What is Material Engagement

In this chapter, the authors will attempt to answer two related questions: How is our cognitive experience with time enacted and extended? Has the cognitive dimension of the experience of time lost its reference in the body? The background reviews relevant literature and shows the motivation for the main discussion of the chapter, especially the contrast between the authors' approach and the traditional symbolic-representational view. The principal argument will be that the dimension of the organism's coupling with the environment that can be called engagement with material culture—or things—has been undertheorized in the literature. Bringing this dimension into the analysis can, the authors argue, help explain how we experience psychological time. What's more, it can help understand the kinds of extra-bodily extensions that might explain why the use of technologies does not threaten disembodiment.