Maria Brincker
I study how various contextual factors dynamically ground and shape our minds and actions. The goal is the development of better theoretical frameworks for scholars, scientists and policy makers to work with. I also hope my work can highlight the empirical implausibility of the widespread mechanistic and disembodied assumptions of existing cognitive, psychiatric as well as legal and political models.
I am generally sympathetic to embodied & enactive approaches to cognition and to ambitions of looking at processes as temporal and as materially, socially and historically situated, and of grounding higher cognition in more basic sensorimotor and somatic functions.
Within philosophy much of my research might be categorized as pertaining to philosophy of mind, action and neuroscience, but often it also concerns issues of epistemology, metaphysics, aesthetics, ethics, disability, privacy and technology. I am interested in social environments and interactions and how various power structures and asymmetries affect the conditions of autonomy for individuals.
Omnipresent in my work is the oddly appendixed field of history of philosophy and I can proudly label most of my ideas as having a high degree of recycled material particularly from critical, continental, phenomenological & pragmatist traditions.
I am generally sympathetic to embodied & enactive approaches to cognition and to ambitions of looking at processes as temporal and as materially, socially and historically situated, and of grounding higher cognition in more basic sensorimotor and somatic functions.
Within philosophy much of my research might be categorized as pertaining to philosophy of mind, action and neuroscience, but often it also concerns issues of epistemology, metaphysics, aesthetics, ethics, disability, privacy and technology. I am interested in social environments and interactions and how various power structures and asymmetries affect the conditions of autonomy for individuals.
Omnipresent in my work is the oddly appendixed field of history of philosophy and I can proudly label most of my ideas as having a high degree of recycled material particularly from critical, continental, phenomenological & pragmatist traditions.
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Papers by Maria Brincker
When thinking particularly about technologically mediated habitual agency an obvious place to start is with Don Ihde’s 4 classic human–technology relations. Interestingly, fellow post-phenomenologist Peter-Paul Verbeek has proposed new additional kinds of relations to e.g. “smart” and virtually “augmenting” technologies. While I find each of these analyses insightful, I worry that a focus on individual relations to particular spatio-temporally circumscribed artifacts falls short—or even obscures—some of the particular new challenges to our agency that networked, and data-driven smart technologies give rise to.
I will therefore attempt to broaden the focus to how our agency is scaffolded by not just particular technological artifacts, but by our understanding of the broader informational and behavioral environment. To do this, I start by introducing some core theoretical background ideas that will support a more contextual approach and then proceed to consider both the classic and newer post-phenomenological relations from this more contextual perspective.
The goal is not only to affirm the value of analyzing concrete technology relations but also to expand and contextualize the analyses. The latter is key if we want a post-phenomenological analysis that can help us understand how our habitual agency might be transformed as we come to live in increasingly “smart worlds”. These new data and algorithmically driven technologies not only transform our relation to a given context, but due to networked dataflows and “smart” decision-making (1) recursively act on us and (2) collapse and transcend the present context. This chapter will also highlight the uncertainties that informationally leaky and “smart” technologies introduce to our understanding of the kind of affordance space we are in and even what the expected outcomes of our actions will be. I suggest that technology relations with such effects might challenge some of the core contextual stabilities and informational segregations that our habitual agency have hitherto relied on. A further issue is if these new technological configurations challenge our habitual processes in ways we cannot easily adapt to. We certainly seem able to create new habits and adapt to these new technologies locally, but the new information flows, hidden audiences, and context collapses appear to challenge some conditions of agency that are typically out of sight, and the effects of which untraceably shows up well outside the present context. Overall, I shall argue that “smart” technologies can both expand and shrink our habitual agency—but that in terms of our ability to guide our action through various contexts in a perceived world something more fundamental appears to be breaking.
We suggest that the study of movement variability—very broadly conceived as including all minute fluctuations in bodily rhythms and their rates of change over time (coined micro-movements (Figure 1A-B) (Torres, Brincker, et al. 2013))—offers a uniquely valuable and entirely objectively quantifiable lens to better assess, understand and track not only autism but cognitive development and degeneration in general. This chapter presents the rationale firstly behind this focus on micro-movements and secondly behind the choice of specific kinds of data collection and statistical metrics as tools of analysis (Figure 1C).
