My talk at Brooklyn College

Sorry to report this after the fact. I attended the conference "Resisting the Divides: Contemporary Philosophy of Art" at Brooklyn College, CUNY and gave a talk there. Thank you for all those who asked me a lot of questions after the talk. I was happy to answer all of them.

My talk title was:

Shogo Tanaka

"The enactive approach meets art:The phenomenology of one-time performances"

Here I put my abstract.

The enactive approach meets art: The phenomenology of one-time performances

In recent years, phenomenological research has been expanding its horizon into the realm of performance, including music, dance, and theater (Gallagher 2021, Krueger 2014, Zarrilli 2020). This move was partly made possible by integrating the enactive approach, which emphasizes the ideas that perception is for action and that action orientation shapes cognitive processes. Combined with a phenomenological description of experiences with its emphasis on the first-person perspective, the enactive approach attempts to explicate what really occurs in unrepeatable performative and aesthetic experiences. In this talk, I introduce three enactive-phenomenological notions: (1) intercorporeality (Merleau-Ponty 1961): a potential intersubjective relationship between self and other that manifests through a perception-action loop of each other’s body; (2) enactive intersubjectivity (Fuchs & De Jaegher 2009): embodied interactions between two participants, including nonverbal signals, which create a dyadic system through which intersubjectivity develops; and (3) aida (Kimura 2005): the “in-between” of interactants starts to have its own autonomy as an intersubjectively shared mood, outside of which each participant would act differently. All these notions share the view that the key to understanding one-time performances is in the emergent process among participants. An intersubjectively shared mood emerges through embodied interactions, and the common sense-making process develops as performance. Based on this theoretical underpinning, I take up two examples. One is an observational study on the process of spontaneous drawing that I conducted as a psychological experiment in past research. The other one is a performative artwork called “Heat-Touch Therapy” proposed and practiced by the Japanese artist Mew Imashuku (2024). In both cases, performance proceeds in an unpredictable manner, but the participants experience shared processes of sense-making.

my talk at "Aware & Alive" symposium

Two weeks ago I participated in "Aware & Alive" which was organized as a ASSC satellite symposium. 

Aware & Alive (8-10th July 2024, Hokkaido University, Japan)

Here I share the talk I gave there, titled "From an implicit sense of self to an explicit self-consciousness." 

Enjoy!

Roundtable in ISTP 2024

20th Conference of the International Society for Theoretical Psychology will be held soon in Belgrade. I am going to give a talk there in the roundtable titled "Phenomenology and Psychology of Performance" organized by Dr. Tetsuya Kono. Other speakers are Dr. Shoji Nagataki from Chukyo University and Dr. Martin Nitsche from Czech Academy of Sciences. Here is the abstract.

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Performance is an important theme with great potential for the development of philosophy, psychology, and the cognitive science of embodiment. The methodology to study performances should be the basis for the studies of arts, sports, education, and clinical psychology. However, in order to understand the phenomenon of one-time performance, conventional hard science methodology is disqualified since it places reproducibility as the basis of research. In contrast, phenomenology has the potential to provide the basis for a science of performance to analyze the structure and the meaning of performance experiences. In recent years, phenomenology and related cognitive studies of embodiment (4E cognition) have begun to pay more attention to skilled performance and tact in performance (Fuchs & De Jaegher 2009, Gallagher 2021, Grant et al. 2019; Hutto 2012; Welch 2019). 

So far, we have been conducting phenomenological and qualitative research on intercorporeal interactions. Kono will talk about how children have a dialogue in the practice of philosophy for/with children. Nagataki will focus on certain typical scenes in a soccer game and the linguistic expressions of the leaders who analyze and describe these images. Nitsche will speak on sonic performances (not only music), how they create sound-spaces, and immersion within the sonic in-between. Tanaka will talk about an experiment in which a pair of people drew in improvisation to confirm the process of “participatory sense-making” that emerges “in-between”. 

In this roundtable, we discuss the fundamental questions, “Are the scientific studies of one-time performance possible?”, “What contribution can digital humanities make to research in this field?”, and “What are the relations between skills and performance” from the interdisciplinary and phenomenological viewpoints.

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The conference website is here;

https://www.istp2024.f.bg.ac.rs/

I look forward to sharing my ideas in ISTP.

Hand to Face (Tanaka 2024)

My new paper was published on Japanese Psychological Research.

