Interview on the journal 'Passion'

On the blog today, Kathleen speaks to Alfred Archer and Heidi Maibom about the journal 'Passion', which was launched relatively recently. Alfred and Heidi are editors-in-chief of the journal.
 

Alfred Archer

 KMH: Could you tell us a little bit about Passion, and its links to EPSSE?

AA & HM: Certainly. 2014, The European Philosophical Society for the Study of Emotions (EPSSE) has been going for ten years now and has grown into a wonderful, lively and welcoming group of scholars working on philosophical issues related to emotions. Several years ago, it was suggested that the society could look into starting its own journal . The main reason for this was that while EPSSE’s members were publishing their work in a range of philosophical and interdisciplinary journals, there was no academic journal dedicated to publishing the kinds of papers that EPSSE members were writing. Between 2017 and 2020 the executive board, then led by Achim Stephan, explored various options for starting an open access journal with commercial publishers.

When we took up our positions on the executive committee of the society (together with Joel Krueger), we decided that it would be better to look for a non-commercial publisher, as this would give a better financial deal for both the society and to the authors, as well as allowing the society to decide for itself how it wants the journal to be run. By happy coincidence, Tilburg University (where Alfred works) was just starting an initiative to encourage open science which included the start of an open access publisher, Open Press TiU. By working with Open Press TiU we are able to publish a completely open access journal that is free for both the reader and the author, and with only minimal costs for EPSSE. 

Heidi Maibom

KMH: What inspired you to start the journal?

AA & HM: We both felt that EPSSE was an inspiring group of philosophers, which every year would have a conference full of some of the most interesting philosophical work on emotions and that it was a real pity that there was no journal committed to publishing this kind of research. Having a journal would both be a major boost to the society and help draw attention to the valuable work being done by its members and others doing similarly exciting, cutting-edge, and engaged philosophical work on emotions. This feeling was shared by the other members of the executive board at the time (Max Gatyas, Joel Krueger and Lucy Osler) who are now the journal’s associate editors and who have been crucial in getting the journal started. 

KMH: What kind of topics do you hope to publish about in the journal?

AA & HM: As the title suggests, we are looking for original work on emotions. This could be papers on the nature of emotions generally or on specific emotions, such as guilt, anger, or joy. We are also interested in work on the connection between emotions and human welfare, politics, or art. We publish papers in both the philosophical traditions: analytic and continental. And although this is a philosophical journal, we are pretty ecumenical about what we take a philosophically interesting paper to be. We embrace interdisciplinarity and our own work is heavily influenced by work in fields traditionally external to philosophy, such as psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience, history, anthropology, and so on. One does not have to be a card-carrying philosopher to publish in Passion, but the paper should be philosophical in nature. 

KMH: Are there any events or special issues coming up which we should keep an eye out for? 

AA & HM: At this time, we publish two issues a year. One with papers received during the normal course of events, and another which is a special issue. The special issue has historically been connected with a workshop organized in connection with the yearly meeting of EPSSE. Last year, that issue was about co-experienced emotions (which you can read here), and this year it will be on the nature of emotions, and is guest edited by Heidy Meriste. We strongly encourage anybody philosophically inclined to submit their papers to the next issue Passion, which will appear this summer..

Why it’s important to ask what forms introspection could take

In today's post, François Kammerer and Keith Frankish write about their recent special issue 'What Forms Could Introspective Systems Take?'. François is a philosopher of mind. He holds a PhD from the Sorbonne in Paris (France) and currently works as a postdoc researcher at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum (Germany). His work focuses on consciousness and introspection. 

Keith is Honorary Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield, UK, Visiting Research Fellow at The Open University, UK, and Adjunct Professor with the Brain and Mind Programme in Neurosciences at the University of Crete, Greece. He works mainly in the area of philosophy of mind and is well known for his 'illusionist' theory of consciousness. 

François Kammerer

Human beings can introspect. They can look inwards, as it were, at their own minds and tell what thoughts, experiences, and feelings they have. That is, they can form representations of their own current mental states. And they can put these representations to use, flexibly modifying their behaviour in response to information about their own current mental state. For example, on a shopping trip to the supermarket I might suddenly notice that I am extremely hungry. And since I intend to follow a strict diet and know that I am weak-willed, I decide to avoid the confectionery section of the store.

Human introspection has some unusual psychological and epistemological features, especially when contrasted with perception, and philosophers have devoted much time to speculating about it. How exactly does human introspection work? What sort of knowledge does it provide? However, there is a more general question that has been underexplored: What could introspection be? What are the possible ways in which cognitive systems — human or non-human, natural or artificial — could come to represent their own current mental states in a manner that allows them to use the information obtained for flexible behavioural control?

Keith Frankish

It is important to ask this question. If we don’t, we might assume that the human form of introspection is the only possible one, and that if introspection occurs in nonhuman animals, or ever develops in artificial intelligences, it will take the same basic form as our own, with some simplifications or variations. And this assumption might be wrong. For this reason, we have just edited a special issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies devoted to exploring the neglected question of what introspection could be.

The issue opens with an article we coauthored, titled ‘What forms could introspective systems take? A research programme’, which serves as a target for the rest of the issue. In it, we argue that the question of what forms introspection could take is an important and fruitful one, and we give a precise, workable formulation of it. The central portion of the article then seeks to provide a preliminary map of the space of possible introspective systems. 

We focus on what we call ‘introspective devices’ — possible mechanisms for producing introspective representations. We propose that such devices can be classified along several dimensions, including, (a) how direct their processing is, (b) how conceptualized their output is, and (c) how flexible their functioning is. We define an introspective system as a set of one or more introspective devices, and we propose that such systems can be ranked in terms of how unified their component devices are.

We then use these dimensions to describe a possibility space, in which one could locate the introspective devices that various theorists have ascribed to humans, as well as a huge range of possible introspective devices that other creatures might employ.

To further refine the space of possible forms of introspection, we also examine what we call ‘introspective repertoires’. An introspective repertoire is a way of grouping and characterizing the mental states that an introspective device targets. For example, human introspection arguably groups together states on the basis of what direction of fit they have, whether they are perceptual or cognitive, and whether or not they possess intentional content, and it characterizes (conceptualizes) each group as such. However, there is no reason to think that all introspective systems would employ the same groupings and characterizations as our own, and we propose a provisional way of mapping other possible introspective repertoires.

