[Xmca-l] Re: How embodied is Cognition?

[mike cole]

This part sure sounds radical, Henry:

in principle no difference between the processes engendering, walking,
reaching, and looking for hidden objects and those resulting in mathematics
and poetry.” (p. xxiii)

On Tue, Jan 6, 2015 at 2:17 PM, HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com> wrote:

> Greg,
> While reading about what Hutto and McGivern on “radical E-approaches to
> cognition I remembered reading a book by Esther Thelen and Linda Smith , A
> Dynamic Systems Approach to the Development of Cognition and Action (1994).
> Here are three quotes:
> “We conclude here that, as all mental activity is emergent, situated,
> historical and embodied, there is in principle no difference between the
> processes engendering, walking, reaching, and looking for hidden objects
> and those resulting in mathematics and poetry.” (p. xxiii)
>
> and
>
> “Walking in intact animals is not controlled by an abstraction but in a
> continual dialogue with the periphery…What sculpts movement patterns are
> these peripheral demands, not cartoons of the movement that exist
> beforehand…Cats and humans do not walk in abstractions. They walk in a
> gravity-dominated, variable, and changing world for different functional
> purposes. “(p. 9)
>
> and
>
> “In chicks, as in frogs and humans, a dialogue with the periphery is an
> essential motor, driving developmental change.” (p. 19)
>
>
> I wonder if Hutto and McGivern would call this radical.
>
> Henry
>
>
>
>
> > On Jan 6, 2015, at 10:36 AM, Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > I thought this short article "How embodied is Cognition?" by Daniel Hutto
> > might be a nice piece to bring together with the pre-frontal discussion
> in
> > the other thread (not as counterpoint but as complement):
> >
> > https://www.academia.edu/9614435/How_Embodied_Is_Cognition
> >
> > Here is a teaser:
> > "E is the letter, if not the word, in today’s sciences of mind. E
> > adjectives proliferate. Nowadays it is hard to avoid claims that
> cognition
> > – perceiving, imagining, decision-making, planning – is best understood
> in
> > E terms of some sort. The list of E-terms is long: embodied, enactive,
> > extended, embedded, ecological, engaged, emotional, expressive, emergent
> > and so on. This short piece explains: the big idea behind this movement;
> > how it is inspired by empirical findings; why it matters; and what
> > questions the field will face in the future. It focuses on the stronger
> and
> > weaker ways that..."
> > -greg
> >
> > --
> > Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
> > Assistant Professor
> > Department of Anthropology
> > 880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
> > Brigham Young University
> > Provo, UT 84602
> > http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
>
>


-- 
It is the dilemma of psychology to deal with a natural science as an object
that creates history. Ernst Boesch.