Tanaka, S. (2024). Hand to Face: A Phenomenological View of Body Image Development in Infants. Japanese Psychological Research. 

https://doi.org/10.1111/jpr.12517

You can read the full text online by clicking the DOI above. This paper is an attempt to reconsider body image development from a phenomenological perspective. In it, I proposed that hands are the first organ and the face the last organ to be incorporated into one's body image. If you are interested in knowing why and how of this proposal, please refer to the full text. You will enjoy the argument.

Best,

S

Co-authored paper with Dr. Iriki

 A paper co-authored with Dr. Atsushi Iriki has just been published in Global Perspectives. 

Iriki, A., & Tanaka, S. (2024). Potential of the path integral and quantum computing for the study of humanities: An underlying principle of human evolution and the function of consciousness. Global Perspectives, 5(1). https://doi.org/10.1525/gp.2024.115651

You can read the full text by clicking the DOI above. This is my first paper that deals with quantum computing and its implications in humanities. As we emphasized in it, we can expect to obtain insights into new humanities based on quantum computation, including the fields such as linguistics, psychopathology, and diverse states of consciousness. Here is the abstract of our paper.

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The “(classical) scientific view of the world” that characterizes the modern history of human civilization has been successful by objectifying nature, humans, and society, for reductive analysis into (approximate) linear causation to allow prediction and control. However, because of its growing maturity and complexity, our modern society now confronts the complexity of multilayered causal structures underlying the real phenomena, which classical science has abstracted through reductive approximation, and consequently, modern scientists are perplexed by the limitations on  comprehension, predictability, and controllability. The “uncertainty principle” of quantum physics, discovered a century ago, has overthrown this classical mechanistic and deterministic worldview, but the “(quantum) scientific worldview” remained confined at the level of microscopic science and has to date never extended onward to the life-size human world. However, as practical applications of the quantum computer are now becoming realistic, it might provide us with an innovative way to manipulate such complex causal structures and open up a new era in the history of civilization. In this paper, we build ideas on our earlier research findings in the context of the evolutionary patterns of human cognition, so as to extrapolate them to advance speculations on the mechanism of the phase transition of worldviews from classical to quantum causal structure-based ones, expecting to obtain insights into practical ways of computation to realize such a transition. The paper begins with a section examining the origin of the linear approximation adopted in classical science, back casting from the evolutionary history of the (linguistic) consciousness of our human ancestors. In the next section, we show how human intelligence and civilization have in fact evolved as analog with quantum laws, and review the limitations of modern science in finding an expression of these laws in Eastern philosophy. This section proceeds to show the potential of quantum computation to not only realize a fusion of Eastern and Western approaches but also integrate the humanities and natural sciences. The final section concludes that this new framework can expand and develop the structure and function of human “consciousness” and build a bridgehead against recent “anti-scientism” that is rooted in skepticism concerning the (classical) scientific view of the world and humanity.

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Enjoy the paper!

Workshop in Shanghai

There will be a workshop on social cognition next week in Shanghai, organized by Eastern China Normal University.

"Cultural Embedding of Social Cognition"

 

I am going to give a talk as one of the speakers. My talk is titled, "Hand to Face: Body image development embedded in social interactions." Focusing on the developmental course of infants, I will try to explicate the order of body image development, which starts with hands and ends up with face.

Look forward to sharing my argument.

author's manuscript of Miyahara & Tanaka (2023)

As a lot of colleagues have asked me to share the article, here I share the author's manuscript of Miyahara and Tanaka (2023).

Katsunori Miyahara and Shogo Tanaka (2023) "Narrative self-constitution as embodied practice" Philosophical Psychology, Online First.

Enjoy it!

New article on Philosophical Psychology

Shortly before, our new article was published on Philosophical Psychology.

 

Katsunori Miyahara and Shogo Tanaka (2023) "Narrative self-constitution as embodied practice" Philosophical Psychology, Online First.

https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2023.2286281

Here is the abstract. 

