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Elisabeth Pacherie

École Normale Supérieure, Institut Jean Nicod, Faculty Member

Philosophy of Mind +12

529 Followers 46 Following 8 Co-authorsTotal Views

Papers

Collective Phenomenology

Pacherie, E. (2017). Collective phenomenology. In K. Ludwig & M. Jankovic (eds), The Routledge Handbook on Collective Intentionality (pp. 162-173). New-York: Routledge., 2017

Phenomenology is concerned with the study of subjective experience and investigates the structure... more Phenomenology is concerned with the study of subjective experience and investigates the structure and nature of various types of conscious experiences. But what is collective phenomenology about? This paper discusses three main issues. Can a collective as such be a locus of subjective experience or should we conceive of collective phenomenal states—e.g., collective joy, collective grief or a collective sense of agency for some achievement—as experiential states had by individuals in a group and shared by them in some suitable way? If the latter, in what sense must experiences must be shared in order for them to constitute together a collective experience and what are the mechanisms and processes that make this sharing possible? Finally, in what does the subjective specificity of shared or collective experiences consist?

Do we see with microscopes?

The Monist, 1995

L'approccio empirista al delirio: un chiarimento e una difesa

Sistemi intelligenti, 2004

Troubles de l'agentivité et troubles de la conscience de soi: quelques hypothèses sur leurs liens dans l'autisme

Les neurosciences et la philosophie de l'action. Paris: Vrin, 1997

La philosophie cognitive

Cogniprisme Collection dirigée par Catherine Fuchs Cette collection propose un panorama des diffé... more Cogniprisme Collection dirigée par Catherine Fuchs Cette collection propose un panorama des différentes disciplines (en particulier en sciences humaines et sociales) engagées dans l'étude de la «cognition», en donnant au lecteur les repères essentiels lui permettant de comprendre le développement récent de ce nouveau champ du savoir, appelé à renouveler en profondeur nos connaissances sur le fonctionnement de l'esprit et du cerveau. Chaque ouvrage est consacré à l'état de l'art dans l'une des disciplines concernées; dirigé par un ...

Naturaliser l'intentionnalité: essai de philosophie de la psychologie

The phenomenology of controlling a moving object with another person

Cognition, 2014

The phenomenology of controlling what one perceives is influenced by a combination of sensory pre... more The phenomenology of controlling what one perceives is influenced by a combination of sensory predictions and inferential processes. While it is known that external perturbations can reduce the sense of control over action effects, there have been few studies investigating the impact of intentional co-actors on the sense of control. In three experiments, we investigated how individuals' judgments of control (JoC) over a moving object were influenced by sharing control with a second person. Participants used joysticks to keep a cursor centered on a moving target either alone or with a co-actor. When both participants' actions had similar perceptual consequences, JoC ratings were highest when self-generated movements were the only influence on the cursor, while the appearance of sharing control with a second person decreased JoC ratings. By contrast, when participants performed complementary actions with perceptually distinctive consequences, JoC ratings were highest when both...

19 Sense of Agency: Many Facets, Multiple Sources

Monothematic delusions, empiricism, and framework beliefs: A reply to Campbell

Leibhaftigkeit and representational theories of perception

Perceptual hysteresis as a marker of perceptual inflexibility in schizophrenia

Consciousness and Cognition, 2014

Role of prior information in action understanding

A recent consensus on the mechanisms that enable an observer to understand an agent's action... more A recent consensus on the mechanisms that enable an observer to understand an agent's action from the mere observation of his behaviour suggests that both the observer's prior knowledge and the sensory information arising from the scene contribute to that inference. However, the extent to which these different types of information do so is still controversial. One relevant approach to this debate may consist in considering the varieties of intentions. Intentions can indeed be distinguished into several sub-types according to two ...

The Cambridge handbook of cognitive science, 2012

My arm rises. Is my arm rising something happening to me–say, a movement caused by a muscle spasm... more My arm rises. Is my arm rising something happening to me–say, a movement caused by a muscle spasm or by somebody pulling a string attached to my wrist–or is it my own doing–am I raising my arm? What does it mean to say that I am raising my arm intentionally? Must it be the case that a conscious intention to do so causes my arm to rise? How do I know that I am raising my arm, and does that knowledge differ from the knowledge you may acquire by observing me? The nature of action, action explanation, and agency are central issues in ...

