The Philosophy and Cognitive Science of Embodied Agency
Instructor: Dr. Hong Yu Wong
Cross-listed in: Philosophy, Max Planck Neural and Behavioral Graduate School
Time and Location:
Fridays, 14.15 pm
Lecture Hall, Graduate Training Centre of Neuroscience
International Max Planck Research School
Österbergstr. 3, 72074 Tübingen
This seminar will look at the philosophy and cognitive science of embodied agency. We will read and discuss selections from two book manuscripts on the topic, one by the instructor of the course and another by the philosopher and cognitive scientist Frederique de Vignemont (Institut Jean Nicod/CNRS).
The seminar will provide an opinionated, but wide-ranging overview of action theory, philosophy of perception, issues associated with embodiment, and philosophically relevant material on these topics from the cognitive sciences.
Readings:
Wong Embodied Agency (ms.)
de Vignemont Mind the Body (ms.)
Plus selections from:
Peacocke The Mirror of the World (Oxford, 2014)
Burge Origins of Objectivity (Oxford, 2010)
O’Brien Self-Knowing Agents (Oxford, 2007)
O’Shaughnessy The Will, vols. 1 and 2, 1st and 2nd eds. (Cambridge, 1980 and 2008)
Merleau-Ponty Phenomenology of Perception
Jeannerod Motor Cognition: What Actions Tell the Self (Oxford, 2006).
Prinz, Beisert, and Herwig (eds.) Action Science (MIT, 2013)
And literature on embodied agency from philosophy, psychology and neuroscience.
Taking the seminar for credit:
Students taking the seminar for credit will be required to:
Attend the seminar and participate actively in the discussion.
Write 4 short critical pieces (500-800 words each) on readings in the seminar of the student’s own choosing. Each critical piece must be on a different session of the seminar, and must be submitted to the instructor by 10 am on the day of the seminar on the topic in question.
Write a 5000-word essay on a topic to be determined in consultation with the instructor. This final essay is due one month after the end of semester.
The grade will be determined as follows:
Participation in discussion 10%, Critical pieces 40%, Final essay 50%.
Number of credits for Neural and Behavioral School students: 3 credits
Students not taking the seminar for credit are welcome to audit the seminar.
Prerequisites:
· For philosophers: Preferably one in any of the following areas: philosophy of mind, philosophy of action, philosophy of language, metaphysics, or epistemology.
· For scientists: Preferably one course on motor control, neuropsychology, perception, action, cognitive science, cognitive psychology, or cognitive neuroscience.
Students who do not meet this requirement but are interested in taking the course should contact the instructor.
Background Reading:
Frankfurt ‘The Problem of Action’, American Philosophical Quarterly (1978) (JSTOR)
de Vignemont ‘Bodily Awareness’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (online)
Wilson ‘Action’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (online)
Anscombe Intention 2nd ed.
Aristotle Nichomachean Ethics
Kant Critique of Pure Reason
Roessler & Eilan (eds.) Agency and Self-Awareness (Oxford, 2003).
Campbell Past, Space, and Self (MIT, 1995).
Bermudez, Marcel & Eilan (eds.) The Body and the Self (MIT, 1995).
O’Connor & Sandis (eds.) A Companion to the Philosophy of Action (Blackwell, 2010)
Eilan ‘The Explanatory Role of Consciousness’ in O’Connor & Sandis (2010)
Wong ‘Bodily Awareness and Bodily Action’ in O’Connor & Sandis (2010)
WEEKLY SCHEDULE
Required readings are *-ed
Events where attendance is recommended but not mandatory are #-ed
April 17, 2015
Introduction: the Action-Body Gap
*Wong Embodied Agency, Introduction - EMAIL INSTRUCTOR FOR COPY
*Frankfurt “The Problem of Action” APQ 1978
*Graziano MSA (2006) “Feedback remapping and the cortical control ofmovement”, in Latash (ed.) Motor Control and Learning. Springer, NY, pp. 97-105.
*Longo MR (2015) “Implicitand explicit body representations”, EuropeanPsychologist 20: 6-15.
McGinn The Character of Mind, chapter 5 “Action”
Williams Descartes, chapter 10 “Mind and Its Place in Nature”
April 20-24, 2015
Crash course on contemporary action science and philosophy!
Daily from April 20-24, 6-8 pm
!!! Students of this Hauptseminar are required to attend the Public Lectures associated with the Tübingen Action Summer School.
