#5 – Self & Volition with Professor J. Scott Jordan & JFL

In this fifth episode of the bodymindself™ podcast psychologist and cognitive scientist John Francis Leader (JFL) meets Professor J. Scott Jordan to discuss the topics of self and volition, or conscious will.

J. Scott Jordan’s research focuses on volition and its relationship to consciousness. He received his PhD in cognitive psychology and the neurophysiological basis of perception at Northern Illinois University in Dekalb, Illinois in 1991. His dissertation addressed the relationship between voluntary eye-movements and spatial perception. In 1992 he was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Post-doctoral Fellowship and spent a year in Prof. Dr. Hans Kornhuber’s neurophysiology lab at the University of Ulm in Germany studying the relationship between event-related brain potentials and memory and attention.

In 1998-1999 he spent a year at the Max Planck Institute for Psychological Research in Munich, Germany studying the relationship between action planning and spatial perception, and in 2006, spent a semester as a Scholar-in-Residence at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research at the University of Bielefeld in Germany working in a research group entitled, “Embodied Communication in Humans and Machines.” He is currently the Chair of the Department of Psychology at Illinois State University in Normal, Illinois where he is also Director of the Institute for Prospective Cognition (my.ilstu.edu/~jsjorda/Institute…ive_Cognition.html), which he founded in 2008.

His empirical research continues to focus on the relationship between spatial perception and action planning, with an increasing emphasis on social influences. He also investigates social perception during interaction and the manner in which these social dynamics influence perceived similarity, use of stereotypes, and desire to reengage. His theoretical work (i.e., Wild Systems Theory) focuses on moving scientific psychology away from the current computational-ecological debate, toward an integrated framework that conceptualises organisms as embodiments of the phylogenetic, cultural, social, and developmental contexts from they emerged and in which they sustain themselves.

The bodymindself™ podcast, newly launched in 2017, is an ongoing series of conversations between JFL and others on the topics of applied psychology and cognitive science, experiential learning, perception, virtual and mixed reality, embodiment, mental processes and identification.

The aim of the series is to include the voices of people from very diverse backgrounds, ranging from academia to those working on the frontline in applied fields, with the hope of gaining an even greater systematic understanding of the topics being explored. All references and views expressed are those of the person who expressed them and not necessarily those of JFL.

Your comments, shares, likes and dislikes are very welcome and will help guide future discussions. To stay up to date follow on Twitter, subscribe on SoundCloud or iTunes and visit jfl.com

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Special Thanks

Special thanks to Dr. Fred Cummins for arranging the podcast and talk and for filming the talk, and to University College Dublin for hosting the podcast and talk.

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References

  1. Born to be Wild: Faust, Pinocchio and the Marlboro Man meet the Embodied Other
  2. Michael Oakeshott
  3. Being There by Andy Clark
  4. Olympic vault set too low
  5. Wild Systems Theory
  6. Dynamical Systems Theory
  7. Illinois State University profile
  8. Psychonomic Society profile

Your comments, shares, likes and dislikes are very welcome and will help guide future discussions. To stay up to date follow on Twitter, subscribe on SoundCloud or iTunes and visit jfl.com