McWeeny and Maitra motivate the adoption of a feminist perspective in contemporary debates within the philosophy of mind to further illuminate the nature of conscious experience. They argue that the adoption of a feminist perspective leads to the implementation of a more nuanced investigation of the mind, one that avoids a conceptualization of the mind as a “uniform” concept across beings or groups, and instead, considers the role of the body and different societal contexts. In philosophy of mind, when thinking about “the mind”, we are usually prompted to think about the mind as a universal thing, as something that we all (humans) have. Moreover, when exploring and investigating what makes the mind to be what it is ( i.e. which are the intrinsic and special features or consciousness), traditionally, we have been encouraged to think about certain properties of the mind that are universal and can be attributed to anyone. McWeeny and Maitra argue that this mainstream methodology in philosophy of mind is a simplistic one. Not only it overlooks the many inter and intrapersonal nuances of each individual’s “mind”, but also the impact of social constructs, such as gender, race, and class, in our understanding of what the mind is, and who has a mind.
Enactivism and Gender Performativity
The enactivist paradigm of embodied cognition represents a powerful alternative to Cartesian and cognitivist approaches in the philosophy of mind. On this view, the body plays a constitutive role in the integrated functioning of perception, affect, and other cognitive processes. Enactivism shares many of the central themes of feminist theory, and is extended to apply to social and political concerns. Following a discussion of the key components of the enactive approach, we apply it to explain more complex social manifestations, specifically gender performance and its reproduction through time. By employing Judith Butler’s notion of performativity, we demonstrate how gender, as one marker of social identity and difference, emerges through processes of embodied and embedded sense-making as articulated by enactive theory. We argue that more attention to embodied and embedded values allows for the interruption and transformation of histories of oppressive practices and opens the door to more liberatory possibilities.
Outliving oneself: trauma, memory, and personal identity
“How can one die in Vietnam or fail to survive a death camp and still live to tell one’s story? How does a life- threatening event come to be experienced as self- annihilating? And what self is it who remembers having had this experience?” By examining the lived experience of survivors from traumatic events, Brison sets to explore what exactly “the self” is. According to Brison, the self is “both autonomous and socially dependent”, which makes it prone to be disrupted by traumatic events, but also, can be healed through safe and healthy relationships.
Logical reasoning: a first course
| This book describes how logical reasoning works and puts it to the test in applications. It is self-contained and presupposes no more than elementary competence in mathematics. |
Intercultural education based on situated cognition practices
In this article we want to enrich a view of intercultural education that can use the conceptualizations of 4E cognition (enactive, embedded, embodied and extended). We follow the idea that education can be understood as a community of situated practices. We argue that the perspective of practices acquires a sense from the 4E cognition that will help to promote an educational epistemology that does not only hover over gnoseological processes but brings into play other categories of the sociocultural environment that help other types of reflections that lead towards a critical, political and ethical interculturality.
Cognitive disability and embodied, extended minds
Many models of cognitive ability and disability rely on the idea of cognition as abstract reasoning processes implemented in the brain. Research in cognitive science, however, emphasizes the way that our cognitive skills are embodied in our more basic capacities for sensing and moving, and the way that tools in the external environment can extend the cognitive abilities of our brains. This chapter addresses the implications of research in embodied cognition and extended cognition for how we think about cognitive impairment and rehabilitation, how cognitive reserve mitigates neural impairment, and the distinction between medical and social models of disability.
Extended Sex: An Account of Sex for a More Just Society
We propose an externalist understanding of sex that builds upon extended and distributed approaches to cognition, and contributes to building a more just, diversity-sensitive society. Current sex categorization practices according to the female/male dichotomy are not only inaccurate and incoherent, but they also ground moral and political pressures that harm and oppress people. We argue that a new understanding of sex is due, an understanding that would acknowledge the variability and, most important, the flexibility of sex properties, as well as the moral and political meaning of sex categorization. We propose an externalist account of sex, elaborating on extended and distributed approaches to cognition that capitalize on the natural capacity of organisms to couple with environmental resources. We introduce the notion of extended sex, and argue that properties relevant for sex categorization are neither exclusively internal to the individual skin, nor fixed. Finally, we spell out the potential of extended sex to support an active defense of diversity and an intervention against sex-based discrimination.
The Mind in the Body: Feminist and Neurocognitive Perspectives on Embodiment
From the introduction: The body’s epistemic significance is a shared preoccupation for both feminist theory and neurophilosophy, two fields that rarely interact. Neurocognitive theories of embodied mind seek to identify the features of embodiment that inform cognition and consciousness. They share with feminist epistemologies a view that consciousness is inextricably linked to lived embodiment and situated in the environment, and they each offer powerful challenges to the disembodied, abstract Cartesian subject. This convergence bears deeper consideration. In this chapter I address claims of their compatibility, and also how feminist concerns trouble neurophilosophical interpretations of the embodied mind. I begin with a brief introduction to neurobiologically informed views of mind that embrace reductive physicalism, and then I describe the non-reductive physicalism of embodied mind theories. Later, I take up feminist epistemology and its parallels and tensions with this subfield of neurophilosophy. I raise the question of epistemic difference as an opening for critical engagement. (p. 1 – online version)
The embodiment of emotion
Historically, almost all psychological theories of emotion have proposed that emotional reactions are constituted by the body in some fashion, but those theories utilized a common metaphor that the body and mind are separate and independent forces in an emotional episode. Current embodiment theories of the mind challenge this assumption, however, by suggesting that the body helps to constitute the mind in shaping an emotional response. We briefly review new theories of embodied cognition in light of accumulating findings from emotion research, to lay the foundation for novel hypotheses about how the conceptual system for emotion is constituted and used. Finally, we discuss how an embodied perspective can help to usher in a paradigm shift in scientific approaches to what emotions are and how they work
Embodied agents, narrative selves
Recent work on diachronic agency has challenged the predominantly structural or synchronic approach to agency that is characteristic of much of the literature in contemporary philosophical moral psychology. However, the embodied dimensions of diachronic agency continue to be neglected in the literature. This article draws on phenomenological perspectives on embodiment and narrative conceptions of the self to argue that diachronic agency and selfhood are anchored in embodiment. In doing so, the article also responds to Diana Meyers’ recent work on corporeal selfhood.