In this paper I take up John Searle's account of ?Background capacities? to render intelligible the presupposed and hidden aspects of the background conditions that enable the performance of skilled movement. The paper begins with a review of Searle's initial account of Background capacities and how this picture can be applied to account for skilled movement in sport. Then an objection to this picture is addressed, claiming that Searle's initial picture might ?overrepresentationalise? background conditions. Moreover, this objection prompts how Searle (...) has modified his initial picture of background conditions in accordance with his more recent ?connection principle?. Searle's recent account of background conditions is then elaborated and discussed in the second half of the paper. The discussion emphasises three distinct levels of analysis in Searle's framework necessary to a full understanding of his background conditions: (i) the neurophysiological level; (ii) the descriptive higher-order practical skill level; and (iii) the logical level of integration. It is argued that Searle's logical framework is found plausible, but that more work is needed to better understand the background conditions of skilled movement in terms of neurophysiological capacities and practical skills from both scientific and philosophical perspectives. (shrink)

This paper is a excursus into a philosophy of science for deployment in the study of sport. It argues for the virtues of Thomas Kuhn's account of the philosophy of science, an argument conducted strategically by contrasting that account with one derived from views of Karl Popper. In particular, it stresses, first, that Kuhn's views have been widely misunderstood; second, that a rectified Kuhnianism can give due weight to truth in science, while recognising that social sciences differ in crucial ways (...) from natural sciences. For, as Kuhn recognised, social sciences do not function in the paradigm-relative way characteristic of natural sciences. Yet there Kuhn's jargon, and especially misguided talk of ?paradigms?, is almost ubiquitous. These thoughts have relevance for three groups. First, as both sports scientists and exercise scientists come to grips with the claims to scientificity of their work, they will need increasingly to locate it within an epistemological framework provided by philosophy of science. So they must begin to take Kuhn's view seriously. Second, social scientists of sport ? faced with the predominant scientism of colleagues in sport and exercise science ? must also recognise alternatives to a postmodernist rejection of the concept of truth, where Kuhn's picture of natural science clarifies one such. Finally, philosophers writing on sport must not let antipathy to scientism close off the options they present or the terms in which they (we!) present them. And that may require debate among ourselves on abstract issues not immediately connected with sport. (shrink)

The question has long confounded philosophers and scientists, and it is this so-called explanatory gap between biological life and consciousness that Evan ...

[opening paragraph] -- Clark: The `astonishing hypothesis' which you put forward in your book, and which you obviously feel is very controversial, is that `You, your joys and sorrows, your memories and ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will are, in fact, no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells. As Lewis Carroll's Alice might have phrased it: `You're nothing but a pack of neurons'.' But it seems to me that this is not so (...) astonishing a statement for a scientist to make. Isn't this what reductionist science has always believed? (shrink)

The author takes the reader on a tour that covers such topics as computers, evolution, Descartes, Schrodinger, and the nature of perception, language, and invididuality. He argues that biology provides the key to understanding the brain. Underlying his argument is the evolutionary view that the mind arose at a definite time in history. This book ponders connections between psychology and physics, medicine, philosophy, and more. Frequently contentious, Edelman attacks cognitive and behavioral approaches, which leave biology out of the picture, as (...) well as the currently fashionable view of the brain as a computer. (shrink)

This is a book about how we see: the environment around us (its surfaces, their layout, and their colors and textures); where we are in the environment; whether or not we are moving and, if we are, where we are going; what things are good for; how to do things (to thread a needle or drive an automobile); or why things look as they do.The basic assumption is that vision depends on the eye which is connected to the brain. The (...) author suggests that natural vision depends on the eyes in the head on a body supported by the ground, the brain being only the central organ of a complete visual system. When no constraints are put on the visual system, people look around, walk up to something interesting and move around it so as to see it from all sides, and go from one vista to another. That is natural vision—and what this book is about. (shrink)

Linking the process of rational decision making to emotions, an award-winning scientist who has done extensive research with brain-damaged patients notes the dependence of thought processes on feelings and the body's survival-oriented regulators. 50,000 first printing.

