Luísa Semedo received his PhD from the University Paris-Sorbonne. She is an
associate member of the research team of the Institute for Philosophy of Language (IFL) at the New University of Lisbon and a research team member of the IFL project "Cognitive Foundations of the Self".
Title: "Ethics of Empathy: From Theory to Practice"
Date, Time, Place: 29/03/2013, 4pm, Salle de Réunion du Pavillon Jardin
Abstract: In this talk I will present some of the main ideas of my PhD dissertation entitled “Towards an Ethics of Empathy” and its outcomes, both theoretical and practical. Empathy is an early, universal and flexible faculty which allows us to be affected (emotional empathy, empathic distress, contagion, imitation), to recognize (cognitive empathy, empathic concern, perspective taking, simulation, imagination) and to respond (empathic action, altruism, trust, cooperation, respect) properly to the subjectivity of others. This behavior can range from simple social coordination to a true ethical conduct. I will review and discuss these different components of empathy, and I will argue that there is a necessary link between emotion, cognition and morality. My hypothesis is that we can build a coherent and pragmatic ethics of empathy and to support this purpose I will present some of the most recent, French and international, initiatives in education of empathy and also my own project (in progress), "Philo’Ensemble", an interdisciplinary association that aims to raise awareness among citizens, especially among young people, to the issue of "living together", through the fight against discrimination and the strengthening of social ties.
Please visit: http://www.ethicsofempathy.com/index.html
Friday, March 15, 2013
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Margaux Larre-Perez - 22/03/2013 at 4 pm
Margaux Larre-Perez (Institut Jean Nicod & LPP) will be our next speaker. She is jointly supervised by Pierre Jacob and Thérèse Collins.
Title: "Stroop-like interference between structural and functional hand gestures within objects"
Date, Time, Place: 22/03/2013, 4pm, Salle de Réunion du Pavillon Jardin
Abstract: Man-made objects may elicit at least two kinds of hand gestures: structural hand gestures associated with the shape-based properties of objects, and functional hand gestures associated with their typical usage. A number of behavioral studies have examined the relationship between these action classes, but some questions remain unanswered; in particular, whether they are both automatically recruited when viewing a particular object, and if they are, whether they may compete with each other. We adapted a Stroop-like paradigm to assess action representations afforded by man-made objects, and the interference within the same object between its associated structural and functional hand actions. In a practice phase, subjects first learned to associate either a “clench” or a “poke” movement with a given color (green or red). In the test phase, subjects executed these learned movements in response to the color of several objects associated with both hand actions (e.g. a calculator or a soap dispenser) that were displayed on a computer screen. Three different object colorations were presented: the object was entirely red or green (“baseline” condition), or was partially colored in such a way that the color and the colored part were congruent (e.g. a red calculator key or a green calculator body) or incongruent (e.g. the opposite combination). Difference in initiation times between these conditions will shed light on what kinds of gestures are evoked by the visual image of graspable objects and if these gesture representations are automatically elicited.
Title: "Stroop-like interference between structural and functional hand gestures within objects"
Date, Time, Place: 22/03/2013, 4pm, Salle de Réunion du Pavillon Jardin
Abstract: Man-made objects may elicit at least two kinds of hand gestures: structural hand gestures associated with the shape-based properties of objects, and functional hand gestures associated with their typical usage. A number of behavioral studies have examined the relationship between these action classes, but some questions remain unanswered; in particular, whether they are both automatically recruited when viewing a particular object, and if they are, whether they may compete with each other. We adapted a Stroop-like paradigm to assess action representations afforded by man-made objects, and the interference within the same object between its associated structural and functional hand actions. In a practice phase, subjects first learned to associate either a “clench” or a “poke” movement with a given color (green or red). In the test phase, subjects executed these learned movements in response to the color of several objects associated with both hand actions (e.g. a calculator or a soap dispenser) that were displayed on a computer screen. Three different object colorations were presented: the object was entirely red or green (“baseline” condition), or was partially colored in such a way that the color and the colored part were congruent (e.g. a red calculator key or a green calculator body) or incongruent (e.g. the opposite combination). Difference in initiation times between these conditions will shed light on what kinds of gestures are evoked by the visual image of graspable objects and if these gesture representations are automatically elicited.
