The objective is to conduct research to develop an account of experience that is based on a model of mind and action drawn from the following: empirical work in psychology, William James's philosophical work on the nature of the mind, and studies in moral philosophy and science studies that exploit the concept of practice. The PI will argue that the non-cognitive aspects of mind and an agent's enmeshment in practices set the stage for meaningfulness without fully determining the meaning of perceptual experience, and give human beings access to a world that is not merely a reflection of our going theories or belief systems.
The underlying motive of the project is to resolve the impasse presented in debates about realism in scientific theory choice and moral knowledge In both the debate about scientific objectivity and the debate about moral objectivity, the fact that perception and observation are taken to be theory-laden is often assumed to undermine the objectivity of scientific claims and moral judgments alike. This "learned" aspect of perception is commonly referred to as "cognitive penetrability" to capture the ways that beliefs (i.e., cognitive states) may be said to strongly influence or determine the content of our experiences. The PI proposes that an alternative model of mind and experience, drawn from James's radical empiricism and focusing less on experience as private subjective mental or brain states, but rather as agency-centered interactions with the world, can defuse the dilemma posed by experience's educability and its revelatory function in science and in moral perception. Using James's humanistic psychology as a basis, the PI will try to extend this alternative model of mind and experience by drawing on literature on embodied cognition and child development studies. Contrary to some of the conclusions drawn by representatives of the embodied cognition school, the PI will show that we can understand how experience can be meaningful to subjects without thereby giving up on the idea of experience as giving us access to a theory-independent world.
If this project is funded, the PI will conduct research that will eventually result in an eight chapter monograph that will be of interest to philosophers, anthropologists, feminist theorists, science studies scholars, cognitive scientists, and psychologists. The PI will also develop a class that brings together moral philosophy and philosophy of science and thereby integrate research and education. Thus the project contributes to society by modeling interdisciplinary research, by contributing to broader debates in gender studies, by contributing to the broader social debates about the relationship between values and science, and by contributing to discussions about best practices in education.
