Paez Jose Paez Professor Peter Olen PHI-3320 November 25th, 2013

Dreyfus on Embodied Coping Hubert Dreyfus in his paper on embodied coping presents a framework to understand how it is that our minds become acquainted with the physical world we inhabit. To Dreyfus, the world does not immediately present itself to us; rather, we are forced to cope to interpret the world presented to us. On his view, we are always constantly engaged with the world. He parallels Martin Heideggers conception of phronesis and several Aristotelian ideas. Dreyfus agrees with Heidegger and Aristotle in that there is a general phenomenon of phronesis, translated practical wisdom. Dreyfus views phronesis as a paradigm that will allow us to be able to understand human action and perception. Phronesis for Dreyfus is the faculty that allows an immediate response to the worldly things we are engaged in, and knowledge of what to do on this view is through perception, rather then a specific conceptual framework or reason. Phronesis allegedly allows us to make immediate responses to our circumstances, which is a critical point to remember. In the events where phronesis does not know what to do promptly, Aristotle says that phronesis must be able to deliberate between decisions. Dreyfuss account of perception does not have a large role for reason in effecting skilled action or behavior. Reason plays an elementary role in guiding us as we learn a craft and then once we have achieved a certain level of mastery, phronesis takes over. On his view, through socialization individuals can be produced that are unguided by reasons in their actions, and he goes to great lengths to demonstrate that rational thinking in expert arenas actually hampers performance. Dreyfuss model places reason as a crutch that is used when initially learning behavior, and he likens reason to training wheels in learning to ride a bike. He writes, We may need such aids [training wheels] when learning to ride a bicycle, but we must eventually set them aside if we are to become skilled cyclists. To assume that the rules we once consciously followed become unconscious is like assuming that, when we finally learn to ride a bike, the training wheels that were required for us to be able to ride in the first place must have become invisible. So initially we begin to use reason as we acquire a second nature, another Aristotelian idea. This idea of second nature simple states that as we are reared, we are initiated in the world of thought and reason, and for Dreyfus, soon after we become acquainted with a skill we depart from reason as the main course of action. Dreyfus does an overview of expertise in various fields to compare whether it is reason and rules, or learned intuitive responses that produce the most skilled behavior. His overview of the phenomenology of expertise begins by looking at chess Grandmasters and a particular style of chess play called lightning chess, where the whole game must be played in less than two minutes. As Dreyfus notes, under such time constrictions players often have to make their moves as fast as they can extend their arms, and nonetheless display amazing skill. He writes, at this speed he must depend entirely on perception and not at all on analysis and comparison of alternatives. He concludes that eventually, learners develop a way of coping that does not involve reason. They become expert copers at whatever it is they do. He supplants this point by presenting research in neuroscience, which shows that amateur chess players and master chess players have different distributions of brain activity, which alter the mechanisms and brain organization of the respective players. He compliments this finding with

