Speakers​

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The Plurality of Emotions in Social Cooperation

Dra. Sofia Stein

PPGFil/UNISINOS

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I will discuss the relevance of neuroscientific research that tries to find neural correlates of moral sensitivity when investigating moral judgements. I think that, if we accept that emotions are central for moral judgements —though these are at some degree culture relative and interact with rational values and inferences—, neuroscientific research is vital to identify the link between emotions and this kind of judgements. This neuroscientific research will prompt us to revise some philosophical concepts, as proposed by Moll et al., to break them “down into clear cognitive components” or to substitute some of them or to create new ones. But, even if neurosciences are finding neural correlates to moral evaluations and judgments, these correlates are still quite vague when we consider the emotions involved, in the sense that many of the activated brain areas during moral evaluations are related to emotions in general and not just to specific emotions.  And even if one tries to link these activations to a specific (basic or secondary) emotion, the kind of connectivity that instantiates an emotion is broad and complex, rendering identification of a basic or secondary emotion during moral evaluations indeed very difficult in the current state of the art.

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When Other’s Will Matter

Prof. Dr. Adriano Naves de Brito

Department of Philosophy
Unisinos University

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Where is the source of moral normativity? Me, the law or the other? The predominance of the first-person perspective in ethics, whose root is undoubtedly Kantian, makes the question redundant. Korsgaard (2007, p. 11), for instance, speaks of “a second-personal voice within”. In this tuning fork, the source of normativity is the self, which catapults itself above itself into a universal dimension to turn, now as a legislator, upon itself. I, the law, and the other collapse into a higher-order subjectivity—transcendental as Kant would say—which, in the end, also subsumes the third person. This dominant subjectivism is modern and of Cartesian origin, so that the problem of the second person in ethics is ineluctably intertwined with the problem of recognising other minds, or, from a practical point of view, other wills. In this text, I want to explore the idea that the source of moral normativity is the relationship between myself and another, one numerically and qualitatively different from me, and without whose will, moral normativity is not set in motion. In no moral virtue is the other so essential as on justice, the measure of which is inexorably relative to those concerned. I will defend in this contribution that the structure of reciprocity inherent to justice expresses tout court the structure of moral normativity, a structure for which the will of the other, the second person, is originally constitutive and not reducible to the first person, be it the subjective will of someone, a particular self, be it the will of an impersonal self, the third person. My starting point will be analysing how, on justice, the reciprocal relationship between wills constitutes motives for action. Reasons that, by reciprocity, constitute reasons to act.
 

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Contextual effects on emotion perception:

what does it mean and how far can we go?

Felipe de Carvalho

Pesquisador de pós-doutorado em Filosofia
Programa CAPES-PrInt
Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

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From all aspects of non-verbal behavior, the face is undoubtedly one of the richest and most important sources of information about others. But facial expressions are rarely perceived in isolation. On the contrary, they are embedded in rich, dynamic social contexts that include body gestures and postures, situational knowledge, and so on. On the basis of these observations, we can naturally wonder if the overall context in which the face is embedded can change how emotions are perceived in facial expressions. If so, in what ways, and what do these contextual effects tell us about emotion perception? The purpose of this talk is to explore the range and depth of contextual effects in emotion perception, as well as draw some conclusions about what kind of process emotion perception really is, and in what ways it depends on extra-facial context.
 

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Language and Enactivism:

A normative reply to scope objection and hard problem of content

Marcos Silva

Philosophy Department
Federal University of Pernambuco

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Language does not have to be held as a problem for radical enactivists. The scope objection usually presented to criticize enactivist explanations is a problem only if we have a referentialist and representationalist view of the nature of language. Here we present a normative hypothesis for the great question concerning the hard problem of content, namely, on how linguistic practices develop from minds without content. We carry representational content when we master inferential relations and we master inferential relations when we master normative relations, especially when we are introduced into frameworks of authorizations and prohibitions. Inspired by the anti-intellectualism of the later Wittgenstein and Brandom’s inferentialism, we present the hypothesis that language emerges from inferentially articulated action from normative elements and not from manipulation in internal mental states of contents fixed by reference to external things.
 