Narrative views of the self argue that we constitute our self in self-narratives. Embodied views hold that our self is shaped through embodied experiences. In that case, what is the relation between embodiment and narrativity in the process of self-constitution? The question demands a clear definition of embodiment, but existing studies remains unclear on this point (section 2). We offer a correction to this situation by drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of the body that highlights its habituality. On this account, the body has an inherent tendency to cultivate an organization of habits through its history of engagement with the world (section 3). Next, we explore its role in narrative self-constitution by distinguishing between two aspects of the narrative self, the narrated I and the narrating I (section 4). We argue on phenomenological grounds that self-narratives are informed by bodily perspectives in both respects. Furthermore, a focus on the habituality of the body allows for a better explanation of self-constitution than those based on implicit self-narratives (section 5). For these phenomenological and theoretical reasons, we conclude that narrative self-constitution is an embodied and embedded practice (section 6).

 

It was a nice experience for me to write together with Katsunori Miyahara, who is also a Merleau-Ponty scholar. Collaborating with him, I tried to extend Merleau-Ponty's ideas on embodiment into the realm of narrativity.

Enjoy reading it.

Happy 2024!

Happy new year, everybody! 

Greetings from Tokyo.

 

Here is a picture of IHSRC 2023 in Tokai University last year.

 

The Ikigai Podcast

Two weeks ago, I enjoyed being interviewed with Nich Kemp from IKIGAI TRIBE. 

Do you know the Japanese word "IKIGAI (生きがい)"? Ikigai means somthing that make your life worth living, and it is becoming popular in English literature through Mieko Kamiya's book titled "On Ikigai (生きがいについて)."

Through the interview, I tried to give accounts on the concept of "aida (あいだ)” and "ma (間)". Both concepts are grounded in Japanese language and culture but I think it has a universal dimension that is open to the people from diverse cultural backgrounds. Intending to show that, my talk starts with the idea of intercorporeality.

Visit the page below, if you are interested in.

IKIGAI podcast 66: Navigating Aida and Intercorporeality with Prof. Shogo Tanaka

https://ikigaitribe.com/podcasts/podcast66/

Enjoy!

Past IHSR conferences

Thanks to the aid of Prof. Steen Halling, I obtained the following information on International Human Science Research Conference. This is a list of sites and themes of the past conferences since 1982. Here I share it with you all.

 

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International Human Science Research Conference

Conference Sites and Themes, 1982-2023

(made by Prof. Steen Halling)

1982: School of Education, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA. “Phenomenology of Childhood.”

1983: Department of Psychology, Duquesne University, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, USA. No theme.

1984: Department of Psychology, State University of West Georgia, Carrollton, USA.

1985: May 21-25. Faculty of Education, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. 

1986:  May 27-31. University of California, Berkeley; Co-sponsored by the California State University, Hayward, and the Saybrook Institute, USA: “Dialogue Within Diversity”.

1987:  May 26-30. School of Psychology, University of Ottawa, Canada. “Towards Integration in Human Science.”  (The tradition of holding alternative meetings in Europe is affirmed. )

1988: June 8-12th. Department of Psychology and the College of Arts and Sciences, Seattle University, Washington, USA. “The Ethical Foundations and Implications of Human Science Research.” (Subsequent to 1988, the newsletter is published at Seattle University.)

1989:  Aug 18-22. Institute of Psychology, University of Aarhus, Aarhus, Denmark. No theme (First meeting outside of North America. From the beginning many Europeans came to these conferences.)

1990:  June 9-13. Faculty of the Educational Sciences, University of Laval, Quebec, Canada. “Intersubjectivity.” (The first and only time presentations were both in French and English (a requirement at public institutions in Quebec). Paul Ricouer was the keynote speaker.)

1991:  Aug 18-22. Departments of Psychology, Educational and Educational Research, and History of Science and Ideas, University of Goteborg, Sweden. “Human Science as Methodology.” 

1992:  June 9-13. The Institute for Action Research, the Departments of Human Development and Child Studies, and of Philosophy, Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan, USA. “The Hermeneutic Circle: Voice, Narrative and Meaning Making in the Life-Worlds of Children and Adults.” 

1993: Aug 10-14. Department of Pedagogical and Educational Sciences, University of Groningen, the Netherlands. “Human Sciences at the Intersection of Politics, Social Change and Development and Political Decision Making.” (We voted to go to South Africa if democratic elections were held.)

1994: Jun 14- 18th. Department of Psychology, St. Joseph’s College, West Hartford, Connecticut, USA. No theme. 

1995: Aug 21-25. Department of Psychology, University of Pretoria, Eskrom Conference Centre, Midrand, South Africa. No theme. 

1996: Aug 14-17. Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada: Beyond Form. “Transformation through Imagery and Action.” 

1997: Aug 16-20. Department of Psychology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway. “The Challenges for the Human Sciences in a Technological World.”

1998: June 10-14. Sheldon Jackson College, Sitka, Alaska. “Interfaces: Heritages and Cultures”

1999: July 26-29. Learning and Teaching Research Institute (and others), Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, United Kingdom. “Qualitative Research: Unity and Diversity.” (The attendance at the previous two conferences was quite low (less than hundred). This year at least 300 attended.)

2000: June 12-15. Southampton College, Long Island University, New York, USA. “Celebrating Openness.” 

2001: Aug 19-22. Counseling Institute, Taisho University, Tokyo, Japan. “Caring for the Next Generation.”

2002. June 19-22. University of Victoria, Victoria BC, Canada. “Inciting Dialogue at the Edges.” 

2003: Aug 13-16th. Ersta Skondal University College, Stockholm, Sweden. “Human Science Research and Human Vulnerability.”

2004: Aug 5-8th. Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario Canada. “Embodiment and its Consequences in Human Science Research.”

2005: Aug 10-13. Bournemouth University, United Kingdom. “Values”

2006: Aug 3-6. John F. Kennedy University, Pleasant Hills, California. “The Multicultural Future of Qualitative Research”

2007: June 13-16. University of Trento, Rovereto Branch, Italy. “New Frontiers of Phenomenology: Beyond Postmodernism in Empirical Research.”

2008: June 11-14, Ramapo College, Ramapo, NJ, USA. “Imagination and the Human Sciences.”

2009: June 17-20, Molde University College, Molde, Norway.

2010: August 4-8. Seattle University, Seattle, USA. “Giving Voice to Experience.”

2011: July 27-30. Hosted by the Open University at Oxford University, Oxford, UK. “Intertwining Body-self-world.”

2012: June 25-29. University of Quebec at Montreal, “Renewing the Encounter between the Human Sciences, the Arts and the Humanities”.

2013: July 27-30. University of Aalborg, Denmark. Creativity in human science research, methodology and theory.

2014: Saint Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia. Advancing Human Science: Recovering Subjectivity, Relation, Process. (We had expected that the 2016 would be held in San Francisco but the potential organizers were at a loss to find an appropriate venue. After the conference, University of Ottawa stops forward and becomes the host without a business meeting decision.)

2015: August 11-15. Sør-Trøndelag University College, Trondheim, Norway. “Culture and Morality.”

2016: July. University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada. “Life Phenomenology: Movement, Affect, and Language.”

2017: July, Karkonosze College in Jelenia Gora, Poland. “Between Necessity and Choice: Existential Dilemmas in the Human life-world.”

2018: June, Wofford College, Spartanburg, SC, “Dialogue and Inclusivity.”

2019: June, Molde University College, Molde, Norway

2022: June. PACE University, New York, USA. “Building Bridges, State of the Science.”

2023: August 7-11. Tokai University, Shonan Campus, Japan. “Intercorporeality: (Re) Connecting people beyond social distance.”

 

Website open: IHSRC 2023 in Tokyo

We are happy to announce the website for IHSRC 2023 is now open!

https://ihsrc2023tokyo.jp/

The 40th International Human Science Research Conference is scheduled for 7 to 11 August 2023 and will be held in Tokai University Takanawa Campus, as an onsite event.

Please send your abstract for paper presentation by April 15th to "ihsrc2023@gmail.com" The decision will be sent no later than May 15th.

We look forward to meeting you all in Tokyo!

All the best,

Shogo Tanaka

IHSRC 2023 local organizing committee 

International Conference on Embodied Cognitive Science, November 7-11, Okinawa

There will be a full-fledged onsite conference on embodied cognition in a week.

International Conference on Embodied Cognitive Science

ECogS 2022 "Interaction Matters"

at OIST, Okinawa, Japan

I've just started to prepare for my talk titled "Embodied cognitive revolution behind the “sapient paradox”" 

Sapient Paradox is a question formulated by Colin Renfrew in his 1996 paper, pointing out that there is a big temporal gap between the accomplishment of human evolution in anatomical senses and the manifestation of human cognitive capabilities in civilizations. In fact, human evolution in a biological sense was accomplished some 60,000 years ago (or as long as 200,000 years ago when the Sapiens appeared), but human civilization first appeared 12000-10000 years ago. If there is such a gap, there should be an account on human cognitive capacities that prepared for the formation of early civilization, which involved the development of sedentism, stock rearing, and agriculture. My talk deals with this problem from the perspective of embodied cognition.