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Joulia Smortchkova - 01/03/2013 at 4 pm
For the next session, Joulia Smortchkova (Institut Jean Nicod) will talk about a work she's been developing with Michael Murez (Institut Jean Nicod & Harvard University).
Title: "Singular Thought: from Object Files to Person Files"
Date, Time, Place: 01/03/2013, 4pm, Salle de Réunion du Pavillon Jardin
Abstract: How do mind and world connect, so that particular things (objects, people, etc.) find their way into the content of our thought? To answer this question is to solve what philosophers call the problem of singular thought. Many singularists claim that to have a non-descriptive thought about some thing is to represent it via a mental file.
Psychologists' notion of an object file resembles philosophers' notion of a file: both serve to represent things independently from their properties. However, an account still needs to be given to connect the existing psychological data with another crucial part of the singularist thesis, viz., that we are able to form acquaintance-based thoughts not just about objects, but also about people.
We argue for a careful extension of the notion of a file, starting from psychologists' narrower notion. We postulate files specially dedicated to the tracking of animated agents, biological entities, and especially, people. We claim a file of this latter kind, which we call a person file, explains our ability to form a singular thought about a person.
Title: "Singular Thought: from Object Files to Person Files"
Date, Time, Place: 01/03/2013, 4pm, Salle de Réunion du Pavillon Jardin
Abstract: How do mind and world connect, so that particular things (objects, people, etc.) find their way into the content of our thought? To answer this question is to solve what philosophers call the problem of singular thought. Many singularists claim that to have a non-descriptive thought about some thing is to represent it via a mental file.
Psychologists' notion of an object file resembles philosophers' notion of a file: both serve to represent things independently from their properties. However, an account still needs to be given to connect the existing psychological data with another crucial part of the singularist thesis, viz., that we are able to form acquaintance-based thoughts not just about objects, but also about people.
We argue for a careful extension of the notion of a file, starting from psychologists' narrower notion. We postulate files specially dedicated to the tracking of animated agents, biological entities, and especially, people. We claim a file of this latter kind, which we call a person file, explains our ability to form a singular thought about a person.
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Nicolas Delon - 08/02/2013 at 4 pm
Nicolas Delon (Université de Picardie, CURAPP) will be our next speaker. He is currently doing a PhD under the supervision of Sandra Laugier, working on animal ethics.
Title: "Animal ethics goes experimental"
Date, Time, Place: 08/02/2013, 4pm, Salle de Réunion du Pavillon Jardin
Abstract: Animal ethics, like most other subfields of normative ethics, routinely appeals to readers' intuition concerning either real or fictitious cases. However, those appeals have usually had two main shortcomings. First, they often used thought experiments purporting to show that some "speciesist" biases were unwarranted, by using supposedly analogous cases involving humans or alien species. Unfortunately, those cases often display several important disanalogies. Secondly, the intuitions that animal ethics has been relying on haven't yet, as far I know, been properly surveyed. Except for psychologists and sociologists who have already surveyed people's views and behaviors with respect to animals, there's little to be found about the specific responses of the so-called "folk" to the philosophical treatment of human-animal relations.
These shortcomings led me to design a series of experimental studies in order to assess how our conceptions of the moral status of nonhuman animals vary according to different factors (relational, spatial, categorial, species-specific, contextual...). The core hypothesis of this work is that, in contrast to a view that is held to be commonsense by many animal ethicists themselves, moral status is not univocally a function of an entity's intrinsic properties, hence, that extrinsic factors affect judgments concerning the wrongness of some treatments of some animals. The upshot of the survey is not, of course, normative. The most prominent contemporary animal ethicist, Peter Singer, famously rejected the use of (empirically uncovered) intuitions as, at best, irrelevant to morality. But these intuitions are interesting in their own right nonetheless, and, as they're often implicit in animal ethics, it's important to test them. I believe, moreover, that those intuitions should play some role in the assessment of our obligations, if only because we have to know what they are in order to know how to revise them.
