Cogprints

At the Potter’s Wheel: An Argument for Material Agency

Malafouris, Dr Lambros (2007) At the Potter’s Wheel: An Argument for Material Agency. [Book Chapter]

Full text available as:

[img]
Preview
 PDF - Published Version
4Mb

Abstract

Consider a potter throwing a vessel on the wheel. Think of the complex ways brain, body, wheel and clay relate and interact with one another throughout the different stages of this activity and try to imagine some of the resources (physical, mental or biological) needed for the enaction of this creative process. Focus, for instance, on the first minutes of action when the potter attempts to centre the lump of clay on the wheel. The hands are grasping the clay. The fingers, bent slightly following the surface curvature, sense the clay and exchange vital tactile information necessary for a number of crucial decisions that are about to follow in the next few seconds. What is it that guides the dextrous positioning of the potter’s hands and decides upon the precise amount of forward or downward pressure necessary for centring a lump of clay on the wheel? How do the potter’s fingers come to know the precise force of the appropriate grip? What makes these questions even more fascinating is the ease by which the phenomena which they describe are accomplished. Yet underlying the effortless manner in which the potter’s hand reaches for and gradually shapes the wet clay lies a whole set of conceptual challenges to some of our most deeply entrenched assumptions about what it means to be a human agent.

Item Type:Book Chapter
Keywords:Agency, material culture, extended and distributed mind, mediated action, embodiment, pottery making, archaeology
Subjects:Philosophy > Philosophy of Mind
Computer Science > Human Computer Interaction
Computer Science > Dynamical Systems
Computer Science > Robotics
ID Code:6402
Deposited By: Malafouris, Dr Lambros
Deposited On:28 Mar 2009 09:29
Last Modified:11 Mar 2011 08:57

References in Article

Select the SEEK icon to attempt to find the referenced article. If it does not appear to be in cogprints you will be forwarded to the paracite service. Poorly formated references will probably not work.

Bateson, G., 1973. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. London: Granada.

Brooks, R. A., 1991. Intelligence without representation. Artificial Intelligence 47: 39–59.

Callon, M. and Latour, B., 1981. Unscrewing the Big Leviathan. In Advances in Social Theory

and Methodology: Towards an Integration of Micro and Macro-Sociology, edited by K. Knorr-Cetina and A. V. Cicouvel, pp. 277–303. Routledge, Boston, MA.

Gazzaniga, M. S., 1998. The Mind’s Past. University of California Press, Berkeley.

Clark, A., 1997. Being There: Putting Brain, Body and World Together Again. The MIT Press,Cambridge, MA.

Clark, A. and Chalmers, D., 1998. The Extended Mind. Analysis 58(1): 10–23.

Dennet, D. C., 1987. The Intentional Stance. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

Gallagher, S., 2005. How the Body Shapes the Mind. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Gallagher, S., 2000. Philosophical conceptions of the self: Implications for cognitive science. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 4(1): 14–21.

Gell, A., 1998. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Gibbs, R. W., 2001. Intentions as emergent products of social interactions. In Intentions and Intentionality: Foundations of Social Cognition, edited by F. Bertram, L. J. Moses and D. A. Baldwin. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

Gibson, J. J., 1979. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Houghton Mifflin, Boston,MA.

Howhy, J. and Frith, C., 2004. Can Neuroscience explain consciousness? Journal of Consciousness Studies 11: 180–198.

Hutchins, E., 1995. Cognition in the Wild. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

Knappett, C., 2005. Thinking Through Material Culture: An Interdisciplinary Perspective. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.

Knappett, C., 2004. The affordances of things: A post-Gibsonian perspective on the relationality of mind and matter. In Rethinking Materiality: The Engagement of Mind with the Material World, edited by E. DeMarrais, C. Gosden and C. Renfrew, pp. 43–51. McDonald Institute Monographs, Cambridge.

Knappett, C., 2006. Beyond Skin: Layering and Networking in Art and Archaeology. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 16(2): 239–251.

Kirsh, D., 1995. The intelligent use of space, Artificial Intelligence 73(1–2): 31–68.

Kirsh, D., 1996. Adapting the environment instead of oneself. Adaptive Behavior 4(3–4): 415–452.

Libet, B., 1985. Unconscious cerebral initiative and the role of conscious will in voluntary action, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 8: 529–566.

Libet, B., 1999. Do we have free will? Journal of Consciousness Studies 6: 47–58.

Libet, B., Gleason, C. A., Wright, E. W. and Pearl, D. K., 1983. Time of conscious intention to act in relation to onset of cerebral activity (readiness potential). The unconscious initiation of a freely voluntary act. Brain 102: 623–642.

Malafouris, L., 2004. The cognitive basis of material engagement: Where brain, body and culture conflate. In Rethinking Materiality: The Engagement of Mind with the Material World, edited by E. DeMarrais, C. Gosden and C. Renfrew, pp. 53–62. McDonald Institute Monographs, Cambridge.

Malafouris, L., in press. Linear B as distributed cognition: Excavating a mind not limited by the skin. In material culture. In Excavating the Mind: Cross-sections Through Culture,Cognition and Materiality, edited by M. Jessen, N. Johanssen and H. J. Jensen. Aarhus University Press, Aarhus.

Malafouris, L. and C. Renfrew, editors, in press. The Cognitive Life of Things: Recasting the Boundaries of the Mind. McDonald Institute Monographs, Cambridge.

Merleau-Ponty, M., 1962. Phenomenology of Perception. Routledge, London.

Schiffer, B. and Skibo, J. M., 1997. The explanation of artifact variability. American Antiquity 62: 27–50.

Searle, J. R., 1983. Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Tsakiris, M. and Haggard, P., 2005. Experimenting with the acting self. Cognitive Neuropsychology 22(3/4): 387–407.

Van der Leeuw, S. E., 1993. Giving the potter a choice: Conceptual aspects of pottery techniques. In Technological Choices: Transformations in Material Cultures since the

Neolithic, edited by P. Lemonnier, pp. 238–288. Routledge, London.

Van der Leeuw, S. E., 1994. Cognitive aspects of technique. In The Ancient Mind, edited by C. Renfrew and E. Zubrow, pp. 135–142. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Van Gelder, T., 1995. What might cognition be, if not computation? Journal of Philosophy 91: 345–381.

Walter, W. G., 1953. The Living Brain. Duckworth, London.

Wegner, D. M., 2002. The Illusion of Conscious Will. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

Wegner, D. M., 2003. The mind’s best trick: How we experience conscious will. Trends in Cognitive Science 7: 65–69.

Wegner, D. M., 2004. Precis of the illusion of conscious will. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 27: 649–692.

Wertsch, J. V., 1998. Mind as Action. Oxford University Press, New York, NY.

Wittgenstein, L., 1953. Philosophical Investigations. Basil Blackwell, Oxford

Metadata

Repository Staff Only: item control page

Cogprints is powered by EPrints 3 which is developed by the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton. More information and software credits.