Philosophers of mind and epistemologists are increasingly making room in their theories for epistemic emotions (E-emotions) and, drawing on metacognition research in psychology, epistemic – or noetic or metacognitive – feelings (E-feelings). Since philoso- phers have only recently begun to draw on empirical research on E-feelings, in particular, we begin by providing a general characterization of E-feelings (section 1) and reviewing some highlights of relevant research (section 2). We then turn to philosophical work on E-feelings and E-emotions, situating the contributions (...) to the focus section (two articles devoted to E-feelings and two devoted to E-emotions) with respect to both the existing literature and each other (section 3). We conclude by brie y describing some promising avenues for further philosophical research on E-feelings and E-emotions (section 4). (shrink)

Many philosophers consider that memory is just a passive information retention and retrieval capacity. Some information and experiences are encoded, stored, and subsequently retrieved in a passive way, without any control or intervention on the subject’s part. In this paper, we will defend an active account of memory according to which remembering is a mental action and not merely a passive mental event. According to the reconstructive account, memory is an imaginative reconstruction of past experience. A key feature of the (...) reconstructive account is that given the imperfect character of memory outputs, some kind of control is needed. Metacognition is the control of mental processes and dispositions. Drawing from recent work on the normativity of automaticity and automatic control, we distinguish two kinds of metacognitive control: top-down, reflective control, on the one hand, and automatic, intuitive, feeling-based control on the other. Thus, we propose that whenever the mental process of remembering is controlled by means of intuitive or feeling-based metacognitive processes, it is an action. (shrink)

Proponents of enactivism should be interested in exploring what notion of action best captures the type of action-perception link that the view proposes, such that it covers all the aspects in which our doings constitute and are constituted by our perceiving. This article proposes and defends the thesis that the notion of sensorimotor dependencies is insufficient to account for the reality of human perception, and that the central enactive notion should be that of perceptual practices. Sensorimotor enactivism is insufficient because (...) it has no traction on socially dependent perceptions, which are essential to the role and significance of perception in our lives. Since the social dimension is a central desideratum in a theory of human perception, enactivism needs a notion that accounts for such an aspect. This article sketches the main features of the Wittgenstein-inspired notion of perceptual practices as the central notion to understand perception. Perception, I claim, is properly understood as woven into a type of social practices that includes food, dance, dress, music, etc. More specifically, perceptual practices are the enactment of culturally structured, normatively rich techniques of commerce of meaningful multi- and inter-modal perceptible material. I argue that perceptual practices explain three central features of socially dependent perception: attentional focus, aspects’ saliency, and modal-specific harmony-like relations. (shrink)

The main aim of this paper is to clarify the relation between epistemic feel- ings, mental action, and self-ascription. Acting mentally and/or thinking about one’s mental states are two possible outcomes of epistemic or metacognitive feelings. Our men- tal actions are often guided by our E-feelings, such as when we check what we just saw based on a feeling of visual uncertainty; but thought about our own perceptual states and capacities can also be triggered by the same E-feelings. The first (...) section of the pa- per presents Dokic’s argument for the insufficiency of the “ascent routine” to account for non-transparent cases of self-ascription, as well as his account of E-feelings. The second section then presents a two-level model of metacognition that builds on Dokic’s account and my own view of the issue. The two-level model links E-feelings to a min- dreading capacity in order to account for non-transparent self-ascriptions. Finally, the third section develops a deeper characterization of the relation among E-feelings, mental action, and self-ascription of mental states based on epistemic rules. In the context of self-knowledge, these remarks suggest the existence of means of forming self-ascriptions other than the ascent routine. (shrink)

Mind-wandering seems to be paradigmatically unintentional. However, experimental findings have yielded the paradoxical result that mind-wandering can also be intentional. In this paper, we first present the paradox of intentional mind-wandering and then explain intentional mind-wandering as the intentional omission to control one’s own thoughts. Finally, we present the surrealist method for artistic production to illustrate how intentional omission of control over thoughts can be deployed towards creative endeavors.

