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1379Bodily intentionality and social affordances in contextIn Fabio Paglieri (ed.), Consciousness in Interaction. !e role of the natural and social context in shaping consciousness, John Benjamins. 2012.There are important structural similarities in the way that animals and humans engage in unreflective activities, including unreflective social interactions in the case of higher animals. Firstly, it is a form of unreflective embodied intelligence that is ‘motivated’ by the situation. Secondly, both humans and non-human animals are responsive to ‘affordances’ (Gibson 1979); to possibilities for action offered by an environment. Thirdly, both humans and animals are selectively responsive to one a…Read more
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361McDowell and Dreyfus on Unreflective ActionInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 53 (2): 183-207. 2010.Within philosophy there is not yet an integrative account of unreflective skillful action. As a starting point, contributions would be required from philosophers from both the analytic and continental traditions. Starting from the McDowell-Dreyfus debate, shared Aristotelian-Wittgensteinian common ground is identified. McDowell and Dreyfus agree about the importance of embodied skills, situation-specific discernment and responsiveness to relevant affordances. This sheds light on the embodied and…Read more
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974The paradox of spontaneity and design: Designing spontaneous interactionsOase 2011 (85): 33-41. 2011.This paper illustrates how affordance-based design can contribute to solutions for the grand challenges that society faces. The design methodology of ‘strategic interventions’ is explained.
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Alledaags handelen zonder na te denkenAlgemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte 102 (4). 2010.
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1047On the nature of obsessions and compulsionsIn David S. Baldwin & Brian E. Leonard (eds.), Anxiety Disorders, . pp. 1-15. 2013.In this chapter we give an overview of current and historical conceptions of the nature of obsessions and compulsions. We discuss some open questions pertaining to the primacy of the affective, volitional or affective nature of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Furthermore, we add some phenomenological suggestions of our own. In particular, we point to the patients’ need for absolute certainty and the lack of trust underlying this need. Building on insights from Wittgenstein, we argue that th…Read more
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50Optimal grip on affordances in architectural design practices: an ethnographyPhenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 16 (3): 545-564. 2017.In this article we move beyond the problematic distinction between ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ cognition by accounting for so-called ‘higher’ cognitive capacities in terms of skillful activities in practices, and in terms of the affordances exploited in those practices. Through ethnographic research we aim to further develop the new notion of skilled intentionality by turning to the phenomenon of the tendency towards an optimal grip on a situation in real-life situations in the field of architecture. T…Read more
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Gesitueerde normativiteit: Van Wittgenstein naar neurofenomenologieAlgemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte 98 (1). 2006.
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133The Skillful Body as a Concernful System of Possible Actions: Phenomena and NeurodynamicsTheory & Psychology 18 (3): 341-361. 2008.For Merleau-Ponty,consciousness in skillful coping is a matter of prereflective ‘I can’ and not explicit ‘I think that.’ The body unifies many domain-specific capacities. There exists a direct link between the perceived possibilities for action in the situation (‘affordances’) and the organism’s capacities. From Merleau-Ponty’s descriptions it is clear that in a flow of skillful actions, the leading ‘I can’ may change from moment to moment without explicit deliberation. How these transitions occ…Read more
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2898According to the traditional Western concept of freedom, the ability to exercise free will depends on the availability of options and the possibility to consciously decide which one to choose. Since neuroscientific research increasingly shows the limits of what we in fact consciously control, it seems that our belief in free will and hence in personal autonomy is in trouble. A closer look at the phenomenology of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) gives us reason to doubt the traditional concep…Read more
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1426Social affordances in context: What is it that we are bodily responsive toBehavioral and Brain Sciences 36 (4): 436-436. 2013.We propose to understand social affordances in the broader context of responsiveness to a field of relevant affordances in general. This perspective clarifies our everyday ability to unreflectively switch between social and other affordances. Moreover, based on our experience with Deep Brain Stimulation for treating obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) patients, we suggest that psychiatric disorders may affect skilled intentionality, including responsiveness to social affordances
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234Inviting complementary perspectives on situated normativity in everyday lifePhenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 9 (1): 53-73. 2010.In everyday life, situations in which we act adequately yet entirely without deliberation are ubiquitous. We use the term “situated normativity” for the normative aspect of embodied cognition in skillful action. Wittgenstein’s notion of “directed discontent” refers to a context-sensitive reaction of appreciation in skillful action. Extending this notion from the domain of expertise to that of adequate everyday action, we examine phenomenologically the question of what happens when skilled indivi…Read more
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