baobab
Base de données des enseignements et séminaires de l'EHESS

Le séminaire est divisé en deux parties, articulées l’une à l’autre, mais qui peuvent être suivies et validées séparément, respectivement au titre du premier et du second semestre de l’année. La première partie (Émotion et perception.1) dresse un état des lieux des travaux empiriques récents sur les émotions, en insistant sur les approches dynamiques et incarnées des processus affectifs et motivationnels. Ces travaux seront mis en rapport avec les théories principales des émotions dans la littérature philosophique : théories perceptuelles, sentimentalistes et attitudinales en particulier. Nous porterons également une attention soutenue aux mérites et aux limites des analogies entre les émotions et les sentiments ou ressentis noétiques (présence, familiarité, confiance, etc.). La seconde partie (Émotion et perception. 2) portera plus particulièrement sur les émotions en contexte esthétique et prolongera l’enquête de l’an dernier dans le domaine de l’esthétique cognitive. Nous évoquerons les différentes manières dont la perception peut être affective sans être elle-même une émotion, en exploitant le système affectif notamment pour enrichir le contenu perceptuel. Au second semestre, nous bénéficierons des interventions de deux directrices d’études invitées à l’EHESS : Christine Tappolet (Université de Montréal), philosophe spécialiste des émotions, et Fiona MacPherson (Université de Glasgow), philosophe spécialiste de la perception. Un programme détaillé des séances sera bientôt proposé sur cette page.

Séances spéciales:

19 mars :  Intervention de Christine Tappolet (U. de Montréal, directrice d’études invitée à l’EHESS), « Affective Knowledge in Ethics »

Can anger and frustration place someone in a favourable epistemic position? According to Marilyn Friedman (1986), they can: our affective states constitute epistemic touchstones, which allow for the assessments of one’s moral principles. What is the epistemic role of emotions, and more generally of affects? This paper starts by arguing that emotions confer prima facie and ultima facie justification to evaluative beliefs. It then discusses how emotions could be involved in the justification of deontic beliefs. Finally, it offers replies to several objections to the claim that emotions have a positive epistemic contribution.

26 mars, 15h-17h00 : Intervention de Christine Tappolet (U. de Montréal, directrice d’études invitée à l’EHESS), « The Anguish of Ivan Karamazov » (avec Mauro Rossi)

In a striking passage of The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevski describes Ivan Karamazov’s feelings as he approaches his father’s house. The goal of our paper is to provide a philosophical account of Ivan’s state of mind. On the basis of a brief typology of affective states, we argue that the anguish that Ivan experiences is best characterized as an occurrent affective state. But which kind of occurrent affective state is it, exactly? We consider the two main options. We examine whether Ivan’s anguish should be conceived of as an emotion, either a standard kind of emotion or an objectless emotion, and we offer reasons to think that Ivan’s anguish is neither. We then turn to the suggestion that Ivan’s anguish should instead be conceived of as a mood. We consider the main accounts of moods and argue that the answer is again negative. Finally, we argue that Ivan’s anguish belongs to a sui generis kind of affective state, which we tentatively propose to call ‘Dostoevskian affects’, and which is characterized by the fact that it bears on epistemically undetermined intentional objects.

26 mars, 17h00-19h00 : Intervention de Fiona Macpherson (U. de Glasgow, directrice d’études invitée à l’EHESS), « Cognitive Penetration »

Can the phenomenal character of perceptual experience be altered by the states of one’s cognitive system, for example, one’s thoughts or beliefs? If one thinks that this can happen (at least in certain ways that are identified in the lecture) then one thinks that there can be cognitive penetration of perceptual experience; otherwise, one thinks that perceptual experience is cognitively impenetrable. I claim that there is one alleged case of cognitive penetration that cannot be explained away by the standard strategies one can typically use to explain away alleged cases. The case is one in which it seems subjects’ beliefs about the typical colour of objects affects their colour experience. I propose a two-step mechanism of indirect cognitive penetration that explains how cognitive penetration may occur. I show that there is independent evidence that each step in this process can occur.

2 avril : Intervention de Fiona Macpherson (U. de Glasgow, directrice d’études invitée à l’EHESS), « Aphantasia and Hyperphantasia »

The two-step mechanism that I proposed in the previous lecture, that I claim explains how cognitive penetration might occur, involves perceptual imagination contributing to perceptual experience. In this lecture I discuss different forms of imagination and the phenomena of aphantasia, a condition in which people lack visual imagination and hyperphantasia, in which people have imagination that they claim is every bit as vivid as visual experience. I discuss what the evidence about these phenomena tell us about the interaction of perception and imagination and how we might explain what it is like to have visual imagination to those who lack it.