Finally, the article proposes a research programme on possible introspective systems. We identify two routes for the exploration of introspective possibilities, one focusing on cases, the other on theories. The former looks at specific cases of introspection, either real or imaginary. Adopting this route, we might examine how different groups of humans introspect, considering differences due to culture, neurodivergence, meditative practice, and so on. We might also look how various non-human animals introspect (if they do) and ask whether and how current AI systems introspect. Finally, we might consider merely possible cases, imagining the forms introspection might take in beings such as aliens and future AIs, which have radically different forms of mentality from our own and different introspective needs.

The theory route, by contrast, involves looking at different theoretical models of introspection and of the mental states that introspection targets. By varying the parameters in these models, we should then be able to identify new introspective possibilities.

In both forms of exploration, the aim is to identify interesting possible forms of introspection — that is, ones that allow for efficient and flexible control of behaviour but are nevertheless different from the familiar human form. All this should give us insight into possible interesting ways in which a mind can introspect.

The special issue also includes fifteen contributions by philosophers and cognitive scientists, each responding in some way to our proposal.

Some contributors make direct comments on, or criticisms of, our research programme (Peter Carruthers & Christopher Masciari, Maja Spener, Daniel Stoljar). Others (Krzysztof Dołęga, Adriana Renero, Wayne Wu) discuss particular models or theories of human introspection in the context of our programme, testing and evaluating the conceptual tools we offer.

Most contributors, however, focus on some particular aspect of our research question. One looks at introspective variation among humans (Stephen Fleming). Others focus on introspection in neurodivergent individuals (Alexandre Billon) and in meditators as conceived in the Buddhist tradition (Bryce Huebner & Sonam Kachru). 

At least three pieces look at introspection in nonhuman animals (Heather Browning & Walter Veit, Maisy Englund & Michael Beran, Jennifer Mather & Michaella Andrade). One piece is devoted to introspection in current AI systems, asking whether Large Language Models, such as ChatGPT, could introspect (Robert Long), and AI introspection is also touched upon in other pieces (Heather Browning & Walter Veit, Krzysztof Dołęga, Stephen Fleming).

Finally, two contributions take a radically speculative perspective. They discuss introspection in imaginary minds very different from ours. One focuses on technologically enhanced humans (Pete Mandik). Another analyzes ‘ancillary’ artificial minds, which are intermediate between singular unified minds and group minds (Eric Schwitzgebel & Sophie Nelson).

This exciting multidisciplinary symposium is followed by a lengthy response paper in which we address the contributors’ arguments and proposals and draw some lessons for our project.

We hope that this special issue succeeds in making the case for the value of research on possible ways in which cognitive systems can introspect and that other researchers will pursue this research — ideally in unexpected directions!

Remembering Daniel Dennett

In this post, blog editors Lisa Bortolotti and Kengo Miyazono talk about how Daniel Dennett's work shaped their intellectual journeys. Lisa and Kengo have worked together on a number of projects, are editors of the journal Philosophical Psychology, and co-authored a textbook in the philosophy of psychology for Polity.

Lisa and Kengo

Lisa

As my graduate research on belief and rationality started in the late nineties, it won’t surprise anyone that Daniel Dennett’s work had a great influence on my ideas and on my way of coming to grips with what being a philosopher of mind involved. I remember reading The Intentional Stance (MIT 1987) many times, and studying the critiques by Stephen Stich and Christopher Cherniak to the notion that ideal rationality governs our practices of belief ascription. I had many questions and some concerns about the intentional stance, but I did love Dennett’s clear writing style and the elegance of his examples. Most of all, I cherished the sense of liberation (from the undue pressures of metaphysics) that I felt when I realised that it was OK to care about beliefs only in so far as we use them to understand each other. 

In May 2019 I got to meet Dennett at an event at the University of Reading where I was a speaker, entitled Growing Autonomy in Human and Artificial Agents. I was so nervous about presenting my work straight after the talk by Keith Frankish and Daniel Dennett! This was a hard act to follow indeed! I argued that there are some irrational beliefs, those that contribute to a view of ourselves as competent, coherent, and efficacious agents, that are instrumental to our pursuing our goals in the face of setbacks and also enhance our chances of attaining our goals. That idea, at the core of the project I was running at the time, had also been inspired by a paper by Ryan McKay and Daniel Dennett on adaptive misbeliefs. While I was walking back to my seat after the presentation, Dennett said he liked my talk and, trust me, that day won’t be forgotten anytime soon. 

My interests have continued to match and be inspired by those of Dennett. I was never particularly intrigued by consciousness but I have always been fascinated by how key notions in the philosophy of mind, such as belief, rationality, agency, and the self, were constantly challenged by experiences and discoveries in the psychological sciences and in mental health research. Dennett managed to combine philosophical rigour and inventiveness with the realisation that the best available empirical evidence is both a powerful inspiration and an unavoidable constraint for the philosopher’s theorising.

This remains his most important lesson to me. In Dennett’s words: 

"The most important job for philosophers is to negotiate traffic between our everyday vision of the world and science".

Kengo

I decided to write my PhD dissertation on delusions after reading Lisa’s book, Delusions and Other Irrational Beliefs, which was published in 2010. Lisa’s discussions of delusions in that book adopt a Dennett-Davidson-style interpretationism according to which the (third-personal) interpretation or belief-attribution is constitutive of the mental state of believing. In contrast, Dennett-Davidson-style interpretationism is not suitable for my project. I needed a more robust form of realism about beliefs where the mental state of believing is taken to be a discrete state of a person that is ontologically independent from the (third-personal) interpretation of belief-attribution. 

In my dissertation, I adopt a teleo-functionalist theory of beliefs, where the mental state of believing is defined in terms of its functions in a teleological sense (rather than a causal sense). In preparing the dissertation, while staying in Boston as a visiting student at MIT, I found that Dennett described himself as a teleo-functionalist (in the Appendix A of his Consciousness Explained) but wanted to know more about his commitments. So I visited him at Tufts in 2012. 

He was extremely smart, friendly and generous. He spent several hours in the afternoon with me, clarifying his own views on interpretationism, teleo-functionalism, etc. as well as giving me useful feedback on my dissertation project. That conversation with Dennett in that afternoon was, personally and academically, one of the best moments during my years as a graduate student. Later, when my dissertation turned into my first book Delusions and Beliefs: A Philosophical Inquiry, I included Dennett’s name in the acknowledgement section. 

