“What is Extended Mind?” by Andy Clark
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Tag Archives: mind
“Religion, Language, and the Human Mind” by Paul Chilton and Monika Kopytowska
“Language, Mind and Body: A Conceptual History” by Prof. John E. Joseph
“Language, Mind and Body: A Conceptual History” By Prof. John E. Joseph
Cambridge University Press
Book description
Where is language? Answers to this have attempted to ‘incorporate’ language in an 
‘extended mind’, through cognition that is ’embodied’, ‘distributed’, ‘situated’ or ‘ecological’. Behind these concepts is a long history that this book is the first to trace. Extending across linguistics, philosophy, psychology and medicine, as well as literary and religious dimensions of the question of what language is, and where it is located, this book challenges mainstream, mind-based accounts of language. Looking at research from the Middle Ages to the present day, and exploring the work of a range of scholars from Aristotle and Galen to Merleau-Ponty and Chomsky, it assesses raging debates about whether mind and language are centred in heart or brain, brain or nervous-muscular system, and whether they are innate or learned, individual or social. This book will appeal to scholars and advanced students in historical linguistics, cognitive linguistics, language evolution and the philosophy of language.
Reviews
‘Joseph vividly defamiliarizes linguistic categories we are accustomed to – abstract and concrete, langue and parole, embodied cognition, even language and mind. Rereading our histories, he rethinks what’s at stake when we affirm a ‘discipline’ of linguistics.’
Mark Amsler – University of Auckland
“The tangled roots of inner speech, voices and delusions” by Cherise Rosen et al.
The tangled roots of inner speech, voices and delusions
Cherise Rosen, Simon McCarthy-Jones, Kayla A. Chase, Clara S. Humpston, Jennifer K. Melbourne, Leah Kling & Rajiv P. Sharma
Highlights
- This exploratory study examined the role of inner speech in the experience of
auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs) and delusions. - Greater levels of dialogic inner speech were found in participants with psychosis compared to non-clinical controls.
- Greater levels of dialogic inner speech reported better relations both with and between their voices.
- Qualitative narratives also highlighted the tangled dynamics of inner speech, AVHs and delusions.
- These results underscores the need for phenomenological and clinical research into the potential interrelatedness of inner speech, voices and delusions, and the complexities involved in disentangling this network of inner experience.
Abstract
The role of inner speech in the experience of auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH) and delusions remains unclear. This exploratory study tested for differences in inner speech (assessed via self-report questionnaire) between 89 participants with psychosis and 37 non-clinical controls. We also tested for associations of inner speech with, i) state/trait AVH, ii) AVH-severity; iii) patients’ relations with their voices, and; iv) delusion-severity. Persons with psychosis had greater levels of dialogic inner speech, other people in inner speech, and evaluative/motivational inner speech than non-clinical controls. Those with state, but not trait AVH had greater levels of dialogic and evaluative/motivational inner speech than non-clinical controls. After controlling for delusions, there was a positive relation between AVH-severity and both evaluative/motivational inner speech and other people in inner speech. Participants with greater levels of dialogic inner speech reported better relations both with and between their voices. There was no association between delusion-severity and inner speech. These results highlight the importance of better understanding relations between inner speech and AVH, provide avenues for future research, and underscore the need for research into the interrelatedness of inner speech, voices and delusions, and the complexities involved in disentangling these experiences.
http://www.psy-journal.com/article/S0165-1781%2817%2931563-9/abstract
Call for Participation: Symposium on Mind – Body – Violence, June 28th, 2018
Call for Participation: Symposium on Mind – Body – Violence
Funded by the British Academy
June 28th, 2018
University of Edinburgh
Defining, researching and understanding the concept of ‘violence’ is challenging and contested. At the centre of debates around violence is the enduring problematic of a mind/body dualism. Ongoing developments in the fields of disability studies, the health humanities, illness studies, and violence studies place conversations about mind and body at the centre of their disciplines; in part, this symposium seeks to address some of the following questions: What is the effect of bodily violence on the mind? How do we categorise and understand the intersections of body and mind through the experiences of violence? What can the emerging field of health humanities offer to understandings of mind-body-violence?
This one-day symposium will provide an engaging and innovative forum in which to explore and interrogate intersections between violence, mind, and body. Attendance is free, but limited to 25-30 delegates, which we hope will draw from a wide range of working scholars, graduate students, and non-scholars with interest in the topic. We invite contributions from a range of disciplinary perspectives allied to health humanities (e.g. literature, drama, history, gender studies, sociology, and anthropology) who are interested in violence and how this intersects with wider understandings of what Margaret Price, among others, suggests calling “bodyminds.”
The day will be organised around a series of workshops and roundtable discussions; as such, attendees will not present formal work but will rather be a part of what we hope is an cross-disciplinary investigation of the body, mind, and violence.
In lieu of more formal presentations, we also invite proposals with the application for contributions of 5-minute provocations around the following thematic areas (see below). Proposals may take the form of oral presentations, as well as more creative contributions (e.g. music, dance, poetry, theatre). The 5 minute limit is strict, however, as we want to maximise opportunities for mutual discussion and form a base from which to launch interdisciplinary conversations:
Bodymind in Parts (Georgie Lucas, University of Nottingham): This session invites perspectives that consider how the performance of violence (e.g. massacre, rape, dismemberment) that literally or figuratively reduces the body into parts can inform understandings of the temporal and eternal self. Approaches and subjects might include, but are not limited to, historical or contemporary understandings of violence and the self; artistic or creative responses to, or representations of, violence and the bodymind experience; and different cultural conception of this dynamic.
Bodymind in Pain (Sarah Nance, United States Air Force Academy): This session investigates the relationship of the bodymind to pain, whether through suffering, illness, or violence. Particular attention will be paid to the way that pain can reify or “repair” the perceived division between mind and body; that is, does pain distance us from our bodies or return us to our bodies? The session will also consider the possibility of representing pain within language. Approaches might include, among others: literary and artistic representations of pain; medical and health intersections with the body and/or pain; and narrated accounts of pain, whether through memoir, visual art, medical narratives, or sociological/anthropological study.
Bodymind in Practice (Amy Chandler, University of Edinburgh): This session considers how violent practices – and practices of accounting for these – produce or unsettle the concept of an integrated bodymind. In doing so, the session explicitly engages with definitions of violence and of bodies/selves, and will attend to the ways in which different practices come to be understood as ‘violent’ – or not. Particularly relevant practices might include (but are not restricted to): self-harm, suicide, intimate partner abuse, gender-based violence, surgeries.
To apply to attend: please submit a short paragraph summarising your interest in the symposium topic; to apply to contribute a 5-minute provocation (not required for attendance), please also include a 250-word abstract, giving an indication of the content of your contribution, as well as the medium of presentation.
Please send abstracts/applications to: mindbodyviolence@gmail.com by 4th May 2018. Applications will be reviewed and decisions made by 11th May 2018.
For further information: please feel free to contact mindbodyviolence[at]gmail.com.
To discuss contributing to a particular theme in advance of your submission, please email the theme lead:
Dr. Georgie Lucas (Bodymind in Parts) – georgina.lucas[at]nottingham.ac.uk
Dr. Sarah Nance (Bodymind in Pain) – sarah.nance[at]usafa.edu
Dr. Amy Chandler (Bodymind in Practice) – a.chandler[at]ed.ac.uk