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208Distributed 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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117Late Pleistocene skill domains: commentary on Sterelny & HiscockCurrent Anthropology. forthcoming.Sterelny and Hiscock (S&H) argue against the centrality of high-fidelity copying in cumulative culture. I address one key strand of their case, the decoupling of expertise from precise imitation. This advances understanding of hominin skill acquisition, and underlines a puzzle about domain-specificity.
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295Maurice Halbwachs on dreams and memoryIn Daniel Gregory & Kourken Michaelian (eds.), Dreaming and Memory, Springer. forthcoming.In the first two chapters of his 1925 book Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire (The Social Frameworks of Memory), the French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs (1877-1945) develops a sustained comparison between remembering and dreaming. Engaging in detail with large bodies of contemporary research in psychology, physiology, philosophy, and linguistics, he aims to combat what he calls the ‘surprising’ tendency of ‘psychological treatises that deal with memory’ to treat each of us as ‘an isolated being’ …Read more
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160Perspective (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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171Individuals 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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19Sociocultural memory development research drives new directions in gadgetry scienceBehavioral and Brain Sciences 42. 2019.Sociocultural developmental psychology can drive new directions in gadgetry science. We use autobiographical memory, a compound capacity incorporating episodic memory, as a case study. Autobiographical memory emerges late in development, supported by interactions with parents. Intervention research highlights the causal influence of these interactions, whereas cross-cultural research demonstrates culturally determined diversity. Different patterns of inheritance are discussed.
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36Why robots can’t haka: skilled performance and embodied knowledge in the Māori hakaSynthese 199 (1-2): 4337-4365. 2021.To investigate the unique kinds of mentality involved in skilled performance, this paper explores the performance ecology of the Māori haka, a ritual form of song and dance of the indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand. We respond to a recent proposal to program robots to perform a haka as ‘cultural preservationists’ for ‘intangible cultural heritage’. This ‘Robot Māori Haka’ proposal raises questions about the nature of skill and the transmission of embodied knowledge; about the cognitive an…Read more
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44Yoga From the Mat Up: How words alight on bodiesEducational Philosophy and Theory 46 (6): 655-673. 2014.Yoga is a unique form of expert movement that promotes an increasingly subtle interpenetration of thought and movement. The mindful nature of its practice, even at expert levels, challenges the idea that thought and mind are inevitably disruptive to absorbed coping. Building on parallel phenomenological and ethnographic studies of skilful performance and embodied apprenticeship, we argue for the importance in yoga of mental access to embodied movement during skill execution by way of a case stud…Read more
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16To Think or Not To Think: The apparent paradox of expert skill in music performanceEducational Philosophy and Theory 46 (6): 674-691. 2014.Expert skill in music performance involves an apparent paradox. On stage, expert musicians are required accurately to retrieve information that has been encoded over hours of practice. Yet they must also remain open to the demands of the ever-changing situational contingencies with which they are faced during performance. To further explore this apparent paradox and the way in which it is negotiated by expert musicians, this article profiles theories presented by Roger Chaffin, Hubert Dreyfus an…Read more
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12Interacting to remember at multiple timescalesInteraction Studies. Social Behaviour and Communication in Biological and Artificial Systemsinteraction Studies / Social Behaviour and Communication in Biological and Artificial Systemsinteraction Studies 16 (3): 419-450. 2015.Everyday joint remembering, from family remembering around the dinner table to team remembering in the operating theatre, relies on the successful interweaving of multiple cognitive, 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 so as better to study their interanimation in practice:…Read more
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11753Self‐Representation and Perspectives in DreamsPhilosophy Compass 8 (11): 1041-1053. 2013.Integrative and naturalistic philosophy of mind can both learn from and contribute to the contemporary cognitive sciences of dreaming. Two related phenomena concerning self-representation in dreams demonstrate the need to bring disparate fields together. In most dreams, the protagonist or dream self who experiences and actively participates in dream events is or represents the dreamer: but in an intriguing minority of cases, self-representation in dreams is displaced, disrupted, or even absent. …Read more
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Mnemicity - A cognitive gadget?Perspectives on Psychological Science 1 (1). 2023.Episodic representations can be entertained either as “remembered” or “imagined”—as outcomes of experience or as simulations of such experience. Here, we argue that this feature is the product of a dedicated cognitive function: the metacognitive capacity to determine the mnemicity of mental event simulations. We argue that mnemicity attribution should be distinguished from other metacognitive operations (such as reality monitoring) and propose that this attribution is a “cognitive gadget”—a dist…Read more
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13Re-tracing the encounter: Interkinaesthetic forms of knowledge in Contact ImprovisationAntropologia E Teatro 7 (7): 226-243. 2016.We adopted a phenomenological approach, directly engaging with the community of practice of the form of movement under study. We discuss some methodological approaches that we considered in investigating the lived experience of a heterogeneous group of Contact Improvisation (CI) practitioners. We delineate how such a system of movement could provide a unique example for the analysis of the interpersonal dynamics between movers with a different degree of expertise, re-tracing some common paths to…Read more
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35Transmitting Passione: Emio Greco and the Ballet National de MarseilleIn Jill Nunes Jensen Kathrina Farrugia-Kriel (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Ballet, Oxford University Press. pp. 594-612. 2021.This work addresses the case of the Ballet National de Marseille (BNM) and the 2017 recreation of the piece Passione, created by the artistic directors Emio Greco and Pieter C. Scholten. This study, informed by a phenomenological approach, adopts ethnographic methods, including participant observation, in-depth interviews, and one researcher’s direct involvement with the practices of enculturation and enskillment in this dance form. It investigates how the dancers of the BNM articulate their div…Read more
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19Ageing Together: Interdependence in the Memory Compensation Strategies of Long-Married Older CouplesFrontiers in Psychology 13. 2022.People live and age together in social groups. Across a range of outcomes, research has identified interdependence in the cognitive and health trajectories of ageing couples. Various types of memory decline with age and people report using a range of internal and external, social, and material strategies to compensate for these declines. While memory compensation strategies have been widely studied, research so far has focused only on single individuals. We examined interdependence in the memory…Read more
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Multiperspectival Imagery: Sartre and Cognitive Theory on Point of View in Remembering and Imagining.In Jack Reynolds & Richard Sebold (eds.), Phenomenology and Science, Palgrave-macmillan. 2016.