I learned a lot not only from Dennett's ideas and theories on philosophical issues but also from his insight into how philosophy needs to be done, and how philosophers need to behave in philosophical debates. One of my favorite quotes from Dennett is "Dennett-Rapoport rules" (in this book) for criticising another philosopher's view: 

"1 You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.

2 You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).

3 You should mention anything you have learned from your target.

4 Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism."

First-person perspectives and scientific inquiry of autism

Today’s post is by Sarah Arnaud (Clemson University) on her recent paper, "First-person perspectives and scientific inquiry of autism: towards an integrative approach" (Synthese 2023).

Sarah Arnaud

In my paper, "First-person perspectives and scientific inquiry of autism: towards an integrative approach," published in Synthese, I analyse the essential role of first-person perspectives in enriching our comprehension of autism. This paper explores the interplay between scientific inquiry, activism, and the personal experiences of autistics, advocating for an approach that integrates insights from these varied sources.

The paper begins by confronting widespread misconceptions about autism, focusing particularly on the debate concerning the impact of science and activism in shaping our collective understanding of autism. I analyze the perspectives of Ian Hacking and Kenneth Kendler, two influential figures in this discourse. Hacking argues for the predominance of activism in influencing public perception and understanding of autism, while Kendler highlights the indispensable role of scientific research.

Moving beyond this debate, I critically evaluate the perceived dichotomy between scientific methodologies and activism in autism studies. I underline the significant contributions of the Neurodiversity movement and Critical Autism Studies, arguing that these perspectives have brought crucial comprehension to the autism discourse by effectively combining scientific research with activism. These approaches have not only enhanced our understanding but also fostered a more inclusive view of autism.

Central to my paper is the argument for incorporating autistic people’s perspectives in autism research. I claim that integrating these firsthand experiences is crucial for the validity of the autism category. This integration is examined through three distinct dimensions: content validity, criterion-related validity, and construct validity. Content validity deals with how comprehensively the autism category covers the diverse manifestations of autism. Criterion-related validity assesses the empirical correlations between the autism category and external standards, such as treatment responses. In the case of autism, the lack of response to alleged treatments is informative. Construct validity concerns the accuracy with which autism is differentiated from other categories and the effectiveness in identifying actual instances of autism.

A key aspect of my argument is the valuable and unique contributions that the perspectives of autistics bring. These perspectives not only challenge existing preconceptions and stereotypes about autism but also pave the way for more nuanced and accurate research. They offer a perspective through which we can understand the complexities of autism, leading to advancements in both theoretical and practical aspects of autism research.

In conclusion, I strongly advocate for an integrative approach to understanding autism, one that combines scientific research, activism, and the knowledge or experiences of autistic people. This approach, I argue, is indispensable for gaining a comprehensive and empathetic understanding of autism. Overall, my paper strongly supports the integration of autistics’ perspectives into the broader scientific research on autism. By challenging the traditional boundaries between science and activism, it highlights the need for an inclusive, multifaceted approach. This approach not only enriches our understanding of autism but also fosters a more inclusive society, where the voices of autistic people are heard and valued. 

What does it mean for a robot to be cultured?

This post is by Henry Taylor, who is a philosopher at the University of Birmingham. He is interested in in the philosophy of mind. His main areas of research in the area are attention, consciousness, peripheral vision and robotics.

Henry Taylor

You wake up and listen for the familiar sound of your household robot making you your morning porridge. On the way to work, you pop into a supermarket, and a robot helps you to find the products you need. You’re a mental health professional, and you spend the day working alongside the robots that support people with post-traumatic stress disorder. On your way home, you call into the care home where your parents are being looked after by both humans and robots.

The use of robots in all of the above contexts is currently being investigated. In healthcare, for example, researchers are exploring how robots can support humans with autism, cancer, dementia, diabetes social anxiety, and more.

These applications raise questions that straddle robotics and philosophy. One of them concerns how robots should respond to differing cultural norms and expectations. For example, different cultures seem to have different norms about personal space. This is important for understanding how far from a human the robot should stand. Different human cultures also have different expectations about facial expressions, hand gestures, physical greetings, and so on. How should we take these on board when we’re designing the robot?

Cultural robotics is the study of how robots can fit into this world of varying (and constantly shifting) cultural expectations and practices. The most fundamental question in cultural robotics is: what do we mean by ‘culture’? One popular approach in robotics is to equate culture with nationality. On this approach, ‘culture’ just means things like British, Canadian, Indian, Iranian, Italian, Japanese, Nigerian, etc. However, this approach has raised concerns in the robotics community. Equating culture with nationality runs the risk of propagating an over-simplistic approach, where whole cultures are reduced to a few stereotyped patterns of behaviour associated with particular countries. It also marginalises those who do not fit into the dominant patterns of behaviour in a particular country, such as refugees, immigrants, religious minorities, or members of subcultures.

In our recent work, myself and my co-author, Masoumeh Mansouri, have addressed this issue by arguing for a more nuanced definition of culture in robotics. Rather than looking for ‘the correct’ definition of culture, we argue for a conceptually fragmented approach. This involves accepting that there are many different ways of approaching culture in sociology and the humanities, and recognising that different approaches to culture might be appropriate for different areas of robotics. For example, a robot designed only to give directions to humans in a shopping centre may only require norms of politeness and helpfulness. Conversely, a robot designed for long-term use by the same group of people in a factory or hospital may need to grow and change its behaviour over time, in response to changes in the social dynamics of that environment.

It is inevitable that robots will come to occupy a more prominent role in our everyday lives. This raises fundamental questions about how these robots can behave appropriately, and also which social interactions should be kept human.

Experiences of Loss conference report

In this post, Kathleen reports from the 'Experiences of Loss' Conference which took place on the 26th and 27th October 2023, at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. The conference was organised and ran by Sabrina Coninx (VU Amsterdam). The selection of talks over two days all spoke to the theme of loss in different contexts, addressing self, illness, and memory. 

Day 1

Regina Fabry

Regina Fabry (Macquarie University): Sharing experiences of loss through self-narration: possibilities and limitations. (online)

Regina first clarified the concept of a self-narrative. Individuals might also draw on master narratives, which are widely shared in a socio-cultural community or society. These are value-laden, usually reflecting systems of power and oppression in play. Individuals might push back against these master narratives with alternative narratives, as a form of resistance. In cases of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), there is a sense of loss or absence which is very much felt by the individual. This is a loss of possibility of change, of interactions with one’s environment, and of interpersonal connection. This affects one’s capacities for crafting one’s own self-narrative, but the practice of writing a memoir of one’s experience can help regain these capacities. However, given that there are master narratives and literary genre expectations in play when writing a memoir, this sets limits on how these experiences can be shared in this form.

