JOHN SUTTON
PAPERS & WRITING

Philosophy & 
Memory Traces
 Descartes' Natural Philosophy

This page gives details of my work and my papers.
The versions of my papers posted here are for personal scholarly use only. In the case of recent papers, the versions published here are not
    identical to the published versions. Please quote and cite the published versions where possible.
Please
email me with comments or suggestions, or if you can't find something that should be here.
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New. Here is a categorized publications page with my writings categorized into overlapping research areas.

Books
Papers
Response to Critics
Commentaries
Encyclopedia Articles
Essay Review
Book Reviews
Other Stuff

Work in progress (see also my talks page)
- A book on interdisciplinarity in the study of memory, on interactive relations between diverse components (neural, cognitive, bodily,
social, material/
        autobiographical, procedural) of the dynamic systems which engage in remembering activities and are animated by history at different timescales and levels
- Tasneem Khan, Amanda Barnier, Celia Harris, John Sutton, 'Social Contagion of Autobiographical Memory: collaborating in accurate and inaccurate recall
        of significant life events'
, in progress.
- Two papers in progress with Evelyn Tribble, one arguing that distributed cognition is a useful perspective for work on early modern cultural history; the
       second arguing that early modern cultural history affords a range of test cases on which to apply and enrich the distributed cognition framework.
- John Sutton & Doris McIlwain, paper on skilled movement and embodied cognition, in progress.
- Wayne Christensen & John Sutton, paper on habit memory in cognitive neuroscience, in progress.
- Doris McIlwain, Wayne Christensen, Andrew Geeves, & John Sutton, 'Seven Notes on Chaffin', commentary for Empirical Musicology Review

- Celia Harris, Amanda Barnier, and John Sutton, 'Turn-Taking vs Consensus in Collaborative Recall: instructions influence costs and benefits of
       remembering with others', submitted, revision in progress.
- Charlie Stone, Amanda Barnier, John Sutton, and William Hirst, 'Building Social Consensus about the Past: socially-shared retrieval-induced forgetting',
        in progress.
- Amanda Barnier, Celia Harris, Michelle Moulds, & John Sutton, paper on 'ecological validity' in memory research, in progress
- Max Coltheart, Peter Menzies, & John Sutton, paper on abduction and abduction (on abductive reasoning and alien abduction/ delusional beliefs) for
        special issue of Cognitive Neuropsychiatry on confabulation and delusion edited by Robyn Langdon and Martha Turner.
- Full revision of my entry
'Memory', in the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Please email me with suggestions for changes or additions.
- (with Gerard O'Brien) 'Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Science since 1970', for G. Oppy (ed) A History of Australasian Philosophy (due July 2008).
- (with Amanda Barnier) chapter on collective forgetting for Sergio Della Salla (ed), volume of essays on forgetting for Psychology Press (due Dec 2008).
- Chapter on soul, mind, and self for Peter Anstey (ed), The Oxford Handbook of British Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century, OUP (due 2009).
- 'Carelessness and Inattention:
chance and the physiology of habit between Locke and Hume', finally writing up a paper I presented a couple of times in 1999,
    which looks at various views in philosophy and medical psychology in the early C18 on what happens when the mind is elsewhere.

- A paper on perspective and vantage-point in memory and dreams, or 'field' and 'observer' memory
[- 'Childrens' Dreams and the Nature of Dreaming' on the philosophical implications of David Foulkes' experimental results]
    [presented at ESPP/ SPP, Barcelona 2004 but currently stalled]

   

Books
Philosophy and Memory Traces: Descartes to connectionism
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). You can read about this book here, with access to selected draft extracts, contents descriptions, and extracts
    from reviews.
You can even order it, through Amazon.com, here. Sadly it is even more crazily expensive than most academic books these days,
    so I suggest you have a look through the stuff on this site first.