The explanatory gap . Consciousness is a mystery. No one has ever given an account, even a highly speculative, hypothetical, and incomplete account of how a physical thing could have phenomenal states. Suppose that consciousness is identical to a property of the brain, say activity in the pyramidal cells of layer 5 of the cortex involving reverberatory circuits from cortical layer 6 to the thalamus and back to layers 4 and 6,as Crick and Koch have suggested for visual consciousness. .) (...) Still, that identity itself calls out for explanation! Proponents of an explanatory gap disagree about whether the gap is permanent. Some say that we are like the scientifically naive person who is told that matter = energy, but does not have the concepts required to make sense of the idea. If we can acquire these concepts, the gap is closable. Others say the gap is uncloseable because of our cognitive limitations. Still others say that the gap is a consequence of the fundamental nature of consciousness. (shrink)

Damasio, an eminent neuroscientist explores the science of human emotion and what the great Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza can teach of how and why we feel. Damasio shows how joy and sorrow, those most defining of human feelings, are in fact the cornerstones of our survival and culture.

The article attempts to show some limitations to reductive accounts in science and philosophy of body-mind relations, experience and skill. Extensive literature has developed in analytic philosophy of mind recently due to new technology and theories in the neurosciences. In the sporting sciences, there are also attempts to reduce experiences and skills to biology, mechanics, chemistry and physiology. The article argues there are three fundamental problems for reductive accounts that lead to an explanatory gap between the reduction and the conscious (...) experience. First, reductive accounts deal with objective observations; conscious experiences are subjective. Second, subjective experience seems difficult to identify with physical events described by chemistry, biology, mechanics or neurophysiology. Finally, sport involves knowing how and knowing how is also difficult to reduce to propositional knowledge, which is the reductive scientific/philosophical project. The article argues that sport provides an excellent platform to better understand what is wrong with reductive analysis in body-mind relations, since both conscious experience and knowing how are fundamental to sport performance. (shrink)

Bodily movement has become an interesting topic in recent philosophy, both in analytic and phenomenological versions. Philosophy from Descartes to Kant defined the human being as a mental subject in a material body. This mechanistic attitude toward the body still lingers on in many studies of motor learning and control. The article shows how alternative philosophical views can give a better understanding of bodily movement. The article starts with Heidegger's contribution to overcoming the subject-object dichotomy and his new understanding of (...) the primacy of the practical involvement with the surrounding world. Heidegger, however, in many ways neglected the role of the human body. Merleau-Ponty took a huge step forward when he focused on the bodily intentionality of our interaction with the world. The next step was taken by Samuel Todes who presented a better understanding of how we are bodily oriented in space. After having seen how the body is oriented outward towards the environment it is proper that the final part of this article goes inward toward the role of bodily awareness and the role of proprioception in human movement. The goal of the presentation is to contribute to a better understanding of what goes on in sport. The article therefore uses examples from sport, especially football, to show the relevance of the new insights for sport studies. (shrink)

This paper opens with a presentation of the philosophical underpinning and rationale of the concept of physical literacy. This is followed by an articulation of the concept of physical literacy. Three subsequent sections then consider aspects of the concept in a little more detail. The first investigates the relationship of the physical literacy to the development of a sense of self and to establishing interaction with others. Here the philosophical approach is informed by writings on cognitive development and recent neurological (...) insights. The second considers the universality of the concept and looks briefly at the views of existentialists and of contemporary sociologists. The third section addresses the place of propositional knowledge in being physically literate. The implications of objectifying the body in descriptive language are weighed against the fact that verbally expressed understanding and knowledge are an integral part of Western culture. The debate presented is one of a series that has, over the last five years, mapped the author's work on developing the concept of physical literacy. The aspects chosen to be discussed here are three that have generated considerable interest and debate. In conclusion, there is a short reflection on the implications of the views discussed for education and physical education. (shrink)

"This is a fine volume that clarifies, defends, and moves beyond the views that Kim presented in Mind in a Physical World.

qualia include the ways it feels to see, hear and smell, the way it feels to have a pain; more generally, what it's like to have mental states. Qualia are experiential properties of sensations, feelings, perceptions and, in my view, thoughts and desires as well. But, so defined, who could deny that qualia exist? Yet, the existence of qualia is controversial. Here is what is controversial: whether qualia, so defined, can be characterized in intentional, functional or purely cognitive terms. Opponents (...) of qualia think that the content of experience is intentional content (like the content of thought), or that experiences are functionally definable, or that to have a qualitative state is to have a state that is monitored in a certain way or accompanied by a thought to the effect that I have that state (seecontent functionalism; intentionality). If we include the idea that experiential properties are not intentional or functional or purely cognitive in the definition of ‘qualia’, then it is controversial whether there are qualia. (shrink)

