Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-m8s7h Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-20T16:20:31.552Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

17 - Habits and the Enculturated Mind

Pervasive Artifacts, Predictive Processing, and Expansive Habits

from Part III - Socially Embeddded and Culturally Extended Habits

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 November 2020

By
Joerg Fingerhut
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
Get access

Summary

How do cultural artifacts influence the ways we experience and act? In this chapter I propose that cognition is cultural tout court and that habits provide a central link between human organisms and the sociocultural environment. I will defend an enactive account of habits that sees them as expansive in the temporal (they relate us to a history of sociocultural interactions) and spatial sense (they are co-constituted by our brains, bodies, and cultural artifacts). This account is based on Dewey's pragmatist–organicist concept of habits that rigorously anchors experience in culture. I will trace cultural factors in Dewey's philosophy and 4E (embodied, embedded, enacted, extended) cognitive science with a focus on pervasive artifacts – such as architecture, pictures, and moving images. Such artifacts have become part of our habits of perceiving. I finally situate artifactual habits within recent predictive processing theories that claim to provide the corresponding neuroscientific theory to our cultural minds.

Keywords

expansive habitsDeweyenactivismcultural artifactspredictive processing
Type
Chapter
Information
Habits
Pragmatist Approaches from Cognitive Science, Neuroscience, and Social Theory
 , pp. 352 - 375
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Boden, Margaret A. 2006. Mind as Machine: A History of Cognitive Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 2000. Pascalian Meditations. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Bredekamp, Horst. 2017. Image Acts: A Systematic Approach to Visual Agency. Berlin: de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chiao, Joan Y. 2009. “Cultural Neuroscience: An Once and Future Discipline.” Progress in Brain Research 178: 287–304.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Clark, Andy. 1997. Being There: Putting Brain, Body and World Back Together Again. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Clark, Andy. 2006. “Material Symbols.” Philosophical Psychology 19 (3): 291–307.Google Scholar
Clark, Andy. 2016. Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action, and the Embodied Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dewey, John. 1967. “The New Psychology.” In: The Early Works of John Dewey, 1882–1898. Volume 1, 1882–1888: Early Essays and Leibniz's New Essays. Edited by Boydston, Jo Ann, 48–60. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.Google Scholar
Dewey, John. 1981a. “The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology.” In: The Early Works of John Dewey, 1882–1898, vol. 5, 1895–1898, Essays. Edited by Boydston, Jo Ann, 97–110. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.Google Scholar
Dewey, John. 1981b. “Experience and Nature.” In The Later Works of John Dewey, 1925–1953, vol. 1, 1925. Edited by Boydston, Jo Ann, 1–437. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.Google Scholar
Dewey, John. 1983. “Human Nature and Conduct.” In The Middle Works of John Dewey, 1899–1924, vol. 14, 1922. Edited by Boydston, Jo Ann, 1–226. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.Google Scholar
Dewey, John. 1987. “Art as Experience.” In The Later Works of John Dewey, 1925–1953, vol. 10, 1934. Edited by Boydston, Jo Ann, 1–365. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.Google Scholar
Di Paolo, Ezequiel A., Cuffari, Elena Clare, and De Jaegher, Hanne. 2018. Linguistic Bodies: The Continuity between Life and Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fingerhut, Joerg. 2012a. “Extended Imagery, Extended Access, or Something Else? Pictures and the Extended Mind Hypothesis.” In Bildakt at the Warburg Institute. Edited by Marienberg, Sabine and Trabant, Jürgen, 33–50. Berlin: de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Fingerhut, Joerg. 2012b. “The Body and the Experience of Presence.” In Feelings of Being Alive. Edited by Fingerhut, Joerg and Marienberg, Sabine, 167–99. Berlin: de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fingerhut, Joerg. Forthcoming. “Twofoldness in Moving Images. The Philosophy and Neuroscience of Filmic Experience.” Projections 14(3).Google Scholar
Fingerhut, Joerg, and Heimann, Katrin. 2017. “Movies and the Mind: On Our Filmic Body.” In Embodiment, Enaction, and Culture: Investigating the Constitution of the Shared World. Edited by Durt, Christoph, Tewes, Christian, and Fuchs, Thomas, 353–77. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Fingerhut, Joerg, and Prinz, Jesse. Forthcoming. “Enactive Aesthetic Emotions.”Google Scholar
Fridland, Elen. 2014. “They've Lost Control: Reflections on Skill.” Synthese 191 (12): 2729–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friston, Karl. 2010. “The Free-Energy Principle: A Unified Brain Theory?” Nature Reviews. Neuroscience 11 (2): 127–38.Google Scholar
Gallagher, Shaun. 2017. Enactivist Interventions: Rethinking the Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gallagher, Shaun, and Allen, Micah. 2018. “Active Inference, Enactivism and the Hermeneutics of Social Cognition.” Synthese 195 (6): 2627–48.Google Scholar