I've finally managed to put up the references for Traces, Brains, and History, the online sample (chapter 1).
Draft version of chapter 2 - Wriggle-work: the quick and nimble animal spirits
Draft version of chapter 4 - Spirit sciences, memory motions

Descartes' Natural Philosophy
Edited by Stephen Gaukroger, John Schuster, and John Sutton (Routledge, 2000), pp.xii + 767: you can order it at Amazon
        here or find it in the Routledge catalogue here.
This book places Descartes' scientific projects, rather than his metaphysics or epistemology, at the centre of his philosophical concerns.
Descartes' picture of the natural world admits of surprising complexity, with both his cosmology and his physiology modelled on the
dynamics of fluids. Rejecting the tired caricature by which Descartes' dualism left nature and the human body as barren, inert matter to
be dominated by active ghostly soul, the authors in contrast focus on the details of the links Descartes sought to forge between
physics, medicine, and ethics. Among the topics covered are mechanics and meteorology, optics and experimental method, anatomy
and embryology, and theories of imagination, perception, and the passions.


Edited Journal Issues
- Editors Amanda Barnier and John Sutton, special issue of Memory 16 (3), 177-182
    'From individual memory to collective memory: theoretical and empirical perspectives', April 2008
, 177-326 (10 papers).
- With Andrew Hoskins (chief editor), Amanda Barnier, and Wulf Kansteiner, I'm coeditor of a new interdisciplinary journal
    Memory Studies launched in 2008, issue 1 number 2 now out!! Free online subscription on a trial basis to volume 1 available from Sage.

For more details of the three special issues listed below click here.
Special issue #1: 'Memory, Media, and Embodied Cognition' of
Scan volume 2 number 2, September 2005 (9 papers)
Special issue #2: Cognitive Processing: international quarterly of cognitive science, volume 6 number 4, December 2005 (6 papers).
    Continued/ extended in
Cognitive Processing, volume 7 number 1, March 2006 (3 papers)
Special issue #3 (June 2006) of Philosophical Psychology, volume 19 number 3: memory, embodied cognition, & the extended mind (7 papers).


Papers
- (in press), 'The Feel of the World: exograms, habits, and the confusion of types of memory', Andrew Kania (ed.),
       
Philosophers on Memento, collection of essays on Memento in the Routledge Philosophers on Film series (Routledge, May 2009).
- (in press) John Sutton, Celia Harris, and Amanda Barnier, 'Memory and Cognition', for Susannah Radstone & Bill Schwarz (ed.) Mapping Memory
   
(Fordham University Press, 2009).

- (in press) 'Dreaming', in Paco Calvo and John Symons (eds), Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Psychology
    (Routledge,
November  2008).
- (in press) 'Exograms and Interdisciplinarity: history, the extended mind, and the civilizing process', in Richard Menary (ed),
    The Extended Mind  (Ashgate, 2008).
- (in press) 'Remembering', in Philip Robbins and Murat Aydede (eds), The Cambridge Handbook of Situated Cognition
    (Cambridge University Press, November 2008), 217-235.
- (in press) 'Material Agency, Skills, and History: distributed cognition and the archaeology of memory', in Lambros Malafouris
    and 
Carl Knappett (eds), Material Agency: towards a non-anthropocentric approach (Springer, October 2008), 37-55.

