Abstract: This article aims at elucidating the ways in which philosophy may engage in cooperation with other disciplines through “philosophy with” (Hansson 2008). An exemplary investigation is undertaken of the roles of epistemology in investigating knowledge, that is, how epistemology may interact with sciences concerned with knowledge. Four possible roles are distinguished: provider of a priori conceptual analyses, clarifier of scientific concepts and their implications, interpreter of scientific results, and dialogue partner with a voice of its own. Each role is (...) illustrated by contemporary texts, and it is argued that the role of dialogue partner is the most fruitful. (shrink)

Body experience can be seen as the basis for the formation of the self-concept. The relation between body experience and self-concept is fundamental for human existence and is especially in focus in the fields of psychotherapy and movement activities . But body experience is a "data source" which is difficult to handle scientifically. Body experiences are based on "internal physical sensations" - which Gendlin also describes as the felt meaning or the felt sense, and is not in opposition to phenomenology. (...) To bridge the gap between internal sensations - which are the foundation of the creation of meaning - and language as the medium in both everyday and scientific communication, a form of visualisation technique is introduced to help to evoke descriptions and metaphors that are able to transform body experiences as the pre-reflective mode of information into language as the digital mode of information. Metaphors are the source domain for the target domain body experience . Through the presentation of an empirical project in the field of movement and sport, the theoretical reflections on the process of transforming body experience into language will be exemplified. (shrink)

This essay reconstructs the steps by which Cassirer moved from the philosophy of language in the early 1920s to his more general theory of symbolism. The linguistic turn in philosophy overcame idealism without falling into naturalism or psychologism, but according to Cassirer proclaiming the primacy of language was one-sided. He claimed that language is but one symbolic form among many and, what is more, it is not the most fundamental kind of symbolism. The basic function of symbolism is neither "reference" (...) nor "pure signification," but the unification of sensory phenomena in perception, a function he termed symbolic "Prägnanz." The essay explains how Cassirer argued for a continuity of symbolic processes linking expressive perceptual qualities with scientific theory. (shrink)

Traditional approaches tend to regard figuration (and by extension, deference in general) as an essentially marked or playful use of language, which is associated with a pronounced stylistic effect. For linguistic purposes, however, there is no reason for assigning a special place to deferred uses that are stylistically notable — the sorts of usages that people sometimes qualify with a phrase like "figuratively speaking." There is no important linguistic difference between using redcoat to refer to a British soldier and using (...) suit to refer to a corporate executive (as in "A couple of suits stopped by to talk about the new products"). What creates the stylistic effect of the latter is not the mechanism that generates it, but the marked background assumptions that license it — here, the playful presupposition that.. (shrink)

Following the theory of conceptual metaphor in cognitive linguistics, this paper studies a predominant conceptual metaphor in the understanding of the heart in ancient Chinese philosophy: THE HEART IS THE RULER OF THE BODY. The most important conceptual mapping of this metaphor consists in the perceived correspondence between the mental power of the heart and the political power of the ruler. The Chinese heart is traditionally regarded as the organ of thinking and reasoning, as well as feeling. As such, it (...) is conceptualized as the central faculty of cognition. This cultural conceptualization differs fundamentally from the Western dualism that upholds the reason-emotion dichotomy, as represented by the binary contrast between mind and heart in particular, and mind and body in general. It is found that the HEART AS RULER metaphor has a mirror image, namely THE RULER IS THE HEART OF THE COUNTRY. The ruler as the "heart" of the country leads his nation while guided by his own heart as the "ruler" of his body. It is argued that the two-way metaphorical mappings are based on the overarching beliefs of ancient Chinese philosophy in the unity and correspondence between the microcosm of man and the macrocosm of universe. It is suggested that the conceptualization of the heart in ancient Chinese philosophy, which is basically metaphorical in nature, is still spread widely across Chinese culture today. (shrink)

My paper sets out to compare neuroaesthetics and transcendental philosophy, concerning the perception of schemes of imitation in aesthetic experience. The argument is structured in four steps: first, I will introduce the function of schemes in mirror-neuron-based processes and in general in the embodiment theory of Mark Johnson and George Lakoff; second, I will consider some analogical relations between a transcendental approach and neuroaesthetics concerning semantics; third, starting with the statement that one open question in neuroaesthetics is how creativity emerges, (...) I would like to propose a transcendental account about sensible schemes as a possible foundation of creativity. I will conclude my paper with some examples from visual arts and aesthetic practices in general. (shrink)

The correspondence metaphor is useful in developing functional models of memory. However, the storehouse metaphor is still useful in developing structural and process models of memory. Traditional research techniques explore the structure of memory; everyday techniques explore the function of memory. We illustrate this point with two examples: amnesia and metamemory. In each phenomenon, both metaphors are useful.

