Abstract
The aim of the chapter is to discuss and evaluate the epistemic role of emotions in participatory sense-making, assuming 4Ecognition as background. I first ask why could emotions be beneficial for the collective processes of knowledge, especially discussing Battaly (Extending Epistemic Virtue: Extended Cognition Meets Virtue-Responsibilism, in Extended Epistemology. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2018) and arguing for a conceptualisation of emotions as socially extended motivations in virtue epistemology; then, I discuss participatory sense-making (De Jaegher and Di Paolo, Participatory Sense-Making: An Enactive Approach to Social Cognition, in Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 6:485–507, 2007; Making Sense in Participation, in Intersubjectivity: A Cognitive and Social Perspective to the Study of Interactions. IOS Press, Amsterdam, 2008; Fuchs and De Jaegher, Enactive Intersubjectivity: Participatory Sense-Making and Mutual Incorporation, in Phenomenology and Cognitive Science 8:465–486, 2009), both conceptually and phenomenologically, arguing for a fundamental role played by emotions in boosting epistemic cooperation and determining the quality of social bonds. I advocate their specific function in epistemic cooperation. Epistemic cooperation is what brings about the generation of a shared meaning in participatory sense-making and thus, since emotions function as socially extended motivations, they boost the relationships among the agents, bonding them to the aims of their epistemic community.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
This chapter does not deal with the hot question of group minds, group mental states, or group knowledge, but it looks at the collective effort of generating knowledge in epistemic communities. It thus discusses how individuals collaborate in revising beliefs, building a defense, or interpreting a text, for example, focusing on the conditions required by the right performance of these epistemic practices. Specifically discussing participatory sense-making, I analyse the interactions between the personal and the social, thus focusing on the epistemic practices that happen in-between. Also, I cannot engage here with the massive debate on the meaning of knowledge, especially with the critical segment that challenges the assumption that knowledge is a true belief and argues that knowledge is more valuable than mere true belief. I thus take here the standard definition of knowledge as a true belief but, since my thesis is not dependent upon it, I think it can be efficiently employed in other accounts too.
- 3.
Participatory sense-making is the enactive approach to intersubjectivity. Since it is a conceptual framework, not a specific activity only, the aims of the proponents are more ambitious than the mine here, i.e. to propose an alternative to the cognitivist approach to intersubjectivity (Di Paolo and De Jaegher 2017). I take this humbler stance because my aim here is to argue for a clear-cut thesis about the value of emotions in epistemic cooperation, and not for participatory sense-making per se. However, my focus on the activity, instead of arguing for the theoretical value of the model, is not at all alien to this research project, since I infer important implications about the affective dimension of participatory sense-making from the practice itself, also highlighting why participatory sense-making seems to be one of our best options for understanding the role of affectivity in epistemic cooperation.
- 4.
The two main approaches available nowadays in virtue epistemology, reliabilism and responsibilism, disagree in the very identification of what is truth-conducive, being the possession of certain abilities, as reliable memory or attention, for the reliabilists and the exercise of certain character traits, as intellectual humility or perseverance, for the responsibilists. See Sosa (1980) and Greco (2002) for reliabilism and Zagzebski (1996) and Baehr (2011) for responsibilism.
- 5.
See Code (1993) for the emphasis on taking the subject into account for epistemology. This line of thought has been developed by most of the feminist approaches to the theory of knowledge. This view cannot be ascribed to the entire spectrum of approaches labelled under “virtue epistemology”—it depends by what we mean for “subject” as the epistemic agent, if the individual person with her own and unique characteristics or a more neutral and universal subject of the epistemic agency. However, what counts here is that this subject-dependent approach in epistemology seems to fit better than others with 4Ecognition.
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- 7.
As happened for the cognitive science, I believe that a wedding between phenomenology and analytic epistemology is not only possible but very promising too.
- 8.
Other options are available nowadays for merging extending cognition and virtue epistemology, especially within virtue reliabilism (see Pritchard 2010; Carter 2019). Here I’m looking at virtue responsibilism because it is the approach that can better explain emotion-regulation as self-mastery in epistemic agency, and at Battaly’s account because it is open to going beyond the standard individualism of virtue responsibilism.
- 9.
The case analyses the integration of an external tool, a notebook, for the formation of a belief (the correct route to reach the MoMA) and it argues for the functional equivalence between this case and a standard internalist formation of beliefs. See Clark and Chalmers (1998).
- 10.
There are at least two ways for labelling this social extension in the philosophical literature, as distributed cognition (Palermos 2016) and socially extended mind (Gallagher2013). However, as I will argue in a moment, although both these approaches point to the right direction, we need to endorse an enactivist approach—as participatory sense-making, for example—for properly grasping the function of emotions in social knowledge.
- 11.
- 12.
I stress “philosophical investigation” because I think that much of the work which has been done by social psychology in overcoming the cognitive-situative divide also regarding internal motivation should be incorporated and philosophically discussed by philosophy, especially social epistemology. See Järvelä et al. (2010).
- 13.
For Zagzebski (1996, p. 137), intellectual virtues have two components, the motivational and the success ones. The former, leading to produce a certain desired end, which is knowledge, is assumed to rely on an internalist view of knowledge, and the latter, which establishes the reliable success in bringing about that end, is assumed to be externalist.
- 14.