- (2008) 'Between Individual and Collective Memory: interaction, coordination, distribution', in special collective memory issue of
     Social Research: an international quarterly of the social sciences 
Winter 2007-08, volume 75 number 1, 23-48.
- (2008) Amanda J. Barnier & John Sutton, 'Editorial Introduction' to special issue of Memory 16 (3), 177-182.
    'From individual memory to collective memory: theoretical and empirical perspectives', April 2008.
- (2008) Amanda J. Barnier, John Sutton, Celia B. Harris, & Robert A. Wilson,
     'A Conceptual and Empirical Framework for the Social Distribution of Cognition: the case of memory' [prepublication draft],
     in special social cognition issue of Cognitive Systems Research 9 (1), 33-51.
- (2007) 'Language, Memory, and Concepts of Memory: semantic diversity and scientific psychology', in Mengistu Amberber (ed.), 
    The Language of Memory in a Cross-linguistic Perspective. (John Benjamins, 2007), pp. 41-65.
- (2007) 'Batting, Habit, and Memory: the embodied mind and the nature of skill', in Jeremy McKenna (ed),
    At the Boundaries of Cricketspecial issue of Sport in Society 10 (5), September 2007, 763-786,
    and also forthcoming a book  in the series Sport in the Global Society (Taylor and Francis).
- (2007) 'Spongy Brains and Material Memories' in Mary Floyd-Wilson & Garrett Sullivan (eds.)
    Environment and Embodiment in early modern England
, Palgrave Macmillan, July 2007, pp. 14-34.
- (2007) 'Integrating the Philosophy and Psychology of Memory: two case studies', in Massimo Marraffa, Mario de Caro,
    & Francesco Ferretti (eds.), Cartographies of the Mind: philosophy & psychology in intersection (Springer), pp. 81-92.
- (2006) 'Distributed Cognition: domains and dimensions', Pragmatics and Cognition 14 (2), 2006, 235-247, special issue on distributed cognition.
- (2006) 'Introduction: Memory, Embodied Cognition, and the Extended Mind', Philosophical Psychology 19 (3)  (June 2006), 281-9.
- (2005) 'Memory and the Extended Mind: embodiment, cognition, and culture', introduction to special issue of Cognitive Processing 6 (4), December,  223-6.
- (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)

- (2004) 'Representation, Levels, and Context in Integrational Linguistics and Distributed Cognition', Language Sciences 26 (6), 503-524
- (2004) 'Representation, Reduction, and Interdisciplinarity in the Sciences of Memory',  in  Hugh Clapin, Phillip Staines, and Peter Slezak (eds.),
        Representation in Mind: new approaches to mental representation
(Elsevier), pp.187-216.

- (2003) 'Constructive Memory and Distributed Cognition: towards an interdisciplinary framework', in Boicho Kokinov and
    William Hirst (eds.), Constructive Memory (Sofia: New Bulgarian University), 290-303.

- (2003) 'Truth in Memory: the humanities and the cognitive sciences', in Iain McCalman and Ann McGrath (eds.),
    Proof and Truth: the humanist as expert (Canberra: Australian Academy of the Humanities), 145-163.

- (2002) 'Cognitive Conceptions of Language and the Development of Autobiographical Memory'Language and Communication 22 (2002), 375-390.
- (2002) 'Porous Memory and the Cognitive Life of Things'. In Darren Tofts, Annemarie Jonson, and Alessio Cavallaro (eds),
    Prefiguring Cyberculture: an intellectual history (MIT Press and Power Publications), pp.130-141.
    Read
Mitchell Whitelaw's very nice Real Time review of this book  here. And Nick Mercer's here.
- (2000) (in rtf) 'The Body and the Brain', in Gaukroger, Schuster, and Sutton (eds.), Descartes' Natural Philosophy (London: Routledge),
    pp. 697-722.

- (2000) [coauthored with Stephen Gaukroger & John Schuster), 'Introduction', in Descartes' Natural Philosophy (London: Routledge),
    pp.1-25.

- (2000) (here in a very badly formatted old rtf version) 'Body, Mind, and Order: local memory and the control of mental representations in
    medieval and Renaissance sciences of self', in Guy Freeland & Anthony Corones (eds.), 1543 And All That: word and image
    in the proto-scientific revolution
(Dordrecht: Kluwer), pp.117-150 [Australasian Studies in History and Philosophy of Science]

- (1998) 'Controlling the Passions: passion, memory, and the moral physiology of self in seventeenth-century neurophilosophy', in
    Stephen Gaukroger (ed.), The Soft Underbelly of Reason: the passions in the seventeenth century (London: Routledge), pp.115-146

- (1995) 'Reduction and Levels of Explanation in Connectionism', in P. Slezak, T. Caelli, & R. Clark (eds.), Perspectives on Cognitive
    Science: theories, experiments, and foundations
(Norwood, NJ: Ablex), pp.347-368

- (1991) 'Religion and the Failures of Determinism', in Stephen Gaukroger (ed.), The Uses of Antiquity: the scientific revolution and
    the classical tradition
(Dordrecht: Kluwer), pp.25-51 [Australasian Studies in History and Philosophy of Science]


Response to Critics
- (2000) 'Author's Response', in symposium on Philosophy and Memory Traces, Metascience 9, July 2000, 226-237.