On the very idea of a frame of reference1

Space in Languages: Linguistic Systems and Cognitive Categories, 2006

It is widely assumed that perception essentially involves a relative or egocentric frame of refer... more It is widely assumed that perception essentially involves a relative or egocentric frame of reference. Stephen Levinson has explicitly challenged this assumption and proposed a 'neo-Whorfian'hypothesis according to which the frame of reference that is dominant in a given language infiltrates spatial representations in non-linguistic modalities. Our aim is to assess this hypothesis at the philosophical level and to explore the further possibility that perception may be perspective-free, at least at the most basic level, in the sense that it does not ...

The sense of control and the sense of agency

Psyche, 2007

Abstract:. The now growing literature on the content and sources of the phenomenology of first-pe... more Abstract:. The now growing literature on the content and sources of the phenomenology of first-person agency highlights the multi-faceted character of the phenomenology of agency and makes it clear that the experience of agency includes many other experiences as components. This paper examines the possible relations between these components of our experience of acting and the processes involved in action specification and action control. After a brief discussion of our awareness of our goals and means of action, it will focus on ...

Motor-images, self-consciousness, and autism

ABSTRACT

What Are They Up To? The Role of Sensory Evidence and Prior Knowledge in Action Understanding

by Etiene Koechlin, Elisabeth Pacherie, Valérian Chambon, and Philippe Domenech

PLoS ONE, 2011

On Commitments and Other Uncertainty Reduction Tools in Joint Action

by John Michael and Elisabeth Pacherie

In this paper, we evaluate the proposal that a central function of commitments within joint actio... more In this paper, we evaluate the proposal that a central function of commitments within joint action is to reduce various kinds of uncertainty, and that this accounts for the prevalence of commitments in joint action. While this idea is prima facie attractive, we argue that it faces two serious problems. First, commitments can only reduce uncertainty if they are credible, and accounting for the credibility of commitments proves not to be straightforward. Second, there are many other ways in which uncertainty is commonly reduced within joint actions, which raises the possibility that commitments may be superfluous. Nevertheless, we argue that the existence of these alternative uncertainty reduction processes does not make commitments superfluous after all but, rather, helps to explain how commitments may contribute in various ways to uncertainty reduction.

Time to act: the dynamics of agentive experiences

Actions unfold in time, and so do experiences of agency. Yet, despite the recent surge of interes... more Actions unfold in time, and so do experiences of agency. Yet, despite the recent surge of interest in the sense of agency among both philosophers and cognitive scientists, the import of the fact that agentive experiences unfold in time remains to this day largely under-appreciated. I argue that we should think of agentive experiences as continuants, whose contents evolve as actions unfold. I try to characterize these content-shifts, distinguishing two main dimensions of change, changes in scale or fine-grainedness and changes in tense, as well as the main action control and action specification processes that underlie them. I further argue that taking into account this temporal dynamics of agentive experiences can also help us better appreciate in what sense some of the apparently conflicting empirical models of the sense of agency proposed in recent years can be seen as complementary rather than as rival and help us refine integrative models.

Consciousness and agency

by Elisabeth Pacherie and Tim Bayne

There are three projects within the cognitive science of agency and consciousness that are of par... more There are three projects within the cognitive science of agency and consciousness that are of particular interest to neuroethics: the descriptive project, the genetic project, and the substantive project. The descriptive project is concerned with characterizing our everyday experience of, and beliefs about, agency. What is the folk view of agency? The aim of the genetic project is to
give an account of the psychological mechanisms involved in constructing our experience of, and beliefs about, agency. How is the folk view of agency to be explained? The substantive project is concerned with determining the degree to which our experiences of, and beliefs about, agency are correct and to what degree they might need to be revised in light of findings from the cognitive sciences. Is the folk view of agency basically correct or does it need to be modified in fundamental ways (as “will skeptics” argue)? This entry provides an overview of recent research relating to all three projects.

