CALL FOR PAPERS (JOLMA 4 | 2 | 2022)
De-humanizing cognition, intelligence, and agency. A critical assessment between philosophy, ethics, and science.
Editor: Filippo Batisti
A trend that calls into question several fundamental views has been recently rising in several disciplines. The core idea is that a number of notions traditionally associated with humans in the philosophical and scientific tradition, such as “cognition”, “intelligence”, and “agency”, should not instead be limited in their application to us humans only. On this view, new recipients of said concepts should be entities including various non-human animals, plants, or even inorganic materials. This issue of JoLMA aims to critically shed light on the implications of such a philosophical move. To be clear, we want both risks and merits to be discussed, without prejudice.
One key difference between the received view and the new ones may lie in the direction of the movement one could make in reconsidering “cognition”, “intelligence”, and “agency” as broader notions. For instance, let’s consider the extended mind model (Clark, Chalmers 1998). In that case the inclusion of extracranial elements in the account of human cognition was indeed conceived in an outward direction from the body of the individual. In other words, the focal point remained the human person and her abilities, like cognition, which was studied in that it could function through elements in her surroundings other than her own body and mind. That is, they were extending what was human to elements of a different nature.
What we want to discuss, instead, is the idea that there are good reasons to reconceive from the beginning the scope and the application of the three notions mentioned before. Those were almost exclusively “human”, while it now seems that rather than humanizing non-human external tools, e.g. by extension of the cognitive, the idea is to de-humanize notions traditionally predicated prototypically or exclusively on humans.
Thus we call for contributions especially centered on the concepts of “cognition”, “intelligence”, and “agency” within that discussion. While JoLMA is a philosophy journal, given the features of the topic, we will welcome papers from colleagues with expertise in other disciplines as long as they bear clear and well-stated theoretical relevance.
The following are topical suggestions, not exclusive of other starting points for reflection.
PHILOSOPHY OF MIND AND ACTION
Many animal species are now recognized (at least by some) as having full-blown “minds”; plants and vegetal formations display recognizable patterns of agency and cognitive properties like memory (Trewavas 2016, Baluska, Mancuso 2020, Mancuso 2021, Calvo et al. 2020, Segundo-Ortin, Calvo 2021); materials, both natural and artificial, are said to be “intelligent” in that they can timely adapt to environmental conditions and events (Tripaldi 2022).
Where does all this leave the traditional notions of “mind”, “intelligence” and “agency”? Usually they were considered the distinctive mark of the human, at least in their respective highest forms. Should this change be framed in terms of a “deflation” of those definitions? May this be the beginning of an anti-anthropocentric trend in philosophy? How can humans redefine their distinctiveness – if any, in a strong sense – using arguments coming from the philosophy of mind and action?
Critical voices are not rare in this respect (Mallat et al. 2021, Robinson et al. 2020, or even Marconi 2005) – are they just being reasonable, rather than conservative? Could a less heated reflection coming from philosophy possibly help to foster the dialogue (Katthar et al. 2022, Colaço 2022)?
ETHICS AND POLITICS
One reason motivating the dehumanization of those notions is intrinsically ethical, may it be environmentalism, or animalism, or any other form of thinking that aims to stress the importance of the non-human components and agents of Earth (Haraway 1991, Viola 2020, Raffaetà 2023). As a consequence, on such views, more or less radical changes in human behavior and societal issues are advocated.
How exactly can this result be achieved through an argumentation developed in the philosophy of mind and action? How can one argue in favor of (or against) granting rights to plants and/or animals by arguing that they possess certain kinds of mind and/or agency? Or is it entirely misguided to portray plants as ‘similar to us’ animals in order to nobilitate them morally, since this entails some sort of “ontological violence” by bending them to a whole different lexicon (Hendlin 2022)?
EPISTEMOLOGY AND SCIENCE
Does the dehumanization of cognition, intelligence and agency put in danger the paradigms of orthodox science? For example, the notion of individual is being criticized both by biologists and anthropologists for being too limited and explanatorily insufficient (e.g., Gagliasso 2015, Remotti 2019).
Has contemporary empirical scientific practice embraced this trend yet? Or all of these arguments are bound to be confined in the philosophical debate – for better or for worse? What – if anything – are we trading off in loosening the boundaries of those central philosophical notions? Granted that it is true that science needs some operational simplifications in order to function and make predictions, can one say that thinking of, insisting on or even fetishizing the idea of “complexity” is a risk for the progress of science?
References
Baluska, F.; Mancuso, S. (2020). “Plants, climate and humans: Plant intelligence changes everything”. EMBO REPORTS, 21, e50109.
Calvo, P., Gagliano M., Souza G., Trewavas A. (2020). “Plants are intelligent, here’s how”. Annals of Botany, 125, 1, 11–28.
Clark, A., Chalmers D. (1998). “The Extended Mind”. Analysis, 58(1), 7-19.
Colaço, D. (2022). “Why studying plant cognition is valuable, even if plants aren’t cognitive”. Synthese, 200, 453.
Gagliasso, E. (2015). “Individuals as Ecosystems: An Essential Tension”. Paradigmi. Rivista di critica filosofica, XXXIII, 2, 85-102.
Haraway, D. (1991). “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century”. Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, 149-81. London: Routledge.
Keijzer, F. (2021). “Demarcating cognition: the cognitive life sciences”. Synthese 198 (Suppl. 1), S137–S157.
Khattar, J. et al. (2022). “Understanding interdisciplinary perspectives of plant intelligence: Is it a matter of science, language, or subjectivity?”. Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine 18-41.
Hendlin, Y. H. (2022). “Plant Philosophy and Interpretation: Making Sense of Contemporary Plant Intelligence Debates”. Environmental Values, 31(3), 253-76.