See URL for locations of the lectures which are spread across the Tübingen altstadt
#April 27-28
Finding Perspective Kick-off Workshop @ MPI
Speakers:
Thomas Sattig (Tübingen), Hong Yu Wong (CIN), Christopher Lopez (CNRS), Dana Samson (Louvain), Betty Mohler (MPI), Matthew Longo (Birkbeck), Adrian Alsmith (Copenhagen)
Details at URL
May 8
Embodiment and Agency I: Problems of Embodiment in Agency
*Wong Embodied Agency, chapters 1-3
*de Vignemont “Body Image and Body Schema—Pros and Cons”, Neuropsychologia (2010)
May 15
Embodiment and Agency II: The Account
*Wong Embodied Agency, chapters 4-5
Background/Optional readings for May 8 and May 15:
Jeannerod Motor Cognition, chapters 1-3 (2006)
O’Shaughnessy The Will, 2nd ed., Book 1, Part 3 (2008)
O’Shaughnessy “The Unity and Diversity of Perception and Action” in Crane (1992)
O’Shaughnessy “Proprioception and the Body Image” in Bermudez et al. (1995)
de Vignemont “Bodily Awareness”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2011)
de Vignemont “A Multimodal Conception of Bodily Awareness”, Mind (2014)
Wong “Bodily Awareness and Bodily Action”, in O’Connor & Sandis (2010)
Wong “On the Multimodality of Body Perception” JCS (2014)
Wong “On the Significance of Bodily Awareness in Action”, PQ (2015) early view
Wong “Proprioception in Action: Multimodality versus Deafferentation”, M&L (2015)
June 5
Naturalising Action I: Background
Frankfurt “The Problem of Action” APQ 1978 (already assigned for Introductory Session)
*Burge “Primitive Agency”, PPR (2010)
*Butterfill and Sinigaglia “Intention and Motor Representation in Purposive Action”, PPR (2014)
June 12
Naturalising Action II: Flexibility, Integration, and the Action Hierarchy
*Wong Embodied Agency, chapters 6/7
Background/Optional readings for June 5 and June 12:
Anscombe Intention, 2nd ed. (1957)
O’Shaughnessy on sub-intentional actions in The Will, vol. 2, both 1st and 2nd eds.
Smith/Hornsby exchange on causal theory of action in Aguilar and Buckareff Causing Human Actions (2010)
Stewart “Sub-intentional Actions and the Over-mentalization of Agency”, in Sandis (2010)
Wilson ‘Action’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (online)
June 26
Personal and Sub-personal Explanations in Philosophy and Neuroscience
*Dennett, D. (1969) Content and Consciousness. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, selection of about 10 pages where the distinction is first introduced.
*McDowell, J. (1994) “The Content of Perceptual Experience”, Philosophical Quarterly 44: 175-205.
*Wong “Personal and Sub-Personal: Overcoming Explanatory Apartheid”, in T.-W. Hung (ed.) Communicative Action (Singapore: Springer, 2014), pp. 93-104.
July 3
Embodiment and Self I: Body Ownership
* M. G. F. Martin “Bodily Awareness: A Sense of Ownership” in Bermudez et al. (1995)
* de Vignemont (2011) "Embodiment, ownership and disownership", Consciousness and Cognition, 20, 82-93.
de Vignemont, F. (2007) "Habeas Corpus: the Sense of Ownership of One's Body", Mind and Language, 22, 4.
#July 6-9
Brentano Lectures and Philosophy of Mind Workshop
Brentano Lecturer:
M. G. F. Martin (UCL and UC Berkeley)
Invited Speakers:
Matthew Nudds (Warwick), Susanna Schellenberg (Rutgers), Matthew Soteriou (Warwick)
#July 13-14
Taipei-Tübingen Neurophilosophy Workshop
Speakers to include:
Caleb Liang (NTU), Aleksandra Mroczko-Wasowicz (Yang Ming)
July 17
Embodiment and Self II: Body Ownership and Body Action
Special Guest: Andreas Kalckert (Karolinksa/Reading)
*Kalckert & Ehrsson (2012). Moving a rubber hand that feels like your own: a dissociation of ownership and agency. Front. Hum. Neurosci.6:40. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2012.00040 PDF
*de Vignemont Mind the Body, selections on defensive conception of body ownership
July 31 (Final Session)
Embodiment and Self I: Sense of Agency and Knowledge of Agency
*Wong Embodied Agency, chapter 10
*Pacherie “The Phenomenology of Action: a Framework”, Cognition (2008)
*Thompson “Anscombe on Knowledge of Action” in Ford et al. Essays on Anscombe’s Intention (2010)
Marcel “Sense of Agency” in Roessler and Eilan (2003) – highly recommended but not obligatory
Background/Optional readings for July 17 and July 31:
Anscombe Intention §26 and other key passages on non-observation knowledge of action (1957)
Ehrsson “Bodily Ownership and Multisensory Integration” (2012)
Moran “Anscombe on Practical Knowledge”, Philosophy (2004)
Peacocke “Perception and the First Person” in Matten (ed.) Handbook of the Philosophy of Perception (2015)
Tsakiris “My body in the brain: A neurocognitive model of body-ownership”, Neuropsychologia (2010)
Zombie Action and Automatic Action
*Wong Embodied Agency, chapter 8
*Clark “The Golden Braid”, Neuropsychologia (2009)
*Wong Embodied Agency, chapter 9
*Wu “Experts and Deviants”, PPR early view (2015)
*Moors latest Automaticity review
Auditing the seminar: