Published papers by Katsunori Miyahara
Topoi: International Review of Philosophy, 2021
Habitual actions unfold without conscious deliberation or reflection, and yet often seem to be in... more Habitual actions unfold without conscious deliberation or reflection, and yet often seem to be intelligently adjusted to situational intricacies. A question arises, then, as to how it is that habitual actions can exhibit this form of intelligence, while falling outside the domain of paradigmatically intentional actions. Call this the intelligence puzzle of habits. This puzzle invites three standard replies. Some stipulate that habits lack intelligence and contend that the puzzle is ill-posed. Others hold that habitual actions can exhibit intelligence because they are guided by automatic yet rational, propositional processes. Others still suggest that habits guide intelligent behaviour without involving propositional states by shaping perception in action-soliciting ways. We develop an alternative fourth answer based on John Dewey's pragmatist account of habit. We argue that habits promote intelligent behaviour by shaping perception, by forming an interrelated network among themselves, and by cooperating with the environment.
Habits: Pragmatist Approaches From Cognitive Science, Neuroscience, and Social Theory. Fausto Caruana & Italo Testa (eds.) Cambridge University Press, 2020
We explore different modes of experience in performance, including various experiences of flow, h... more We explore different modes of experience in performance, including various experiences of flow, heedful performance, and habit. In contrast to conceptions that take habit to be automatic or a more-or-less rote repetition of behavior, Dewey and Merleau-Ponty consider habit to be a general bodily responsiveness to the world. Dewey’s conception of intelligent habit involves a thoughtful attitude of care and attunement to the parameters of the task. Merleau-Ponty likewise describes habit as being both motor and perceptual. Habit is an open and adaptive way in which the body learns to cope with familiar situations in ways that involve some degree of heedful performance. The deployment of a motor habit, for example, adapts to the specific contour of the situation—different situations make different demands on how the habitual task, here and now, ought to be achieved. This conception of habit meshes well with ecological affordance-based accounts of action and perception.
Topoi: International Review of Philosophy, 2020
What role does habit formation play in the development of sport skills? We argue that motor habit... more What role does habit formation play in the development of sport skills? We argue that motor habits are both necessary for and constitutive of sensorimotor skill as they support an automatic, yet inherently intelligent and flexible, form of action control. Intellectualists about skills generally assume that what makes action intelligent and flexible is its intentionality, and that intentionality must be necessarily cognitive in nature to allow for both deliberation and explicit goal-representation. Against Intellectualism we argue that the habitual behaviours that compose skilful action are accompanied by their specific, non-cognitive form
New Ideas in Psychology. Special Issue "First-Person Science of Consciousness", 2020
We discuss our attempts to develop a short-term phenomenological training program for training na... more We discuss our attempts to develop a short-term phenomenological training program for training naïve participants in phenomenological skills. After reviewing existing methodologies for collecting phenomenological data and clarifying the benefit of the short-term training approach, we present two training programs and two experiments that tested their effectiveness. Experiment 1 tested the two-stage training program, which consists of (i) the illusion training which instructs participants to describe the experience of a visual illusion and (ii) the guidance training which offers individualized feedbacks for improving their description. This program proved effective, but also excessively skill-demanding. Experiment 2 tested the one-stage training program, consisting only of the illusion training; it was easier to use, but exhibited a smaller training effect. The paper concludes by delineating methodological lessons from the experiments focusing on three themes: (i) Individual difference in phenomenological aptitude; (ii) Bounded transferability of phenomenological skills; (iii) Active intervention in the learning process.
Annual Review of the Phenomenological Association of Japan, 2019
In this paper, we present our collective effort to tackle various dimensions of the challenge of ... more In this paper, we present our collective effort to tackle various dimensions of the challenge of understanding minds in skilled performance. It is based on the plenary symposium on “Phenomenology of Skilled Performance” which took place in the 40th Annual Meeting of the Phenomenological Association of Japan. We argue that the concept of embodied mind plays a key role in clarifying the mentality needed for skilled performance.
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences
This paper disputes the theoretical assumptions of mainstream approaches in philosophy of pain, r... more This paper disputes the theoretical assumptions of mainstream approaches in philosophy of pain, representationalism and imperativism, and advances an enactive approach as an alternative. It begins by identifying three shared assumptions in the mainstream approaches: the internalist assumption, the brain-body assumption, and the semantic assumption. It then articulates an alternative, enactive approach that considers pain as an embodied response to the situation. This approach entails the hypothesis of the sociocultural embeddedness of pain, which states against the brain-body assumption that the intentional character of pain depends on the agent's sociocultural background. The paper then proceeds to consider two objections. The first questions the empirical basis of this hypothesis. It is argued based on neuroscientific evidence, however, that there is no empirical reason to suppose that the first-order experience of pain is immune to sociocultural influences. The second objection argues that the mainstream approaches can account for sociocultural influences on pain by drawing on the conceptual distinction between narrow and wide content. I respond by challenging the semantic conception of pain underpinning the proposal. Pain experience can occur in pre-reflective, affectively reflective, or cognitively reflective forms, but the semantic conception at most only applies to the last form. The paper concludes that the enactive approach offers a promising alternative framework in philosophy of pain. This is a pre-print of an article published in Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences. The final authenticated version is available online at: https://doi.
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2018
Penultimate draft. Please cite and reference to the published version. Miyahara, K. and Witkowski... more Penultimate draft. Please cite and reference to the published version. Miyahara, K. and Witkowski, O. (2018). The integrated structure of consciousness: Phenomenal content, subjective attitude, and noetic complex. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences. Online First. 1-28. https://doi. Abstract We explore the integrated structure (or the unity) of consciousness by examining the "phenomenological axioms" of the "integrated information theory of consciousness (IIT)" from the perspective of Husserlian phenomenology. After clarifying the notion of phenomenological axioms by drawing on resources from Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty (Section 1), we develop a critique of the integration axiom by drawing on phenomenological analyses developed by Aron Gurwitsch and Merleau-Ponty (Section 2 & 3). This axiom is ambiguous. It can be read either atomistically as claiming that the phenomenal content of conscious experience is an integrated complex and holistically as claiming that it is an integrated Gestalt. We argue that the latter reading provides a better characterization of the internal structure of the phenomenal content. Furthermore, the integrated structure of consciousness is not confined to the phenomenal content, but it also extends into the subjective attitude (Section 4). Subjective attitudes and phenomenal contents are interdependent constituents that jointly make up conscious experiences. This implies a novel theoretical challenge to the scientific component of IIT, which is to explain how to accommodate the subjective dimension of consciousness into its explanatory scope (Section 5). IIT can respond in a few different ways, but most importantly, it cannot just ignore it once and for all. As one possible way to address the challenge, we propose introducing a novel construct, noetic complex, to develop a fine-grained model of the neural underpinning of consciousness (Section 6).
哲学, 2017
This paper proposes an enactive account of thing-perception by integrating a descriptive, phenom... more This paper proposes an enactive account of thing-perception by integrating a descriptive, phenomenological analysis of thing-perception with the American philosopher John Haugeland’s account of “objective perception.” Enactive views of perception hold that perception is a form of embodied action. They apply well to the kind of perception that directly guides embodied action, but so far there is no convincing account as to how they might accommodate “thing-perception,” or the kind of perception that presents physical objects as things as such. Phenomenologically speaking, thing-perception is a temporally extended process of transforming an inarticulate appearance of a physical object into an articulate one. Furthermore, such transformation is shaped by embodied action guided by a normative sensitivity to the environment. Accordingly, phenomenological description suggests that ordinary thing-perception depends on the operation of bodily skills or bodily habits of certain kinds. On the other hand, Haugeland submits that our perceptual experience has the structure of objectivity by virtue of our antecedent commitment to certain constitutive standards. In particular, thing-perception is essentially dependent on our commitment to the constitutive standard for thinghood: We experience things as perceptual objects because of our preparedness to maintain in our experience a pattern of phenomena in accord with this constitutive standard. I claim that it is one and the same thing to have a commitment to the constitutive standard for thinghood and to have a bodily habit of seeing physical objects as things as such. Furthermore, I argue by thus integrating the two accounts described so far that thing-perception is essentially dependent on a form of embodied action. While to have a bodily habit of seeing something as such is to have a commitment to the constitutive standard for thinghood, the latter commitment is necessary for thing-perception to take place. Therefore, thing-perception is essentially a form of embodied action.
I explore the role of phenomenology in the enactive approach to cognition advanced by Francisco V... more I explore the role of phenomenology in the enactive approach to cognition advanced by Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch in their seminal book, The
Embodied Mind. After presenting (or representing) Varela and his co-authors as proposing a “scientific research programme” in cognitive science, in the philosopher of
science Imre Lakatos’ sense, I suggest that we think of the role of phenomenology in enactive approach in terms of the former’s possible contributions to making the latter
a progressive programme. Finally, by drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception, I sketch two ways in which phenomenological analyses might actually contribute to the progress of an enactive cognitive science of perception.
(This is an open commentary on "Never Mind the Gap: Neurophenomenology, Radical Enactivism, and t... more (This is an open commentary on "Never Mind the Gap: Neurophenomenology, Radical Enactivism, and the Hard Problem of Consciousness" by Michael D. Kirchhoff and Dan D. Hutto)
An exegetical worry about Kirchhoff and Hutto’s exposition of neurophenomenology is pointed out. Combining this exegetical critique with an examination of the “strict identity” in the strict identity thesis, I argue that there is more affinity between neurophenomenology and REC than they think.