Think for example of how our anxiety dissolves with a good run, or how our anger softens practicing loving-kindness meditation. These examples could be conceptualised within the framework of embodied intentionality and, regarding the social dimension of interaction, with enactive empathy. For enactive empathy, see Fantasia et al. (2014).
- 15.
In a more general way, we could say that they are regulated for the agent’s well-being. But this is not in contradiction with the idea that we are regulating them toward knowledge since knowledge contributes to the agent’s well-being. Of course, different accounts can be provided here for explaining why and how knowledge matter for well-being, from eudaimonism and perfectionism to evolutionary psychology, but what it is important to highlight here is that virtue epistemology seems to fit well with this perspective.
- 16.
This does not mean that we should not develop an account of extended emotions, but that for doing so we need to integrate phenomenology to the classical literature on extended cognition.
- 17.
For the criticism addressed by the authors to Theory Theory (TT) and Simulation Theory (ST) see Fuchs and De Jaegher (2009, pp. 467–469). These are the five core elements of criticism: the presupposed internalism; the disembodied and disembedded stance; the denial of the embodied dimension of interaction; the underestimation of temporal locality for diachronic processes of development; the presupposed naïve realism (the world of the other as something given). See also Gallagher and Hutto (2008) for a similar criticism to Theory Theory and Simulation Theory grounded on the evidence provided by developmental psychology.
- 18.
Social interactions are thus processes, and not just relationships. For the important difference between processes and relationships, see Livet and Nef (2009). As De Jaegher, Di Paoloand Fuchs, also Livet and Nef criticise the standard interactionist approach for which interactions are just functions of a structure. But the novelty of the enactivist approach on social cognition is that it does not only argue that interactions are processes, but that interactions are participatory processes, focusing on the first-person perspective and, thus, ascribing a higher value to their phenomenology.
- 19.
But it is important to mention that the authors borrow a lot from dynamical system theory, especially about the conceptualisation of interactions as processes extended in time and the function played by cooperation in them. For the role of coordination and cooperation in the group epistemic practice understood as a dynamical system, see Hutchins (1995).
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- 21.
Taking the observer into account also means to give values to concepts as autonomy and personal choices which risk being lost in a pure functionalist approach to interactions. And, most important for our topic, to emotions, as what disclose our values, what we care most. See Vanello (2018) for a critical discussion about the conceptualisation of emotion as the perception of values.
- 22.
- 23.
On the co-determination of self and other within an enactivist point of view to cognition, see Thompson and Varela (2001).
- 24.
In this model, individual aims are not denied but are understood within a wider cooperative activity which includes both the individuals and the group. This model wants to reply to some of the dilemmas which have been highlighted by decision theory about the supposed incompatibility between personal and group gains.
- 25.
There is plenty of evidence about it in network theory and social capital literature about social trust and shared goals. See for example Newton (1997).
- 26.
And also, broadening the spectrum of analysis, from normativity to personal beliefs. This is important to highlight because, in our case, epistemic cooperation could be assumed as a normative structure which rules out the dynamics of social interactions. On the role of normativity in collective actions, see Brink et al. (2017).
- 27.
On the function played by emotions in the revision of beliefs, see Livet (2016).
- 28.
In this regard, De Jaegher et al. (2010), have differentiated among enabling condition (when the interaction facilitate/hinder the cognitive phenomenon), contextual factor (when interaction simply influences the cognitive phenomenon), and constitutive element (when interaction is part of the cognitive phenomenon). I add to this list the beneficial function, namely, a beneficial outcome is something that facilitates the cognitive phenomenon to occur, not only supporting the process but also enhancing it. The beneficial function confers the causality in place with a very positive value and I argue that epistemic emotions serve this function in the epistemic practices. See Candiotto (2017a).
- 29.
A multi-component theory of emotion (Scherer 1984) seems the one that best represents the wider spectrum of affective experience, from physiological reactions to cognitive appraisals, passing through motor expressions, behavioural tendencies, and subjective feelings. However, as Slaby (2008) has highlighted, this approach often forgets that the embodied dimension does not only deal with the private experience of self-affect, but it possesses a precise intentionality for which we could detect bodily driving forces. Therefore Slaby (2008, pp. 434–440) argues for a model of affective intentionality from the perspective of the feeling body, describing its five central features: diffuse localization, world-directed intentionality, hedonic valence, self-consciousness, and motivational force. I do not need to argue for this model here, although I think it is one of the best available nowadays, because it is enough for my argument that the reader would accept that if we look at the phenomenology of emotional experience in participatory sense-making, we cannot take emotions just as mental states, but we need to embrace a wider perspective which includes bodily feelings, expressions, etc.
- 30.
De Jaegher (2015) argues that not only self-affection but also inter-affection is embodied.
- 31.
It seems correct to conceptualise curiosity as a metacognitive feeling (Litman 2009), but this does not exclude that some emotions are strictly related to a curious attitude toward the world.
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Acknowledgements
This chapter arises from the project “Epistemic cooperation. The function of positive emotions” funded by the IMéRA Institute for Advanced Study of Aix-Marseille University. I am grateful to Dave Ward, Pierre Livet, and Duncan Pritchard for their insightful comments and constructive criticism to a previous version of this chapter. I would also thank the colleagues at IMéRA for the rich interdisciplinary conversations we had throughout the five months of research residency.
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Candiotto, L. (2019). Emotions In-Between: The Affective Dimension of Participatory Sense-Making. In: Candiotto, L. (eds) The Value of Emotions for Knowledge. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15667-1_11
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