Mallatt, J., Blatt, M.R., Draguhn, A. et al. (2021). “Debunking a myth: plant consciousness”. Protoplasma 258, 459-76.
Mancuso, S. (2021). The Nation of Plants. London: Profile Books.
Marconi, D. (2005). “Contro la mente estesa”. Sistemi intelligenti, 17(3), 389-98.
Raffaetà, R. (2023). Metagenomics Futures. How Microbiome Research Is Reconfiguring Health And What It Means To Be Human. Londra: Routledge.
Remotti, F. (2019). Somiglianze. Una via per la convivenza. Bari: Laterza.
Robinson, D.G., Draguhn A., Taiz L. (2020). “Plant “intelligence” changes nothing”. EMBO REPORTS, 21 e50395.
Trewavas, A. (2016). “Intelligence, Cognition, and Language of Green Plants”. Frontiers in Psychology, 7(588).
Tripaldi, L. (2022). Parallel Minds. Discovering the intelligence of materials. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Viola, A. (2020). Flower power. Le piante e i loro diritti. Torino: Einaudi.
Invited Contributors:
- David Colaço
- Carrie Figdor
- Simone Pollo
Submission deadline: September 30th, 2023
Notification of acceptance: November 15th, 2023
Articles must be written in English and should not exceed 6,500 words. The instructions for authors can be consulted in the journal’s website: ‘Editorial Guidelines’.
Submissions must be suitable for blind review. Each submission should also include a brief abstract of no more than 650 words and five keywords for indexing purposes. Notification of intent to submit, including both a title and a brief summary of the content, will be greatly appreciated, as it will assist with the coordination and planning of the issue.
For any question, please use the following address: Filippo Batisti (filippo.batisti@unive.it) or the journal (jolma_editor@unive.it).
Please submit your proposals to the email jolma_editor@unive.it or using the section ‘Submit’ of the journal’s website.
Go to the upload area
https://ecfpeerflow.unive.it/abstracts/form/journal/18/285
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CALL FOR PAPERS (JOLMA 5 | 1 | 2024)
The Art of Mapping an Ever-Expanding World
Editor: Francesco Ragazzi
Cartography is made possible through the mastery of an entirely unique set of technical skills. In the creation of maps, scientific knowledge related to mathematics and physics combines with knowledge specific to graphic or artistic disciplines, such as theories of colors and data visualization, among others. Furthermore, while pure sciences are typically responsible for establishing general laws that define cause-effect relationships, the cartographic discipline finds its purpose in describing spatio-temporal ratios. Lastly, although maps strive for objective representation of data, this objectivity is constructed through a process of selecting relevant elements, which always reveals the influence of specific cultural or even political viewpoints.
Being scientific, cultural, and political tools all at once, maps are fascinating objects that invite philosophical exploration. First, they pose a problem of representation: what data should be included, and how should this data be visually presented? If the Modern era has been characterized by a proliferation of cartographical methods, thinkers such as Frédérique Aït-Touati and Bruno Latour have recently claimed that, in the era of Anthropocene awareness, it is necessary to move beyond the grid of Cartesian information. Space should no longer be conceived as a mere receptacle for living things, Aït-Touati suggests, but rather as the result of their actions.
Second, maps give rise to ontological questions that hold political significance, as they deal with the status of territorial entities such as regions, nations, etc. Particularly in a post-colonial world, different cartographies may identify the same piece of land, often leading to conflicts. Consequently, maps have been utilized as both surveillance technologies and counter-culture devices, both within and outside the realm of art.
Third, notions pertaining to cartography have been increasingly applied to domains unrelated to the ordinary objects of geography. For instance, Sigmund Freud's topographic theory was one of the earliest contemporary attempts to map the human mind; Aby Warburg arranged images in an Atlas to demonstrate the persistence of ancient iconography in Western culture; and Gilbert Ryle argued that philosophy itself should be viewed as a kind of conceptual cartography.
Based on these premises, this issue of the journal intends to bring together the following: 1) essays on maps as an art form or on the aesthetics of maps (real and imaginary); 2) essays on the history of ideas concerning the representation of the world and the universe from a transhistorical and transcultural perspective; 3) essays on the philosophy of language concerning toponymy; 4) essays on linguistic relativism and geographical terms; 5) essays on the ontology of geographical notions; 6) essays on the relationship between mapping techniques and surveillance capitalism; 7) essays on mind mapping theories; 8) essays on conceptual cartographies.
Invited Contributors:
- Tarek Elhaik, University of California Davis
- Elin Kristine Haugdal, Arctic University of Norway;
- Dan Montello, UC Santa Barbara;
- Domenico Quaranta, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore / Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera;
- Marcello Tanca, Università degli Studi di Cagliari;
- Julia Tanney, independent researcher
- Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther, University of California Santa Cruz
Submission deadline: December 31st, 2023
Notification of acceptance: February 15th, 2024
Articles must be written in English and should not exceed 6,500 words (40,000 characters approx.). The instructions for authors can be consulted in the journal’s website: ‘Editorial Guidelines’.
Submissions must be suitable for blind review. Each submission should also include a brief abstract of no more than 650 words and five keywords for indexing purposes. Notification of intent to submit, including both a title and a brief summary of the content, will be greatly appreciated, as it will assist with the coordination and planning of the issue.
For any question, please use the following address: Francesco Ragazzi (ragazzi.fr@gmail.com) or the journal (jolma_editor@unive.it).
Please submit your proposals to the email jolma_editor@unive.it or using the section ‘Submit’ of the journal’s website.
Go to the upload area
https://ecfpeerflow.unive.it/abstracts/form/journal/18/286
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