Philosophical Psychology, 2014
In opposition to mainstream theory of mind approaches, some contemporary perceptual accounts of s... more In opposition to mainstream theory of mind approaches, some contemporary perceptual accounts of social cognition do not consider the central question of social cognition to be the problem of access to other minds. These perceptual accounts draw heavily on phenomenological philosophy and propose that others' mental states are "directly" given in the perception of the others' expressive behavior. Furthermore, these accounts contend that phenomenological insights into the nature of social perception lead to the dissolution of the access problem. We argue, on the contrary, that the access problem is a genuine problem that must be addressed by any account of social cognition, perceptual or nonperceptual, because we cannot cast the access problem as a false problem without violating certain fundamental intuitions about other minds. We elaborate the fundamental intuitions as three constraints on any theory of social perception: the Immediacy constraint; the Transcendence constraint; and the Accessibility constraint. We conclude with an outline of an account of perceiving other minds that meets the three constraints.
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2011
The general idea of enactive perception is that actual and potential embodied activities determin... more The general idea of enactive perception is that actual and potential embodied activities determine perceptual experience. Some extended mind theorists, such as Andy Clark, refute this claim despite their general emphasis on the importance of the body. I propose a compromise to this opposition. The extended mind thesis is allegedly a consequence of our commonsense understanding of the mind. Furthermore, extended mind theorists assume the existence of non-human minds. I explore the precise nature of the commonsense understanding of the mind, which accepts both extended minds and non-human minds. In the area of philosophy of mind, there are two theories of intentionality based on such commonsense understandings: neo-behaviorism defended, e.g., by Daniel Dennett, and neopragmatism advocated, e.g., by Robert Brandom. Neither account is in full agreement with how people ordinarily use their commonsense understanding. Neopragmatism, however, can overcome its problem-its inability to explain why people routinely find intentionality in non-humans-by incorporating the phenomenological suggestion that interactional bodily skills determine how we perceive others' intentionality. I call this integrative position embodied neo-pragmatism. I conclude that the extended view of the mind makes sense, without denying the existence of non-human minds, only by assuming embodied neo-pragmatism and hence the general idea of enactive perception.
Book chapters by Katsunori Miyahara
Habit: Pragmatist Approaches from Cognitive Neurosciences to Social Sciences , 2020
We explore different modes of experience in performance, including various experiences of flow, h... more We explore different modes of experience in performance, including various experiences of flow, heedful performance, and habit. In contrast to conceptions that take habit to be automatic or a more-or-less rote repetition of behavior, Dewey and Merleau-Ponty consider habit to be a general bodily responsiveness to the world. Dewey's conception of intelligent habit involves a thoughtful attitude of care and attunement to the parameters of the task. Merleau-Ponty likewise describes habit as being both motor and perceptual. Habit is an open and adaptive way in which the body learns to cope with familiar situations in ways that involve some degree of heedful performance. The deployment of a motor habit, for example, adapts to the specific contour of the situation – different situations make different demands on how the habitual task, here and now, ought to be achieved. This conception of habit meshes well with ecological affordance-based accounts of action and perception.
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Published papers by Katsunori Miyahara
Embodied Mind. After presenting (or representing) Varela and his co-authors as proposing a “scientific research programme” in cognitive science, in the philosopher of
science Imre Lakatos’ sense, I suggest that we think of the role of phenomenology in enactive approach in terms of the former’s possible contributions to making the latter
a progressive programme. Finally, by drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception, I sketch two ways in which phenomenological analyses might actually contribute to the progress of an enactive cognitive science of perception.
An exegetical worry about Kirchhoff and Hutto’s exposition of neurophenomenology is pointed out. Combining this exegetical critique with an examination of the “strict identity” in the strict identity thesis, I argue that there is more affinity between neurophenomenology and REC than they think.
Book chapters by Katsunori Miyahara
Embodied Mind. After presenting (or representing) Varela and his co-authors as proposing a “scientific research programme” in cognitive science, in the philosopher of
science Imre Lakatos’ sense, I suggest that we think of the role of phenomenology in enactive approach in terms of the former’s possible contributions to making the latter
a progressive programme. Finally, by drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception, I sketch two ways in which phenomenological analyses might actually contribute to the progress of an enactive cognitive science of perception.
An exegetical worry about Kirchhoff and Hutto’s exposition of neurophenomenology is pointed out. Combining this exegetical critique with an examination of the “strict identity” in the strict identity thesis, I argue that there is more affinity between neurophenomenology and REC than they think.
Phenomenological Association of Japan. We argue that the concept of embodied mind plays a key role in clarifying the mentality needed for skilled performance: The concept allows for theoretical
sensitivity to its special features while avoiding both over-intellectualization and mechanical reduction. Such concept of mind and cognition is vigorously developed in recent embodiedenactive
approaches, but is also prefigured in Continental phcnomcnologist, American pragmatist, and East Asian traditions of thinking. We actively seek to engage with and benefit from these different traditions of thought in developing our philosophical investigation.