Eleanor Byrne

Eleanor Byrne (University of Birmingham): Narrative Deference

Eleanor talked about how distributed memory can affect one’s self-narratives. Group memory enables greater recall than individual memory, this might happen amongst married couples, for instance. Sometimes, an individual has no memory of an event at all, and in these cases, they might defer to another who can remember. This means that their self-narrative is also significantly deferred to another. This narrative deference demonstrates how intimate others not only can play this role for us, but this affects our experience of them. We experience them as people who have the possibility of ‘taking hold’ of our self-narratives when it comes to matters we cannot directly remember ourselves. One way of understanding this is to see these people as affective scaffolds. They are trusted over time to reliably make possible an understanding (through narrative) of phenomena which could be otherwise missed or overlooked. They can help make sense of quite difficult and unarticulated phenomena.

 

Lilith Lee (VU Amsterdam): Love and Friendship: Daoist Partnership and Zhuangzi’s two losses

Lilith talked about various possible losses in cases of death. One is the loss of a life partnership, and the second is the loss of intellectual partnership. In the Zhuangzi, Zhuangzi grieves the loss of his wife and Huizi, despite death being seen otherwise as simply one of the many transformations that take place in the world. There are couple of ways that scholars try to make sense of this, but Lilith emphasised the depth of loss of an intellectual partner or foil. Given the loss of a fundamentally discursive skill here which may be integral to one’s life and livelihood, one arguably loses a part of oneself as well. These friendships and partnerships themselves also help individuals make sense of loss.

Peter Stilwell

Peter Stilwell (McGill University): The Self and Suffering: From Theory to Pain Practice. (online)

Peter discussed the difference between pain and suffering, and explored a newer concept of ‘pain-related suffering’, and this draws on experiences of loss. One difference seems to be that people can coherently say that their pain doesn’t bother them too much, but cannot say that their suffering doesn’t bother them too much. From qualitative interviews on pain-related suffering, it was found that people experienced disruption to the minimal self insofar as they experienced alteration or loss of perceived agency and ownership over their actions and experiences, and disruption to the narrative self insofar as they experienced loss or threat to valued life roles, relationships and aspirations.

Leon DeBruin

Leon DeBruin (Radboud University): Neurodiversity and Identity Formation.

Leon discussed the possible sources of harm when it comes to mental health conditions, which are teased apart in Wakefield’s hybrid account of disorder. One source of harm is the dysfunction itself, within some underlying psychological, biological or developmental process. But another source of harm is still deviating from socio-cultural norms, and the reactions which come from that. Many struggle with self-illness ambiguity; distinguishing between oneself and between what is often referred to as one’s mental illness. There may be spectrum, wherein some identify fully with their illness, whereas others do not identify at all. Individuals may ask themselves whether their own desires, actions and emotions can be attributed to themselves or to their illness. But many proponents of neurodiversity see their mental illness as actually a manifestation of natural variation and integral to their selfhood.

Day 2

Gerrit Glas

Gerrit Glas (Amsterdam UMC): Experiences of Loss in Mental Illness

Gerrit discussed the many links and interrelations to pay attention to between the patient as a person, the patient with an illness, and the patient in a context, whether that be individual, institutional, or societal. Senses of loss could appear in any of these dimensions. In particular, individuals also have a fundamental I-Self relation - one’s ‘self-referential pole’ in relating to the world. This relation is not explicitly felt by people but it is not an illusion either, and senses of loss here are very deeply felt and sometimes referred to as ‘disorders of ipseity’.

Lucy Osler

Lucy Osler (Cardiff University): Losses and Loneliness in Anorexia Nervosa

In Lucy’s talk, she emphasised the experiences of social loss, particularly of recognition and understanding, which can underlie cases of anorexia nervosa. There can be a somewhat cyclical relationship between experiences of social loss and anorexia nervosa, where each can contribute to the continuation of the other. In particular, feelings of loneliness can bring individuals to enter and remain embedded in communities based around the condition, such as pro-anorexia forums online. Lucy described these place as ‘affectively sticky’, in that they are very difficult to leave even when they cannot offer any new information or insights. These communities can give a sense of control, connection, purpose, emotional regulation and so on, but they also provide affective scaffolding for the condition itself.

 

Lieke Schrijvers

Lieke Schrijvers (VU Amsterdam): ‘Loss’ and ‘Gain’ Amongst Women Becoming Jewish, Christian or Muslim.

Lieke discussed her PhD study which looked at women who converted to Judaism, Christianity, or Islam in the Netherlands. The traditional conception of these conversions are strongly characterised by associated ‘losses’– loss in autonomy, in freedom, and of the emancipation that the women would otherwise have. Lieke emphasised that the real picture of conversation is more complicated, and involves transformation of their identity, daily lives, emotions, agency, and social circumstances. These processes of transformation mean that convert women themselves were less likely to have a clear sense of ‘before’ and ‘after’ their conversion, with their sense-making of the process contributing to the process itself. All of this means that using a framework of losses and gains is inadequate.

 

Marta Carava

Marta Carava (Purdue University): Norm-Induced Forgetting

Marta suggested that there are some cases of forgetting which take place despite agents having the cognitive resources required to retrieve the information, and so cognitive explanations of this forgetting are not adequate. She suggests that norm-induced forgetting helps explain these cases instead. In these cases, forgetting is caused and underpinned by some relevant social norms. This captures that there are normative elements to the mechanism of forgetting, which we can see in cases such as the tendency for women’s contributions to conversations to be forgotten. Culturally shared biases about the social group, ‘women’, can be triggered by the content of the memory (i.e., what the woman said) when the agent tries to access it.

Philosophy of Mental Disorder: An Ability-Based Approach

This post is by Sanja Dembić. Sanja is a research associate at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and a member of the “Human Abilities” Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities. Here, she discusses her recent book 'Philosophy of Mental Disorder: An Ability-Based Approach'. 

What is it to have a mental disorder? There are many different answers to this question in the literature, the most prominent being those that refer to the concept of biological dysfunction. These views are usually developed with reference to clear cases of bodily disorders (or: diseases). The idea behind them is that if we have an adequate analysis of the concept of bodily disorder, we will also have an adequate analysis of the concept of mental disorder. In contrast, my aim was to develop a concept of mental disorder that is developed with reference to clear cases of mental disorder.