Parallel to Koriat & Goldsmith's accounting of human memory, there are two distinct approaches in animal learning. Behaviorist approaches focus on quantitative aspects of conditioned response probability, whereas cognitive and ethological approaches focus on qualitative aspects of how memory is used in real life. Moreover, in animal research these distinguishable measures of memory are dissociated in experimental amnesia.

Recent work in neurophilosophy has either made reference to the work of John Dewey or independently developed positions similar to it. I review these developments in order first to show that Dewey was indeed doing neurophilosophy well before the Churchlands and others, thereby preceding many other mid-twentieth century European philosophers’ views on cognition to whom many present day philosophers refer (e.g., Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty). I also show that Dewey’s work provides useful tools for evading or overcoming many issues in contemporary neurophilosophy (...) and philosophy of mind. In this introductory review, I distinguish between three waves among neurophilosophers that revolve around the import of evolution and the degree of brain-centrism. Throughout, I emphasize and elaborate upon Dewey’s dynamic view of mind and consciousness. I conclude by introducing the consciousness-as-cooking metaphor as an alternative to both the consciousness-as-digestion and consciousness-as-dancing metaphors. Neurophilosophical pragmatism—or neuropragmatism—recognizes the import of evolutionary and cognitive neurobiology for developing a science of mind and consciousness. However, as the cooking metaphor illustrates, a science of mind and consciousness cannot rely on the brain alone—just as explaining cooking entails more than understanding the gut—and therefore must establish continuity with cultural activities and their respective fields of inquiry. Neuropragmatism advances a new and promising perspective on how to reconcile the scientific and manifest images of humanity as well as how to reconstruct the relationship between science and the humanities. (shrink)

Koriat & Goldsmith's abstract correspondence metaphor is unlikely to prove useful to memory science. It aims to motivate and inform the investigation of everyday memory, but that movement has prospered without it. The irrelevance of its competitor – the more concrete storehouse metaphor – as a guiding force in memory research presages a similar fate for the correspondence perspective.

The target article interprets current psychological research on everyday memory in terms of a correspondence metaphor. This metaphor is based on a reduction of everyday memory to autobiographical and eyewitness memory. This commentary focuses on everyday memory as it functions in activity. Viewed from this perspective, the joining of everyday memory to a correspondence metaphor is problematic. A more natural way to frame the processes of everyday memory is in terms of context, practice, and pragmatics.

This paper examines the different conceptions of personal renewal offered in the writings of John Dewey and Stanley Cavell. Both conceptions, I suggest, can be seen as attempting to reconcile the quest for self-realization with democratic life through a poetic, essentially Emersonian vision of the self as a continual work-in-progress. Accordingly, the kinds of selves that Dewey and Cavell seek are in the end highly compatible. Yet it seems clear too that Dewey and Cavell also stand in a somewhat different (...) relation to the Emersonian tradition, and thus diverge in important ways as to the most preferable means of personal renewal. While Dewey tends to focus on the extensive workings of embodied habit, Cavell's ``Emersonian Perfectionism'' takes a more distinctively linguistic turn. After showing the strengths and weaknesses of each approach to personal renewal, I prevail upon the need for educational environments that recognize both the discursive and nondiscursive dimensions of reconstructing the self. (shrink)

This paper continues to develop a programme of research which has recently emerged investigating the ideological functions of spatial construals in social and political discourse from a Cognitive Linguistic perspective. Specifically, inspired by principles in Cognitive Grammar, the paper attempts to formulate a grammar of ‘point of view’ and show how this trans-modal cognitive system is manifested in the meanings of individual grammatical constructions which, when selected in discourse, yield mental representations whose spatial properties invite ideological evaluations. The link between (...) spatial organisation and ideological evaluation in these mental models, it is argued, is a function of our embodied understanding of language. These theoretical arguments are illustrated with data taken from online news reports of two political protests. (shrink)

The problem of inductive learning is hard, and--despite much work--no solution is in sight, from neural networks or other AI techniques. I suggest that inductive reasoning may be grounded in sensorimotor capacity. If an artificial system to generalize in ways that we find intelligent it should be appropriately embodied. This is illustrated with a network- controlled animat that learns n-parity by representing intermediate states with its own motion. Unlike other general learning devices, such as disembodied networks, it learns from very (...) few examples and generalizes correctly to previously unseen cases. (shrink)

