THE PHILOSOPHY
OF HABIT
PHIL 354 Advanced Philosophy Seminar
2009
Weeks 11-13
John
Sutton
Tel. (02)-9850-4132, or
email.
Back to my home
page.
<>This was the site for a short
(3-week) session of seminars in our pre-Honours undergraduate class in
May/June 2008
in Philosophy, Macquarie
University,
Sydney. It is related to my ongoing research project,
'Applying
intelligence to the reflexes: embodied skill and kinesthetic memory,'
with psychologist Doris
McIlwain.<>
Here is handout 1.
For week 13 (Friday 6 June, 2-4pm)
The ‘Intellectualist
Legend’
Core Readings
Jerry Fodor (1968). The Appeal to Tacit Knowledge in
Psychological Explanation. Journal of Philosophy 65, 627-640.
Alva Noё (2005). Against Intellectualism. Analysis
65, 278-290.
Gilbert Ryle (1949). The Concept of Mind (Hutchison), ch.2
‘Knowing How
and Knowing That’.
Optional
Readings
Jason
Stanley & Timothy Williamson (2001). Knowing how. Journal
of Philosophy 97, 411-44.
Josefa
Toribio (2008). How do we know how? Philosophical Explorations 11, 39-52.
Charles Wallis (2008). Consciousness, context, and know-how. Synthese
160, 123-153.
Garry Young (2004). Bodily Knowing: rethinking our
understanding of procedural knowledge.
Philosophical
Explorations 7, 37-54.
For week 12 (Friday 30 May, 2-4pm):
Skilled Movement: a test case for
phenomenology and cognitive science
Core Readings
Please read
and be prepared to comment on
Hubert
Dreyfus (2002). Intelligence without Representation: Merleau-Ponty’s
critique
of mental representation.
Phenomenology
and the Cognitive Sciences 1, 367-383.
[available via library; this is a
special issue on Dreyfus
with papers
by many leading philosophers].
Maxine
Sheets-Johnstone (2003). Kinesthetic Memory. Theoria et Historia
Scientiarum
7, 69-92.
Optional
Readings
Elizabeth
Ennen (2003). Phenomenological Coping Skills
and the Striatal Memory System.
Phenomenology
and the Cognitive Sciences 2, 299-325.
Evan
Selinger & Robert P. Crease (2002). Dreyfus on Expertise: the
limits of
phenomenological
analysis. Continental Philosophy
Review 35, 245-279.
Mike
Wheeler (2005). Reconstructing the
Cognitive World. MIT. Chapter 7 ‘Doorknobs & Monads’.
Also:
the debate between Dreyfus and John McDowell in Inquiry 50
(2007), 338-377.
For week 11 (Friday 23 June, 2-4pm):
Please read and be prepared to comment on
Dretske, F. (1998). 'Where
is the Mind when the Body Performs?', Stanford Humanities Review 6. (A
provocative 3-page paper).
and at least one of
Cole, J. &
Montero, B. 2007. Affective
Proprioception. Janus Head 9, 299-317.
Pollard, B. (2006). 'Explaining
Actions with Habits', American Philosophical Quarterly, 43, 2006,
pp. 57-68.
There's a huge history of habit to investigate, tho' not the
focus of this short course. It'd include (just for a start) Aristotle
and
his medieval interpreters (hexis, habitus ...), a radical
reinterpretation of Descartes's mechanism and the Cartesian cyborg,
Hume on 'custom and habit', Hegel I'm sure, the key
pragmatists (Wm James, Dewey, Peirce), Bergson, Husserl, Mauss etc etc.
A sweet life's work? Here instead we start with Ryle and with
Merleau-Ponty.
Philosophy of
Habit, Movement, and Skill
Behnke,
E. (1997). 'Ghost Gestures: phenomenological investigations of
bodily micromovements and their intercorporeal
implications', Human
Studies 20, 181-201.
Brett, N. (1981). 'Human Habits'. Canadian
Journal of Philosophy 11, 357-376.
