Philosophy 340: Embodied Cognition

Spring 2023

Prof. Patrick Frierson

frierspr@whitman.edu

 

Course Meets in Olin 119 Monday and Wednesday, 1-2:20.

 

Office Hours (Olin 193): Monday 2:30-3:15, Tuesday 1:00-3:00, and by appointment.

 

Course Goals.

By the end of this course, students will

1.     Be familiar with recent work in embodied cognition.

2.     Improve their abilities to present complex philosophical arguments in writing.

3.     Be able to revise writing based on feedback from peers.

4.     Be able to offer constructive feedback on student work.

5.     Improve their abilities to present arguments orally through both leading and participating in text-driven philosophical discussion.

 

 

Course Requirements:

The class meets Mondays and Wednesdays from 1-2:20.  Every student is expected to do all of the assigned reading for each class.  Generally, we will spend Mondays during the semester discussing seminar papers by members of the class, and Wednesday will cover primary source material in anticipation of those seminars.  That means that the reading loads will be heavier for Wednesdays than for Mondays, so you should plan accordingly.

 

·       Attendance, Reading, and Participation (10%). You are expected to read and reread the assigned texts for each class with thoughtfulness and care. Merely passing your eyes over the relevant pages is not reading. You need to engage with the material, thinking through passages that you find confusing until you are able to either understand them or clearly articulate the nature of your confusion.  Reading and thinking through these materials should take at least six to nine hours a week.  You should bring this deep understanding of and insightful questions about the texts to class with you each week, prepared to contribute in substantive ways to our cooperative class project of coming to a deeper understanding of what it is to be human. You are required to attend every class and are expected to participate in a learning community of mutual respect.

·       Seminar Paper (20%). For at least one of our weekly meetings, you will be expected to write a seminar paper of 1800-3000 words that engages with the material assigned for the day but also incorporates at least one additional reading that you find on your own.  At least 55 hours before the class on which we will discuss your paper (so no later than 6am on the Saturday preceding a Monday where we discuss your paper), you must send a draft of your paper to both me (at frierspr@whitman.edu) and the person who will lead discussion of your paper.  At least 30 hours before we discuss your paper (so no later than 7am on the Sunday preceding a Monday seminar), you must distribute a polished version of the paper to the entire class (including me).  This should be in .docx format (not a googledoc or pdf) with a filename that starts with your first name and last name (e.g. “Patrick Frierson Seminar Paper”).  This will be the draft I will grade, but its content should be basically the same as the draft you give to the discussion-leader.  A seminar paper that is late (either draft) will automatically suffer a one grade point drop (from a B to a C, for instance). If the paper is more than 24 hours late, it will receive an F.  All students should bring a printed copy of the paper to class.

The seminar paper should offer a well-reasoned argument that defends a specific and interesting thesis related to the topic for the day.  I expect these seminar papers to reflect thoughts-in-progress, but the writing should be polished and professional.  That means that I fully expect that you might not be wholly convinced of the thesis you defend in your paper, but you should write a paper that clearly and rigorously defends a thesis.  Because of my high expectations for this seminar paper, you should not wait until the week that it is due to begin writing it.  By noon on the Wednesday before your paper is due, you should turn in (to me) at least 500 words of writing, showing how far you have come in your thinking about the topic.  You are free to change your topic after class, but this will ensure that you have done at least some thought about your topic before we discuss the primary source material together as a class.  (I will not comment on or grade this draft, but students who do not turn in at least 500 words related to their paper will suffer a one grade point drop on their paper.)  I strongly encourage you to meet with me on Thursday to discuss your paper draft/ideas.  I will generally be available from 9-10 and from 1-2pm on Thursdays.

