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A Cognitive Account of Agentive Phenomenology| old_uid | 15580 |
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| title | A Cognitive Account of Agentive Phenomenology |
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| start_date | 2015/05/04 |
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| schedule | 15h45-17h15 |
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| online | no |
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| summary | Many hold that just as there is something it is like for one to taste chocolate, smell a rose, or see green, there is something it is like for one to perform an action, i.e., that there is a phenomenology of agency. Taking this on board as a starting point for theorizing, we may characterize agentive experiences as experiences of oneself as acting. In this talk, I defend a cognitive account of agentive experiences on which the vehicles of such experiences are first-personal thoughts to the effect that <I am A-ing>. In the first part of the talk, I identify a number of desiderata that a theory of agentive experiences must satisfy. Next, I defend what I call the independence-priority claim: sometimes agentive experiences arise independently of and prior to sensory feedback from bodily action. I argue that, combined with some additional reasonable assumptions, this gives us good reason to conclude that agentive experiences are either intentions (constitutive view) or systematically-related states occurring prior to action (non-constitutive view). In the third part of the talk, I argue against the constitutive view, a classic proponent of which is Searle (1983), on the grounds that (i) it explains experiences of trying or intending to act, rather than experiences of acting, and (ii) intentions do not have the appropriate “direction of fit” to serve as the vehicles of agentive experience. Finally, I offer my own account of agentive experiences in terms of first-personal thoughts, and I show how such an account avoids these two difficulties, as well as satisfies our desiderata. |
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| responsibles | Kriegel |
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