Casey, E. (2000). ‘The Ghost
of Embodiment: on bodily habitudes and schemata’, in D. Welton (ed.), Body and
Flesh.
Oxford:
Blackwell, pp. 207-225.
Casey, E. (1987). Remembering: a
phenomenological study. Indiana UP. Ch.8 'Body Memory'.
Clark, A. (2005). Word,
Niche and Super-Niche: how language makes minds matter more. Theoria 20, 255-268.
Cole, J. & Montero, B. 2007. Affective
proprioception. Janus Head 9, 299-317.
Connerton, P. (1989). How Societies
Remember. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, chapter 3.
Dretske, F. (1998). 'Where
is the Mind when the Body Performs?', Stanford Humanities Review 6.
Dreyfus,
H. (2002). Intelligence
Without Representation: the relevance of phenomenology to
scientific explanation.
Ennen, E. (2003). Phenomenological
Coping Skills and the Striatal Memory System. Phenomenology and the
Cognitive
Sciences
2, 299-325.
Fodor, J. (1968). The Appeal to Tacit Knowledge in Psychological
Explanation. Journal of Philosophy
65, 627-640.
Gallagher, S. (2005). How the Body
Shapes the Mind. Oxford UP, pp.24-30, & ch.6 'Prenoetic
Constraints on
Perception & Action'.
Hutchins, E.
(2006). Imagining
the Cognitive Life of Things.
Kelly, S. (2000). Grasping
at Straws: motor intentionality and the cognitive science of skilful
action. In
J. Malpas & M.
Wrathall (eds),
Heidegger, Coping, & Cognitive
Science. Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 161-177.
Leder, D. (1990). The Absent Body. Chicago
UP.
Merleau-Ponty, M. ((1945/ 1962). The
Phenomenology of Perception. Routledge. Part I ch.3 'The
Spatiality of One's Own
Body and Motility' (esp. end of chapter, pp.164-170
in the 2002 reprint).
Morris, D. (2004). The Sense of
Space. SUNY Press. Part I, 'The Moving Sense of the Body', esp
pp.90-100 (difficult)
Noe, A. (2005). 'Against Intellectualism'. Analysis 65, 278-290.
Pollard, B. (2006). 'Explaining
Actions with Habits', American Philosophical Quarterly, 43, 2006,
pp. 57-68.
Preston,
B. (1996). ‘Merleau-Ponty and Feminine
Embodied
Existence’. Man and World 29, 167-186.
Sheets-Johnstone,
M.
(2003). ‘Kinesthetic Memory’. Theoria et
Historia Scientiarum 7, 69-92.
Sheets-Johnstone,
M.
(2003). The Primacy of Movement. Benjamins,
1999. See especially the introduction; ch.3 'The
Primacy of Movement'; ch.5 'On Learning to Move
Onself: a constructive phenomenology'; ch.15 'Thinking in Movement'
Reynolds, J. (2006). Dreyfus and
Deleuze on L'habitude, Coping,
and Trauma in Skill Acquisition, International
Journal
of Philosophical Studies 14, 539-559.
Ryle, G. (1949). The Concept of Mind
(Hutchison, 1949/ many editions), chapter 2, 'Knowing How and
Knowing That' (also
chapter 5, section 3 on capacities and tendencies)
Snow, N.E. (2006) Habitual Virtuous Actions and Automaticity. Ethical Theory & Moral Practice 9, 545-561
Toribio, J. (2008). How do we know how? Philosophical Explorations 11, 39-52.
Wallis, C. (2008). Consciousness, context, and know-how. Synthese 160, 123-153.
Wheeler, M. (2005). Reconstructing the Cognitive World: the next
step.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Young, G. (2004). Bodily Knowing: rethinking our understanding of
procedural knowledge. Philosophical
Explorations 7, 37-54.
Young, I.M. (1990). 'Throwing Like a Girl' in Young, Throwing Like a Girl (Indiana UP),
141-159with pp.11-17 (part of the intro),
and with Preston (1996) above.