Commentaries etc
- (2000) 'Introduction to the Symposium on Perceptual Cognition', in Gaukroger, Schuster, and Sutton (eds.),
         Descartes' Natural Philosophy (London: Routledge), pp.524-7.

- (1999) 'The Churchlands' Neuron Doctrine: both cognitive and reductionist', Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22, pp.850-1
        (commentary on Ian Gold and Daniel  Stoljar, 'A Neuron Doctrine in the Philosophy of Neuroscience').


Encyclopedia Articles
- (2006) 'Memory', Donald M. Borchert (ed), The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2nd edition, Farmington Hills, MI: Macmillan Reference/
    Thomson Gale, 2006 [published December 2005]), volume 5, pp.122-8.
- (2005) 'Rene Descartes' in The Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History, Senior Editor William H. McNeill (Berkshire, 2004),
    volume 2, pp.513-4
- (2003) 'Memory', in the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Cite as (Summer 2004 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.),
    URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2004/entries/memory/>
- (2002) 'Memory: philosophical issues', article for L. Nadel (ed), Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science
    (London: Nature Publishing Group, 2002). [Or final draft in pdf here.]
Here are drafts of three short biographical articles in the 20-volume Encyclopedia of Life Sciences
    (London: Nature Publishing Group, 2001). [You can search ELS on a 24-hour free trial].
Francis Bacon (in volume 2, p.471)
Rene Descartes (volume 3, pp.395-6) or better here in pdf
Robert Hooke (volume 9, pp.202-3).


Conference Proceedings
- (2006) 'Issues in the Research and Application of Chemo-Prophylactic Drugs for the Treatment of Traumatic Stress', in
    Dialogue, the journal of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia 25 (1), 2006, pp.69-74. Jessica Wolfendale's
    workshop summary includes (pp.71-72) an abstract of my paper 'Construction and Influence in Autobiographical Memory'
- (2003) 'Imagination, Sympathy, and Spirits: Kenelm Digby's physiological psychology', Proceedings of the 8th Annual Meeting of the
    International Society for the History of the Neurosciences (Middlesex: Brunel University Press, 2003), p.42
- (2001/2) 'Material Memories and Extended Minds', abstract in online edition of  Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art
    volume 2 issue 2/ volume 3 issue 1, 2001/2.

- (2000) 'Traces, Dreams, and Spirits: the physiology of memory representations in 18th-century British neurophilosophy',
    Proceedings of the 4th meeting of the international society for the history of
the neurosciences, Zurich and Lausanne,
    Sept 13-18, 1999, in Journal of the History of the
Neurosciences 9 (2), 2000, p.147.
- (1999) [pdf] 'Distributed Memory, Coupling, and History', in R. Heath, B. Hayes, A. Heathcote, and C. Hooker (eds),
    Dynamical cognitive science: Proceedings of the Fourth Australasian Cognitive Science Conference (1997)
    (CD-ROM, Newcastle, NSW: University of Newcastle) ISBN 0 7259 1059 3, September 1999.


Essay Review
- (1991) 'Shakespeare, Science, and Magic': essay review of John S. Mebane, Renaissance Magic and the Return of the
        Golden Age (Nebraska U.P., 1990), Metascience  (New Series), pilot issue, pp.31-38

Book Reviews
- (2006) Review of Stefano Franchi & Guven Guzeldere (eds), Mechanical Bodies, Computational Minds,
    Philosophy in Review/ Comptes Rendus Philosophiques XXVI (6), December 2006, 420-422
- (2006) Review of Carl Zimmer, Soul Made Flesh: the discovery of the brain – and how it changed the world
    (New York: Free Press/ Simon and Schuster, 2004), Journal of the history of the behavioral sciences 42 (3), 298-9.
- (2003) Review of Joseph Tabbi, Cognitive Fictions  (Minnesota U.P., 2002), in Metapsychology, February.
- (2003) Draft version of a review of Dennis Des Chene, Spirits and Clocks: Machine and Organism in Descartes.
        (Cornell University Press, 2001), British Journal for the History of Science 36 (2003), 233-5

- (2003) Draft version of a review of John P.  Wright and Paul Potter (eds.), Psyche and Soma: physicians and
    metaphysicians on the mind-body problem from Antiquity to the Enlightenment (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000),
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 81 (2003), 142-144.
- (2002) Review of Dennis Des Chene, Life's Form: Late Aristotelian Conceptions of the Soul (Cornell U.P., 2000), in
    Metapsychology (online mental health book reviews), May.

