Consciousness Talks 6: Phenomenology & Embodied mind. Yuko Ishihara & Tom Froese

Yuko Ishihara, Ritsumeikan University, Japan

Title: “From human agency to ‘natural’ agency”

Bio/CV/Abstract: Yuko Ishihara is Associate Professor at the College of Global Liberal Arts at Ritsumeikan University. Her research interest lies in the intersection of phenomenology and modern Japanese philosophy (mostly the Kyoto School tradition), and more generally, in intercultural philosophy.

Her recent research focuses on the topic of play and how modern philosophers, both eastern and western, have turned to the notion of play to overcome the metaphysics of subjectivity.

In this talk, she will contrast the idea of human agency based on a Heideggerian framework with an alternative conception of our agency, which she will call “natural” agency, using ideas from Japanese philosophy and phenomenology.

Tom Froese, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University, Japan

Title: “Irruption theory of consciousness”

Bio/CV/Abstract: Tom Froese is Assistant Professor at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST), where he heads the Embodied Cognitive Science Unit. He is a cognitive scientist with a background in phenomenological philosophy, human-computer interaction, and complex systems theory.

His interdisciplinary research centers on the role of agent-environment interaction in shaping cognition and consciousness, specifically when the interaction process involves sociality and technology.

In this talk he will present current work in progress on “irruption theory”, a new theory of consciousness that integrates an embodied-enactive account of basic mind with radical formulations of the freedom and efficacy of intentional agency.