I argue that Husserl’s concept of position-taking, Stellungnahme, is adequate to understand the idea of second nature as an issue of philosophical anthropology. I claim that the methodological focus must be the living subject that acts and lives among others, and that the notion of second nature must respond to precisely this fundamental active character of subjectivity. The appropriate concept should satisfy two additional desiderata. First, it should be able to develop alongside the biological, psychological, and social individual development. Second, (...) it should be able to underlie the vast diversity of human beings within and across communities. As possible candidates, I contrast position-taking with two types of habit-like concepts: instinct and habitus, on the one hand, and customary habits, on the other. I argue that position-taking represents the active aspect of the subject while the habit-like concepts are passive. A subject’s position-takings and ensuing comportments are tied together by motivations, which evince a certain consistency, and for this reason are expression of the subject’s identity. I conclude by nuancing the relation between Stellungnahme and passivity. Passivity is deemed necessary to action but subservient to it; position-taking is thought to be prior to passivity. (shrink)

This article explores the role of second-order anger in the formation of resistant feminist space through the work of María Lugones and Sara Ahmed. I argue that this incommunicative form of anger can operate as a bridge between two senses of resistant spatiality in Lugones, connecting the hangout, which is a collective and transgressive space for alternative sense making, and the cocoon, which is a solitary and germinative space of tense internal transformation. By weaving connections with Ahmed’s concept of feminist (...) fragile sheltering, I demonstrate that the insulating character of second-order anger need not be equated with spatial solitude. Rather, given its orientation toward a future becoming away from oppressed subjectivity, germinative cocooning can be understood as constitutive of collective, feminist, and resistant spaces. I conclude, therefore, that feminist spaces ought to shelter second-order angers and embrace fragility as a condition of resistant transformation. (shrink)

Ouraiminthischapteristodelineatetheformofsharedagencythatwe take to be manifested in collective memory. We argue for two theses. First, we argue that, given a relatively weak conception of episodicity, certain small-scale groups display a form of emergent (i.e., genuinely collective) episodic memory, while large-scale groups, in contrast, do not display emergent episodic memory. Second, we argue that this form of emergent memory presupposes (high-level and possibly low-level) metamemorial capacities, capacities that are, however, not themselves emergent group-level features but rather strictly individual-level features. The form of (...) shared agency that we delineate is thus revealed as being minimal in three senses. First, the relevant groups are themselves minimal in terms of their size. Second, the form of memory in question is minimally episodic. And finally, the cognitive capac- ities attributed to the relevant groups are minimal, in the sense that they need not themselves be capable of metacognition. (shrink)

Applied behavior analysis (ABA) has featured an increasing concern for understanding and considering the cultural diversity of the populations behavior analysts serve in recent years. As an expression of that concern, the new BACB’s Ethics Code for Behavior Analysts is more explicit and comprehensive in its inclusion of ethical obligations concerning cultural diversity. The purpose of this paper is to offer a discussion on the limitations of both our capacity and willingness to know and overcome our ignorance about our own (...) and other cultures. We examine different ways in which our ignorance of other cultures plays out even in willful compliance with the BACB ethics code. We suggest part of the problem is that the BACB ethics code seems to operate under the assumption that practitioners are always aware or can be aware of what they do not know and their biases. In contrast, we offer a reflection on a more complex picture of our understanding of ourselves and other cultures where we cannot assume people are aware of what they ignore and of their biases. Ethically, we find that in some cases these blindspots are accounted for by the BACB ethics code and should be foreseen and addressed by the behavior analyst (BA). But in other cases, when a person is not aware of what they ignore, understanding the connection between cultural diversity ignorance and professional behavior requires a different approach. Our analysis suggests an attitude of being thoughtfully diligent and humble while learning about cultural diversity issues and examining the areas where we might be ignorant and not aware of our ignorance. We argue that BAs’ obligations to respect the dignity of clients and their families and to provide effective treatment call for this attitude of diligence and humility that goes beyond mere compliance. (shrink)

Judith Butler argues for collective liberatory action grounded in ontological vulnerability. Yet descriptive social ontology alone provides neither normative ethical prescriptions nor direction for political action. I believe Butler tries to overcome this gap by appealing to equality as an ethical ideal. In this article, I reconstruct how equality operates in her transition from ontological vulnerability to prescriptive commitments. Then, turning to Sylvia Wynter, I argue Butler's uncritical use of equality constrains the radical direction of her liberatory goals—firstly because it (...) cannot mitigate the coloniality of Being, and secondly because she figures the locus of critique as an anonymous and equally vulnerable body at the limits of the recognizably human. I conclude with Wynter's demand for liberatory critique to arise out of specific decolonial locations of rupture from our historically situated, oppressive, and overrepresented genre of being human. (shrink)

In his comment, McGann argues that in my “From Sensorimotor Dependencies to Perceptual Practices: Making Enactivism Social,” I have overlooked a group of enactivist theories that can be grouped under the participatory sense-making label. In this reply, I explain that the omission is due to the fact that such theories are not accounts of perception. It is argued that, unlike participatory sense-making, the approach of the “From Sensorimotor Dependencies to Perceptual Practices” article does not focus on the perceptual aspects of (...) things social, but on the social aspects that are constitutive of perception in general. I conclude by underscoring the central argument of the original article: that the adequate notion to make enactivism about perception social is that of “perceptual practices,” a social practices-based notion of perception. (shrink)