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The second-person and the simulation theory: an enactivist point of view

Leonardo Lana de Carvalho

Federal University of Jequitinhonha and Mucuri Valleys (UFVJM)

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The simulation theory (ST) claims that our understanding of the other is based on self-simulating their beliefs, desires, intentions, or emotions. Some simulationists argue that the simulation in question involves conscious imagination and deliberative inference, others claim that the simulation is explicit and non-inferential, and finally some insist that simulation is implicit and sub-personal. From an enactivist point of view, I shall investigate the second-person based on our common pragmatic or socially contextualized interactions, with no cognitive simulation required.

 

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The radical view of embodied consciousness

Marco Aurélio Sousa Alves

Federal University of São João del-Rei

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Radical embodied views on cognition have become increasingly influential. I call “radical” the views that deny both representationalism and vehicle-internalism, including some trendy versions of enactivism. The views I am interested in conceives consciousness as also intrinsically embodied, going beyond the brain and reaching the whole body and the environment. The radical move from cognition to consciousness includes body and world as necessarily constitutive of phenomenal experiences. First, I try to elucidate what exactly this radical move is committed to. Then I criticize its plausibility, given current empirical evidence and a few reasonable metaphysical assumptions.

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Cognition and Language: reflexions on meaning and form

Dra. Nara M. Figueiredo - Unicamp

Meaning En-action

Dr. Raquel Krempel - Unifesp

Notes on linguistic meaning

Prof. Dr. César Meurer - UFABC

Embodied semantics & Sign-based semantics

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The debate on how linguistic items (words, expressions, sentences) acquire meanings and how these meanings should be understood is of central concern in philosophy and linguistics. According to the semiological principle (Duffley, 2020) we should conceive words as having stable meanings, which can be discovered through observation of their uses. In this roundtable, we will offer critical assessments of sign-based semantics as presented in the book Linguistic Meaning Meets Linguistic Form (2020), including some of its explanatory limits and possible compatibility with embodied semantics and enactivism.
In Notes on linguistic meaning, Raquel Krempel briefly presents the view we are addressing and offers her view on the limits of a semantic theory based on the semiological principle. She critically addresses some ideas of sign-based semantics, and argues that the principle can lead to artificial descriptions of the meaning of words, such as the preposition for, in attempting to avoid the charge of polysemy. Another issue she raises is that the principle is not always consistently applied. Cases such as the meaning of start, or words with encyclopedic meanings are examples of this limitation.
In Embodied semantics & Sign-based semantics, César Meurer argues that these two approaches may be mutually beneficial if we conceive them as a foundational theory and as a semantic theory, respectively. First, he describes embodied semantics as a research program that conceives the foundations of meaning in terms of embodied simulation. Afterwards, he draws attention to three points (the analysis of for, verbs of positive and negative recall, and causative verbs) where sign-based semantics could find support in such a foundational theory. Finally, he suggests that two pressing challenges currently on the agenda of embodied semantics (abstract language and sentence-level simulations) could be met by sign-based semantics.
In Meaning En-action, Nara Figueiredo distinguishes between methodological and ontological commitments of sign-based semantics. The methodological one is the analysis of corpora and the ontological one is the postulate of mental content. By adopting a linguistic enactivist perspective she proposes that the methodological aspect could be compatible with an enactivist perspective which rests on the notion of stable meaning in action. She presents a conception of meaning as a four-level practice and argues that sign-based semantics doesn’t have to rely on mental content if it takes into account the conception of meaningful material engagement in cognitive archeology and its development into sign-using as an enactive capacity.

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Reference:

Duffley, P. (2020) Linguistic Meaning meets Linguistic Form. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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First- and Second- Person Singular and Plural