In this book, I offer an ability-based view of mental disorders. I argue that an individual has a mental disorder if and only if they are—in the relevant sense—unable to respond adequately to their available reasons in some of their thinking, feeling or acting and they are harmed by the condition underlying or resulting from this inability. I call this the “Rehability View”. I develop a detailed analysis of the concept of inability that is relevant in the psychiatric and psychotherapeutic context by drawing on the most recent literature on the concepts of ability, reasons and harm. The Rehability View does not imply that an individual with a mental disorder cannot learn to respond adequately to their available reasons. It suggests that therapy aimed at “cure” should, at its core, empower the affected individual.

Sanja Dembić

The Rehability View is developed by the method of explication. The goal of an explication is to formulate a concept that is fruitful to us for certain purposes. I argue that we need the concept of mental disorder for (a) the theoretical purpose of scientific classification and (b) to help us settle certain practical or normative questions concerning treatment and responsibility. In light of these purposes, I propose the following set of adequacy conditions for an explication of the concept of mental disorder: to capture the distinction between (1) mental health and disorder, (2) mental and bodily disorder, (3) mental disorder and deviances from social, legal or moral norms, as well as to clarify (4) what about having a mental disorder it is that may justify certain normative consequences (such as eligibility for treatment or excuse from moral responsibility).

The Rehability View has various normative aspects. Normative considerations are relevant to determine (1) what class of abilities is relevant to mental disorders; (2) at what threshold an inability can be attributed; (3) what constitutes psychiatrically relevant harms; and (4) whether an individual’s actions or mental states are adequate responses to their available reasons. I see this as an advantage of this approach because I believe that it is better to make clear (and discuss) the normative aspects of the attribution of mental disorders than to deny them.

In sum, my aim was not to offer just another conception of mental disorder, but to develop a systematic approach that incorporates insights from philosophy of psychiatry and adjacent philosophical disciplines.

Addressing Epistemic Injustice: Perspectives from Health Law and Bioethics

This post is by Lisa Bortolotti who reports on a symposium was organised by Mark Flear to explore interdisciplinary perspectives (law, philosophy of psychiatry, bioethics, sociology, and more) on epistemic injustice, hosted by City University on 15th September 2023. 

This is a report of some of the talks presented at the symposium. The other talks were given by Anna Drożdżowicz (on epistemic injustice and linguistic exclusion); Miranda Mourby (on reasonable expectations of privacy in healthcare); and Neil Maddox and Mark Flear (on epistemic injustice and separated human biomaterials). 

The City Law School, venue of the symposium

The first presentation was by David Archard (Queen’s University, Belfast) on lived experience and testimonial injustice. Lived experience is being increasingly used in debates on a number of controversial areas—as a source of special authority on a given subject. The appeal to lived experience often works in resisting claims that contradict lived experience. Is refusal to listen to lived experience a form of testimonial injustice? For Fricker, testimonial injustice when the speaker receives less credibility than they deserve. The credibility deficit is due to an identity prejudice in the hearer. Testimonial injustice can manifest in different forms (disbelief, ignoring, rejecting). 

Are statements of lived experience reliable? How do we establish that? What if the people with lived experience are deluded or mistaken about what has been experienced? Lived experience can be source of advice (consultative) or authority (authoritative). Reasons to consult are not necessarily reasons to consider lived experience authoritative. Also, there is an important difference between what lived experience is and what can be inferred from lived experience. Injustice is in not listening and not giving weight.

The second talk by Lisa Bortolotti focused on research with Kathleen Murphy-Hollies (both at the University of Birmingham) on curiosity as an antidote to epistemic injustice. Lisa and Kathleen talked about the complex history of curiosity in the philosophical literature from a sin to a virtue, and argued that curiosity can be both an epistemic virtue when people disposed to attain knowledge have some basic skills for pursuing curiosity, use their judgement, are well motivated, and find pleasure in the pursuit of curiosity. 

Lisa and Kathleen also suggested that curiosity can be a moral virtue when directed at other people as it can support enhanced mutual understanding. To argue their case, they discussed cases in which people’s experiences are contested and people’s views are marginalised and pathologized. In those cases, an interpreter being curious helps them better understand the speaker’s perspective. 

The third speaker was Jonathan Montgomery (University College London) discussed public reason and religious voices in judicial reasoning. Jonathan focused on cases where courts and parents disagree on whether life support should be stopped for children. Often parents are motivated by religious views in arguing that life support should continue. Other cases are where a medical treatment or intervention is not wanted by the family due to religious convictions (e.g., refusing a blood transfusion that may be life saving). 

Are the courts dismissive of parents’ perspectives? Is there a shared reality that is misunderstood by one party and not the other? How are credibility markers distributed? Jonathan reviewed a number of interesting and controversial cases where there are several epistemic issues at play, including risk assessment and disability discrimination. How to address these problems? 

One suggestion is to avoid the court and try mediation first, on the assumption that less epistemic injustice occurs in a mediation effort. Another suggestion is to think clearly about epistemic authority: is it medical competence or lived experience? Whose voice is going to be powerful in the given context? The presentation finished with a super interesting table detailing different ways of thinking about events as instances of epistemic injustice.

Next, Priscilla Alderson (University College London) focused on epistemic injustice in the context of children having major surgery. She reviewed how we moved from children themselves and parents too from being removed from care to important questions being raised about the role of parents and children in making healthcare decisions. Priscilla’s research with patients and surgeons suggests that it is key to obtain consent from children for surgery, even very young children. They can be explained what is happening to them—we can inform and involve them in the procedures and the reasons for them.

A famous case of conjoined twins was examined in some detail: a Senegalese father was pressurised into agreeing to surgery to separate his daughters after being told that one of them would not survive due to her weaker heart. In the BBC programme on this case there was a clear emphasis on medical expertise and undermining the parent’s view and there was absolutely no reference to what the twins thought or wanted. Even the ethics committee’s intervention was not helpful as it did not include the concern about how the surviving child would have felt after surgery, realising that she was alive because of her sister’s sacrifice.  Priscilla talked about the need for a more engaged and embodied bioethics.

After lunch, Magda Furgalska (York Law School) contextualised epistemic injustice within mental health law research. In Magda’s research with people who experience credibility deficits in legal context, she found that many participants were surprised that she did not require to see medical records or other evidence to corroborate what they were saying. And also, when she presented her work at conferences, audiences often questioned whether research participants did tell her the truth. 