Collaborative remembering, in which two or more individuals cooperate to remember together, is an ordinary occurrence. Ordinary though it may be, it challenges traditional understandings of remembering as a cognitive process unfolding within a single subject, as well as traditional understandings of memory knowledge as a justified memory belief held within the mind of a single subject. Collaborative memory has come to be a major area of research in psychology, but it has so far not been investigated in epistemology. In (...) this chapter, we attempt an initial exploration of the epistemological implications of collaborative memory research, taking as our starting point the “extended knowledge” debate which has resulted from the recent encounter between extracranialist theories of cognition and externalist theories of knowledge (Carter et al., 2014; Carter et al., forthcoming). Various forms of socially and technologically augmented memory have played important roles in the extended knowledge debate, but the debate has so far not taken collaborative memory, in particular, into account. We will argue that collaborative memory supports a novel externalist theory of knowledge: distributed reliabilism. Distributed reliabilism departs in two important respects from both traditional reliabilism (Goldman, 2012) and updated theories such as extended (Goldberg, 2010) and social reliabilism (Goldman, 2014). First, it acknowledges that belief-forming processes may extend extracranially to include processing performed both by other subjects and by technological artifacts. Second, it acknowledges that distributed sociotechnical systems themselves may be knowing subjects. Overall, then, the main aim of the chapter is to draw out the philosophical implications of psychological research on collaborative memory. But our argument will also suggest that it may be useful to broaden the standard conception of collaborative memory to include not only the sorts of direct interactions among subjects that have been the focus of psychological research so far but also a range of more indirect, technology-supported and -mediated interactions, and it thus has implications for psychology as well. (shrink)

Este artículo presenta y defiende una concepción expresiva del mundo perceptual que depende de la intersubjetividad. En un primer momento se muestra el desarrollo del concepto de expresión en Husserl y en Merleau-Ponty. El punto central de este desarrollo es que, en contraste con la concepción tradicional del concepto de expresión que es lingüística y consiste en el manifestarse exteriormente de algo interno, se propone ahora una idea de expresión que ya no separa radicalmente lo expresado de la expresión, no (...) se concibe como traducción, y se aplica a la relación entre subjetividad y corporalidad. Para ajustar la aplicación de la expresión a la percepción, se argumenta que las apariencias perceptuales requieren de una cualificación en términos de la posición o perspectiva del sujeto que percibe. Esta “posición” o perspectiva no es únicamente espacio-temporal, sino que también es pragmática. Finalmente, se introduce la intersubjetividad, entendida pragmáticamente, a través de la idea de que hay maneras de explorar el mundo con los sentidos que son constituidas socialmente por los diferentes grupos sociales de los que hacemos parte. Se argumenta que esta concepción pragmatista, diferente a la ruta predominante en fenomenología basada en el significado como un asunto de conciencia de la experiencia, también es defendible en el terreno fenomenológico, particularmente a través de la noción husserliana de toma de posición (Stellungnahme) y la idea merleau-pontiana de las maneras de interrogar el mundo perceptualmente. -/- This article presents and defends an expressive and intersubjectively dependent conception of the perceptual world. The first section deals with the phenomenological development of the concept of expression in Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. In this development, and in contrast with the traditional conception of expression –a linguistic conception based on the external manifesting of something inner–, a new conception appears: one that doesn’t keep a hard separation between the expression and what is expressed, is not modeled after translation, and can be applied to the relationship between subjectivity and corporeality. To further precise the way expression and perception fit together, I argue that perceptual appearances require being qualified in terms of the position or perspective of the perceiving subject. This “position” or perspective is not only spatiotemporal but also pragmatic. Lastly, a pragmatically understood intersubjectivity is brought into play. I look at the fact that there are different ways of exploring the world with our senses that are socially constituted. This constitution takes places in and through the different social groups to which we belong. I argue that this pragmatist conception, while different from the dominant phenomenological understanding that takes meaning to be about the consciousness of experiences, is also defensible on phenomenological grounds. This alternative understanding finds support in Husserl’s idea of position-taking (Stellungnahme) and Merleau-Ponty’s claim that there exist different ways of interrogating the world perceptually. (shrink)

