Situating Cognitive Science between Zen and DADA in the Works of Arakawa and Gins: From Blankness to Landing Sites

This essay addresses whether the married artists and architects Arakawa and Madeline Gins might be considered Japanese philosophers by widening the definition of philosophy. Does the impressive number of leading philosophers who have engaged with their work qualify them as such? On closer look, when we look at what they actually do, we see that what they refer to as their “crisis ethics” delves into ontology as well as epistemology in ways both ancient and contemporary. I follow the lead of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze in arguing that science, philosophy, and the arts must mutually inform each other in order to address questions that do not fit within the purview of a single discipline. I therefore wish to expand the disciplinary alliances between art and philosophy established by Raquel Bouso and Michelle Deville to include theoretical and empirical neuroscience, particularly the neuro-phenomenology of Francisco Varela and Evan Thompson. I also demonstrate how and why the philosophy of Dōgen, as well as the philosophical and artistic avant-garde of the twentieth century (exemplified by Marcel Duchamp), infuse their work.