Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Duration: 2019 - 2022

Code: PGC2018-095909-B-I00

Principal Investigator

Josefa Toribio (jtoribio@icrea.cat)

All researchers

Jules Holroyd (Sheffield)

Indrek Reiland (Edinburgh)

Susanna Schellenberg (Rutgers)

Miguel Ángel Sebastían (Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas, UNAM) 

Susanna Siegel (Harvard)

Summary

This project tackles important questions arising at the intersection of philosophical and scientific studies of the mind. It addresses central philosophical issues about perceptual experience while also seeking to make progress on two additional fronts. On the one hand, we are interested in the introspective knowledge that we obtain from our own self-awareness of such experiences and its relation to our sense of agency. On the other hand, and following a recent and renewed philosophical and scientific interest in states and mental processes of which we are not aware, but which are rationally sensitive, the present project tackles different aspects of a subset of such states: implicit biases.

The general hypothesis that drives this project is that an analysis of the conceptual and empirical foundations of the continuum perception- cognition-action needs to focus not only on events of which we are aware, but also on events and processes of which we are self-aware and unaware. Each vertex of this triangle has a restrictive research domain so as to make the project manageable: (i) the metaphysics of perceptual (awareness); (ii) both the introspection of the contents of such experiences and their role in our sense of agency (self- awareness); and (iii) the nature and modulation of implicit biases, and our responsibility for themisolated as an importantly relevant philosophical, psychological and social phenomenon in the realm of non-conscious cognition (unawareness).

The project is structured around four general objectives:

(1) To discuss the arguments for and against Representationalism and Naïve Realism so as to better understand the metaphysics of perceptual experiences.

(2) To examine the role of perceptual experiences as a source of self-knowledge, drawing on philosophical analyses of first-personal thought as well as scientific studies of relevant cognitive processes such as metacognition and attention.

(3) To examine the nature and mechanistic underpinnings of agentive phenomenology and its contribution to action control.

(4) To provide a better philosophical understanding of a particular kind of mental states of whose influence we are typically unaware: implicit biases.

Total budget: €60.500
1 FPI Fellow