Thought+as+a+Facet+of+Activity

I am interested in collapsing the distinction between embodied action, conceived "ecologically" as a system incorporating both environmental and "human" elements, and "thought."

This would involve first a careful survey of approaches and studies demonstrating linkages between thought and perceptual and muscular systems.

I am particularly interested in treatments attempting to take the whole body into account as functional within so-called "thought" and "perception." Beyond perceptual organs and muscular systems, what about the roles of the connective system (extremely important in the martial arts), endocrine system, postures and general states of tension/relaxation?

I am also interested in what active processes may attend listening, and if it doesn't run me too far afield, in the special cases of drones and repetitive rhythms.

Lastly it seems at least in the Clark reading that though some progress may be made toward understanding thought as an intrinsic phenomenon of the world, the basic ontological framework of input, output, information and computation remains. I intend to critique that....

[//Jerry//] Matt, this seems more like a book prospectus than a paper proposal. For what it's worth: an ecological approach would be much more interested in the drones and repetitive rhythms than the muscular and endocrine systems.

The dualism of input and output, which you mention in your last paragraph, is worth critiquing, although it is even more worth setting aside in favor of a more ecological "picture", such as one where information "loops" through the perceptual system in ways characteristic of its interaction with the environment. "Coupling" as a metaphor for "engagement".