Paez

another study on expertise, this time looking at nurses. A study of student nurses revealed that those who remained emotionally detached and followed basic guidelines did not develop beyond the level of adequacy, while those who became emotionally involved developed into masters, or at the very least a much higher level of talent. So for Dreyfus, our interaction with the physical world is sketched out as follows. The mythical Givens that are discussed in philosophy, those bare things that prompt us to receive sense data, are to him a sort of meaningful Given. He terms these affordances. As Charles Taylor makes it clear in the article, we need not even notice the affordances, and actually, we respond better to them when we are unconscious of them. Such is why reason hampers excellent performance. So for example, a door is an affordance, an affordance that allows you to go in and out of the door. Food, as another example, affords us the action of eating. These affordances are situation specific, such as when we are walking (the ground is affording us walking) and come to a steep hill, and thus begin to exert more effort. Or to use Dreyfuss example on doors, this door does not simply afford going in or out, but doing so cautiously, silently, noisily, etc. depending on the context. Put simply, affordances are environmental prompts that cue us to do any of the constellations of activities that fall under human behavior. He denotes that affordances are meaningful, i.e., they have intentional content. This is why we can be right or wrong. This view seems compatible with the way that adults and animals respond similar to basic situations. To fill in the gap between the space of reason and the space of causes, Dreyfus borrows a term from Maurice Merleau-Ponty, a space of motivation, which is a third way to cope. This is a perceptual concept, which as Dreyfus writes, is a name for the way affordances solicit one to act. What distinguishes us from animals and infants here is that we have the ability to deliberate. This view has been subjected to several criticisms, most commonly from John McDowell who champions a different perspective on phronesis and the Givens. However, from an eliminative materialist point of view, there are a variety of flaws that the doctrine suffers from. First of all, while the embodied coping view offers a good exposition of what is going on in the brain when a person has a level of expertise, it falls short when it comes to anything below this standard. He makes it clear that novices use reasons and rules to guide their behavior in learning, but he does not illuminate the process of switching over from rationalization to intuitive, acquired responses. As we mentioned, the brain imaging of chess Grandmasters and novices show there is a different distribution of brain activity between the two. However, how exactly does the switch occur? Is it a gradual process, the strengthening of neural connections, only in different areas, or does phronesis turn on at an undesignated point? What structures, if any, in the brain change or adapt to the new behavior (i.e. relying on intuition rather then reason). Neuroscience dictates that there must be an anatomical change to correlate the different function. Phronesis is a suspicious phenomenon. Psychology or neuroscience have discovered no such structure in the brain that accounts for the ability to immediately perceive and respond to the world. As mentioned before, minds are dependent on bodies (or vice versa) to live or function. Eliminativism holds that the entire spectrum of human emotion and cognition will eventually be reduced to a mature neuroscience, even more precise then what we have at present, with the ability to pinpoint morality, language, etc. in the brain. Neuroscience, while incomplete, has shown us that areas of the brain are associated with certain skills or behaviors. Sociopaths who tend to exhibit above-average aggression and violence clearly have diminished activity in the areas of the frontal lobe associated with morality and empathy, as brain scans show. We have been able to pinpoint a general region in the brain that accounts for morality and compassion.

Paez

Should we not be able to pinpoint an area, or a network of areas in the brain, that account for phronesis? Dreyfus provides no response to this. He simply lays claim to the cognitive ability of understanding the world through perception and being able to immediately respond. He makes no effort to ground this in the brain. Dreyfus also draws the conclusion from his phenomenology of expertise that there must be some detectable invariant features of what J.J. Gibson calls the ambient optic array and that human beings and animals can learn to respond to them. These features [affordances], although available to the perceptual system, neednt be available to the mind. First, let us look at the first point, the claim of detectable invariant features or affordances. These seem to equivocate simply to another way of expressing sense data or a Given, however Dreyfuss interpretation of such. Dreyfus covers up the problem of explaining the origin of these givens by simply saying, there is no reason to believe that these higher-order features [affordances] need be nameable and thinkable as a reason for acting. He ignores the problem altogether and takes the givens as an assumption, and from there he proceeds to explain how they impact our minds. Dreyfus criticizes McDowell and others in his article for allegedly subscribing to the Myth of the Given, but he does not seem to be conducting himself any better. It is also unclear how Dreyfus deduced the existence of such features from his study of expertise. Because through practice and hard work individuals become better at a craft, therefore there must be detectable, invariant features, available to perception and however not necessarily in the mind. These affordances seem to just be the traditional Givens in disguise, or whatever it is that penetrates the mind leaving ideas. The claim that the features need not be available to the mind, yet are always available to the perceptual system, begs the question if there is even a way of processing Givens, features, etc. without cognitively processing them. It is pretty clear that if a brain is removed from a human being, amongst other things, the person will cease to receive sense input. So whether Dreyfus will admit it or not, on some level, although minimal, these features must necessarily be available to the mind. If we do accept the features posited, how is it exactly that they carry intentional content? Dreyfus holds that the features are not bare, but how do they strike upon us their semantic content? He poses this same question, and replies with a complimentary theories from Sameul Todes and Martin Heidegger, each of which merely pontificates how the affordances turn into affordances with semantic content.