.  The review will undergo one revision: from a lengthy form to a shortened, more concise format. (Note: individual contributions will be noted in the text so that each participant can receive an individual grade.)

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

PHIL 467W may be applied towards the Writing Requirement (and the upper division Writing Requirement for Philosophy majors).

The course is also very suitable for students in Cognitive Science. 

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING: