Workshop “Phenomenology Today” – Professor Søren Overgaard – January 20th, 2016

Vita-Salute San Raffaele University – Milan

International Permanent Workshop
Phenomenology today: some popular issues
Embodied Cognition, Empathy, Normativity/Values, Social Cognition

Wednesday January 20th, 2016
2:00 – 4:00 pm
Room Agnodice (DIBIT 1)

Søren Overgaard (University of Copenhagen)

Abstract – Defenders of the so-called ‘direct-perception theory’ of social cognition (DPT) often suggest that we should understand such social perception along ‘enactive’ lines. The reason for this is rarely made explicit, although there is some circumstantial evidence that one motivating factor may be the DPT advocate’s suspicion of representational theories of perceptual experience.  In my talk, I discuss whether enactive theories of the sort that reject the notion that perceptual experience has representational content are congenial to DPT. I argue that they are not. What advocates of DPT seem to want is a version of enactivisim that eschews representational perceptual content while making room for perception to be, in Gallagher’s (2008) phrase, ‘smart’. But I suggest that none of the enactivist theories currently available meet these requirements.

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