What is a philosophy class like? What roles do teachers and students play? Questions like these have been answered time and again by philosophers using images and metaphors. As philosophers continue to develop pedagogical approaches in a more conscious way, it is worth evaluating traditional metaphors used to understand and structure philosophy classes. In this article, we examine two common metaphors—the sage on the stage, and philosophy as combat—and show why they fail pedagogically. Then we propose five metaphors—teaching philosophy as (...) world-traveling, wondering, conducting an orchestra, storytelling, and coaching—that can better respond to the needs of increasingly diverse student bodies. Further, these metaphors find their ground in long-standing beliefs about what philosophy is, how it is done, and what it can do for those willing to engage in it. While no single one of them is comprehensive, we think that these models can help us enliven our own thinking about our teaching and the roles we and our students play in our classrooms. (shrink)

El artículo es un comentario crítico a“Realismo, esencialismo yextensionalismo”, del profesor IgnacioÁvila. En particular, se contestan lascríticas que el profesor Ávila hace a lametafísica esencialista, argumentando,principalmente, que esta metafísica escompatible con el fenómeno de larelatividad conceptual.This paper is a critical commentary to“Realism, Essentialism and Extensionalism”, by professor Ignacio Ávila. In particular, professor Ávila’s criticisms to an essentialist metaphysics are answered,arguing, mainly, that this metaphysicsis compatible with the phenom-enon of conceptual relativity.

The debate about the definition of Latinidad as a social identity has fluctuated between accounts that put it closer to ethnicity or closer to race. We present and defend the claim that the multiplicity of features and experiences of Latinxs in the United States is best accounted for by placing Latinidad in a different theoretical space. We draw from the ecological psychology and enactive literature on affordances to argue that Latinidad can be better understood as a social identity affordance: a (...) multifaceted landscape of possibilities for interaction, to do and to be done unto. We then focus on four areas that are part of the objective factors that have come to constitute Latinidad and which provide reasons to shy away from both race and ethnicity: the facts of mestizaje and hybridization, a vexed relation to the land, the political horizons and histories of this population, and the multiplicity of sensory-based cultural practices of Latinxs. It is precisely the many and deep variations across Latinxs that make social affordances an apt way to conceptualize a social identity whose reality is asserted pragmatically in many aspects of social life in the U.S. (shrink)

This introduction to this collection of essays presents diverse perspectives on social identities, inviting readers to reconsider established notions and explore new approaches to understanding these complex social phenomena. The contributions challenge traditional philosophical boundaries, intersecting ontological, epistemological, ethical, and political considerations. // The authors situate different views on the ontology of social identities within some extant options. Thus, they contrast their "social identity affordance view" with two alternative approaches: the Cambridge Social Ontology group's positioning theory and Weichold & Thonhauser's (...) broad conception of social identities. Their view understands social identities as realities that structure social life and shape individuals' self-conceptions, emphasizing the importance of historical contingency and social context. // The introduction then proceeds to review the contributions to the volume. The volume comprises three sections: "Experiences of Social Identities," exploring how specific identities are understood and experienced; "Horizons of Social Identities," examining how identities develop and change over time; and "Some Frameworks of Social Identities," presenting alternative frameworks for conceptualizing social identities. (shrink)

The purpose of this essay is to articulate a specific desideratum for any theory of Latinidad, namely, that there is no adequate conception of Latinx without an attendant conception of Afro-Latinx. In order to be reflective of those whom it purports to describe in the U.S. and elsewhere in the hemisphere, the term Latinx must be plastic enough to encompass the many internal differences, and even antagonisms, between its different constituent parts. Within it, we argue here in particular, it must (...) include its Afro-descended history, which includes not just African-descended people but also a denial of the influences of African-descended culture writ large. Our central claim here, then, is that a certain African-descendedness is constitutive of Latinidad in multiple registers, including history, cultural practices, and social identificatory processes despite Latinidad’s pernicious exclusionary history. (shrink)

Passive frame theory attempts to illuminate what consciousness is, in mechanistic and functional terms; it does not address the “implementation” level of analysis (how neurons instantiate conscious states), an enigma for various disciplines. However, in response to the commentaries, we discuss how our framework provides clues regarding this enigma. In the framework, consciousness is passive albeit essential. Without consciousness, there would not be adaptive skeletomotor action.