In brief the proposal is that the micro-movements (defined in Part I – Chapter 1), obtained using various time scales applied to different physiological data-types (some examples in Figure 1), contain information about layered influences and temporal adaptations, transformations and integrations across anatomically semi-independent subsystems that crosstalk and interact. Further, the notion of sensorimotor re-afference is used to highlight the fact that these layered micro-motions are sensed and that this sensory feedback plays a crucial role in the generation and control of movements in the first place. In other words, the measurements of various motoric and rhythmic variations provide an access point not only to the “motor systems”, but also access to much broader central and peripheral sensorimotor and regulatory systems. Lastly, we posit that this new lens can also be used to capture influences from systems of multiple entry points or collaborative control and regulation, such as those that emerge during dyadic social interactions.
only metaphysical options available. Through an analysis of Dennett’s view of free will as gradually evolving
this article attempts to point to emergentist, interactivist and temporal metaphysical options, which have
been left largely unexplored by contemporary theorists. Whereas, Dennett himself holds that “the kind of
free will worth wanting” is compatible with classic determinism, I propose that his models of determinism fit
poorly with his evolutionary theory and naturalist commitments. In particular, his so-called “intuition pumps”
seem to rely on the assumption that reality will have a compositional bottom layer where appearance and
reality coincide. I argue that instead of positing this and other “unexplained explainers” we should allow for
the heretical possibility that there might not be any absolute bottom, smallest substances or universal laws, but
relational interactions all the way down. Through the details of Dennett’s own account of the importance of
horizontal transmission in evolution and the causal efficacy of epistemically limited but complex layered “selves,”
it is argued that our autonomy is linked to the ability to affect reality by controlling appearances.
This article entertains the idea that the development of cortically based mental processes and autonomous control relies on the complexities and proper function of the peripheral nervous systems. Through such an “embodied” lens the heterogeneous symptoms of autism invites new interpretations. We propose here that many behavioral-level findings can be re-defined as downstream effects of how developing nervous systems attempt to cope and adapt to the challenges of having various noisy, unpredictable, and unreliable peripheral inputs.
What seems to be assumed in most of these simulation theories is that the default role of the motor system in social perception is to ‘mirror’ the observed action or that it is only related to the observed action and not my own action motives and plans. It is these basic assumptions of the passivity of motor resonance that I would like to challenge. The question is whether it is misleading to conceptualize motor resonance simply as a mirroring simulation where we covertly ‘echo’ the observed action? Many studies of the functional properties of mirror neurons (MN) and motor facilitation during perception seem to point to a more complex role of the motor system in action perception (di Pellegrino 1992, Gallese et al 1996, Rizzolati & Craighero 2004). This has recently led to some proposals trying to reinterpret the function of motor activity during action perception and in social situations from a simple mirroring process to an anticipatory process (Kilner et al 2004, Csibra 2005, Prinz 2006) – or simply to abandon the idea of simulation altogether (Gallagher 2007). I think these are interesting proposals, but inspired by historic approaches to motor resonance and recent studies I would like to venture a hypothesis of an even more proactive, context and motivation dependent role of motor activity during action perception (Newman-Norlund et al. 2007, Schie et al. In press, Cheng et al. 2007, Keysers & Perrett 2004, 502). Motor resonance during object perception is by many researchers thought of in terms of affordances; i.e. what the object affords the observer to do (Grèzes et al. 2003). My question is why we should not – albeit extra social levels of complexity - see motor resonance during social perception in a similar way, as potential action sketches ‘afforded’ by own present motivational, senori-motor and perceptual situation. My point is not that we never ‘simulate’ or covertly imitate observed actions, but rather that it is questionable why we should think of this as the default process in normal interactive social contexts. Covert imitation might only take place during special cases of action observation where we exactly take on a passive spectator attitude, and that we therefore might need a broader theory of motor resonance that also explains normal active and interactive cases of action perception. Accordingly, I suggest that experimental paradigms with single observers in one-way social situations often carry an ‘imitation bias’, and that we are in dire need of more research of actual interactive social perception. I conclude that theories of motor resonance in social perception as a passive ‘mirroring’ or low-level simulation are faced with serious empirical challenges, and that the motor system might serve a much more proactive role in social cognition than previously thought.
