Walter & Kästner's "The where and what of cognition"

New in Cognitive Systems Research, Volume 13, Issue 1, March 2012, Pages 12-23

Systematicity and the Post-Connectionist Era, from MIT Press

So, Paco Calvo and John Symons are getting together a selection of papers based on their workshop from last summer.  It will be published by MIT Press and feature contributions from Tony Chemero, Brian McLaughlin, Steven Philips, and me.

What Science Offers the Humanities: Integrating Body and Culture by Edward Slingerland

What Science Offers the Humanities examines some of the deep problems facing current approaches to the study of culture. It focuses especially on the excesses of postmodernism but also acknowledges serious problems with postmodernism’s harshest critics.In short, Edward Slingerland argues that, in order for the humanities to progress, its scholars need to take seriously contributions from the natural sciences – in particular research on human cognition – which demonstrate that any separation of the mind and body is entirely untenable. The author provides suggestions for how humanists might begin to utilize these scientific discoveries without conceding that science has the last word on morality, religion, art, and literature. Calling into question such deeply entrenched dogmas as the “blank slate” theory of nature, strong social constructivism, and the ideal of disembodied reason, What Science Offers the Humanities replaces the humanities-sciences divide with a more integrated approach to the study of culture.

Edward Slingerland taught in the School of Religion and the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Southern California, where he was recipient of  the 2002 General Education Teaching Award. He is currently an associate professor of Asian Studies and a Canada Research Chair in Chinese Thought and EmbodiedCog-nition at the University of British Columbia. His previous books include The Analects of Confucius and Effortless Action: Wu-wei as Conceptual Metaphor and Spiritual Ideal in Early China, which won the American Academy of Religion’s 2003 Best First Book in the History of Religions Award.

Comment on Embodied Cognition in "Neuroscience: Neanderthals in mind"

Info here.

Good news for me

I mentioned this a while back on Google+, but since the blog has a wider readership, I though I might mention this here as well. 

I received a fellowship from the Ruhr University, Bochum, to spend 2.5 months there next summer, mid-May to the end of July. I'll be working on empathy, mirror neurons, and the role of action in perception. I will be at the Center for Mind, Brain, and Cognitive Evolution.  Albert Newen and Tobias Schlict will be my hosts there.

Aside from escaping from the heat, humidity, and allergens of the southern US, I'll get to think about some interesting philosophical topics with good colleagues.

Embodied Cognition in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

This has actually been out for a few months, but that fact probably deserves some notice.  The entry is a daunting 73 page affair (in PDF) that seems to me to lay out matters in interesting ways.

Whiting Reivew of Maise's Embodiment, Emotion and Cognition

At the NDPR.  Notice near the end that Whiting is all over the causation/constitution distinction..

This Extended Mind Again: We Don’t Know What a Human Being Is

Over at Larval Subjects...

Link: A Brief Guide to Embodied Cognition: Why You Are Not Your Brain

At Scientific American.