- (2002) Review of Richard Allen, David Hartley on Human Nature (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999),
    Times Literary Supplement 5162, 8 March, pp.28-29.

- (2001) Review of Douwe Draaisma, Metaphors of Memory: a history of ideas about the mind (Cambridge University
    Press, 2000), Times Literary Supplement 5152, 28 December, p.25.

- (2001) Review of Don Dedrick, Naming the Rainbow: colour language, colour science, and culture (Dordrecht:
    Kluwer, 1998), in Philosophy in Review/ Comptes Rendus Philosophiques XXI (2), April 2001, 106-9.

- (2001) Review of Jerry Fodor, The Mind Doesn’t Work That Way: the scope and limits of computational psychology
    (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000), in Metapsychology (online mental health book reviews), February.

- (2001) Review of Michel Jouvet, The Paradox of Sleep: the story of dreaming, and Patricia Cox Miller, Dreams in
    Late Antiquity, in Journal of the History of the Neurosciences 10, 355-8.

- (2000) Review of Janice Haaken, Pillar of Salt: gender, memory, and the perils of looking back (New Brunswick, N.J.:
    Rutgers U.P., 1998), in Metapsychology (online mental health book reviews), June.

- (1999) Review of Elizabeth A. Wilson, Neural Geographies: feminism and the microstructure of cognition (London:
    Routledge), Philosophy in Review/ Comptes Rendus Philosophiques XIX (4), August 1999, 299-301.

- (1999) 'No More Folk Tales', review of Paul and Patricia Churchland, On the Contrary: critical essays, 1987-1997
    (MIT Press, 1997), Times Literary Supplement no.5029, 20 August, p.26.

- (1999) 'Prodigies and Portents', review of Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750
    (Zone Books/ MIT Press, 1998), Times Literary Supplement no.5001, 5 February.

- (1998) Review of Andy Clark, Being There: putting brain, body, and world together again (MIT Press, 1997),
    Metascience n.s. 7,  90-95 (after reviews by Cliff Hooker, Gerard O'Brien, Naomi Quinn, & followed by author's response).

- (1997) Review of Georges Canguilhem, A Vital Rationalist: selected writings of  Georges Canguilhem, F. Delaporte
    (ed.) (New York: Zone Books, 1994), British Journal for the History of Science 30, 101-3.

- (1996) 'Uncanny innards', review of Jonathan Sawday, The Body Emblazoned: dissection and the human body
    in Renaissance culture (London: Routledge, 1995), Metascience 9, 179-182.

- (1994) 'The cruelty of reason', review of Kenneth Craven, Jonathan Swift and the Millenium of Madness: the
    information age in Swift's A Tale of a Tub (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1992), Metascience 6, 183-5.

- (1994) 'History, language, and mind', review of Graham Richards, Mental Machinery: the origins and consequences
    of psychological ideas, part 1:1600-1850 (London: Athlone Press, 1993), Metascience 5, 147-150.


