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213Eliminating episodic memory?Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. forthcoming.In Tulving’s initial characterization, episodic memory was one of multiple memory systems. It was postulated, in pursuit of explanatory depth, as displaying proprietary operations, representations, and substrates such as to explain a range of cognitive, behavioural, and experiential phenomena. Yet the subsequent development of this research program has, paradoxically, introduced surprising doubts about the nature, and indeed existence, of episodic memory. On dominant versions of the ‘common syst…Read more
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213Multiple Timescales of Joint Remembering in the Crafting of aMemory-Scaffolding Tool during Collaborative DesignIn G. Airenti, B. G. Bara & G. Sandini (eds.), roceedings of EuroAsianPacific Joint Conference on Cognitive Science, . pp. 60-65. 2015.Joint remembering relies on the successful interweaving of multiple cognitive, linguistic, bodily, social and material resources, anchored in specific cultural ecosystems. Such systems for joint remembering in social interactions are composed of processes unfolding over multiple but complementary timescales which we distinguish for analytic purposes with the terms ‘coordination’, ‘collaboration’, ‘cooperation’, and ‘culture’, so as better to study their interanimation in practice. As an illustra…Read more
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211Review of Joseph Tabbi's, Cognitive Fictions (review)Metapsychology 7 (8). 2003.In the closing chapter of his recent bestseller The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker attributes what he dislikes in modern literature to the influence of poor empiricist psychology. The modernist ‘denial of human nature’ resulted, Pinker informs us sadly, in the replacement of ‘omniscient narration, structured plots, the orderly introduction of characters, and general readability’ by ‘a stream of consciousness, events presented out of order, baffling characters and causal sequences, subjective and dis…Read more
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208Psyche And Soma: Physicians and Metaphysicians on the Mind-Body Problem from Antiquity to EnlightenmentAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 81 (1): 142-144. 2003.Review of Psyche And Soma: Physicians and Metaphysicians on the Mind-Body Problem from Antiquity to Enlightenment.
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208Review of Dennis Des Chene, Spirits and Clocks: machine and organism in Descartes (review)British Journal for the History of Science 36 233-235. 2003.This rangy and precise book deserves to be read even by those historians who think they are bored with Descartes. While offering surprising and detailed readings of bewildering texts like theDescription of the Human Body, Des Chene constructs a powerful, sad narrative of the Cartesian disenchantment of the body. Along the way he also delivers provocative views on topics as various as teleology, the role of illustrations in the history of mechanism, theories of the sexual differentiation of the f…Read more
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207Review of Dennis Des Chene, Life's Form: Late Aristotelian conceptions of the soul (review)Metapsychology 6 (22). 2002.In the late 16th and early 17th centuries, a number of ‘liberal Jesuit scholastics’ produced the last great synthesis of Aristotelian psychology with Christian theology. In this magnificently sympathetic reconstruction of their systems of the soul, Dennis Des Chene rescues Toletus, Suarez, and the other ‘schoolmen’ from neglect which resulted from scornful dismissals by Descartes and his fellows. Deliberating bypassing the political and medical contexts of their work, and focusing almost exclusi…Read more
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204Review of Douwe Draaisma, Metaphors of Memory: a history of ideas about the mind. (review)Times Literary Supplement 5152. 2001.According to a 17th-century European fantasy, certain sponges were used in the South Seas to record and transmit sound. A message spoken into one of these sponges would be exactly replayed when a recipient squeezed it appropriately, even across great distances in time and space. It's hard for us to remember just how magical it is, in a natural world made up solely of warring elements, that any information can be enduringly stored, transported without distortion, and precisely reproduced. Our liv…Read more
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203Review of Elizabeth A. Wilson, Neural Geographies: feminism and the microstructure of cognition (review)Philosophy in Review/ Comptes Rendus Philosophiques 299-301. 1999.Writing within and against the set critical practices of psychoanalytic-deconstructive-Foucauldian-feminist cultural theory, Elizabeth Wilson demonstrates, in this provocative and original book, the productivity and the pleasure of direct, complicitous engagement with the contemporary cognitive sciences. Wilson forges an eclectic method in reaction to the 'zealous but disavowed moralism' of those high cultural Theorists whose 'disciplining compulsion' concocts a monolithic picture of science in …Read more
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201Embodied experience in the cognitive ecologies of skilled performanceIn Ellen Fridland & Carlotta Pavese (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Skill and Expertise, Routledge. pp. 194-205. 2020.
