aap > media > find an expert > John Sutton
John Sutton
Areas of public interest: (examples of areas of public interest this person is qualified to comment on)
Memory (autobiographical memory, social memory); skill memory, movement, sport, and embodied cognition; Cognition and culture; Descartes; Dreaming; Distributed cognition and the extended mind
Contact Details:
Ph: (+61 2) 9850 8817
email: jsutton@scmp.mq.edu.au
Address: Macquarie University
Sydney, NSW, 2109
Title & Institutional Affiliations:
Associate Professor in Philosophy, Macquarie University
Selected Media appearances and public comments:
'The Philosophy of Cricket', The Philosopher's Zone, ABC Radio National, 21 October 2006
'The meaning of memory', Life Matters, ABC Radio National, 5 August 2005
'Dreams', Life Matters, ABC Radio National, 5 August 2005
Discussion of Kenelm Digby's schemes for bringing plants, creatures, and his wife back to life on BBC Radio 4 programme, The History of Folly, episode 2, 'Tis Folly to be Wise, 21 May 2003
'Animal Spirits: The Mind in History', All in the Mind, ABC Radio National, 27 April 2003
John was the co-ordinator and regular presenter of "Ghost in the Machine", Drive Eastside, a weekly philosophy radio program about bodies and minds, machines and memory 2001-4. The program won the 2002 AAP Media Prize for his work on the show.
Writer, director, and occasional performer, Philosophy Nights plays at the Steki Taverna, Newtown: 'Kenelm Digby and the Liquid Empire' (2000, 2002); 'Empedocles: Love and Strife - a quest' (1998, 2004)
General Areas of Academic Expertise:
Philosophy of Psychology; History of Science; Early Modern Natural Philosophy
Selected Publications:
'Batting, Habit, and Memory: the embodied mind and the nature of skill', in Jeremy McKenna (ed), At the Boundaries of Cricket, to be published as a special issue of the journal Sport in Society (September 2007) and as a book in the series Sport in the Global Society (Taylor and Francis).]
'Animal Spirits', with William Sutton, Fortean Times 219, February 2007
'Memory', Donald M. Borchert (ed), The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2nd edition, Farmington Hills, MI: Macmillan Reference/Thomson Gale, 2006 [published December 2005]), volume 5, pp.122-8
'Moving and Thinking Together in Dance',  in Thinking in Four Dimensions: creativity and cognition in contemporary dance, eds Robin Grove, Kate Stevens, & Shirley McKechnie  (Melbourne University Press e-book), 2005. Prepublication version.
Philosophy and Memory Traces: Descartes to connectionism (Cambridge University Press, 1998)

Further information about John and his research, including a list of publications

For information about the AAP's list of philosophical experts or enquiries about philosophers for media comment please contact the AAP's Media Officer: Caroline West, wk) 02 9036 9349 or mob) 0412 702 433 or Executive Officer: Eliza Goddard, wk) 03 62946319 or mob) 0409 169837.