Research

As I see it, the standard treatment of the intentionality of action as deriving from metaphysically prior and distinct mental representations (beliefs, desires, intentions) gets things backwards. My action-forward account attempts to put matters in order by treating the intentionality of action as basic and analyzing the intentionality of representations in terms of the function of providing “practical access,” i.e.,  enabling or potentiating the performance of appropriate (or “practically-fitting”) intentional actions. 

While other teleological accounts of action invert the order of analysis between action and mental representation, mine is the first to do so while providing a robustly realist, noncircular analysis of mental representations. And while my account is broadly continuous with inferentialist accounts of linguistic meaning, mine is the first to provide a unified analysis of the genus representation in terms of intentional action on which inferentialism and robust representationalism are no longer at odds. The reasons the action-forward framework is distinctive in these ways are (briefly) as follows: 

First, where the other teleological accounts of action ultimately rest on an appeal to explanations (and thus linguistic practices), I propose a “problem-solving” account of intentional action on which actions are constituted by natural or synthetic functions to satisfy (“solve”) creatures’ needs (broadly construed) for flourishing (“practical problems”). Actions are typed by the kinds of practical problems they function to solve. 

Second, I take an idea from other Anscombe-inspired teleological accounts of action a step further. The idea is that actions are not to be primarily identified with completed events but rather with end-directed processes. The events (or sub-actions) through which actions are actualized (when they are) are to be understood as the matter of an action. Actions are in this way gestalts: the whole is greater than the parts. I go further by developing an “acorn metaphysics of action” (though I’m also toying with an immortal jellyfish metaphor) according to which actions are developing processes akin to the life processes of organisms. When an agent’s body or environment causally potentiates one of her problem-solving abilities for ability is causally potentiated, a token action is “conceived.” An action thus begins its life as an “acorn,” i.e., in the agent’s head, and competes for performance with other action acorns, germinating in perceptual acts of attention and, sometimes, developing all the way into a fully performed “adult” action, or completed process. 

Finally, this novel “acorn metaphysics” of action allows me to analyze representations qua concepts as subjective or intersubjective abilities (particular kinds of dispositions) for types of intentional actions, and qua judgements as potentiated actions, i.e., acorns. It also reveals a distinction between a “direct” and “indirect” species of action, where the indirect species essentially involves stand-ins that substitute (go proxy) for a target. This allows me to define two major species of representation:  The “de agendo” species functions to enable or potentiate direct actions, the targets of which are “attached” or immediately available for perceptual action (tele- and other “scopes” extend the reach of perceptual actions, while phones and live action televisions project the reach of the worldly target ). The “desubstituto” species functions to enable or potentiate indirect actions, the targets of which are “detached” in that stand-ins copy or reproduce practical problem-relevant structures of targets to which we remain connected via explicitly norm-governed historical social practices. In-between these two species lie the sorts of representations involved in expressive or animal communication.

The action-forward framework provides a rather different conception of the mind. Several of my recent and current projects aim to establish this framework as a practical representationalist alternative to and  replacement for orthodox representationalists theories mental representations and to the standard representational theory of mind in philosophy, psychology, and cognitive science which treats mental representations as propositional attitudes and/or on the model of de substituto representations like pictures and maps. While the belief-desire part of the framework has largely been worked out (though not yet published), I’m in the midst of developing action-forward accounts of memory, imagination, emotion, attention, and mental action, in many cases in collaboration with Seth Goldwasser. 

Several other recent and on-going projects explore the broadly ethical dimensions of  replacing traditional conceptions of mind and psychology with a more practically--oriented framework such as the action-forward framework. While I eventually want to consider implications for the ethical treatment of animals, right now I’m focused on issues that intersect with ethics of knowing, epistemic justice, virtue epistemology, and moral perception/emotions,  and the social nature of epistemic norms, concepts,  and practices, including scientific practices. For example, some of my work examines connections between conceptions of the proper functioning of mnemonic capacities and certain forms of epistemic injustice that impact trauma survivors.

For example, in “Trusting Traumatic Memory” (2023), Rebecca Dreier, Seth Goldwasser and I focus on sexual trauma and argue that the cognitive neuroscience of memory does not support what we call “The Traumatic Untrustworthiness Argument” (TUA). According to the TUA, the experience of trauma causes recall of traumatic events to be unreliable so, ceteris paribus, we should refrain from believing or acting on testimony from trauma victims concerning their traumas. In “Trauma, Trust & Competent Testimony”  Goldwasser  and I further develop our criticisms of the TUA and place them within the framework of Katherine Hawley’s (2019) account of trust and trustworthiness, and in particular, her notion of “incompetence.” Competence, capacity, and virtue frameworks fit naturally with the action-forward framework, and the framework’s practical conception of mental representation and cognitive architecture is in the background of that paper’s key contribution: the concept of diverse modes of manifestation for epistemic competences and its relation to epistemic ableism. Other in-progress work on sexual trauma considers its implications for perceptual epistemic competence and the epistemic injustice at the intersection of ableism and sexism.  Seth and I are also working on a project addressing the impacts of trauma on episodic memory in war veterans and victims of violent crimes.  We propose an action-forward account of episodic remembering as a fundamentally social skill for personal history-telling. An implication of our view is that the modes of successfully manifesting one’s competence to episodically remember will often require certain kinds of social interaction. Unfortunately, mainstream accounts of episodic remembering (and human cognitive capacities more generally) are highly individualistic. As a result, they fail to recognize important modes of manifesting episodic memory that are available to trauma victims, so trauma victims are deprived of the conditions for manifesting their competence to remember their traumatic experiences. The individualistic approach to memory also neglects the ways gender norms and expectations may influence the conditions for manifesting traumatic memories.   As a result, trauma victims are not only deprived of many effective therapies for healing from their trauma, they are also victims of a pernicious form of epistemic ableism.  

The concept of diverse modes of manifestation for epistemic competences is also put to work in “Saving Wisdom” (in progress), where I  critically assess the empirical grounds for a western culture’s devaluing of aging and the elderly as it manifests in the common association of old age with cognitive deterioration and incapacity. This association is commonly wielded to justify the lack of opportunities for elderly persons to engage meaningfully in rational activities and epistemic social practices. I argue that just as it’s a mistake to think that  traumatic experience only undermines memory capacities, so it’s a mistake to think that the changes in mnemonic capacities that accompany old age on the whole constitute decline. Once we properly interpret empirical findings and  recognize diverse modes of manifesting epistemic competences, we can recover the idea that wisdom is an epistemic achievement we may, with social institutions in place to prepare and support our epistemic ripening, look forward to in old age. 

In other in-progress work, I argue that the de agendo representations help make sense of “besires” and “apt” moral and political emotions like righteous anger.  In future work, I hope to explore the relationship between empathy and the conditions for rational or human intentional action and knowledge, the relationship between love and knowledge more generally, and the relationships between self- and other love and how trauma can impact loving relationships. Finally, Seth Goldwasser and I have recently embarked on a new project aimed at understanding epistemic arrogance and epistemic shame.