Philosophy and Neuroscience: A Ruthlessly Reductive Account is the first book-length treatment of philosophical issues and implications in current cellular and molecular neuroscience. John Bickle articulates a philosophical justification for investigating "lower level" neuroscientific research and describes a set of experimental details that have recently yielded the reduction of memory consolidation to the molecular mechanisms of long-term potentiation (LTP). These empirical details suggest answers to recent philosophical disputes over the nature and possibility of psycho-neural scientific reduction, including the multiple realization (...) challenge, mental causation, and relations across explanatory levels. Bickle concludes by examining recent work in cellular neuroscience pertaining to features of conscious experience, including the cellular basis of working memory, the effects of explicit selective attention on single-cell activity in visual cortex, and sensory experiences induced by cortical microstimulation. (shrink)

In Descartes's time the issue between materialists and their opponents was framed in terms of substances. Materialists such as Thomas Hobbes and Pierre Gassendi maintained that people are physical systems with abilities that no other physical systems have; people, therefore, are special kinds of physical substance. Descartes's DUALISM, by contrast, claimed that people consist of two distinct substances that interact causally: a physical body and a nonphysical, unextended substance. The traditional.

A Nobel Prize-winning scientist and a leading brain researcher show how the brain creates conscious experience.

It is popularly believed within sport's practice communities that a contest fails if the competitor who performs most skilfully in it does not win. The belief is rarely acknowledged explicitly, and therefore deserves to be considered ideological in a sense. In this paper I challenge that belief. For conceptual reasons, I confine the discussion to the purposive sports, e.g. football and tennis. The concept of skill is approached by articulation of a set of platitudes about skill in the purposive sports. (...) The first is the conceptual wedge between skill and success. The second is the distinction between skill and other performance-relevant qualities such as courage, strength and luck. The third is the fact that skill deficits can be compensated by sufficient amounts of the other performance relevant qualities. The fourth is the dispositional and dynamic character of skill. The relation between skill and final objectives in the purposive sports means that (i) qualities such as nerve and courage can trump the more skilful performance; and (ii) poor execution of a narrow range of skills can result in the competitive failure of the more skilful performance. There is no viable ideal of sport that would ground regret about the realisation of the immediately preceding possibilities. The inclination towards such regret might be partly motivated by the wish to take a gratifying view of ourselves. An end to this response, and a more inclusive, less hierarchical conception of sport skills, is worth recommending. (shrink)

(2005). A Philosophical Critique of Classical Cognitivism in Sport: From Information Processing to Bodily Background Knowledge. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport: Vol. 32, No. 2, pp. 155-183.

In the preface, Kim writes hopefully that his introduction to the philosophy of mind is “intended to be accessible to those without a formal background in philosophy”. The blurb at the end is more realistic: Philosophy of Mind is “a textbook for upper-level undergraduates and graduate students”. It is an admirable addition to Westview’s excellent Dimensions of Philosophy series. Brisk, workmanlike chapters profile the usual suspects: behaviorism, the identity theory, mind as computer and as causal structure, mental causation, consciousness, mental (...) content, and reductive and nonreductive physicalism. Each chapter ends with a useful note on further readings. (shrink)

Here Jean-Pierre Changeux elucidates our current knowledge of the human brain, taking an interdisciplinary approach and explaining in layman's terms the complex theories and scientific breakthroughs that have significantly improved our ...

I wish we could abolish the misbegotten and misleading term “phenomenal consciousness.” Perhaps Rowlands wishes that too, for he begins his book by confessing that “there is no perspicuous way of defining the associated concept” and by detailing some of the palpable equivocations involved. But he chooses to stick by the phrase. Admitting that the concept may be a “fundamentally hybrid” one, he proposes to “focus…on, and work…with, certain very general features that any instances of phenomenal consciousness must…possess”. And that (...) turns out to be nearly fair enough; he does discuss all the features associated with the term—except one to be noted below. (shrink)