The Hand, an Organ of the Mind: What the Manual Tells the Mental - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0262018845 ISBN 13: 9780262018845

Publisher: The MIT Press, 2013

Synopsis

Theoretical and empirical accounts of the interconnectedness between the manual and the mental suggest that the hand can be understood as a cognitive instrument.

Cartesian-inspired dualism enforces a theoretical distinction between the motor and the cognitive and locates the mental exclusively in the head. This collection, focusing on the hand, challenges this dichotomy, offering theoretical and empirical perspectives on the interconnectedness and interdependence of the manual and mental. The contributors explore the possibility that the hand, far from being the merely mechanical executor of preconceived mental plans, possesses its own know-how, enabling "enhanded" beings to navigate the natural, social, and cultural world without engaging propositional thought, consciousness, and deliberation.

The contributors consider not only broad philosophical questions—ranging from the nature of embodiment, enaction, and the extended mind to the phenomenology of agency—but also such specific issues as touching, grasping, gesturing, sociality, and simulation. They show that the capacities of the hand include perception (on its own and in association with other modalities), action, (extended) cognition, social interaction, and communication. Taken together, their accounts offer a handbook of cutting-edge research exploring the ways that the manual shapes and reshapes the mental and creates conditions for embodied agents to act in the world.

Contributors
Matteo Baccarini, Andrew J. Bremner, Massimiliano L. Cappuccio, Andy Clark, Jonathan Cole, Dorothy Cowie, Natalie Depraz, Rosalyn Driscoll, Harry Farmer, Shaun Gallagher, Nicholas P. Holmes, Daniel D. Hutto, Angelo Maravita, Filip Mattens, Richard Menary, Jesse J. Prinz, Zdravko Radman, Matthew Ratcliffe, Etiennne B. Roesch, Stephen V. Shepherd, Susan A.J. Stuart, Manos Tsakiris, Michael Wheeler

About this title

About the Author

Zdravko Radman is Professor of Philosophy at the Institute of Philosophy, Zagreb, and the University of Split, Croatia. He is the author of Metaphors: Figures of the Mind and the editor of Knowing without Thinking: Mind, Action, Cognition, and the Phenomenon of the Background.

Jesse J. Prinz is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Jonathan Cole, D.M., F.R.C.P., is Consultant in Clinical Neurophysiology, Poole Hospital, and at Salisbury Hospital (with its Spinal Centre), a Professor at Bournemouth University and a visiting Senior Lecturer, Southampton University.

Matthew Ratcliffe is Professor for Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Vienna. He is author of Experiences of Depression, Feelings of Being, and Rethinking Commonsense Psychology.

Shaun Gallagher is Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department at the University of Central Florida and coeditor of the journal Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences.

Daniel D. Hutto is Professor of Philosophical Psychology at the University of Wollongong and the author of Folk Psychological Narratives: The Sociocultural Basis for Understanding Reasons (MIT Press) and coauthor of Radicalizing Enactivism: Basic Minds without Content (MIT Press).

Andy Clark is Doctor of Philosophy at the School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences at the University of Sussex.

Michael Wheeler is Reader in Philosophy at the University of Stirling. He is the author of Reconstructing the Cognitive World: The Next Step (MIT Press, 2005).

Massimiliano L. Cappuccio is Associate Professor of Cognitive Science at the College of Humanities and Social Sciences of the United Arab Emirates University, Abu Dhabi, and research associate at University of New South Wales

Richard Menary is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Wollongong. He is the author of Cognitive Integration and other books.

Zdravko Radman is Professor of Philosophy at the Institute of Philosophy, Zagreb, and the University of Split, Croatia. He is the author of Metaphors: Figures of the Mind and the editor of Knowing without Thinking: Mind, Action, Cognition, and the Phenomenon of the Background.

Edition details

• Publisher: The MIT Press
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0262018845
• ISBN 13: 9780262018845
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 464
• Editor: Radman Zdravko