However, he also makes the offhanded suggestion that language should be seen as an artificially constructed motor system and thus he suggests that like our regular motor system language functions as a tool to interpret perception and as a determining framework for our actions. It is this claim that I shall focus on in my paper. I think there are a series of interesting implications in this idea of language as a constructed motor system, especially given the wider theoretical context of sensory-motor integration grounding cognition. Firstly, I shall discuss to what extent these are empirically plausible ideas, but further also how the idea of language as an extended motor system blurs the border between the individual and the social, between biological and social cognition, body and environment etc. and thus how it could contribute to an integration of traditional cognitive science and neuroscience with social and cultural approaches to cognition.
Thesis by Maria Brincker
When thinking particularly about technologically mediated habitual agency an obvious place to start is with Don Ihde’s 4 classic human–technology relations. Interestingly, fellow post-phenomenologist Peter-Paul Verbeek has proposed new additional kinds of relations to e.g. “smart” and virtually “augmenting” technologies. While I find each of these analyses insightful, I worry that a focus on individual relations to particular spatio-temporally circumscribed artifacts falls short—or even obscures—some of the particular new challenges to our agency that networked, and data-driven smart technologies give rise to.
I will therefore attempt to broaden the focus to how our agency is scaffolded by not just particular technological artifacts, but by our understanding of the broader informational and behavioral environment. To do this, I start by introducing some core theoretical background ideas that will support a more contextual approach and then proceed to consider both the classic and newer post-phenomenological relations from this more contextual perspective.
The goal is not only to affirm the value of analyzing concrete technology relations but also to expand and contextualize the analyses. The latter is key if we want a post-phenomenological analysis that can help us understand how our habitual agency might be transformed as we come to live in increasingly “smart worlds”. These new data and algorithmically driven technologies not only transform our relation to a given context, but due to networked dataflows and “smart” decision-making (1) recursively act on us and (2) collapse and transcend the present context. This chapter will also highlight the uncertainties that informationally leaky and “smart” technologies introduce to our understanding of the kind of affordance space we are in and even what the expected outcomes of our actions will be. I suggest that technology relations with such effects might challenge some of the core contextual stabilities and informational segregations that our habitual agency have hitherto relied on. A further issue is if these new technological configurations challenge our habitual processes in ways we cannot easily adapt to. We certainly seem able to create new habits and adapt to these new technologies locally, but the new information flows, hidden audiences, and context collapses appear to challenge some conditions of agency that are typically out of sight, and the effects of which untraceably shows up well outside the present context. Overall, I shall argue that “smart” technologies can both expand and shrink our habitual agency—but that in terms of our ability to guide our action through various contexts in a perceived world something more fundamental appears to be breaking.
We suggest that the study of movement variability—very broadly conceived as including all minute fluctuations in bodily rhythms and their rates of change over time (coined micro-movements (Figure 1A-B) (Torres, Brincker, et al. 2013))—offers a uniquely valuable and entirely objectively quantifiable lens to better assess, understand and track not only autism but cognitive development and degeneration in general. This chapter presents the rationale firstly behind this focus on micro-movements and secondly behind the choice of specific kinds of data collection and statistical metrics as tools of analysis (Figure 1C).
In brief the proposal is that the micro-movements (defined in Part I – Chapter 1), obtained using various time scales applied to different physiological data-types (some examples in Figure 1), contain information about layered influences and temporal adaptations, transformations and integrations across anatomically semi-independent subsystems that crosstalk and interact. Further, the notion of sensorimotor re-afference is used to highlight the fact that these layered micro-motions are sensed and that this sensory feedback plays a crucial role in the generation and control of movements in the first place. In other words, the measurements of various motoric and rhythmic variations provide an access point not only to the “motor systems”, but also access to much broader central and peripheral sensorimotor and regulatory systems. Lastly, we posit that this new lens can also be used to capture influences from systems of multiple entry points or collaborative control and regulation, such as those that emerge during dyadic social interactions.