Other Stuff (by and about)
- (2008) Interview about memory on Chris Laidlaw's Sunday show, Radio New Zealand, 3 August.
- (2008) Andrew Hoskins, Amanda Barnier, Wulf Kansteiner, and John Sutton, 'Editorial', Memory Studies 1 (1), 5-7.
- (2007) 'On memory and truth', talk in the 2007 Blackheath Philosophy Forum series on the Truth Wars, July 28.
- (2007) Three answers in the ABC Science Online Ask-an-Expert forum on the Human Brain
- (2007)
William and John Sutton, 'Animal Spirits'Fortean Times 219, February 2007, 50-53.
- (2006) 'The Philosophy of Cricket' on The Philosopher's Zone, on ABC Radio National with Alan Saunders, Saturday October 21 2006.
- (2006) 'The Secret Life of John Sutton', Macquarie University News, June 2006
- (2006)
'Introduction to the Special Section: the extended mind and the foundations of cognitive science', Cognitive Processing 7 (1), March, 1-2.
- (2005) 'Introduction to the special issue on Memory, Media, and Embodied Cognition' of Scan: journal of media arts culture vol 2 no 2, Sept 2005
- (2005) (with William Sutton) 'The Powder of Sympathy', Fortean Times 198 (July 2005), pp.42-46 on Kenelm Digby.
- (2005) Some comments on
Thinking in Four Dimensions in Arts Hub Australia (Feb 28, 2005)
- (2004) Interview about philosophy with David Myton for Di Yerbury's column in the Hornsby Advocate, published October 7
- (2003) Discussion of Kenelm Digby's schemes for bringing plants, creatures, and his wife back to life on BBC Radio 4 programme

        The History of Folly, episode 2, 'Tis Folly to be Wise, 21 May 2003.

- (2003) (with William Sutton) 'The Recording Sponge', Fortean Times 171 (June 2003), pp.56-57 [FORUM: fantastic media]
- (2003) 'Animal Spirits: the mind in history' on All in the Mind, ABC Radio National.
- (2003) 'Making Sense of Memory', by Jane Mundy, Macquarie University News, research edition, p.17
- (2003) And Gladly Teche, Macquarie Uni teaching magazine, Feb., feature on Outstanding Teachers Awards 2002: feature p.2
- (2002) Short question session, Campus Review, July 2002
- (2002) Draft version of a book note of Paolo Rossi, Logic and the Art of Memory: the quest for a universal language,
    translated with an introduction by Stephen Clucas (London: Athlone Press, 2000), Australasian Journal of Philosophy 81 (2003), 151-2.
- (2000) Kenelm Digby and the Liquid Empire, a play performed at the Steki Taverna, read at the Folger Library in Washington D.C.
    in June 2001, and revived in a professional production at Steki in 2002 to coincide with an international conference on early
    modern intellectual history.
- (1999) Three short radio pieces on the history of memory.
- (1999) 'Rounding up the Scots' (Edinburgh International Film Festival 1999), Real Time/ On Screen issue 33, Oct./ Nov.1999,
    p.21

- (1998) Empedocles: Love and Strife - a quest, performance piece about the Pre-Socratic philosopher and magus, written for the
    Philosophy Nights series at Steki Taverna, Newtown. Also performed at the Hydro Majestic Hotel in Mt Victoria, Blue Mountains;
    at the Friend in Hand pub, Glebe; and on the lawn at the University of New England, Armidale; then revived at Steki for the
    Olympics of the Mind series in 2004.
- (1998) Christina Slade and San McColl, The Philosophy Distinction Course: An Australian Experiment in Distance Teaching,
    American Philosophical Association (APA) Newsletters 97 (2), discussing the design and writing of the Philosophy Distinction
    course materials (see 1993 below).

- (1995) 'Connecting Memory Traces', UCLA Center for 17th- and 18th-century Studies Newsletter 25 (Spring), 6-7
- (1993) 'The Self' and 'Self-Concept', two modules for the Philosophy Distinction Course which has run in New South Wales
    schools since 1994 as part of the HSC (Higher School Certificate - equivalent of Scots Highers or English A-Levels).

- (1990) 'Where Was Thought?: notes towards a genealogy of mind' [N.B. footnotes now included],
    in Hermes 1990 (Sydney: University of Sydney Union), pp.99-109

There are a couple of quotes in a good feature article on artificial intelligence by Alex Craig, ‘I process binary opposites therefore I am’,
    in the glossy Australian magazine Black + White no.36 (April 1999), pp.24-26

I've written a few anonymous paragraph reviews for Metascience. If for some reason you'd like to see a list, click here.


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Last updated 19 August 2008.