The study that I wish to introduce is part of the Experiment Month initiative, sponsored by the CogSci department at Yale University. It has not been launched yet, so I won't have any results to discuss. For the time being, I'd like to present my hypothesis, the design, and the methodology of the study, and to discuss the broader issues of 1) the relevance of intuitions to ethics; 2) the revisionary or conservative use of probing intuitions.
Title: "Animal ethics goes experimental"
Date, Time, Place: 08/02/2013, 4pm, Salle de Réunion du Pavillon Jardin
Abstract: Animal ethics, like most other subfields of normative ethics, routinely appeals to readers' intuition concerning either real or fictitious cases. However, those appeals have usually had two main shortcomings. First, they often used thought experiments purporting to show that some "speciesist" biases were unwarranted, by using supposedly analogous cases involving humans or alien species. Unfortunately, those cases often display several important disanalogies. Secondly, the intuitions that animal ethics has been relying on haven't yet, as far I know, been properly surveyed. Except for psychologists and sociologists who have already surveyed people's views and behaviors with respect to animals, there's little to be found about the specific responses of the so-called "folk" to the philosophical treatment of human-animal relations.
These shortcomings led me to design a series of experimental studies in order to assess how our conceptions of the moral status of nonhuman animals vary according to different factors (relational, spatial, categorial, species-specific, contextual...). The core hypothesis of this work is that, in contrast to a view that is held to be commonsense by many animal ethicists themselves, moral status is not univocally a function of an entity's intrinsic properties, hence, that extrinsic factors affect judgments concerning the wrongness of some treatments of some animals. The upshot of the survey is not, of course, normative. The most prominent contemporary animal ethicist, Peter Singer, famously rejected the use of (empirically uncovered) intuitions as, at best, irrelevant to morality. But these intuitions are interesting in their own right nonetheless, and, as they're often implicit in animal ethics, it's important to test them. I believe, moreover, that those intuitions should play some role in the assessment of our obligations, if only because we have to know what they are in order to know how to revise them.
The study that I wish to introduce is part of the Experiment Month initiative, sponsored by the CogSci department at Yale University. It has not been launched yet, so I won't have any results to discuss. For the time being, I'd like to present my hypothesis, the design, and the methodology of the study, and to discuss the broader issues of 1) the relevance of intuitions to ethics; 2) the revisionary or conservative use of probing intuitions.
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
Holidays
The Doc in Nicod is having a (long) Christmas break. Please contact Guillaume [guillaume.dezecache [at] ens.fr] if you want to present for a session in 2013.
Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas!
Monday, November 26, 2012
Jeremy Dolan - 30/11/2012 at 4 pm
Our next speaker will be Jeremy Dolan. Jeremy is a fourth-year Ph.D.
student in philosophy at New York University, being advised by Ned Block. He is visiting the Institut Jean Nicod this semester.
Title: "Apparent size and shape in visual experience"
Date, Time, Place: 30/11/2012, 4pm, Salle de Réunion du Pavillon Jardin
Abstract: Does a distant tree look smaller than an equally-sized tree that is closer to you? Does the shape of a table seem to change as you look at it from different points of view? Many theories of perception accept the “appearance view,” according to which perceptual experience involves an awareness of “appearances.” On such a theory, we experience a tree’s apparent size changing as we move closer to it and a table’s apparent shape changing as we change vantage points. I will discuss two perceptual phenomena which motivate the appearance view, and I will offer a simpler explanation of them which doesn’t require that we posit “appearances.” Drawing on lessons from perceptual constancies, visual illusions, multi-stable stimuli, and the reflections of artists, I will propose a theory of shape and size perception which retains the common sense view that when we see an object—unless things go awry—the only shape we perceive is the shape that the object actually has.