The paper develops a new holistic theory of the word by integrating semiotic, linguistic, and psychological perspectives and introduces the Cogitative-Sensory Word Model, the CogSens Model, that unites the human mind and body. Saussure’s two-sided sign is replaced by a Peirce-inspired three-sided conception in which the expression unit mediates two content units, namely, an idea content connected to the human mind and an image content linked to the human body. It is argued that it is the word that makes human (...) language a unique tool of communication. Moreover, it is demonstrated how words interact with grammar to create an utterance. Finally, it is suggested that speech perception, i.e., fission of idea and image content, is the mirror image of speech production, i.e., fusion of idea and image content. (shrink)

L’univers mental de la modalité épistémique n’est pas entièrement coupé de l’univers physique des objets et des substances que les êtres humains perçoivent et avec lesquels ils interagissent. Il existe un lien métaphorique entre attitudes modales et attitudes corporelles, comme l’atteste l’emploi courant d’expressions visuelles et manuelles pour exprimer les notions ou processus modaux. L’énonciateur-conceptualisateur exécute symboliquement une gestualité mentale et s’implique dans des scènes « ceptuelles » de vision, de mouvement et de manipulations épistémiques. Les hypothèses sont « forgées (...) », les faits sont « posés », les jugements « appliqués » ou « assénés » avec plus ou moins de « force ». Les conclusions sont « atteintes » et les déductions « faites » ou « opérées ». Les structures interprétatives sont « construites ». Les arguments logiques « tiennent debout ». L’incohérent«s’écroule » ou«s’effondre ». Les analogies perceptuelles les plus courantes de la certitude et de l’évidence sont la « clarté », la « transparence » ainsi que la « solidité. Les propositions sont des objets de conceptions hybrides, intégrant le matériel au mental, localisés dans des espaces matériels et mentaux mixtes. Le corps symbolique de la cognition y accède, en utilisant les organes, perceptions et mouvements imaginaires inscrits dans le langage. (shrink)

Neither the storehouse nor the correspondence metaphor is an appropriate conceptual framework for memory research. Instead a meaning-based account of human memory is required. The correspondence metaphor is an advance over previous suggestions but entails an oversimple view of “accuracy.” Freud's account of memory may provide a more fruitful approach to memory and meaning.

Dem Alltagsverständnis zufolge bringt uns die Wahrnehmung in einen Kontakt mit der Wirklichkeit. Die Stabilisierung der Wahrnehmungsgewissheit ist tief im subjektiven Bildungsprozess verankert, hat sich alltagspraktisch bewährt und in der Sprache sedimentiert. Andererseits hat sich durch Erfahrungen kultureller Diversität und sozialer Differenz auch die Auffassung verbreitet, dass die Welt nur gleichsam durch die Brille spezifischer Herkünfte und Zugehörigkeiten wahrgenommen wird. Die Spannung zwischen realistischen und konstruktivistischen Interpretationen des menschlichen Weltbezugs bildet die Ausgangssituation, mit der sich die Beiträge zu dem geplanten (...) Sammelband In Kontakt mit der Wirklichkeit. Interdisziplinäre Beiträge zur Situiertheit der Wahrnehmung auseinandersetzen. Ziel ist es, die Wahrnehmungsgewissheit des direkten Realismus zu verteidigen, ohne die berechtigten Einwände außer Acht zu lassen. Nicht nur der Begriff der Wahrnehmung wird dabei einer grundlegenden Prüfung unterzogen, sondern auch der Begriff der Wirklichkeit und mit ihm ein angemessenes Verständnis davon, als leiblich verkörperte Individuen in einer gemeinsam geteilten Welt zu sein. (shrink)

The practices of the arts—plastic and performing—deal in direct sensorial engagement with the body, with materiality, with artifacts and tools, with spaces, and with other people. The arts are centrally concerned with intelligent doing. Conventional explanations of the cognitive dimensions of arts practices have been unsatisfying because internalist paradigms provides few useful tools to discuss embodied dimensions of cognition.