More on Habit in
Social/ Cultural Theory
Baldwin, J. (1988). 'Habit,
Emotion, and Self-Conscious Action'. Sociological
Perspectives 31, 35-57.
Bourdieu, P. (1992). The Logic of
Practice. Stanford UP, pp.52-65 'Structures, Habitus, Practices'.
Camic, C. (1986). 'The Matter of Habit'. American Journal of Sociology 91, 1039-87.
Crossley, N. (2004). 'The Circuit Trainer's Habitus: reflexive body
techniques & the sociality of the workout'. Body & Society 10, 37-69.
Francoz, M.J. (1999). 'Habit as Memory Incarnate'. College English 62, 11-29.
Strathern, A. (1996). Body Thoughts.
Michigan UP, chapter 2, 'Habit or Habitus?'.
Some Specialist Topics
1. Dance
Calvo-Merino, B., Glaser,
D.E., Grezes, J., Passingham, R.E., & Haggard, P. (2005).
‘Action
Observation and Acquired Motor Skills: an fMRI study with expert
dancers’. Cerebral
Cortex 15,
1243-9.
Crease, R.P. (2002). ‘The
Pleasure of Popular Dance’. Journal of
the Philosophy of Sport 29, 106-120.
Hagendoorn, I.
(2003). ‘Cognitive
Dance Improvisation: how study of the motor system can inspire dance
(and vice versa)’.
Leonardo 36, 221-7.
Sheets-Johnstone,
M.
(2003). The Primacy of Movement. Benjamins,
1999. See especially ch.15 'Thinking in Movement'
Stevens, C., Malloch, S.,
McKechnie,
S. & Steven, N. (2003). ‘Choreographic Cognition: the time-course
and
phenomenology of creating a dance’.
Pragmatics
and Cognition 11, 299-329.
Stevens, C. & McKechnie,
S. (2005). ‘Thinking in Action: thought made visible in contemporary
dance’. Cognitive Processing 6, 243-252.
Sutton, J. (2005) 'Moving
and Thinking Together in Dance', in Thinking
in Four Dimensions: creativity and cognition in
contemporary
dance, eds Robin Grove, Kate
Stevens,
& Shirley McKechnie (Melbourne University Press e-book)
2. Music
Chaffin, R., Imreh, G., &
Crawford, M. (2002). Practicing
Perfection: memory and piano performance. Mahwah, NJ:
Erlbaum.
[or check up any of Chaffin's
papers on music]
Sudnow, D. (2001). Ways
of the Hand. 2nd
edition, Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press. Esp ch.3
'Going for the Jazz'
Or key books on jazz improvisation by Paul Berliner, Ingrid Monson.
3. Sport
Downey, G. 2005. "Educating the Eyes: Biocultural
Anthropology and Physical Education." Anthropology in Action:
Journal for Applied Anthropology in Policy and
Practice 12 (2): 56-71.
Land, M.F. &
McLeod, P. (2000). From Eye Movements to Actions: how batsmen hit the
ball. Nature Neuroscience 3,
1340-1345.
Moe, V.F. (2005). A
Philosophical Critique of Classical Cognitivism in Sport: from
information
processing to bodily
background knowledge.
Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 32, 155-183
Morris, D. (2002). ‘Touching
Intelligence’. Journal of the Philosophy
of Sport 29, 149-162.
Sutton, J. (2007) 'Batting,
Habit, and Memory: the embodied mind and the nature of skill',
Sport in
Society 10 (5),
September 2007, 763-786, or better as pdf here.
Wacquant, Loic. The
Taste and Ache of Action.
Williams, A.M. &
Ericsson, K.A. 2005. Perceptual-cognitive expertise in sport. Human
Movement
Science 24, 283-307
4. Yoga
Smith, B.R. 2007.
Body, mind, and spirit? Towards an analysis of the practice of yoga. Body & Society 13, 25-46.
Some other links
Body,
Culture, and Cognition resources index (from Honours course, 2000)
Resources for the Interdisciplinary
Study of
Memory
Philosophy
and Cognitive
Science
Resources Index
_________________________
Last updated 13 August 2008.