·       Presentation (20%). For at least one of our weekly meetings, you will be expected to give a presentation. The primary focus of this presentation should be the seminar paper written for that week’s meeting. You should very briefly explain what you take to be the central thesis of that seminar paper and what you take to be the core argument for that thesis. You should then raise significant objections and/or suggest ways that the argument of the paper could be fruitfully developed. (You might also use this opportunity to defend alternative positions that are neglected or insufficiently treated in the paper.) You should feel free to connect your comments on the paper with your own interests, but the focus should be on the arguments and ideas in the seminar paper. Your introductory comments should not take longer than 10 minutes. In addition, you should come with specific questions to guide discussion. (These should include at least one passage from the primary source reading that you want to read closely in the context of the seminar paper and at least one specific passage from the seminar paper that you want us to look at more closely.) Because the oral portion of your presentation will be brief, I strongly recommend including a handout.  Your handout might include such things as: a summary of the thesis and main argument of the seminar paper; brief bullet points with your central questions, criticisms, extensions, and observations about the paper; quotes for discussion (from the paper and/or readings for the day); and/or key questions that you hope we will discuss as a class.

·       Weekly Responses (20%).  On weeks that you are neither writing a paper nor giving a presentation, you are expected to write a short response to the readings. For each Wednesday class, I will provide a prompt for written work, and you may use this to guide your weekly response. Alternatively, you may simply write up a question about or response to the readings, the seminar paper, or both.  If you turn in your response for class on Monday, you must include at least some question(s) related to the seminar paper for that day.  Generally, these responses need be no longer than 200-400 words. These should be emailed to me (in the body of an email) no later than noon on the day of our seminar.  Responses will be graded with a check, check-plus, or check-minus.  Late responses are welcome but will receive a zero.  You must submit at least one response each week, and you cannot make up for a missed week with two responses on a later week.  At the end of the semester, I will drop your lowest score.  (That means you get one “free pass,” but use this with care.  I will not generally excuse missed or late assignments beyond this one, even if you have an official excuse through the Dean of Students. The point of the free pass is to provide for such contingencies.)

·       Final Paper (30%).  At the end of the semester, you will be required to turn in a substantive research paper of at least 3500 words. This paper should engage with at least some of the material we discuss in class and at least some additional material beyond what we read in class. The topic of these papers is open-ended, but I recommend that you either substantially expand either your seminar paper or one of your weekly responses, responding to comments raised during our seminar and/or developing points that you were unable to develop in the original version; or write about a specific topic discussed in class that we did not get discuss in sufficient depth. You might focus your final paper on a specific question or issue that arose in class.  This paper is due on the last day of class.

Accommodations:  If you are a student with a disability who will need accommodations in this course, please meet with Antonia Keithahn, Associate Director of Academic Resources (Memorial 326, 509.527.5767, keithaam@whitman.edu) for assistance in developing a plan to address your academic needs and ensure that you are best able to meet the requirements for this course.  If you need religious accommodations, then (in accordance with the College’s Religious Accommodations Policy), will provide reasonable accommodations.  All information about disabilities, religious status, or accommodations is considered private.  All students needing accommodations must give me written notice (email is acceptable) by the end of the second week of class about your needs and must receive a written (email) confirmation from me about what accommodations I can provide.  For support in requesting accommodations, you may contact Antonia (for disability-related accommodations) or Adam Kirtley (Whitman’s Interfaith Chaplain).  If you believe that I have failed to abide by Whitman’s requirements for accommodations, here is a link to the Grievance Policy, where you can pursue this matter.

 

Books:

·       Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch, Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience, ISBN: 9780262529365

·       Ben Spatz, What a Body Can Do, ISBN: 9781138854109

 

 

Timeline

Date

Readings

Question(s)

Seminar Paper

Presenter

Jan 18

Handouts in class

What is this course about?

 

 

Jan 23

From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: “Embodied Cognition”

and

“Feminist Perspectives on the Body”

What is “embodied cognition”?

Of the topics explored in these two entries, which is the most interesting and/or important for us to study this semester?

 

 

Jan 25

“Embodied Cognition”

and

“Feminist Perspectives on the Body”

Of the topics explored in these two entries, which is the most interesting and/or important for us to study this semester?

 

 

Jan 30

SEP, Varela et. al. Introductions (including introductions to the new edition) and chapters 1-2.