Our main considerations take as a starting point the educational policy demand for a model of competence of text comprehension, which should make it possible to measure and systematically increase comprehension accomplishments and competences. The approach of classical cognitive psychology appears particularly suitable for this purpose, which determines comprehension as a rule-guided transfer of a sign complex into a mental representation. However, such representationalism tends to be aporetic in character. A way out of this problem is offered by recent concepts (...) of understanding from the area ofEmbodied Cognition, according to which all mental operations are embedded in physical interaction processes. Comprehension means, in this sense, letting physical primary experiences be reproduced in a trial-action fashion. This approach is, in this paper, reconsidered in relation to the role of subjectivity and affect: Physical experiences are meaning-generating because they exhibit a subjectively perceived affective valence between pleasure and suffering. The beginning of all understanding therefore is to be located within the emotional sphere.Such a conception of understanding is supposed to have a considerable impact upon language- and literature teaching in schools. For example, training of reading skills should always be embedded in body-bound experiences. Moreover, learning and understanding both mean cultivating an alert ear for affective undertones, needs and irritations, which might even lead to drawing the curricular benchmarks and competency targets into question. Finally, as art and literature establish areas of freedom and play, literature teaching, especially, needs to be founded on affective awareness, discursive openness and proceeding voluntariness. (shrink)

A philosophical analysis of the work of one of the most iconoclastic thinkers in Chinese history, Li Zhi, whose ethics prized spontaneous expression of genuine feelings.

The article uses embodiment and the experiential basis of conceptual metaphor to argue for the metaphorical essence of abstract legal thought.concepts like ‘law’ and ‘justice’ need to borrow from a spatial, bodily, or physical prototype in order to be conceptualised, seen, for example, in the fact that justice preferably is found ‘under’ law. Three conceptual categories of how law is conceptualised is examined: law as an object, law as a vertical relation, and law as an area. The Google Ngram Viewer, (...) based on the massive library of books that Google has scanned, has been used to study legally relevant conceptions over time within each of these three categories, from 1800 to 2000. In addition, the article suggests a type of analytical method of ‘metaphor triangulation,’ that is, the replacement of prevailing metaphors with unusual ones in order to increase the level of awareness of what conceptual content the prevailing metaphors involve. (shrink)

The correspondence view of memory is not a metaphor. However, correspondence is the essential feature of the archaeology metaphor, which harks back to Freud and Neisser. A modern version of this metaphor and some of its implications are briefly described. The archaeology metaphor integrates the idea of stored traces in a nonmechanistic framework.

This paper seeks to show that human cognition cannot be characterised purely in mentalistic term. It has a bodily basis and cognition is thus the product of the interplay between mind, body, and brain. This is how the idea of embodiment and its importance is realised and gets its foothold in both philosophy and cognitive science. This brings a radical change introducing a new framework for philosophy and cognitive science. In this new change philosophy and cognitive science have a special (...) role to play which this paper seeks to explore. Philosophy in its capacity as a conceptual inquiry provides justification for human embodiment on a conceptual ground whereas cognitive science provides the same on an empirical and experimental ground. This brings the two disciplines closer resulting into a new field of inquiry which can be best described as the interface between philosophy and cognitive science. An important consequence that follows from this alignment is that the traditional epistemological distinction between the a priori and the empirical can no longer be rigidly maintained. (shrink)

Everyday memory tasks often require that researchers focus on output-bound measures of memory. As a result, nonmemorial processes (e.g., report option and grain size) may influence recall accuracy. These nonmemorial processes, usually eliminated by laboratory researchers, have the potential to explain some anomalous results and may even be useful to enhance everyday recollection.

. Book Reviews. Ethics, Place & Environment: Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 57-76.

Après avoir rappelé les critiques adressées à la fois par et à la sémantique cognitive dite « californienne », en termes de référentialisme, de représentationnalisme, de réalisme ou d’objectivisme, l’article propose une réflexion sur les ancrages matériels des réalités conceptuelles. Par là, il vise un modèle sémantique qui tout en maintenant le référent, équilibre construction discursive et représentation sociale du monde, autrement dit : cognition, contexte et culture. Sa démonstration porte, en termes de connecteurs pragmatiques ou de relations vitales sur (...) l’identité personnelle ‑ ses phases et ses facettes, qui sont aujourd’hui des phénomènes ou des processus reconnus des sciences humaines et sociales ‑, et cherche à dépasser le débat mentalisme vs objectivisme de la sémantique dite « californienne » et de ses opposants, notamment hexagonaux. (shrink)

Light metaphors occurring in Chinese philosophy and Stoicism are of special interest for the unique ways they channel potentialities of the self. In this paper I apply ideas from cognitive linguistics to examine selected structural features of these metaphors. I also build on these ideas by presenting a framework regarding affects to assist in disclosing what is at stake for differing Chinese and Stoic technologies of the self. The paper adopts a high-level perspective to see these broad philosophical implications, interleaving (...) discussions of Chinese philosophy (mainly views associated with Daoism), Stoicism (bringing into relief important differences from these views), and contemporary research on socially constructed affects. This “triadic” comparative approach aims to shed new light on some root assumptions built into the projects of self-cultivation that are at the core of Chinese and Stoic worldviews. (shrink)