Philosophy

Events

Skilled Movement and Embodied Cognition by John Sutton (Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science at Macquarie University, Sidney, Australia)

Date: April 9 2010, 3:30pm Location: John R. Howard Hall 202

Theorists of embodied cognition often mention the interactive real-time dynamics of jazz improvisation, fast team sports, or animated conversation. This paper uses these case studies to address the specific problem of understanding how experts can (fallibly) influence their own grooved skilled performances – an applied version of the mind-body problem. Phenomenologists, cognitive scientists, and expert practitioners alike reject the intellectualist idea that skilled movement is governed by rich internalized motor programs which specify actions in advance. But many over-react by evacuating skilled action of all cognition, awareness, and control. I discuss three empirical research programmes – in sport, music, and dance – which might seem to support the view that skilled movement is thus “mindless”: in fact each suggests a complex interplay in which flowing action remains open to certain forms of awareness and control. Both phenomenology and cognitive science offer reasons to resist the idea that skilled action is sealed off from cognition.

 THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.