“For many scientists, “sensing” is the final endpoint of numerous pathways of cognition; for philosophers, it has often been the first step in the process of reason itself. Current debates center on whether neuroscience can understand cognition if the subject is constituted through an ongoing negotiation with stimulus grasped by a moving and active body, in which one signal is constantly checked against another, rather than the long-cherished binaries of excitation/inhibition, push/pull, or on/off. In short, some theorists assert that much thinking goes on outside the skull. This session explored the scientific and cultural basis for prodigious feats of muscle memory, bodily thinking, on-the-spot decision making, and human action.
Alva Noë, Professor of Philosophy, University of California, Berkeley
Carrie Lambert-Beatty, Associate Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies and of the History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University
Tomás Saraceno, Artist
Leila Kinney, Executive Director of Arts Initiatives and the Center for Art, Science & Technology, MIT
Josh Tenenbaum, Professor of Computational Cognitive Science, MIT”