This emerges clearly in the context of issues about insight. Mental health patients are often experiencing a catch-22. For patients, it is not just a question to recognise that they are ill but to comply with the clinicians’ view of their condition. So, if patients realise that they are ill and they should be going to hospital, then for the clinician they are not seriously ill and they shouldn’t be hospitalised. If they do not realise that they are ill and they don’t think they should go to hospital, then for the clinician they are seriously ill, and they should be hospitalised—and their report is not to be relied on anyway. 

Insight and capacity are often used interchangeably, and compliance is used to determine both insight and capacity. Deciding whether someone has capacity on the basis of whether they have insight, is a clear misapplication of the law, and also a case of silencing and testimonial harm as capacity is denied pre-emptively without being tested.

Magdalena Eitenberger (University of Vienna) discussed epistemic injustice in the area of chronic illness. Magdalena introduced the concept of “patho-curative epistemic injustice” to apply to diabetes and hepatitis C. This concept is drawn from the concept of patho-centric epistemic injustice developed by Havi Carel and Ian Kidd. 

The idea is that some people experience a credibility deficit due to their illness and hard facts are prioritised over lived experience reports. The new concept is supposed to concentrate on “curedness” and how in some cases of chronic illness an understanding in terms of being cured or fixed is not available. Biomedical models offer a reduced and simplistic conception of disease and health where problem-fixing is central. But more holistic therapeutic solutions are ignored.

This also results in patients not being able to talk about their experiences over and beyond the idea that a person’s body can be either fixed or damaged. What “cured” means is not how the person feels (whether they feel healthy) but what their glucose levels are. Lived experience is not considered relevant and this impacts healthcare policy and welfare too. The role of the person as someone who manages their health trajectory is also undermined if the person is given the (technological) resources to monitor their health.

Next, Swati Gola (University of Exeter) addressed epistemic injustice in the India’s traditional healthcare system. Indian system of medicine is very heterogeneous system, some indigenous and some introduced from abroad. There are a lot of folk traditions at the margins (such as healers) which have been sidelined as unscientific after the British occupation. How should we understand indigenous health traditions in the light of colonialism? Is there any epistemic injustice against those traditions?

Swati analysed the current situation in India, suggesting that knowledge colonialism is still a big problem, due to the dominance of the biomedical models and the power of the medical professions as seen through the lens of Western medicine. A case was made for epistemic justice to be essential to the decolonisation of knowledge and the decolonisation of the self via issues of hermeneutical injustice.

Trust Responsibly

This post is by Jakob Ohlhorst, who is a postdoc fellow on the Extreme Beliefs project at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. This post is about his recent book, Trust Responsibly (Routledge), which is available open access as an e-book.

Jakob Ohlhorst

"Strange coincidence, that every man whose skull has been opened had a brain!"

'Trust responsibly' opens with this joke from Ludwig Wittgenstein. In On Certainty, he argued that some things we can only trust to be the case because any evidence which speaks in favour of the things we trust must already presuppose the things we trust. That everyone has a brain was a better example in the 1950s than it is now. This goes beyond trust in people. It also involves trust that the world is older than 100 years, trust that you are not in a coma and dreaming, and so on. I argue in my book that – to trust responsibly – we need virtues.

The problem with trust is, if you don’t need any evidence, then you could trust just about anything to be the case. You might trust that astrology is a good way to learn about people or that aliens are causing catastrophes with lasers from Mars. How do we tell good cases of trust from bad cases of trust? Giving completely up on trust is not an option; we would end up in total scepticism and cognitive paralysis. We could not do anything cognitive, not doubt, not believe, nor investigate. So we must at least be somewhat warranted to trust in our fundamental presuppositions.

I argue that we are warranted to trust in presuppositions that enable us to exercise our epistemic virtues. I explain my view of epistemic virtues in more detail here on Imperfect Cognitions, but essentially, they are the psychological resources that enable us to discover and gain knowledge, communicate it, and solve problems. Our virtues would not work if we did not trust them to work. We are therefore warranted to trust our virtues.

You might think: but wait, how can we know which of our psychological resources we can actually trust? How do we recognise virtues? If we possess certain reflective virtues like conscientiousness that allow us to evaluate our own thinking, then we can recognise which virtues are trustworthy. I argue that we are warranted to trust virtues on two conditions. First, we must be aware of the operation of the psychological processes that support the virtue – but we do not need to know that they are virtuous. Second, if we had these reflective virtues that allow us to evaluate our own thinking, then we would recognise them as virtues. When these two conditions are satisfied, our trust in a virtue is responsible and warranted.

To illustrate this, consider a rabbit’s flight response. It is hyper-sensitive, it will detect danger where there is none, thus the flight response is no epistemic virtue. If – through some miracle – the rabbit acquired reflective virtues and started thinking about the response, it would realise that it is unreliable and hence stop trusting it. Therefore, the rabbit is not warranted to trust the response. Still, the rabbit has other simple virtues that it is warranted to trust, say its ability to recognise food.

Disentangling the relationship between conspiratorial beliefs and cognitive styles

This post is by Biljana Gjoneska, who is is a national representative and research associate from the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Here, she discusses her paper in the Psychology of Pseudoscience special issue introduced last week, and is the second post this week in this series on papers in this special issue. 

Biljana investigates the behavioural aspects (conspiracy beliefs) and mental health aspects (internet addiction) of problematic internet use. She has served in a capacity as a national representative for the EU COST Action on “Comparative Analysis of Conspiracy Theories” and has authored, reviewed and edited numerous scientific outputs on the topic. The most recent topical issue can be seen here.

Biljana Gjoneska

In my article for this special issue in Frontiers, I offer an integrated view on the relationship between conspiratorial beliefs (that secret and malevolent plots are forged by scheming groups or individuals) and three distinct cognitive styles (analytic thinking, critical thinking and scientific reasoning). To best illustrate my reasoning and the theoretical conceptualizations, I will draw from personal experience and contemplate one (seemingly) unrelated situation:

Prior to writing this post, I received another invitation to summarize my study for a popular outlet. The invitation was sent by email from an unknown address. The sender claimed to be a freelancer journalist, who is writing a piece for the New York Times Magazine, and is interested to learn more about the reasons why some people seem more prone to endorse conspiracy theories.

