Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Date

2019

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

Philosophy

Committee Chair

Shaun Gallagher

Committee Member

Deborah Tollefsen

Committee Member

Thomas Nenon

Committee Member

Erik Rietveld

Abstract

This dissertation will be organized in the portfolio style. It will center around the themes that develop further and expand Material Engagement Theory, especially regarding the hypothesis of material agency. The dissertation will focus on (1) clarifying and making intelligible certain aspects of this theory from the perspective of embodied and enactive cognition and phenomenological approaches to contemporary cognitive science, and (2) using some of the ideas from MET to make interventions in and enrich the current state of literature. The independent papers of my dissertation will follow roughly this trajectory. The first will deal with a phenomenological approach to material agency drawing on Merleau-Pontys understanding of habit. The second will deal with the implications of MET for group and collective agency, characterized in terms of heedful interrelations within the built environment. The third will deal with the ecological theory of affordances, and how the non-linear unfolding of time offers us a way of thinking about the historical depth of affordances that appear in material culture.

Comments

Data is provided by the student.

Library Comment

Dissertation or thesis originally submitted to ProQuest

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