What would happen if one morning you wake up clumsy, as if your sense of touch were unreliable, arbitrarily on and off? And what would this clumsiness look like if we could transfer it to the moral sense? The article expounds an interesting analogy between the sense of touch, loosely construed, and the moral sense: just as a sort of consistency is necessary for the sense of touch to do its job, so it is for the moral sense to play (...) its part. Touch enables us to navigate the everyday world of coffee pots and staircases; our moral sensibility comes into play when we act or when we judge our actions and those of others, and plays a directive role in what we feel, how we feel it, and how we react to it. Taking the analogy further, I will suggest that inconsistency causes, in both cases, a certain clumsiness, and that clumsiness is linked to arbitrariness – like the person that helps others in dire need, but only does so on some rainy days. (shrink)

The phrase ‘person‐centred care’ (PCC) reminds us that the fundamental philosophical goal of caring for people is to uphold or promote their personhood. However, such an idea has translated into promoting individualist notions of autonomy, empowerment and personal responsibility in the context of consumerism and neoliberalism, which is problematic both conceptually and practically. From a conceptual standpoint, it ignores the fact that humans are social, historical and biographical beings, and instead assumes an essentialist or idealized concept of personhood in which (...) a person is viewed as an individual static object. From a practical standpoint, the application of such a concept of personhood can lead to neglect of a person's fundamental care needs and exacerbate the problems of social inequity, in particular for older people and people with dementia. Therefore, we argue that our understanding of PCC must instead be based on a dynamic concept of personhood that integrates the relevant social, relational, temporal and biographical dimensions. We propose that the correct concept of personhood in PCC is one in which persons are understood as socially embedded, relational and temporally extended subjects rather than merely individual, autonomous, asocial and atemporal objects. We then present a reconceptualization of the fundamental philosophical goal of PCC as promoting selfhood rather than personhood. Such a reconceptualization avoids the problems that beset the concept of personhood and its application in PCC, while also providing a philosophical foundation for the growing body of empirical literature that emphasizes the psychosocial, relational, subjective and biographical dimensions of PCC. (shrink)

This paper presents an examination of communitarianism ethics and its emphasis on community and responsibility as an ethical base for public relations. It studies the importance businesses currently place on social responsibility, quality, and stewardship and how these core values fit within a communitarian approach. A communitarian foundation for public relations may enable organizations to respond to crises and other situations appropriately because of the sense of community public relations seeks to build.

What is the primary function of consciousness in the nervous system? The answer to this question remains enigmatic, not so much because of a lack of relevant data, but because of the lack of a conceptual framework with which to interpret the data. To this end, we have developed Passive Frame Theory, an internally coherent framework that, from an action-based perspective, synthesizes empirically supported hypotheses from diverse fields of investigation. The theory proposes that the primary function of consciousness is well-circumscribed, (...) serving the 'somatic nervous system[. For this system, consciousness serves as a frame that constrains and directs skeletal muscle output, thereby yielding adaptive behavior. The mechanism by which consciousness achieves this is more counterintuitive, passive, and “low level” than the kinds of functions that theorists have previously attributed to consciousness. Passive frame theory begins to illuminate (a) what consciousness contributes to nervous function, (b) how consciousness achieves this function, and (c) the neuroanatomical substrates of conscious processes. Our untraditional, action-based perspective focuses on olfaction instead of on vision and is 'descriptive' (describing the products of nature as they evolved to be) rather than 'normative' (construing processes in terms of how they should function). Passive frame theory begins to isolate the neuroanatomical, cognitive-mechanistic, and representational (e.g., conscious contents) processes associated with consciousness. (shrink)

The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted the considerable challenge of sourcing expertise and determining which experts to trust. Dissonant information fostered controversy in public discourse and encouraged an appeal to a wide range of social indicators of trustworthiness in order to decide whom to trust. We analyze public discourse on expertise by examining how social indicators inform the reputation of Dr. Didier Raoult, the French microbiologist who rose to international prominence as an early advocate for using hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19. To (...) comprehend how these indicators came to inform his reputation, we outline Dr. Raoult's rise to fame based on discourse about hydroxychloroquine. We then discuss why we trust in experts like scientist-practitioners. This is followed by an examination of how social indicators of trust like status, epistemic authority, influence and values have informed Dr. Raoult's reputation. We conclude with recommendations for how to improve the selection and evaluation social indicators of trust and reputations. Our aim here, instead of making a claim about the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine or Dr. Raoult's reputation per se, is to outline through this case study how social indicators of trust inform reputation and the challenge they present to evaluating expertise. (shrink)

There are many different oughts. There is a moral ought, a prudential ought, an epistemic ought, the legal ought, the ought of etiquette, and so on. These oughts can prescribe incompatible actions. What I morally ought to do may be different from what I self-interestedly ought to do. Philosophers have claimed that these conflicts are resolved by an authoritative ought, or by facts about what one ought to do simpliciter or all-things-considered. However, the only coherent notion of an ought simpliciter (...) has preposterous first-order normative commitments. It is more reasonable to reject the ought simpliciter in favor of the form of normative pluralism advocated in (Tiffany 2007). (shrink)