Radical Embodied Cognitive Science Research Articles

Gurwitsch’s Field of Consciousness and Radical Embodied Cognitive Science: A Case of Mutual Enlightenment

ABSTRACT This article tests the waters concerning a possible integration of Gurwitsch’s theory of consciousness into 4E research. More specifically, it is suggested that radical embodied approaches can benefit from Gurwitsch’s distinction between theme, thematic field and margin in order to methodically grasp how contextual and attentional factors can modulate affordance perception. On the other hand, Gurwitsch’s choice to locate the awareness of embodiment (most of the time) in the domain of the margin can generate important theoretical problems in light of empirical evidence often brought up by situated cognition researchers. Following Gallagher’s suggestion that phenomenology and cognitive science can enlighten each other, I argue that Gurwitsch’s notion of a field of consciousness can be an invaluable tool for research on affordances. Nonetheless, at the same time, the results of embodied cognitive science should lead us to revisit some of his intuitions regarding the role of bodily awareness.

Editorial: Radical Embodied Cognitive Science of Human Behavior: Skill Acquisition, Expertise and Talent Development

Editorial: Radical Embodied Cognitive Science of Human Behavior: Skill Acquisition, Expertise and Talent Development

How Radical Is Embodied Creativity? Implications of 4E Approaches for Creativity Research and Teaching.

Modern ideas of embodiment have been influential in cognitive science for the past several decades, yet there is minimal evidence of embodied cognition approaches in creativity research or pedagogical practices for teaching creativity skills. With creativity research in crisis due to conceptual, methodological, and theoretical issues, radical embodied cognitive science (RECS) may offer a framework to move the field forward. This conceptual analysis examines the current state of creativity research from the 4E (embodied, embedded, enactive, and extended) cognition and RECS perspectives. Two streams are critiqued for their potential to further knowledge about the development of creative expertise and inform educational practices. Promising directions for future research is discussed, including ways dynamical systems approaches, such as those used in improvisational and musical creativity, might yield new insights about how people develop creative expertise and help address the “higher order thinking” criticisms of RECS.

Effective Deep Brain Stimulation for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Requires Clinical Expertise.

BackgroundDeep brain stimulation (DBS) is an innovative treatment for severe obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Electrodes implanted in specific brain areas allow clinicians to directly modulate neural activity. DBS affects symptomatology in a completely different way than established forms of treatment for OCD, such as psychotherapy or medication.ObjectiveTo understand the process of improvement with DBS in patients with severe OCD.MethodsBy means of open-ended interviews and participant observation we explore how expert clinicians involved in the post-operative process of DBS optimization evaluate DBS effects.ResultsEvaluating DBS effect is an interactive and context-sensitive process that gradually unfolds over time and requires integration of different sources of knowledge. Clinicians direct DBS optimization toward a critical point where they sense that patients are being moved with regard to behavior, emotion, and active engagement, opening up possibilities for additional cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).DiscussionBased on the theoretical framework of radical embodied cognitive science (RECS), we assume that clinical expertise manifests itself in the pattern of interaction between patient and clinician. To the expert clinician, this pattern reflects the patient’s openness to possibilities for action (“affordances”) offered by their environment. OCD patients’ improvement with DBS can be understood as a change in openness to their environment. The threshold for patients to engage in activities is decreased and a broader range of daily life and therapeutic activities becomes attractive. Movement is improvement.

Radical embodied cognitive science and problems of intentionality

Radical embodied cognitive science (REC) tries to understand as much cognition as it can without positing contentful mental entities. Thus, in one prominent formulation, REC claims that content is involved neither in visual perception nor in any more elementary form of cognition. Arguments for REC tend to rely heavily on considerations of ontological parsimony, with authors frequently pointing to the difficulty of explaining content in naturalistically acceptable terms. However, many classic concerns about the difficulty of naturalizing content likewise threaten the credentials of intentionality, which even advocates of REC take to be a fundamental feature of cognition. In particular, concerns about the explanatory role of content and about indeterminacy can be run on accounts of intentionality as well. Issues about explanation can be avoided, intriguingly if uncomfortably, by dramatically reconceptualizing or even renouncing the idea that intentionality can explain. As for indeterminacy, Daniel Hutto and Erik Myin point the way toward a response, appropriating an idea from Ruth Millikan. I take it a step further, arguing that attention to the ways that beliefs’ effects on behavior are modulated by background beliefs can help illuminate the facts that underlie their intentionality and content.

Enaction: Toward a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science, edited by John Stewart, Olivier Gapenne, and Ezequiel A. Di Paolo.Radical Embodied Cognitive Science, by Anthony Chemero.The New Science of the Mind: From Extended Mind to Embodied Phenomenology, by Mark Rowlands.

<i>Enaction: Toward a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science</i>, edited by John Stewart, Olivier Gapenne, and Ezequiel A. Di Paolo.<i>Radical Embodied Cognitive Science</i>, by Anthony Chemero.<i>The New Science of the Mind: From Extended Mind to Embodied Phenomenology</i>, by Mark Rowlands.

Radical Embodied Cognitive Science

Radical Embodied Cognitive Science

Linguistic embodiment and verbal constraints: human cognition and the scales of time.

Using radical embodied cognitive science, the paper offers the hypothesis that language is symbiotic: its agent-environment dynamics arise as linguistic embodiment is managed under verbal constraints. As a result, co-action grants human agents the ability to use a unique form of phenomenal experience. In defense of the hypothesis, I stress how linguistic embodiment enacts thinking: accordingly, I present auditory and acoustic evidence from 750 ms of mother-daughter talk, first, in fine detail and, then, in narrative mode. As the parties attune, they use a dynamic field to co-embody speech with experience of wordings. The latter arise in making and tracking phonetic gestures that, crucially, mesh use of artifice, cultural products and impersonal experience. As observers, living human beings gain dispositions to display and use social subjectivity. Far from using brains to “process” verbal content, linguistic symbiosis grants access to diachronic resources. On this distributed-ecological view, language can thus be redefined as: “activity in which wordings play a part.”

Radical Embodied Cognitive Science

This paper briefly introduces radical embodied cognitive science (RECS) and places it in historical perspective. Radical embodied cognitive science is an interdisciplinary approach to psychology that combines ideas from the phenomenological tradition with ecological psychology and dynamical systems modeling. It is argued that radical embodied cognitive science has a long history; it is as a direct descendent of the Jamesian functionalist approach to psychology. This approach to psychology is contrasted with the current trend of supplementing standard cognitive psychology with occasional references to the body. In contrast with these trends, radical embodied cognitive science is skeptical of the explanatory usefulness of mental representations. The future prospects of radical embodied cognitive science and the broader functionalist framework are discussed.

Anthony Chemero: Radical Embodied Cognitive Science

Anthony Chemero: Radical Embodied Cognitive Science

Radical embodied cognitive science

This paper briefly introduces radical embodied cognitive science (RECS) and places it in historical perspective. Radical embodied cognitive science is an interdisciplinary approach to psychology that combines ideas from the phenomenological tradition with ecological psychology and dynamical systems modeling. It is argued that radical embodied cognitive science has a long history; it is as a direct descendent of the Jamesian functionalist approach to psychology. This approach to psychology is contrasted with the current trend of supplementing standard cognitive psychology with occasional references to the body. In contrast with these trends, radical embodied cognitive science is skeptical of the explanatory usefulness of mental representations. The future prospects of radical embodied cognitive science and the broader functionalist framework are discussed.