What does it mean for an actor to empathize with the character she is playing? We review different theories of empathy and of acting. We then consider the notion of “twofoldness”, which has been used to characterize the observer or audience perspective on the relation between actor and character. This same kind of twofoldness or double attunement applies from the perspective of the actor herself who must, at certain points of preparation, distinguish between the character portrayed and her own portrayal (...) effected in her craft. We argue that this concept helps us to understand how the actor can empathize with her character. For the actor who must study and rehearse her character, empathy may begin with higher-order processes that provide a contextualized understanding of the character. This understanding eventually integrates with more basic empathic processes in her actual performance. (shrink)

In this paper, we investigate the role of intention and joint attention in joint actions. Depending on the shared intentions the agents have, we distinguish between joint path-goal actions and joint final-goal actions. We propose an instrumental account of basic joint action analogous to a concept of basic action and argue that intentional joint attention is a basic joint action. Furthermore, we discuss the functional role of intentional joint attention for successful cooperation in complex joint actions. Anika Fiebich is PhD (...) student in Philosophy at the Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany. Shaun Gallagher is Lilian and Morrie Moss Professor of Philosophy at the University of Memphis, USA. (shrink)

The full scope of enactivist approaches to cognition includes not only a focus on sensory-motor contingencies and physical affordances for action, but also an emphasis on affective factors of embodiment and intersubjective affordances for social interaction. This strong conception of embodied cognition calls for a new way to think about the role of the brain in the larger system of brain-body-environment. We ask whether recent work on predictive coding offers a way to think about brain function in an enactive system, (...) and we suggest that a positive answer is possible if we interpret predictive coding in a more enactive way, i.e., as involved in the organism’s dynamic adjustments to its environment. (shrink)

An action-oriented perspective changes the role of an individual from a passive observer to an actively engaged agent interacting in a closed loop with the world as well as with others. Cognition exists to serve action within a landscape that contains both. This chapter surveys this landscape and addresses the status of the pragmatic turn. Its potential influence on science and the study of cognition are considered (including perception, social cognition, social interaction, sensorimotor entrainment, and language acquisition) and its impact (...) on how neuroscience is studied is also investigated (with the notion that brains do not passively build models, but instead support the guidance of action). A review of its implications in robotics and engineering includes a discussion of the application of enactive control principles to couple action and perception in robotics as well as the conceptualization of system design in a more holistic, less modular manner. Practical applications that can impact the human condition are reviewed (e.g., educational applications, treatment possibilities for developmental and psychopathological disorders, the development of neural prostheses). All of this foreshadows the potential societal implications of the pragmatic turn. The chapter concludes that an action-oriented approach emphasizes a continuum of interaction between technical aspects of cognitive systems and robotics, biology, psychology, the social sciences, and the humanities, where the individual is part of a grounded cultural system. (shrink)

Grief is often described as characterized by a particular emotional response to another person’s death. While this is true of paradigm cases, we argue that a broader notion of grief allows accommodating forms of this emotional experience that deviate from the paradigmatic case. The bulk of the paper explores such a nonparadigmatic form of grief, anticipatory-vicarious grief, which is typically triggered by pondering the inevitability of our own death. We argue that AV-grief is a particular moral emotion that serves a (...) unique function and is indissolubly linked to the practical identities of human agents. An agent’s AV-grief is about the harm that occurs to individuals whose practical identities depend on the agent. (shrink)

Advancing a radically enactive account of cognition, we provide arguments in favour of the possibility that cultural factors permeate rather than penetrate cognition, such that cognition extensively and transactionally incorporates cultural factors rather than there being any question of cultural factors having to break into the restricted confines of cognition. The paper reviews the limitations of two classical cognitivist, modularist accounts of cognition and a revisionary, new order variant of cognitivism – a Predictive Processing account of Cognition, or PPC. It (...) argues that the cognitivist interpretation of PPC is conservatively and problematically attached to the idea of inner models and stored knowledge. In abandoning that way of understanding PPC, it offers a radically enactive alternative account of how cultural factors matter to cognition – one that abandons all vestiges of the idea that cultural factors might contentfully communicate with basic forms of cognition. In place of that idea, the possibility that culture permeates cognition is promoted. (shrink)

Computer simulations of the formation and evolution of large-scale structure in the universe are integral to the enterprise of modern cosmology. Establishing the reliability of these simulations has been extremely challenging, primarily because of epistemic opacity. In this setting, robustness analysis defined by requiring converging outputs from a diverse ensemble of simulations is insufficient to determine simulation validity. We propose an alternative path of structured code validation that applies eliminative reasoning to isolate and reduce possible sources of error, a potential (...) path that is already being explored by some cosmologists. (shrink)

In this chapter we first elucidate the subjective flow of time particularly as developed by Husserl. We next discuss time and timescales in predictive processing. We then consider how the phenomenological analysis of time can be naturalized within a predictive processing framework. In the final section, we develop an analysis of the temporal disturbances characteristic of depression using the resources of both phenomenology and predictive processing.

