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notabraininavat t1_j1dxyo1 wrote

Reply to comment by Flymsi in Knowing the content of one’s own mind might seem straightforward but in fact it’s much more like mindreading other people by ADefiniteDescription

I'm on that side. Being anti-representationalist, I don't think we can ascribe propositional attitudes/content without the capacity to develop linguistic practices. Highly recommenf Zawidzki's book on it.

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Flymsi t1_j1evryb wrote

What about empathy? Doesn't that make it possible to have such propositional attitudes without any capacity for linguistic practices?

I mean this is just my surface level understanding. I feel like emotional connection is kinda "below!" tasks of higher cognition, as it does also involve the limbic system.

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notabraininavat t1_j1fltv2 wrote

The problem I see there is assuming that empathy requires prepositional attitudes. Not that once you engage in linguistic practices it doesn't acquire conceptual content, but I think that the cognitive/perceptual basis of empathy doesn't need propositional content. In eco psych terms it can be analyzed through the sharing of attention and intention, and in sociocognitive terms with some forms of mindshaping that doesn't necessarily require prepositional attitudes.

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Flymsi t1_j1fqxc8 wrote

Thanks for the replies so far. =)

>I think that the cognitive/perceptual basis of empathy doesn't need propositional content

I would say this depends on the emotions involved. For emotions that dont need content, i agree. Or at least i can't imagine Fear without any object of fear, else it would be anxiety ("I fear" alone feels more like "I fear, ..."). And if i understood correctly the question arises if the basis of empathy lets me feel anxiety and fear differently or if it lets me feel both as anxiety , but in one case i later give one the attribute of a certain fear.

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notabraininavat t1_j1g9cqf wrote

Absolutely. My point is that sometimes levels of analysis are confused. If we talk about non-linguistic creatures, ecological psychology allows explanations of these phenomena without appeal to propositional content. Anscombe and Ryle develop good non-factualist accounts of intention or action in which patterns of behavior can be explained intentionally (for example, as a behavior caused by fear), but understanding the intentional idiom as a discursive ticket that permits a better scale of explanation, rather than assuming there's an entity-like fact under some category (emotions for example).

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Flymsi t1_j1h9dlg wrote

What is your stance on unconscious processes?

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notabraininavat t1_j1jmd3s wrote

Haven't figured yet, but my tendency is to think about it as the normative structures that implicitly regulate our behavior. In the vein of Lacan's dictum, 'the unconscious is structured like a language', but from a Brandomian perspective.

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