Diversity Reading List

Abstract: In this paper we question the basis on which judgements are made about the ‘quality’ of the lives of people whose embodied experience is anomalous, specifically in cases of impairments. In moral and political philosophy it is often assumed that, suitably informed, we can overcome epistemic gaps through the exercise of moral imagination: ‘putting ourselves in the place of others’, we can share their points of view. Drawing on phenomenology and theories of embodied cognition, and on empirical studies, we suggest that there are barriers to imagining oneself differently situated, or imagining being another person, arising in part from the way imagination is constrained by embodied experience. We argue that the role of imagination in moral engagement with others is to expand the scope of our sympathies rather than to enable us to put ourselves in the other's place. We argue for explicit acknowledgement that our assessments of others’ QOL are likely to be shaped by the specifics of our own embodiment, and by the assumptions we make as a consequence about what is necessary for a good quality of life.

Abstract: 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)

Abstract: This chapter provides a structured overview of work on situated cognition. The main fields in which situated cognition is studied - cognitive science, feminist epistemology, and science studies - are unnecessarily isolated from one another. Cognition is always situated. It is always concretely instantiated in one way or another. There are no disembodied cognitive achievements. The situated cognition literature details the ways in which cognition can be instantiated and, instead of abstracting what is in common to all cognition, explores the epistemic significance of particular routes to cognitive accomplishment. The phenomena of situated cognition have been described in several disciplines. Cognitive scientists have described the ways in which representation of the world, learning, memory, planning, action, and linguistic meaning are embedded in the environment, tools, social arrangements, and configurations of the human body. The situated cognition approaches have in common the rejection of the ideas that cognition is individualistic, general, abstract, symbolic, explicit, language based, and located in the brain as mediator between sensory input and action output.