Carlos Mario Márquez Sosa

USP, FAPESP

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Thoughts expressed through the use of the singular first-person pronoun single out by a number of features often contrasted with those of the thoughts expressed through the use of other personal pronouns, among which the singular second-person pronoun “you”. The former, in contrast to the latter, are often said to be self-locating, action-related, and immune to error through misidentification (Lewis 1979, Perry 1979, Evans 1982; pace Cappelen & Dever 2013). In this round table, we take up the discussion and ask whether the contrast carries over to instances of thoughts expressed by the plural first- and second-person pronouns “we” and “you, guys” (in English). Some thoughts expressed by the first-person plural seem to be immune to error through misidentification (Smith 2018). Whether they also are self-locating and action-related the way thoughts expressed by the first-person singular are is an open question to be answered here. Another issue tackled here is whether thoughts expressed by the second-person pronoun always contrast with those expressed the first-person pronoun. An interesting fact about a significant number of (natural) languages is that they allow for a distinction between inclusive and exclusive forms of the first-person plural. Tok Pisin, for instance, a pidgin spoken in Papua New Guinea, allows for a distinction at the morphological level between yumi(inclusive we) and mipela (exclusive we). In French, the plural pronoun “nous autres” is often, yet not always used contrastively (Hilgert 2012). A way of conceptualizing the distinction is to define the inclusive we as a (singular or plural) first-and-second person combination and the exclusive we as a (singular or plural) first-and-third person combination from which the addressee (i.e. the referent of “you”) is excluded (Chen 2006, Hilgert 2012: 1782). This suggests that, in contrast to thoughts expressed by constructions involving the exclusive form, those expressed by constructions involving the inclusive form of the first-person plural pronoun may well have second-person thoughts as components.

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Believing in others. Phenomenology and epistemology of testimony

Federico Boccaccini

University of Brasília

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Why should we believe in science? Why should we believe in history? Why should we believe in religion? Much of our knowledge is based on indirect experience. This means that we believe P not because we have had some form of direct knowledge of P but rather because an external authority tells us that P is true. We believe that P because we recognize the authority of this indirect source and base our beliefs on experience of others. Much of what we believe in our lives is based on books written by other people or on their experience or report to whom we acknowledge the role of reliable testimony. In fact, much of what we believe is justified (or we claim to justify it) on what others tell us. Religious and historical knowledge are such examples. But even medical knowledge, which used to be based on the third-person perspective, seems today to be reduced to a matter of opinion that can be accepted or rejected as any opinion – oddly many people today wonder why we should believe in medical science. 
How does our testimony-based belief work? Why do we believe in the second-person epistemological authority? And what arguments are used against that authority? Starting from Reid's testimonial fundamentalism and his remarks on veracity and credulity, my paper will first explore the phenomenological (or psychological) basis of second-person experience as the basis of some our beliefs (why to believe in other people?), then survey arguments related to the epistemological implications of a belief based on another person's testimony (how do you know your/their experience is true?).
 

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Meeting the Second Person

André Leclerc

University of Brasília - CNPq

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How can I know that I am interacting with another person and not with a technologically advanced automaton? Descartes’ test is still interesting for us, but I believe it is incomplete. A res extensa would be, also, a res cogitans if it/she can answer appropriately to the sense of the words used in an infinite variety of contexts. An automaton cannot do that; it is “morally impossible”, Descartes says. All right. Sooner or later, the machine will “betray itself” and say something silly. But what happens in the case of a real person? Real people too speak nonsense, but we do not conclude that they are machines!  So, how do we meet our fellows? How do we get genuine intersubjectivity? Language is still important, but meanings do not travel on sound waves. We do not hear meanings. What we hear is a human voice. I will describe what I believe to be the mechanism of human communication and explore the role of spontaneous linguistic understanding  as a key in the constitution of intersubjectivity. 
 

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Preocupações epistêmicas na perspectiva de segunda-pessoa

para a responsabilidade moral

Beatriz Sorrentino Marques

Federal University of Mato Grosso

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As condições para a que um agente seja moralmente responsável por sua ação suscitam preocupações epistêmicas, como, por exemplo, se o agente precisa saber o que faz e se ele precisa saber o significado moral do que faz para ser responsável. Veremos que essas preocupações epistêmicas estão presentes em teorias com enfoque na perspectiva de segunda-pessoa. A preocupação com se o agente sabe o que faz é menos controversa, já a preocupação com se ele sabe o significado moral da ação veremos que gera respostas diferentes, de acordo com cada teoria. Além disso, é importante examinar se alguma preocupação epistêmica constitui uma condição independente de outras condições sobre a produção da ação para ser moralmente responsável, ou se as preocupações epistêmicas já são endereçadas pelas condições sobre a produção da ação. A independência é defendida por Mele, com quem concordamos a esse respeito.

