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299In one sense of the term, empathy refers to the act of sharing in another person’s experience of and perspective on the world. According to simulation accounts of empathy, we achieve this by replicating the other’s mind in our imagination. We explore a form of empathy, empathic perspective-taking, that is not adequately captured by existing simulationist approaches. We begin by pointing out that we often achieve empathy (or share in another’s perspective) by listening to the other person. This f…Read more
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323Narrative self-constitution as embodied practicePhilosophical Psychology. forthcoming.Narrative views of the self argue that we constitute our self in self-narratives. Embodied views hold that our self is shaped through embodied experiences. In that case, what is the relation between embodiment and narrativity in the process of self-constitution? The question demands a clear definition of embodiment, but existing studies remains unclear on this point (section 2). We offer a correction to this situation by drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of the body that highlights its habitua…Read more
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20Situated self-awareness in expert performance: a situated normativity account of riken no kenSynthese 200 (3): 1-25. 2022.We explore the nature of expert minds in skilled performance by examining classic Japanese dramatist Zeami’s account of skilled expertise in Noh drama. Zeami characterizes expert minds by the co-existence of mushin and riken no ken. Mushin is an empty state of mind devoid of mental contents. Riken no ken is a distinctive form of self-awareness, where the actor embodies a common perspective with the audience upon one’s own performance. Conventional accounts of riken no ken present it as a form of…Read more
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5Dreyfus and Zeami on Embodied ExpertiseIn Karyn L. Lai (ed.), Knowers and Knowledge in East-West Philosophy: Epistemology Extended, Springer Nature. pp. 345-366. 2021.This chapter explores a non-intellectualist approach to skilled expertise by comparing modern phenomenological philosopher Hubert Dreyfus’ account of absorbed coping with fifteenth-century Japanese dramatist Zeami Motokiyo’s account of Noh performance. It begins by presenting Dreyfus’ account of skilled performance and skill development, which envisages “conceptual mindedness” as the enemy of expertise. It then moves on to introduce Zeami’s account of skilled expertise in Noh by focusing on thre…Read more
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20Who tailors the blanket?Behavioral and Brain Sciences 45. 2022.The gap between the Markov blanket and ontological boundaries arises from the former's inability to capture the dynamic process through which biological and cognitive agents actively generate their own boundaries with the environment. Active inference in the free-energy principle (FEP) framework presupposes the existence of a Markov blanket, but it is not a process that actively generates the latter.
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492The Pragmatic Intelligence of HabitsTopoi 40 (3): 597-608. 2021.Habitual actions unfold without conscious deliberation or reflection, and yet often seem to be intelligently adjusted to situational intricacies. A question arises, then, as to how it is that habitual actions can exhibit this form of intelligence, while falling outside the domain of paradigmatically intentional actions. Call this the intelligence puzzle of habits. This puzzle invites three standard replies. Some stipulate that habits lack intelligence and contend that the puzzle is ill-posed. Ot…Read more
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563Wax On, Wax Off! Habits, Sport Skills, and Motor IntentionalityTopoi 40 (3): 609-622. 2020.What role does habit formation play in the development of sport skills? We argue that motor habits are both necessary for and constitutive of sensorimotor skill as they support an automatic, yet inherently intelligent and flexible, form of action control. Intellectualists about skills generally assume that what makes action intelligent and flexible is its intentionality, and that intentionality must be necessarily cognitive in nature to allow for both deliberation and explicit goal-representatio…Read more
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33A new experimental phenomenological method to explore the subjective features of psychological phenomena: its application to binocular rivalryNeuroscience of Consciousness 2020 (1). 2020.The subjective features of psychological phenomena have been studied intensively in experimental science in recent years. Although various methods have been proposed to identify subjective features of psychological phenomena, there are elusive subjective features such as the spatiotemporal structure of experience, which are difficult to capture without some additional methodological tools. We propose a new experimental method to address this challenge, which we call the contrast-based experiment…Read more
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17Social Perception and the Problem of Other MindsProceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy 45 21-26. 2018.How do we understand other people’s minds? This is a descriptive problem of other minds, a question concerning the descriptive nature of social cognition or interpersonal understanding. There are currently three prominent approaches to this problem, namely, the theory theory approach, the simulation theory approach and the direct perception approach. Instead of trying to resolve the conflict between them, I will conduct a preliminary exploration concerning the nature of social perception or the …Read more
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25Perception and the problem of access to other mindsPhilosophical Psychology 28 (5): 695-714. 2015.
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31Enactive pain and its sociocultural embeddednessPhenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 20 (5): 871-886. 2019.This paper disputes the theoretical assumptions of mainstream approaches in philosophy of pain, representationalism and imperativism, and advances an enactive approach as an alternative. It begins by identifying three shared assumptions in the mainstream approaches: the internalist assumption, the brain-body assumption, and the semantic assumption. It then articulates an alternative, enactive approach that considers pain as an embodied response to the situation. This approach entails the hypothe…Read more
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121Neo-pragmatic intentionality and enactive perception: a compromise between extended and enactive mindsPhenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 10 (4): 499-519. 2011.The general idea of enactive perception is that actual and potential embodied activities determine perceptual experience. Some extended mind theorists, such as Andy Clark, refute this claim despite their general emphasis on the importance of the body. I propose a compromise to this opposition. The extended mind thesis is allegedly a consequence of our commonsense understanding of the mind. Furthermore, extended mind theorists assume the existence of non-human minds. I explore the precise nature …Read more
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71The integrated structure of consciousness: phenomenal content, subjective attitude, and noetic complexPhenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 18 (4): 731-758. 2019.We explore the integrated structure of consciousness by examining the “phenomenological axioms” of the “integrated information theory of consciousness ” from the perspective of Husserlian phenomenology. After clarifying the notion of phenomenological axioms by drawing on resources from Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, we develop a critique of the integration axiom by drawing on phenomenological analyses developed by Aron Gurwitsch and Merleau-Ponty. This axiom is ambiguous. It can be re…Read more
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77Neo-pragmatism and enactive intentionalityIn Jay Schulkin (ed.), Action, perception and the brain: adaptation and cephalic expression, Palgrave-macmillan. 2012.
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116Perception and the problem of access to other mindsPhilosophical Psychology (5): 1-20. 2014.In opposition to mainstream theory of mind approaches, some contemporary perceptual accounts of social cognition do not consider the central question of social cognition to be the problem of access to other minds. These perceptual accounts draw heavily on phenomenological philosophy and propose that others' mental states are “directly” given in the perception of the others' expressive behavior. Furthermore, these accounts contend that phenomenological insights into the nature of social perceptio…Read more
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25Missing Out On the Radicalism of Neurophenomenology?Constructivist Foundations 11 (2): 368-370. 2016.Open peer commentary on the article “Never Mind the Gap: Neurophenomenology, Radical Enactivism, and the Hard Problem of Consciousness” by Michael D. Kirchhoff & Daniel D. Hutto. Upshot: An exegetical worry about Kirchhoff and Hutto’s exposition of neurophenomenology is pointed out. Combining this exegetical critique with an examination of the “strict identity” in the strict identity thesis, I argue that there is more affinity between neurophenomenology and REC than they think.
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Hokkaido UniversityCenter for Human Nature, Artificial Intelligence, and Neuroscience (CHAIN)Lecturer
Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Maurice Merleau-Ponty |
Philosophy of Action |
Skills |
Topics in Japanese Philosophy |