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Memory and PerspectiveIn Sven Bernecker & Kourken Michaelian (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Memory, Routledge. 2017.
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33Cognition and the Web: Extended, Transactive, or Scaffolded?Erkenntnis 85 (1): 139-164. 2020.In the history of external information systems, the World Wide Web presents a significant change in terms of the accessibility and amount of available information. Constant access to various kinds of online information has consequences for the way we think, act and remember. Philosophers and cognitive scientists have recently started to examine the interactions between the human mind and the Web, mainly focussing on the way online information influences our biological memory systems. In this art…Read more
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69Memory systems and the control of skilled actionPhilosophical Psychology 32 (5): 692-718. 2019.ABSTRACTIn keeping with the dominant view that skills are largely automatic, the standard view of memory systems distinguishes between a representational declarative system associated with cognitive processes and a performance-based procedural system. The procedural system is thought to be largely responsible for the performance of well-learned skilled actions. Here we argue that most skills do not fully automate, which entails that the declarative system should make a substantial contribution t…Read more
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22The Centered Mind: What the Science of Working Memory Shows Us About the Nature of Human Thought, by Peter, Carruthers: Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015, pp. xiv + 290, £30 (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 95 (3): 621-622. 2017.
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19Dennis Des chene, spirits and clocks: Machine and organism in Descartes. Ithaca and London: Cornell university press, 2001. Pp. XIII+181. Isbn 0-8014-3764-4. 25.95 (review)British Journal for the History of Science 36 (2): 233-235. 2003.
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535Expanding Expertise: Investigating a Musician’s Experience of Music PerformanceASCS09: Proceedings of the 9th Conference of the Australasian Society for Cognitive Science 106-113. 2010.Seeking to expand on previous theories, this paper explores the AIR (Applying Intelligence to the Reflexes) approach to expert performance previously outlined by Geeves, Christensen, Sutton and McIlwain (2008). Data gathered from a semi-structured interview investigating the performance experience of Jeremy Kelshaw (JK), a professional musician, is explored. Although JK’s experience of music performance contains inherently uncertain elements, his phenomenological description of an ideal performa…Read more
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212Psyche 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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581Representation, levels, and context in integrational linguistics and distributed cognitionLanguage Sciences (6): 503-524. 2004.Distributed Cognition and Integrational Linguistics have much in common. Both approaches see communicative activity and intelligent behaviour in general as strongly con- text-dependent and action-oriented, and brains as permeated by history. But there is some ten- sion between the two frameworks on three important issues. The majority of theorists of distributed cognition want to maintain some notions of mental representation and computa- tion, and to seek generalizations and patterns in the var…Read more
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401Time, Experience, and Descriptive Experience SamplingJournal of Consciousness Studies 18 (1): 118-129. 2011.This rich book, the best I’ve read in consciousness studies, offers more at each encounter. It was a brilliant idea to evaluate Hurlburt’s Descriptive Experience Sampling method through concrete sceptical enquiry by Schwitzgebel, whose role as open-minded but hard-nosed interlocutor makes the debate an intriguing, even gripping read. The radically different views about introspective reports held by the two authors are put to the test in the concrete context of ‘an examination, in unprecedented d…Read more
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23Features of Successful and Unsuccessful Collaborative Memory Conversations in Long‐Married CouplesTopics in Cognitive Science 11 (4): 668-686. 2019.Harris, Barnier, Sutton and Savage examine the communication styles that boost the mnemonic consequences associated with conversations for long‐term married couples and the circumstances under which the couples form a TMS. Harris and colleagues demonstrated that specific communication styles (e.g., cueing each other) promote group memory success whereas others (e.g., correcting each other) did not enhance group recall performance. These results showed that even in well‐established and enduring d…Read more
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1709Cognition and the Web: Extended, transactive, or scaffolded?Erkenntnis 85 (1): 139-164. 2020.In the history of external information systems, the World Wide Web presents a significant change in terms of the accessibility and amount of available information. Constant access to various kinds of online information has consequences for the way we think, act and remember. Philosophers and cognitive scientists have recently started to examine the interactions between the human mind and the Web, mainly focussing on the way online information influences our biological memory systems. In this art…Read more
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1314Collective mental time travel: remembering the past and imagining the future togetherSynthese 196 (12): 4933-4960. 2019.Bringing research on collective memory together with research on episodic future thought, Szpunar and Szpunar :376–389, 2016) have recently developed the concept of collective future thought. Individual memory and individual future thought are increasingly seen as two forms of individual mental time travel, and it is natural to see collective memory and collective future thought as forms of collective mental time travel. But how seriously should the notion of collective mental time travel be tak…Read more
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1Distributed Cognition and Memory Research (special issue) (edited book)Review of Philosophy and Psychology. 2013.