Department of Philosophy
Events involving Stirling philosophers
Report on the first AHRC workshop on The Interactive Mind, University of Sheffield, 8th-9th April.
The local organiser for this workshop was Prof. Eric Clarke. The disciplinary matrix was rich and varied. Discussions were lively, open and constructive, and confirmed the broad interest that this idea commands both within the arts and humanities community, and at its borders with science. The speakers were: Gerard Duveen (Social Psychology, Cambridge); Chris Gosden (Archaeology, Oxford); Mark Greengrass (History, Sheffield); Jim Hurford (Linguistics, Edinburgh); Tim Ingold (Anthropology, Aberdeen); Sally Shuttleworth (English Literature, Sheffield); Michael Siegal (Psychology, Sheffield); David Walker (French, Sheffield); Mike Wheeler (Philosophy, Stirling). Including the speakers, there were 18 participants. The following additional disciplines were represented by participants not giving talks: Hispanic Studies; Music; Russian and Slavonic Studies.
Among the cross-disciplinary themes that were explored during this workshop, the following emerged as central to the discussions.
The language of interaction: The talks and discussions at the workshop highlighted the point that the term ‘Interactive Mind’ is in truth home to more than one theoretical perspective on mind. Some approaches wish to preserve the idea of a mind as an essentially ‘inner’ phenomenon, but one that is nevertheless shaped and sculpted in fundamental ways by the environment in which it is historically, evolutionarily, developmentally and here-and-now situated. By contrast, other approaches wish to see the interactions and inter-relations between the supposedly ‘inner’ and the supposedly ‘outer’ elements as being so tight and reciprocally determining that the very distinction between an inner mind and an outer world becomes suspect. Mind is, as it were, simultaneously extended into and penetrated by the world. Indeed, a more radical form of this view holds that once we bring the interactive landscape into proper view, it will become clear that the historical baggage carried by the notion of mind is one source of the problem here, and that the language of “mind” is itself contestable, as is the language of “interaction”. Understanding and exploring these different but related viewpoints, as well as identifying and investigating specific research questions that might decide between them, would be one important dimension of a research programme in this area.
The distinctive contribution of arts and humanities research: It seems clear that the arts and humanities have always studied minds. Indeed, it would be bizarre to suggest that, for example, visual artists, novelists, critical theorists, musicians, or social and political historians do not explore or illuminate how minds are realised within their cultural and historical contexts. But it is precisely with the interactive turn in our understanding of mind that a fundamentally deep theoretical contribution from the arts and humanities becomes available. Within the interactive paradigm, mind and its contexts become theoretically inseparable. There is no fixed essence of mind that exists prior to its historical and cultural manifestations. Minds are made in the ongoing interactive nexus with other agents and objects – in short the environment both natural and cultural. In this way arts and humanities research becomes an essential ingredient in the explanatory process.
Material culture: We build our social relations through material culture – we are what we eat, wear and build. In this sense material objects become active components in shaping us as human beings. Thus, as discussed at the workshop, the transition from the medieval mind to the early modern mind may be seen as a transformation in our modes of interaction through material culture (e.g. communal food platters replaced by individual place settings).
The constructed self: Human selves are not inner essences, but rather are ongoing narratives constructed through interactive engagements. This point has often been made by philosophers and cultural commentators in the context of new technology such as the internet. But, as literature and history inform us, the construction of malleable identities on the web is merely a recent variation on a fundamental human process. For example, as discussed at the workshop, a striking investigation of the way in which the person-as-consumer is constructed through the questions asked by market researchers occurs in a novel by the French author Perec. And Victorian novelists writing autobiographies of their own childhoods explored the way in which language itself provides selves with the medium of construction. In one case, for example, a child’s alternative selves are realised in two languages that she speaks, one in her middle class home and one with the “street children” with whom she plays.
The artwork and the performance as research: The product of most research in the interactive paradigm will, of course, be manifest as academic publications. However, from the interactive perspective, artworks and performances count directly as research into the nature of mind – as explorations of the structure and bounds of our interactivity. The creative and performance arts offer a suite of research tools that acts as a vital complement to the logocentrism of standard academic discourse.
Educating minds: Moreover, the interactive paradigm, with its stress on deep-rooted contextual embeddedness and fluid self-construction, will have direct consequences for educational strategies. As was demonstrated by the contributions of a practising musician, singer and composer present at the workshop, this contribution is perhaps at its most immediate within, although it is certainly not confined to, the development of skills in music and other performance arts.
Navigating disciplinary boundaries: One of the key thoughts shaping the Interactive Mind initiative is that no one discipline has the intellectual resources necessary to to deal with all the implications of taking the interactive viewpoint. This genuinely cross-disciplinary idea needs to be explored in a genuinely cross-disciplinary context. During the open discussion session at the end of the first workshop, questions were raised about how the initiative might successfully foster and manage genuinely productive cross-disciplinary collaborations. It was pointed out that in some ways this very workshop provided a model of how such a process might begin, in that it had been conducted in a highly constructive atmosphere of openness and dialogue centred on common themes and concerns, while being explicitly reflective about the issues that accompany cross-disciplinary research.
Mike Wheeler (Department of Philosophy, University of Stirling, National Coordinator for the AHRC Interactive Mind workshop series), with assistance from various members of the core group. 13/04/05.
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