As scientists, we receive various sorts of daily invitations that are related to our work (to review articles, contribute to special issues, join editorial boards among others), many of which prove to be false, or seven predatory. So, I first aimed to to understand whether the person and the invitation are real, realistic and reliable. Hence, I employed my analytic thinking (which is slow, deliberate and effortful) to conduct a comprehensive search and gather information from verifiable sources. In essence, analytic thinking helped me to discern fact from fiction in my everyday processing of information.

Once I realized that the invitation seems credible, I needed to make decision whether to accept it. For this, I had to remain open and willing to (re)consider, (re)appraise, review and interpret facts, as a way to update my prior beliefs associated with similar experiences (e.g., with seemingly exaggerated claims and invitations received by email), In short: I employed critical thinking, as a way to decide whether to believe or not certain information. Critical thinking is essential when making judgments and daily decisions. It is only then, that I proceeded to accept the invitation.

Once I made the decision to accept the invitation, I started to anticipate the topics of discussion, as a way to improve the overall quality of the planned conversation. In doing so, I employed my scientific reasoning competencies (relying on induction, deduction, analogy, causal reasoning), for the purposes of scientific inquiry (hypothesizing on the cause for the invitation, and the possible outcomes of the conversation). In short, I relied on my scientific reasoning in an attempt to gain wholesome understanding of the observed subject matter by solving problems and finding solutions.

With this, I conclude my presentation on the three cognitive styles that are covered in my perspective article. Analytic thinking, critical thinking and scientific reasoning, are all guided by rationality and goals for reliable information processing, decision making, and problem solving. All three rely to a different extent, on our thinking dispositions, metacognitive strategies, and advanced cognitive skills. As such they comprise a tripartite model of the reflective mind (that builds on the tripartite model of mind by Stanovich & Stanovich. 2010).

Importantly, a failure in any of these domains might be associated with an increased tendency to endorse conspiratorial beliefs or other pseudoscientific claims. This explains why, in certain instances, people with high cognitive abilities, or even advanced analytic thinking capacities, remain ‘susceptible’ toward conspiratorial beliefs. At the moment, there is ample evidence to support the link between the analytic thinking and the (resistance to) conspiratorial beliefs, while the literature on the latter two categories remains scarce.

In closing of this post, I will refer back to the original story that served to illustrate my key points. Namely, a poignant piece of writing stemmed from the conversations with the scientists who contributed to this special issue, and was published in the New York Times Magazine. It tells a story of verified scientists who became proponents of a disputed theory, using scientific means (arguments but also publishing venues) to advance their claims. This piece contemplates on the possibilities for a failed scientific reasoning, and highlights the associated risks. Needless to say, they are quite dangerous, because they might heavily blur the lines between fact and fiction, leaving a sense of shattered reality in so many people.

Stakes of knowing the truth: the case of a “miracle” treatment against Covid-19

Tiffany Morisseau is a researcher in Cognitive Psychology at the Laboratory of Applied Psychology and Ergonomics (LaPEA, University of Paris). Her current research projects mainly focus on the question of epistemic trust and vigilance, and the socio-cognitive mechanisms underlying how people come to process scientific information.

Tiffany is a member of the Horizon Europe KT4D consortium KT4D (kt4democracy.eu), on the risks and potential of knowledge technologies for democracy, and leads the Psychology part. Here, she talks about her paper in the Philosophy of Pseudoscience special issue, introduced last week by editor Stefaan Blancke.

Tiffany Morisseau

Improving science education and media literacy is an important aspect of dealing with online misinformation. By doing so, the level of accuracy at which information is considered false is raised, thereby ensuring that blatant errors that are no longer perceived as plausible, are eliminated from the public sphere. But merely being plausible is not a sufficient condition for information to be valid! Information can be both plausible and false, and the likelihood of it being true must be critically assessed. 

This requires some cognitive effort, especially when it comes to complex scientific information that is not easily accessible to the public at large. From an individual point of view, engaging in such an investigation is only worthwhile if the stakes of knowing the truth are high enough. Significant efforts in media and science education may therefore not be enough: one can consume and share false facts while being highly educated, for reasons other than the search for truth.

In our paper (Morisseau, Branch & Origgi, 2021) published in this special issue in Frontiers, we illustrated this with the example of hydroxychloroquine, which has been considered as a potential treatment for Covid-19 and has been the focus of much media and popular interest, particularly in France. 

Professor Didier Raoult and his team at the IHU Méditerranée Infection (Marseille) had reported positive results from a study on the effect of HCQ against Covid-19, in March 2020 (Gautret et al., 2020). Although relatively unknown to the general public a few months earlier, Raoult was becoming increasingly popular. But in the weeks and months that followed, many questioned the assumption that HCQ was actually useful against Covid-19, with scientific consensus soon emerging that it was not effective. 

However, HCQ remained very popular with the public. What was the reason? Let us try to answer this question. To begin with, the hypothesis was certainly plausible, so it was cognitively and socially acceptable to hold it as true.

Secondly, holding the efficacy of HCQ to be true had many benefits, allowing for the satisfaction of a number of social and psychological motivations - from understanding the world (Lantian et al., 2021) to protecting one's identity (Nera et al, 2021; Nyhan and Reifler, 2019), as well as social integration and reputation management (Baumeister and Leary, 1995; Dunbar, 2012; Graeupner and Coman, 2017; Mercier, 2020). 

In particular, the promotion of HCQ has been strongly associated with an attitude of distrust towards French elites, perceived as arrogant and disrespectful of popular practices and lifestyles (Sayare, 2020). The appeal to popular common sense and pragmatism, as opposed to experts suspected of being disconnected from the field with their complicated methodologies, has also been used by politicians to justify pro-HCQ positions (Risch, 2020). 

But when its objective (in this case, the promotion of a political stance) moves away from the transmission of information per se, communication ceases to be associated with a strong presumption of truthfulness (Lynch, 2004; Cassam, 2018).

Of course, it is important to use accurate information when making decisions that rely on it. But in this particular case, neither the efficacy of the drug nor its actual adverse effects were paramount. First, the virus was initially perceived as posing little threat to healthy adults and children (Baud et al., 2020), and the question of whether HCQ was actually effective was ultimately of minor importance to most people. 

Secondly, the risks associated with taking HCQ were perceived as very low anyway. Many Covid-19 patients testified to the innocuous nature of the treatment, and the question of its dangerousness at the population level was not so relevant at the individual level.

More generally, we live with many false or approximate beliefs anyway (Boyer, 2018; Oliver and Wood, 2018). This is not necessarily a problem as such, if these beliefs do not lead individuals to make choices against their own interests, or against the interests of society at large. But precisely, the building of a science-based consensus shared by all members of a society is essential to create the conditions for translating this knowledge into effective policies. 