only metaphysical options available. Through an analysis of Dennett’s view of free will as gradually evolving
this article attempts to point to emergentist, interactivist and temporal metaphysical options, which have
been left largely unexplored by contemporary theorists. Whereas, Dennett himself holds that “the kind of
free will worth wanting” is compatible with classic determinism, I propose that his models of determinism fit
poorly with his evolutionary theory and naturalist commitments. In particular, his so-called “intuition pumps”
seem to rely on the assumption that reality will have a compositional bottom layer where appearance and
reality coincide. I argue that instead of positing this and other “unexplained explainers” we should allow for
the heretical possibility that there might not be any absolute bottom, smallest substances or universal laws, but
relational interactions all the way down. Through the details of Dennett’s own account of the importance of
horizontal transmission in evolution and the causal efficacy of epistemically limited but complex layered “selves,”
it is argued that our autonomy is linked to the ability to affect reality by controlling appearances.
This article entertains the idea that the development of cortically based mental processes and autonomous control relies on the complexities and proper function of the peripheral nervous systems. Through such an “embodied” lens the heterogeneous symptoms of autism invites new interpretations. We propose here that many behavioral-level findings can be re-defined as downstream effects of how developing nervous systems attempt to cope and adapt to the challenges of having various noisy, unpredictable, and unreliable peripheral inputs.
What seems to be assumed in most of these simulation theories is that the default role of the motor system in social perception is to ‘mirror’ the observed action or that it is only related to the observed action and not my own action motives and plans. It is these basic assumptions of the passivity of motor resonance that I would like to challenge. The question is whether it is misleading to conceptualize motor resonance simply as a mirroring simulation where we covertly ‘echo’ the observed action? Many studies of the functional properties of mirror neurons (MN) and motor facilitation during perception seem to point to a more complex role of the motor system in action perception (di Pellegrino 1992, Gallese et al 1996, Rizzolati & Craighero 2004). This has recently led to some proposals trying to reinterpret the function of motor activity during action perception and in social situations from a simple mirroring process to an anticipatory process (Kilner et al 2004, Csibra 2005, Prinz 2006) – or simply to abandon the idea of simulation altogether (Gallagher 2007). I think these are interesting proposals, but inspired by historic approaches to motor resonance and recent studies I would like to venture a hypothesis of an even more proactive, context and motivation dependent role of motor activity during action perception (Newman-Norlund et al. 2007, Schie et al. In press, Cheng et al. 2007, Keysers & Perrett 2004, 502). Motor resonance during object perception is by many researchers thought of in terms of affordances; i.e. what the object affords the observer to do (Grèzes et al. 2003). My question is why we should not – albeit extra social levels of complexity - see motor resonance during social perception in a similar way, as potential action sketches ‘afforded’ by own present motivational, senori-motor and perceptual situation. My point is not that we never ‘simulate’ or covertly imitate observed actions, but rather that it is questionable why we should think of this as the default process in normal interactive social contexts. Covert imitation might only take place during special cases of action observation where we exactly take on a passive spectator attitude, and that we therefore might need a broader theory of motor resonance that also explains normal active and interactive cases of action perception. Accordingly, I suggest that experimental paradigms with single observers in one-way social situations often carry an ‘imitation bias’, and that we are in dire need of more research of actual interactive social perception. I conclude that theories of motor resonance in social perception as a passive ‘mirroring’ or low-level simulation are faced with serious empirical challenges, and that the motor system might serve a much more proactive role in social cognition than previously thought.
However, he also makes the offhanded suggestion that language should be seen as an artificially constructed motor system and thus he suggests that like our regular motor system language functions as a tool to interpret perception and as a determining framework for our actions. It is this claim that I shall focus on in my paper. I think there are a series of interesting implications in this idea of language as a constructed motor system, especially given the wider theoretical context of sensory-motor integration grounding cognition. Firstly, I shall discuss to what extent these are empirically plausible ideas, but further also how the idea of language as an extended motor system blurs the border between the individual and the social, between biological and social cognition, body and environment etc. and thus how it could contribute to an integration of traditional cognitive science and neuroscience with social and cultural approaches to cognition.