See you soon in Okinawa,

S

Upcoming Event: "Embodied Spirituality" (September 23rd)

We are going to hold an online symposium on September 23rd. 

Tokai University Online Symposium

"Embodied Spirituality: Meditation practices in the contemporary world"

September 23rd, 2022, 10:00 - 12:00 CET / 17:00 - 19:00 JST

All those who are interested in embodiment and spirituality are welcome. Please follow the link below and register your name and e-mail address. You will get the webinar link after the registration.

> REGISTER HERE

My talk is titled "On the spiritual dimension of embodied experiences." Though I have not finished preparing for my talk yet, my main idea is very simple: Our bodily experiences such as sports and dance inherently have spiritual dimensions. Are you interested? Please join us!

Best,

S

Saving the previous page: Embodied Knowledge

As I restarted the blog as my personal website, the previous pages were closed. I save the page "Embodied Knowledge" as follows:

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Embodied Knowledge

Embodied knowledge is a type of knowledge where the body knows how to act.

A simple and general example is riding a bicycle. Most of us know how to ride a bicycle, and we are able to do it without any deliberation. There is no need to verbalize or represent in the mind all the procedures required. The knowledge seems to be imprinted in one’s body. The knowing-subject here is the body itself, not the mind. Or more precisely, the knowing subject is the minded-body or embodied-mind.

The notion of embodied knowledge is derived from the phenomenology of the French philosopher, Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961). In Phenomenology of Perception (1945/1962), referring to knowing how to touch type, he explains it as follows:

To know how to touch type is not, then, to know the place of each letter among the keys, nor even to have acquired a conditioned reflex for each one, which is set in motion by the letter as it comes before our eye. If habit is neither a form of knowledge nor an involuntary action, what then is it? It is knowledge in the hands, which is forthcoming only when bodily effort is made, and cannot be formulated in detachment from that effort.
[Merleau-Ponty, M. (1945/1962). Phenomenology of Perception, Routledge, p.144.]

What Merleau-Ponty described as 'knowledge in the hands' is the particular type of knowledge which is not distinctly explicit, conscious, mentally representative, or articulated. It is, however, well known by the body or through the body, when it is practiced. The knowledge of how to touch type is just lived by the hands or by the body. Merleau-Ponty also refers to it as 'knowledge bred of familiarity' (savoir de familiarité). This is the original source of embodied knowledge.

Embodied knowledge is similar in concept to the procedural knowledge (as contrasted with declarative knowledge) of cognitive science, which can be better presented by performance than by verbal explanation. However, in contrast to the ideas of Merleau-Ponty, in mainstream cognitive science Cartesian mind-body dualism (and the reduction of mind to brain which derived from it) is still dominant, and the embodied nature of this knowledge seems to be overlooked. For example, Raymond Gibbs states:

One of the traditional beliefs in the cognitive science is that intelligent behavior, including the ability to perceive, think, and use language, need not arise from any specific bodily form. Thermostats, computers, robots, and brains in vats may all, under the right circumstances, exhibit sophisticated cognitive skills.
[Gibbs, R. W. (2006). Embodiment and Cognitive Science. Cambridge U. P., p.2]

This tradition has not fully changed yet, although there exists many embodied approaches today.

Descartes, with his famous methodological skepticism, separated mind and body, and at the same time rejected any knowledge that could be doubted. Thus, in the Cartesian world-view, the knowing-subject, which certain knowledge belongs to, is only the mind. The body is a mere known-object. There is no place for any 'embodied' knowledge.

What I propose as the embodied knowledge is not constituted upon such dualism. For the mind, it is not apparent as knowledge since it is not clearly represented; nevertheless, we experience it with certainty through our own body. It is not confined only to the motor skills, but is concerned with the variety of human experiences which occur within the Lifeworld (Lebenswelt).


For the detail, please refer to;

• Tanaka, S. (2011). The notion of embodied knowledge. in P. Stenner, et al. (Ed.) Theoretical Psychology: Global Transformations and Challenges. Concord, Ont.: Captus University Publications. pp.149-157.
• Tanaka, S. (2013). The notion of embodied knowledge and its range. Encyclopaideia: Journal of phenomenology and education, 37, 47-66.