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201Review of Paul and Patricia Churchland, On the Contrary: critical essays, 1987-1997 (review)Times Literary Supplement 5029. 1999.Cognitive science, with its exuberant neuromythologies, is a regular target for wise humanists who insist that our rich, sharp, sad, and chancy mental life will easily resist the misplaced physics-envy of over-zealous reductionists. Yet there is little true cause for their concern: in the current confusion of multidisciplinary inquiry into computation and the brain, there are few even half-developed visions of a future completed psychology which challenge straightforward metaphysical and moral f…Read more
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201Observer perspective and acentred memory: some puzzles about point of view in personal memoryPhilosophical Studies 148 (1): 27-37. 2010.Sometimes I remember my past experiences from an ‘observer’ perspective, seeing myself in the remembered scene. This paper analyses the distinction in personal memory between such external observer visuospatial perspectives and ‘field’ perspectives, in which I experience the remembered actions and events as from my original point of view. It argues that Richard Wollheim’s related distinction between centred and acentred memory fails to capture the key phenomena, and criticizes Wollheim’s reasons…Read more
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200Symposium: Descartes on perceptual cognitionIn S. Gaukroger, J. Schuster & J. Sutton (eds.), Descartes' Natural Philosophy, Routledge. pp. 524-527. 2000.Descartes, the textbooks say, divided human beings, or at least their minds, from the natural world. This is not just the consequence of metaphysical dualism, but of the concomitant indirect ‘ideas’ theory of perception. On the standard view, the soul must dimly infer the nature of the external world from the meagre, fragmentary, and often misleading input which is causally transmitted from objects through the nervous system to the brain and, ultimately, to the pineal gland. The metaphysical sol…Read more
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195Review of Lorraine Daston & Katharine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750 (review)Times Literary Supplement 5001. 1999.Curious about the nature of light, Robert Boyle spent a series of late nights taking detailed observations of shining veal shanks, stinking fish, pieces of rotten wood which glowed in the dark, and a ‘noctiluca’ distilled from human urine. Once, report Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park, with "only a foot-boy" to assist him, Boyle put a luminous diamond to the nocturnal test, "plunging it into oil and acid, spitting on it, and ‘taking it into bed with me, and holding it a good while upon a warm …Read more
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185Distributed traces and the causal theory of constructive memoryIn John Sutton & Gerard O'Brien (eds.), Current Controversies in the Philosophy of Memory, Routledge. pp. 82-104. 2023.
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185Place and memory: history, cognition, phenomenologyIn Mary Floyd-Wilson & Garrett A. Sullivan (eds.), Geographies of Embodiment in Early Modern England, Oxford University Press. pp. 113-133. 2020.
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184Synchronous vs non-synchronous imitation: using dance to explore interpersonal coordination during observational learningHuman Movement Science 102776 (102776). 2021.Observational learning can enhance the acquisition and performance quality of complex motor skills. While an extensive body of research has focused on the benefits of synchronous (i.e., concurrent physical practice) and non-synchronous (i.e., delayed physical practice) observational learning strategies, the question remains as to whether these approaches differentially influence performance outcomes. Accordingly, we investigate the differential outcomes of synchronous and non-synchronous observa…Read more
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182Author’s responseMetascience 9 (2): 226-237. 2000.Sutton's response to three reviews, by Catherine Wilson, Theo Meyering, and Michael Mascuch. Topics include historical cognitive science; the historical link between animal spirits and neural nets; conceptual change; control and time in memory; and Descartes the neurophilosopher.