The book we are starting with is more than 25 years old.  To what extent are its ideas still important and/or revolutionary today?  How have Thompson and/or Rosch changed their mind(s) since the book was first written?

 

 

Feb 1

Varela et al, chapters 3-5.

 

Van Gelder, “What might cognition be, if not computation?”

 

Prinz and Barsalou, “Steering a Course for Embodied Representation”

 

Optional: Noe, Out of Our Heads, chapters 1 and 5.

(Also check out this youtube lecture by Noe.)

Choose one approach to the philosophy of mind that embodied cognition calls into question.  Explain and defend that approach, and then give at least one piece of evidence in favor of embodied cognition as an alternative to that approach (or discuss what sort of evidence you would need).

 

 

Feb 6

Possible Seminar Paper

 

Li

Shawn

Feb 8

Varela et al, chapters 6-8.

 

Noe, Action in Perception, chapters 1 and 4 (and as much of the rest of it as you choose to read).

In what ways is sense perception “embodied”?  In what ways is perception a sort of “action”?

 

 

Feb 13

Seminar Paper

 

Mallory

Ilse

Feb 15

Varela et al, chapters 9-11.

 

 

Feb 20

President’s Day

No Class

 

 

Feb 22

Clark and Chalmers, “The Extended Mind,”

 

Adams and Aizawa, “The Bounds of Cognition”

 

Selections from Menary, The Extended Mind, including at least the following:

 

Adams and Aizawa, “Defending the Bounds of Cognition”;

Clark, “Coupling, Constitution, and the Cognitive Kind: A Reply to Adams and Aizawa”

 

(Optional: selections from Clark, Supersizing the Mind)

 

Extended Cognition.  To what extent does the body-mind extend beyond the limits of the skin?  Are cognitive extensions (e.g. technology) mere aids to cognition or partly constitutive of cognition?

 

 

Feb 27

Seminar Paper

 

Shawn

Li

Mar 1

Possible Seminar Paper

 

Li

Shawn

Mar 6

Spatz, Introduction and chapter 1; Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Knowledge-How”

How is embodied technique epistemology?

In what ways is Spatz talking about something more or different than “knowledge-how”?

 

 

Mar 8

Spatz, chapter 2; van der Kolk chapter 16 (pp. 265-279), and further reading TBD.

 

Optional: Spatz, chapter 3.  (We won’t otherwise read this chapter.)

Compare Spatz and van der Kolk (and/or Varela et. al.) regarding yoga as an embodiment of mind.  Whose approach represents a better way to think about “embodied cognition”?  To think about yoga?

 

 

Spring Break

 

 

 

 

Mar 27

 

 

 

 

Mar 29

Spatz, Chapters 4 and 5 (focus on pp. 179-86, 197-202, 221-225, 233-240, and 247-50)

 

dePaolo and Thompson, “The Enactive Approach”

 

Mallory

Kate

April 3

Seminar paper

 

Mallory

Jordan

April 5

Butler, Gender Trouble, selections

 

Butler, “How can I deny that these hands and this body are mine”

Gender, performativity, and the body

 

 

Apr 10

Butler, Gender Trouble, selections

 

Butler, “How can I deny that these hands and this body are mine”

 

Butler, “Why Bodies Matter” conference lecture.

 

Apr 12

Seminar Paper

 

Gender, performativity, and the body

Jordan

Mallory

Apr 17

Grosz, Volatile Bodies, selections.

 

Donna Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the 1980s.”

 

 

 

Apr 19

SEP, “Disability”

 

“Examined Life,” Judith Butler and Sanaura Taylor;

 

Elizabeth Barnes, The Minority Body, chapters 1-2 (at least).

 

Neil Marcus, Storm Reading (performance available through linked video in this NYTimes obituary)

 

Minority Bodies

 

 

Apr 24

Seminar Paper

 

Ally

Ilse

Apr 26

Seminar Paper

Kate

Ally

May 1

Seminar Paper

 

Ilse

Kate

May 3

Review and celebrate?

 

 

 

May 8, last day

Embodied Research Exercise?