SS 2016: Embodiment, Emotion, and Experience (Hauptseminar)

In recent years there has been a trend in philosophy and the cognitive sciences emphasising the importance of the body for cognition and consciousness. But what role does the body actually play in these processes? In this course we will consider this question with a specific focus on bodily feelings and their role in experience. We will first of all consider why one might think that processes outside of the brain might play an important role in cognition, and the main current approaches to this question. We will then step back and consider a traditional question in philosophy and psychology: the nature of the relation between bodily feelings and emotional experience. Through engaging with some of the most well-known research in this field we will see several ways that recent neuroscience has proposed that feelings play a key role in both emotion and other kinds of healthy mental processes. In the final part of the course we will consider how the more recent understanding of how the brain processes feelings and emotion might relate to our more general experience of the world.

The course will not presume any previous philosophical or neuroscientific knowledge but will forge towards providing a foundation for a bridge between the two disciplines. The aim of the course will be for students of all disciplines to develop a sense of the way that neuroscience research can help us reframe key philosophical questions and, similarly, how neuroscience research itself can benefit from drawing on philosophical knowledge and expertise. In so doing we will cultivate a basic literacy in the psychology and neuroscience of bodily feelings and begin to consider how our latest understanding of neural mechanisms may change the way we address traditional philosophical questions pertaining to cognition, emotion, and experience.

All interested students are welcome. Some background in philosophy, psychology, or neuroscience would be helpful. The course will be of particular interest to those students enrolled in Philosophy, Cognitive Science, Psychology, and the Max Planck Neural and Behavioral Graduate School.

REQUIREMENTS

All students:

Participation (10%):

• Attendance in all classes (if you cannot attend due to sickness or tragedy please email me)
• To have read the required readings thoroughly and taken notes (please bring these to class)
• Participation in all classes (i.e. asking questions and participating in discussion--please bring along a written copy of the questions you have based on the reading so that you are prepared to ask these to the group)
• Participation in at least 1 experiment run by the PONS group

PLUS...

Bachelors students who need 6 ECTS and Masters students who need 3 ECTS (e.g. Neuroschool & Cog Sci):

• Group referat with 2 page handout (20%)
• Essay 1 (1500-2000 words) (70%)

For 12 ECTS

• Group referat with 2 page handout (10%)
• Essay 1 (1500-2000 words) (30%)
• Presentation of topic for Essay 2 in final class (10%)
• Essay 2 (3000-3500 words) (40%)

Referate:

10-15 minute introductory presentation of the target paper with 2 page handout outlining the structure of the paper, explaining key terms, and highlighting any questions or problems that the paper raises for you and that you want to guide the discussion around in class. The handout should be emailed to me the night before class. In class we will work as a group to correct and develop the handout further in order to upload it to the class webpage to be used as a resource for the topic.

Essay 1: Due 31st May

"Brains are for thinking and bodies are for moving." Drawing on the arguments presented in the papers below, and providing detailed, relevant, and correctly formatted references from them, discuss the above claim and argue for or against it.

Required reading: You are expected to have read and understood, and to discuss and cite the papers discussed in classes 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3. Additional papers that may be helpful are linked to below. You may in addition draw on other literature but this is not required and it is recommended to keep your essay focused by limiting discussion to a few papers.

1. Anderson, M. L. (2003). Embodied Cognition: A field guide. Artificial Intelligence, 149(1), 91–130.
2. Shapiro, L. (2007). The Embodied Cognition Research Programme. Philosophy Compass, 2(2), 338–346.
3. Ziemke, T. (2003). What’s that thing called embodiment. In Proceedings of the 25th Annual meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 1305-1310). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

For a broad introduction to the area see the introduction and chapters 1 & 2 of Andy Clark's Being There, and Supersizing the Mind available in the university library:

Clark, A. (1997). Being there: Putting brain, body, and world together again. MIT press.