Title: "Apparent size and shape in visual experience"
Date, Time, Place: 30/11/2012, 4pm, Salle de Réunion du Pavillon Jardin
Abstract: Does a distant tree look smaller than an equally-sized tree that is closer to you? Does the shape of a table seem to change as you look at it from different points of view? Many theories of perception accept the “appearance view,” according to which perceptual experience involves an awareness of “appearances.” On such a theory, we experience a tree’s apparent size changing as we move closer to it and a table’s apparent shape changing as we change vantage points. I will discuss two perceptual phenomena which motivate the appearance view, and I will offer a simpler explanation of them which doesn’t require that we posit “appearances.” Drawing on lessons from perceptual constancies, visual illusions, multi-stable stimuli, and the reflections of artists, I will propose a theory of shape and size perception which retains the common sense view that when we see an object—unless things go awry—the only shape we perceive is the shape that the object actually has.
Friday, November 16, 2012
Luca Barlassina - 16/11/2012 at 4:30 pm
Our next speaker will be Luca Barlassina (Ruhr University Bochum). Luca was a visiting fellow at the Institut Jean Nicod 2 years ago, and he is now a Von Humboldt Post-Doctoral Fellow at Bochum University. He will talk about a paper he wrote with Albert Newen (Ruhr University Bochum).
Title: "The role of bodily perception in emotion: In defense of an impure somatic theory"
Date, Time, Place: 16/11/2012, 4:30pm, Salle de Réunion du Pavillon Jardin
Abstract: In this paper, we develop an impure somatic theory of emotion, according to which emotions are constituted by the integration of bodily perceptions with representations of external objects, events, or states of affairs. We put forward our theory by contrasting it with Prinz’s (2004) neo-Jamesian pure somatic theory, according to which emotions are entirely constituted by bodily perceptions. After illustrating Prinz’s theory and discussing the evidence in its favor, we show that it is beset by serious problems―i.e., it gets the neural correlates of emotion wrong, it isn’t able to distinguish emotions from bodily perceptions that aren’t emotions, it cannot account for emotions being directed towards particular objects, and it mischaracterizes emotion phenomenology. We argue that our theory accounts for the empirical evidence considered by Prinz and solves the problems faced by his theory. In particular, we maintain that our theory gives a unified and principled account of the relation between emotions and bodily perceptions, the intentionality of emotions, and emotion phenomenology.
Reference
Prinz J. (2004), Gut Reactions: A Perceptual Theory of Emotion. New York: Oxford University Press.
Title: "The role of bodily perception in emotion: In defense of an impure somatic theory"
Date, Time, Place: 16/11/2012, 4:30pm, Salle de Réunion du Pavillon Jardin
Abstract: In this paper, we develop an impure somatic theory of emotion, according to which emotions are constituted by the integration of bodily perceptions with representations of external objects, events, or states of affairs. We put forward our theory by contrasting it with Prinz’s (2004) neo-Jamesian pure somatic theory, according to which emotions are entirely constituted by bodily perceptions. After illustrating Prinz’s theory and discussing the evidence in its favor, we show that it is beset by serious problems―i.e., it gets the neural correlates of emotion wrong, it isn’t able to distinguish emotions from bodily perceptions that aren’t emotions, it cannot account for emotions being directed towards particular objects, and it mischaracterizes emotion phenomenology. We argue that our theory accounts for the empirical evidence considered by Prinz and solves the problems faced by his theory. In particular, we maintain that our theory gives a unified and principled account of the relation between emotions and bodily perceptions, the intentionality of emotions, and emotion phenomenology.
Reference
Prinz J. (2004), Gut Reactions: A Perceptual Theory of Emotion. New York: Oxford University Press.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)