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181Recalling autobiographical memories with others can influence the quality of recall, but little is known about how features of the group influence memory outcomes. In two studies, we examined how the products and processes of autobiographical recall depend on individual vs. collaborative remembering and the relationship between group members. In both studies, dyads of strangers, friends, and siblings recalled autobiographical events individually (elicitation), then either collaboratively or indi…Read more
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180Review of Carl Zimmer, Soul made Flesh: the discovery of the brain (review)Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 42 298-299. 2006.In telling the story of Thomas Willis and the collective investigations of body and brain in 17th-century England with tremendous energy and enthusiasm, journalist Carl Zimmer has written one of the best recent books of popular history of science. The full range of readers will be rewarded by Zimmer’s synthetic scholarship and his evident pleasure in the language of the primary texts. While he owes much to the work of Robert Frank and Robert Martensen in particular, Zimmer has negotiated a vast …Read more
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177Francis BaconIn Encyclopedia of the life sciences, Macmillan. pp. 471. 2001.Francis Bacon was the youngest son of Nicholas Bacon, lord keeper of the great seal under Elizabeth I. He left Cambridge in 1575, studied law, and entered Parliament in 1581. Though roughly contemporary with Kepler, Galileo, and Harvey, Bacon’s grand schemes for the advancement of knowledge were not driven by their discoveries: he resisted the Copernican hypothesis, and did not give mathematics a central place in his vision of natural philosophy. His active public life, under both Elizabeth and …Read more
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177Author's response to reviews by Catherine Wilson, Michael mascuch, and Theo MeyeringMetascience 9 (226-237): 203-37. 2000.Historical Cognitive Science I am lucky to strike three reviewers who extract so clearly my book's spirit as well as its substance. They all both accept and act on my central methodological assumption; that detailed historical research, and consideration of difficult contemporary questions about cognition and culture, can be mutually illuminating. It's gratifying to find many themes which recur in different contexts throughout _Philosophy and Memory_ _Traces_ so well articulated here. The review…Read more
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174Robert HookeIn Encyclopedia of the life sciences, Macmillan. pp. 202-203. 2001.English instrument-maker, experimentalist, and natural philosopher who made key contributions in a wide range of areas including physiology, geology, and mechanics. Born on the Isle of Wight, Hooke showed early aptitude with the design of mechanical toys. At Westminster School he learnt mathematics and geometry, and at Christ Church, Oxford, he joined a remarkable group of natural philosophers working before the Restoration on physiological and physical topics (Frank 1980). Much of Hooke’s caree…Read more
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170Introduction: the situated intelligence of collaborative skillsIn Kath Bicknell & John Sutton (eds.), Collaborative Embodied Performance: Ecologies of Skill, Methuen Drama. pp. 1-18. 2022.
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154Individuals for Anti-IndividualistsConstructivist Foundations 18 (3): 374-376. 2023.Open peer commentary on the article “Beyond Individual-Centred 4E Cognition: Systems Biology and Sympoiesis” by Mads Julian Dengsø & Michael David Kirchhoff. Abstract: Dengsø and Kirchhoff offer a revised dynamic conception of the individual in place of the bounded cognitive agent of classical cognitive science. However, this may not be sufficiently robust to ground the enquiries into individual and cultural differences that remain vital in the proposed “deterritorialized cognitive science.” It …Read more
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152'Yes, and ...': having it all in improvisation studiesIn J. McGuirk, S. Ravn & S. Høffding (eds.), Improvisation: The Competence(s) of Not Being in Control, Routledge. pp. 200-209. 2021.As one of the first readers of this fine collection of chapters in improvisation studies, I’ve been interactively constructing my experiences and interpretations of the chapters as I go along. Engaged reading – like all our characteristic activities – has a substantial improvisatory dimension. Readers are neither passively downloading data transmitted fully formed from the contributors’ minds nor making up whatever we like, projecting our own views onto a blank slate of a book. In forging and sh…Read more
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149Cognition in Skilled Action: Meshed Control and the Varieties of Skill ExperienceMind and Language 31 (1): 37-66. 2016.We present a synthetic theory of skilled action which proposes that cognitive processes make an important contribution to almost all skilled action, contrary to influential views that many skills are performed largely automatically. Cognitive control is focused on strategic aspects of performance, and plays a greater role as difficulty increases. We offer an analysis of various forms of skill experience and show that the theory provides a better explanation for the full set of these experiences …Read more
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140Material agency, skills, and history: Distributed cognition and the archaeology of memoryIn C. Knappett & L. Malafouris (eds.), Material Agency: Towards a Non-Anthropocentric Approach, Springer. 2007.for Lambros Malafouris and Carl Knappett (eds), Material Agency: towards a non-anthropocentric approach (Springer, late 2007)
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139Perspective (review)In Lucas Bietti & Pogacar Martin (eds.), The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Memory Studies, Palgrave Macmillan. 2023.The imagery we adopt when recalling the personal past may involve different perspectives. In many cases, we remember the past event from our original point of view. In some cases, however, we remember the past event from an external “observer” perspective and view ourselves in the remembered scene. Are such observer perspective images genuine memories? Are they accurate representations of the personal past? This chapter focuses on such observer perspectives in memory, and outlines and examines p…Read more
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128Situated Affects and Place MemoryTopoi 43 1-14. 2024.Traces of many past events are often layered or superposed, in brain, body, and world alike. This often poses challenges for individuals and groups, both in accessing specific past events and in regulating or managing coexisting emotions or attitudes. We sometimes struggle, for example, to find appropriate modes of engagement with places with complex and difficult pasts. More generally, there can appear to be a tension between what we know about the highly constructive nature of remembering, whe…Read more