Green, C. Shawn, and Bavelier, Daphne. 2006. “Effect of Action Video Games on the Spatial Distribution of Visuospatial Attention.” Journal of Experimental Psychology. Human Perception and Performance 32 (6): 1465–78.Google Scholar
Hutto, Daniel, and Myin, Erik. 2017. Evolving Enactivism: Basic Minds Meet Content. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Hutto, Daniel, Gallagher, Shaun, Ilundáin-Agurruza, Jesús, and Hipólito, Inês. Forthcoming. “Culture in Mind – An Enactivist Account: Not Cognitive Penetration But Cultural Permeation.”Google Scholar
Ibbotson, Paul, and Tomasello, Michael. 2016. “Language in a New Key.” Scientific American 315 (5): 70–5.Google Scholar
Ildirar, Sermin, and Ewing, Louise. 2018. “Revisiting the Kuleshov Effect with First-Time Viewers.” Projections 12 (1): 19–38.Google Scholar
Ildirar, Sermin, and Schwan, Stephan. 2015. “First-Time Viewers’ Comprehension of Films: Bridging Shot Transitions.” British Journal of Psychology 106 (1): 133–51.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kirchhoff, Michael David. 2012. “Extended Cognition and Fixed Properties: Steps to a Third-Wave Version of Extended Cognition.” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 11 (2): 287–308.Google Scholar
Loschky, Lester C., Larson, Adam M., Magliano, Joseph P., and Smith, Tim J.. 2015. “What Would Jaws Do? The Tyranny of Film and the Relationship between Gaze and Higher-Level Narrative Film Comprehension.” PLoS One 10 (11): e0142474.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Malafouris, Lambros. 2013. How Things Shape the Mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Mallgrave, Harry Francis. 2013. Architecture and Embodiment: The Implications of the New Sciences and Humanities for Design. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar
Mareschal, Denis, Johnson, Mark, Sirois, Sylvain, Thomas, Michael, Spratling, Michael, and Westermann, Gert. 2007. Neuroconstructivism: How the Brain Constructs Cognition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Martiros, Nuné, Burgess, Alexandra A., and Graybiel, Ann M.. 2018. “Inversely Active Striatal Projection Neurons and Interneurons Selectively Delimit Useful Behavioral Sequences.” Current Biology 28 (4): 560–73.Google Scholar
Menary, Richard. 2013. “Cognitive Integration, Enculturated Cognition and the Socially Extended Mind.” Cognitive Systems Research 25–26: 26–34.Google Scholar
Menary, Richard. 2015. “Mathematical Cognition: A Case of Enculturation.” In Open MIND 25(T). Edited by Metzinger, Thomas and Windt, Jenny M.. Frankfurt a.M.: MIND Group. doi: 10.15502/9783958570818Google Scholar
Nanay, Bence. 2009. “Shape Constancy, Not Size Constancy: A (Partial) Explanation for the Müller–Lyer Illusion.” Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society 31: 579–584.Google Scholar
Neisser, Ulric. 1976. Cognition and Reality: Principles and Implications of Cognitive Psychology. San Francisco, CA: Freeman.Google Scholar
Nisbett, Richard E., and Masuda, Takahiko. 2003. “Culture and Point of View.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 100 (19): 11163–70.Google Scholar
Núñez, Rafael, Allen, Michael, Gao, Richard, Rigoli, Carson Miller, Relaford-Doyle, Josephine, and Semenuks, Arturs. 2019. “What Happened to Cognitive Science?” Nature Human Behaviour 3 (8): 782–91.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
O'Regan, J. Kevin, and Noë, Alva. 2001. “A Sensorimotor Account of Vision and Visual Consciousness.” The Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (5): 939–73; discussion 973–1031.Google Scholar
Pasqualini, Isabella, Llobera, Joan, and Blanke, Olaf. 2013. “‘Seeing’ and ‘Feeling’ Architecture: How Bodily Self-Consciousness Alters Architectonic Experience and Affects the Perception of Interiors.” Frontiers in Psychology 4. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00354.Google Scholar
Pedersen, D. M., and Wheeler, J.. 1983. “The Müller–Lyer Illusion among Navajos.” The Journal of Social Psychology 121 (1st Half): 3–6.Google Scholar
Ramstead, Maxwell J. D., Veissière, Samuel P. L., and Kirmayer, Laurence J.. 2016. “Cultural Affordances: Scaffolding Local Worlds through Shared Intentionality and Regimes of Attention.” Frontiers in Psychology 7: 1090.Google Scholar
Ratner, Sidney, and Altman, Jules, eds. 1964. John Dewey and Arthur F. Bentley: A Philosophical Correspondence 1932–1951, vol. 5. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Segall, M. H., Campbell, D. T., and Herskovits, M. J.. 1963. “Cultural Differences in the Perception of Geometric Illusions.” Science 139 (3556): 769–71.Google Scholar
Shapiro, Lawrence. 2019. Embodied Cognition, 2nd ed. Abingdon: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Tim J., and Henderson, John M.. 2008. “Edit Blindness: The Relationship between Attention and Global Change Blindness in Dynamic Scenes.” Journal of Eye Movement Research 2 (2): 1–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sutton, John. 2010. “Exograms and Interdisciplinarity: History, the Extended Mind, and the Civilizing Process.” In The Extended Mind. Edited by Menary, Richard, 189–225, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Varela, Francisco J., Rosch, Eleanor, and Thompson, Evan. 1991. The Embodied Mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wheeler, Michael. 2004. “Is Language the Ultimate Artefact?” Language Sciences 26 (6): 693–715.Google Scholar
Wollheim, Richard Arthur. 1980. Art and Its Objects, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×