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7 - The Backside of Habit

Notes on Embodied Agency and the Functional Opacity of the Medium

from Part II - The Enactment of Habits in Mind and World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 November 2020

By
Maria Brincker
Edited by
Fausto Caruana  and
Italo Testa
Fausto Caruana
Affiliation:
Institute of Neuroscience (Parma), Italian National Research Council
Italo Testa
Affiliation:
Università degli Studi, Parma
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Summary

In this chapter what I call the “backside” of habit is explored. I am interested in the philosophical implications of the physical and physiological processes that mediate, and which allow for what comes to appear as almost magic; namely the various sensorimotor associations and integrations that allow us to replay our past experiences, and to in a certain sense perceive potential futures, and to act and bring about anticipated outcomes – without quite knowing how. Thus, the term “backside” is meant to refer both the actual mediation and the epistemic opacity of these backstage intermediaries that allows for the front stage magic. The question is whether the epistemic complexities around sensorimotor mediation give us valuable insights into the nature of human agency and further how they might begin to show us new ways to think of the mind as truly embodied yet not reducible to any finite body-as-object.

Keywords

sensorimotor integrationembodimentcognitive distancemediationmind–bodyproblem
Type
Chapter
Information
Habits
Pragmatist Approaches from Cognitive Science, Neuroscience, and Social Theory
 , pp. 165 - 183
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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