How things shape the mind : a theory of material engagement / Lambros Malafouris ; foreword by Colin Renfrew.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Malafouris, Lambros.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Archaeology.

Cognition and culture.

Material culture.

Neuroanthropology.

Neuropsychology.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xv, 304 pages) : illustrations

Other Title:

MIT Press CogNet.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Massachusetts : MIT Press, [2013]

System Details:

text file

Contents:

1 Introduction 1

Chronesthesia, the prehistory of mind 1

Recasting the boundaries of the mind 2

At the tip of the blind man's stick 4

What is the difference that makes a difference? 8

Setting the scene 10

The realm of material engagement 15

A synopsis of the book 17

I Cognition and Material Culture

2 Rethinking the Archaeology of Mind 23

In search of the ancient mind 23

Where is the mind? 24

Cognitivism 25

Re-presentation: Looking at the other side of the engram 26

Dismantling Hawkes' ladder 31

3 The Material-Engagement Approach: A Summary of the Argument 35

How to carve mind at its joints 36

Boundaries, paths, and analytical units 36

Understanding evolvability: The developmental challenge 38

"Vital materiality": How to take material culture seriously 43

Metaplasticity 45

Material engagement: The analytical nexus 50

An ontological recommendation 51

II Outline of a Theory of Material Engagement

4 The Extended Mind 57

Beyond cognitivism: Thinking outside the brain 57

The embodied mind 59

The distributed-cognition approach 66

Remembering through, or how a Linear B tablet helps you forget 68

The intelligent use of clay 69

Were it to happen in the head: From "parity" to "complementarity" and beyond 73

The hypothesis of the constitutive intertwining of cognition with material culture 77

Things matter: The coupling-constitution fallacy 81

Being where? The locational fallacy 82

The affect of engagement 85

5 The Enactive Sign 89

Moving beyond representation 89

The fallacy of the linguistic sign 90

Searching for the properties of the material sign 94

The enactive logic of the material sign 96

Projections through matter 99

Material anchors and integrative projections 103

Making numbers out of clay 106

Learning to count in the Neolithic 111

The material sign and the meaning of engagement 116

6 Material Agency 119

Material culture and agency 119

Toward a non-anthropocentric conception 122

Actor-Network Theory 123

The argument for material agency 130

Methodological fetishism 133

Intentionality and secondary agents 135

Agency and intentionality 136

Rethinking "things" as agents 144

Ask not "What is an agent?" but "When is an agent?" 147

A conceptual talisman 148

III Marking the Mental: Where Brain, Body, and Culture Conflate

7 Knapping Intentions and the Handmade Mind 153

Homo faber. Prosthetic gestures 153

The tools of the Stone Age 155

Where does the knapper end and the stone tool begin? 161

Tools for a plastic mind 164

The "handaxe enigma" revisited 169

Reassembling the mind of the toolmaker 172

Enactive intentionalities: The merging of flesh with stone 173

Tools are us: A "cyborg" species 177

8 Thoughtful Marks, Lines, and Signs 179

Mark-making humans 179

The prehistory of mark making 181

What is so special about these marks? The tyranny of modernity 183

From "deliberateness" to "symbolic or representational intent" 185

Were they symbols? 187

What kind of line? Getting outside the engraver's mind 190

Learning to see: On being conscious of marks and pictures 194

The liberation of sight 200

Becoming symbol-minded 205

9 Becoming One with the Clay 227

Thrown on the wheel 227

At the potter's wheel: Agency in action 209

Agency and "sense" of agency 213

"I did it": The problem of agency 215

Agency in pottery making 221

Time, agency, and material engagement 222

Situated bodies and the feeling of clay 225

10 Epilogue: How Do Things Shape the Mind? 227

Methodological ramifications 228

What is it to be human? 230

Homo faber 232

Homo symbolicus: When is a symbol? 234

Unlearning modernity 239

At the tip of the blind man's stick: "We have never been modern" 243

The spike of culture 248.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references ( pages 257-291) and index.

Description based on print version record.

Other Format:

Print version: Malafouris, Lambros. How things shape the mind :

ISBN:

0262315661

9780262315661

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.