From the eSMCs Summer School 2011, San Sebastián, Spain, 5-9 September, 2011:
Enactively Extended Intentionality
by Shaun Gallagher
I argue that the extended mind hypothesis requires an enactive, neo-pragmatic concept of intentionality if it is to develop proper responses to a variety of objections. This enactive concept of intentionality is based on the phenomenological concept of a bodily (or motor or operative) intentionality outlined by Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. I explore the connections between this concept and recent embodied approaches to social cognition.
"We are always constrained by the path we have laid down, but there is no ultimate ground to prescribe the steps that we take ... This groundlessness of laying down a path in walking is the key philosophical issue that remains to be addressed".
- Varela, Thompson, Rosch (1991), The Embodied Mind.
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7 comments:
I really should try to get up to date on what they're doing, as they are doing in neopragmatism what I am doing in neoclassical pragmatism. Yes, there's a huge difference.
http://lukasverburgt.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/latour-the-whole-is-always-smaller-than-its-parts.pdf
http://www.easst.net/review/june2001/mol.shtml
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K79fL3uc4zc&feature=related
I'm swimming in ideas and work commitments right now - which makes for much discomfort - but I do have your essay on 'imagination' next on my list, and sitting on my desk, so I will let you know what I make of it soon enough.
As for neo v. classical re: pragmatism I know next to nothing (besides the obvious between James/Rorty), but I get the sense there are a lot of differences that matter.
I think understanding 4EA cognitive studies and the enaction paradigm generally are essential to clear thinking in our contemporary context.
Have you read Lakoff and Johnson's PHILOSOPHY IN THE FLESH yet? If not, you really need to. Philosophy only makes sense after we trace out the structural conditions of its possibility.
cheers-
Dirk, you beast, great links...
Sadly, I will almost never look at video links as I never have the time. Apologies.
I believe I've skimmed Philosophy in the Flesh, but have spent an enormous amount of time with the other works, especially The Meaning of the Body. I even discuss them in my pragmatic imagination article; I rebuke neoclassical for uncritically appropriating Lakoff and/or Johnson without a lot of qualifications, because much of what they write is an appropriation rather than crossover of pragmatism and analytic. There are a lot of contradictions, and I even name and cite a few specific cases in the footnotes. All that said, know that I wrote that article already knowing their work and can tell you that it's mostly compatible. In fact, Johnson is doing more pragmatism and not less over time.
As for the enaction paradigm, unless you mean something in particular that I do not know of, that paradigm is much longer in coming than people realize. I get most of the philosophical concepts reading GH Mead, and I get the feeling that the science is just filling out or disconfirming the philosophy, sociology, and psychology of prior work. Since the modern period, I've always had the feeling the philosophy and science play leapfrog.
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