When “superficial” opinions – i.e., opinions that do not have a strong epistemic basis – enter the public sphere (in April 2020, a poll published in the newspaper Le Parisien claimed that “59% of the French population believed HCQ was effective against the new coronavirus”), they influence the way societal issues are conceived. 

This can negatively affect the quality of policy decisions that are made, with concrete consequences for people's well-being. Public opinions on scientific issues must therefore be interpreted at the right level, especially as they will determine major political and societal choices.

The Psychology of Pseudoscience

Stefaan Blancke is a philosopher of science at the department of Philosophy at Tilburg University in the Netherlands and a member of the Tilburg Center for Moral Philosophy, Epistemology and Philosophy of Science (TiLPS). 

His current research mainly focuses on the role of cooperation and reputation in science, pseudoscience, and morality. His website is www.stefaanblancke.com; you can also find him on Twitter (@stblancke). This post is about a special issue on the Psychology of Pseudoscience, which Stefaan was an editor for. 

Stefaan Blancke

As a philosopher of science, I have since long been interested in pseudoscience. Not only because pseudoscience induces us to think about what science is – so that we can explain why pseudoscience is not science; but also, because I want to understand what makes our minds vulnerable to beliefs that plainly contradict our best scientific theories. Examples of pseudoscience abound, from creationism over homeopathy and anti-vaccination to telepathy. Given that we should expect the mind to reliably represent the world this is surprising. Why do so many people cherish weird beliefs?

To answer this question, we must first understand the human mind, which inevitably brings us to the domain of psychology. Building on research in evolutionary and cognitive psychology and anthropology we can assume that pseudoscientific beliefs tend to become widespread because they tap into our evolved intuitive expectations about the world. These intuitions are in place because they allow us to effectively navigate our surroundings. 

However, they also create biases by which we are disposed to adopt beliefs that conflict with a scientific understanding of the world. Creationism, for instance, taps into our psychological essentialism and teleological intuitions, whereas mechanisms for pathogen detection and aversion make us suspicious of and even oppose modern technologies such as genetic modification. Their intuitive appeal makes these beliefs contagious. Furthermore, pseudoscientific beliefs also adopt the trappings of science to piggyback on the epistemic and cultural authority of science. This study of the spread of pseudoscientific beliefs has resulted in an epidemiology of pseudoscience.

In line with this research on the frailness of the human mind I, together with a team of fellow philosophers and psychologists, edited a special collection on the psychology of pseudoscience for Frontiers in Psychology. The collection consists of four contributions each of which sheds a new light on a different aspect relating to the central theme. As three out of the four articles will be presented in more detail by the authors, I will just briefly introduce them here. Tiffany Morisseau, T.Y. Branch, and Gloria Origgi discuss how people often use scientific information for social purposes which makes them less concerned about the accuracy than the plausibility of the information. 

This allows controversial scientific theories to spread. Joffrey Fuhrer, Florian Cava, Nicolas Gauvrit, and Sebastian Dieguez provide a conceptual analysis of pseudo-expertise, a phenomenon notoriously common in pseudoscience. The authors also develop a framework for further research. Biljana Gjoneska investigates how the cognitive styles of analytic thinking, critical thinking and scientific reasoning relate to (dis)trust in conspiratorial beliefs. And, finally, in an article not presented here, Spencer Mermelstein and Tamsin C. German argue that counterintuitive pseudoscientific beliefs spread because they play into our communication evolution mechanisms.

I heartily recommend reading next week's post from Tiffany Morisseau on her paper in the issue, and consulting the articles of our collection. I hope you enjoy the read!

Loneliness as a closure of the affordance space: The case of COVID-19 pandemic

This post is by Susana Ramírez-Vizcaya, who is a post-doctoral fellow at the Institute for Philosophical Research, National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). She works in embodied cognitive science, the enactive approach, phenomenology, and habits. This post is about her recent paper on loneliness and the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Susana Ramírez-Vizcaya

When social distancing measures were implemented to reduce the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, many specialists were concerned about a potential dramatic upsurge in loneliness, which was particularly worrying given the wide range of physical and mental health problems associated with it (e.g., depression, anxiety, substance use, cognitive decline, cardiovascular diseases, and suicide risk). However, the few longitudinal studies comparing loneliness levels before and during the social contact restrictions present inconsistent results, with many factors influencing whether the levels of loneliness increased, decreased, or remained constant.

These inconsistent findings underscore the fact that loneliness is not the same as social isolation, so one may feel lonely even among many other people or, conversely, may not experience loneliness even if socially isolated. Thus, the reduction in the number of face-to-face interactions during pandemic-related social restrictions is not a reliable indicator of people’s level of loneliness. In this regard, I propose that loneliness, unlike social isolation, arises not from a lack of social contacts but from a lack of connections, in the sense that, while experiencing loneliness, one lacks meaningful relationships not only with other living beings but also with oneself and aspects of the environment.

I explore this idea by conceiving of loneliness as resulting from a closure in one’s affordance space, i.e., a closure in the range of relevant possibilities for action and interaction that are open to a concrete individual with a particular repertoire of habits. Given a relational reading of the notion of affordances, this closure pertains to both individuals and the materiality of their environment, so the same aspects of the environment could show up as meaningful and solicit action for one person but not for another. Importantly, the relevant affordances missing in loneliness are those that a person would find enjoyable or attractive to engage with if they were present and she had the adequate skills to do so. Moreover, I argue that the lack of those affordances that are most central to our habitual identities, and therefore more meaningful to us, will have a greater impact on our experience of loneliness.

To support this proposal, I consider three possible ways in which the COVID-19 lockdown may have increased levels of loneliness in some people by suddenly contracting their affordance spaces, thus disrupting their habitual possibilities for (1) joint action, (2) affective regulation, and (3) embodied social interaction. I also present some examples from qualitative studies that suggest that some people managed to overcome this contraction ––and even expand their affordance spaces–– by engaging with new affordances or increasing the affective allure of existing ones. This reconfiguration of their affordance spaces may have prevented some people from experiencing the high levels of loneliness that were expected at the beginning of the pandemic. For them, this experience could have been an opportunity to connect or reconnect with others, themselves, and the wider community. However, this opportunity was not equally open to everyone, as is the case for older adults, whose levels of loneliness increased during the pandemic.