Observational astronomy is plagued with selection effects that must be taken into account when interpreting data from astronomical surveys. Because of the physical limitations of observing time and instrument sensitivity, datasets are rarely complete. However, determining specifically what is missing from any sample is not always straightforward. For example, there are always more faint objects (such as galaxies) than bright ones in any brightness-limited sample, but faint objects may not be of the same kind as bright ones. Assuming they are (...) can lead to mischaracterizing the population of objects near the boundary of what can be detected. Similarly, starting with nearby objects that can be well observed and assuming that objects much farther away (and sampled from a younger universe) are of the same kind can lead us astray. Demographic models of galaxy populations can be used as inputs to observing system simulations to create “mock” catalogues that can be used to characterize and account for multiple, interacting selection effects. The use of simulations for this purpose is common practice in astronomy, and blurs the line between observations and simulations; the observational data cannot be interpreted independent of the simulations. We will describe this methodology and argue that astrophysicists have developed effective ways to establish the reliability of simulation-dependent observational programs. The reliability depends on how well the physical and demographic properties of the simulated population can be constrained through independent observations. We also identify a new challenge raised by the use of simulations, which we call the “problem of uncomputed alternatives.” Sometimes the simulations themselves create unintended selection effects when the limits of what can be simulated lead astronomers to only consider a limited space of alternative proposals. (shrink)

This paper discusses different frameworks for understanding imagination and metaphor in the context of research on the imaginative skills of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In contrast to a standard linguistic framework, it advances an embodied and enactive account of imagination and metaphor. The paper describes a case study from a systemic therapeutic session with a child with ASD that makes use of metaphors. It concludes by outlining some theoretical insights into the imaginative skills of children with ASD that (...) follow from taking the embodied-enactive perspective and proposes suggestions for interactive interventions to further enhance imaginative skills and metaphor understanding in children with ASD. (shrink)

Que signifie le fait d’avoir le statut de personne morale, c’est-à-dire d’avoir la capacité de responsabilité morale? Dans un important essai sur la question, Dennett a proposé six conditions qui définissent ce concept. Premièrement, l’entité à laquelle nous attribuerions le statut de personne morale doit être douée de rationalité. Deuxièmement, elle doit être capable d’adopter la position intentionnelle — c’est-à-dire qu’elle doit être capable d’attribuer des intentions aux autres. Troisièmement, elle doit pouvoir être l’objet d’une certaine attitude. Quatrièmement, elle doit (...) être capable de réciprocité de manière à pouvoir répondre à cette attitude. Cinquièmement, elle doit être capable de communiquer avec les autres. Les troisième, quatrième et cinquième conditions, de façon explicite et significative, impliquent des dimensions sociales, bien que, pour Dennett, la nature précise de ces dimensions sociales demeure une question encore ouverte. Enfin, ces cinq premières conditions sont nécessaires pour la sixième : l’entité doit être capable de conscience de soi. La conscience de soi est comprise ici comme étant un processus mental d’un ordre supérieur, dont, ainsi que le suggèrent Dennett et d’autres, les jeunes enfants sont incapables. Bien plus, dans une variété d’autres contextes, Dennett. (shrink)

In a series of lectures on Ethical Know-How, Francisco Varela explains that he is venturing 'into the territory of ethical thought ... Ethics is a new terrain for me, and what I have to say here must be taken in the sphere of adventure more than anything else'. On this adventure Varela is very much influenced by Hubert Dreyfus and his analysis of expertise. Similar to the way that Dreyfus attempts to formulate an ethical theory derived from his analysis of (...) expertise, Varela attempts to do this based on his enactive principles. I'll argue that, despite being inspired by Dreyfus' account of expert practice and embodied coping, and retaining the term 'ethical expertise, Varela offered important correctives to the specific limitations that can be found in Dreyfus's view. I'll also argue that we can resolve some tensions in Varela's account, and extend it to include a skillful form of deliberation that can play an important role in setting up environments or even rules of society, which through the enactive reciprocity of relations between agentive organism and environment, can facilitate our actions and make us who we are. (shrink)