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Palavras-chave: segunda-pessoa, responsabilidade moral, condição epistêmica

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From libet-style experiments to necessary conditions for free will

Jonas G. Coelho

São Paulo State University

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Many neuroscientific experiments, based on monitoring brain activity, suggest that it is possible to predict the conscious intention/choice/decision of an agent before he himself knows that. Some neuroscientists and philosophers interpret the results of these experiments as showing that free will is an illusion, since it is the brain and not the conscious mind that intends/chooses/decides. Assuming that the methods and results of these experiments are reliable the question is if they really show that free will is an illusion. To address this problem, I argue that first it is needed to answer three questions related to the relationship between conscious mind and brain: 1. Do brain events cause conscious events? 2. Do conscious events cause brain events? 3. Who is the agent, that is, who consciously intends/chooses/decides, the conscious mind, the brain, or both? I answer these questions by arguing that the conscious mind is a property of the brain due to which the brain has the causal capacity to interact adaptively with its body, and trough the body, with the physical and sociocultural environment. In other words, the brain is the agent and the conscious mind, in its various forms - cognitive, volitional and emotional - and contents, is its guide of action. Based on this general view I argue that the experiments aforementioned do not show that free will is an illusion, and as a starting point for examining this problem I point out what I believe to be some of  its necessary conditions. 

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Sobre o efeito de outra raça no reconhecimento facial

Daniel De Luca-Noronha

FAJE-MG

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Seres humanos reconhecem as faces dos seus co-específicos com facilidade. Conseguem reconhecer diferentes expressões faciais ao primeiro olhar, detectam uma ampla variedade de faces e sentem-se confiantes na realização das tarefas de reconhecimento. Uma hipótese explicativa para a eficiência do reconhecimento aponta para o caráter holista da percepção de faces: o observador extrai de modo fluente um conjunto integrado e interdependente de informações. Entretanto, várias pesquisas têm mostrado que essa eficiência do processamento holista não ocorre no caso em que os agentes pertencem a raças distintas. Mais precisamente, o chamado “efeito de outra raça”, presente na literatura científico-cognitiva, diz respeito a uma maior dificuldade de identificar elementos que individuam uma face distinta daquela que, tipicamente, pertence aos elementos morfológicos inerentes à raça do observador. Segundo uma hipótese representacionalista, tal efeito pode ser explicado pela ausência de representações internas acerca de faces de outras raças. Na falta dessas representações, a atenção do observador estaria fixada nos elementos morfológicos gerais da face, passando ao largo dos elementos individuadores. Entretanto, essa hipótese possui limites explicativos importantes. Alguns deles, que pretendo discutir, são os seguintes: (i) existem muitas faces miscigenadas que não pertencem a uma morfologia a que representações típicas poderiam corresponder; (ii) muitos elementos individuadores de faces não são tão estáveis para que possam ser integrados em representações associadas a uma dada morfologia. Diante desses limites, o objetivo da minha apresentação é investigar o papel das emoções no reconhecimento facial. De fato, algumas pesquisas recentes têm revelado o efeito de emoções na percepção de outras faces. De acordo com essas pesquisas, emoções básicas de valência positiva causam um alargamento do conjunto de elementos processados e, consequentemente, diminuem o efeito de outra raça no reconhecimento de outras faces. Diante desses resultados empíricos, pretendo trazer à tona elementos da filosofia das emoções que poderiam explica-los. Trata-se de mostrar que emoções positivas podem ampliar o conjunto de informações perceptivas processadas ao primeiro olhar, mesmo que o intérprete não possua representações típicas da face em questão. Note-se que essa abordagem pode ser mais abrangente do que a hipótese representacionalista, dado que pode explicar os problemas do reconhecimento de faces miscigenadas, de elementos individuadores instáveis e mesmo casos de equívocos de reconhecimento facial de sujeitos pertencentes a mesma raça do intérprete. Por fim, essa abordagem ainda abre espaço para pensarmos que a expressão “efeito de outra raça” seja, talvez, enganosa. O problema em reconhecer faces não-familiares diz menos respeito a representações morfológicas, do que às emoções, particularmente da valência prevalente, que nos conectam a outras pessoas e que têm efeito sobre nossas percepções acerca delas.   

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