Collective Phenomenology

Pacherie, E. (2017). Collective phenomenology. In K. Ludwig & M. Jankovic (eds), The Routledge Handbook on Collective Intentionality (pp. 162-173). New-York: Routledge., 2017

Phenomenology is concerned with the study of subjective experience and investigates the structure... more Phenomenology is concerned with the study of subjective experience and investigates the structure and nature of various types of conscious experiences. But what is collective phenomenology about? This paper discusses three main issues. Can a collective as such be a locus of subjective experience or should we conceive of collective phenomenal states—e.g., collective joy, collective grief or a collective sense of agency for some achievement—as experiential states had by individuals in a group and shared by them in some suitable way? If the latter, in what sense must experiences must be shared in order for them to constitute together a collective experience and what are the mechanisms and processes that make this sharing possible? Finally, in what does the subjective specificity of shared or collective experiences consist?

Do we see with microscopes?

The Monist, 1995

L'approccio empirista al delirio: un chiarimento e una difesa

Sistemi intelligenti, 2004

Troubles de l'agentivité et troubles de la conscience de soi: quelques hypothèses sur leurs liens dans l'autisme

Les neurosciences et la philosophie de l'action. Paris: Vrin, 1997

La philosophie cognitive

Cogniprisme Collection dirigée par Catherine Fuchs Cette collection propose un panorama des diffé... more Cogniprisme Collection dirigée par Catherine Fuchs Cette collection propose un panorama des différentes disciplines (en particulier en sciences humaines et sociales) engagées dans l'étude de la «cognition», en donnant au lecteur les repères essentiels lui permettant de comprendre le développement récent de ce nouveau champ du savoir, appelé à renouveler en profondeur nos connaissances sur le fonctionnement de l'esprit et du cerveau. Chaque ouvrage est consacré à l'état de l'art dans l'une des disciplines concernées; dirigé par un ...

Naturaliser l'intentionnalité: essai de philosophie de la psychologie

The phenomenology of controlling a moving object with another person

Cognition, 2014

The phenomenology of controlling what one perceives is influenced by a combination of sensory pre... more The phenomenology of controlling what one perceives is influenced by a combination of sensory predictions and inferential processes. While it is known that external perturbations can reduce the sense of control over action effects, there have been few studies investigating the impact of intentional co-actors on the sense of control. In three experiments, we investigated how individuals' judgments of control (JoC) over a moving object were influenced by sharing control with a second person. Participants used joysticks to keep a cursor centered on a moving target either alone or with a co-actor. When both participants' actions had similar perceptual consequences, JoC ratings were highest when self-generated movements were the only influence on the cursor, while the appearance of sharing control with a second person decreased JoC ratings. By contrast, when participants performed complementary actions with perceptually distinctive consequences, JoC ratings were highest when both...

19 Sense of Agency: Many Facets, Multiple Sources

Monothematic delusions, empiricism, and framework beliefs: A reply to Campbell

Leibhaftigkeit and representational theories of perception

Perceptual hysteresis as a marker of perceptual inflexibility in schizophrenia

Consciousness and Cognition, 2014

Role of prior information in action understanding

A recent consensus on the mechanisms that enable an observer to understand an agent's action... more A recent consensus on the mechanisms that enable an observer to understand an agent's action from the mere observation of his behaviour suggests that both the observer's prior knowledge and the sensory information arising from the scene contribute to that inference. However, the extent to which these different types of information do so is still controversial. One relevant approach to this debate may consist in considering the varieties of intentions. Intentions can indeed be distinguished into several sub-types according to two ...

The Cambridge handbook of cognitive science, 2012

My arm rises. Is my arm rising something happening to me–say, a movement caused by a muscle spasm... more My arm rises. Is my arm rising something happening to me–say, a movement caused by a muscle spasm or by somebody pulling a string attached to my wrist–or is it my own doing–am I raising my arm? What does it mean to say that I am raising my arm intentionally? Must it be the case that a conscious intention to do so causes my arm to rise? How do I know that I am raising my arm, and does that knowledge differ from the knowledge you may acquire by observing me? The nature of action, action explanation, and agency are central issues in ...

On the very idea of a frame of reference1

Space in Languages: Linguistic Systems and Cognitive Categories, 2006

It is widely assumed that perception essentially involves a relative or egocentric frame of refer... more It is widely assumed that perception essentially involves a relative or egocentric frame of reference. Stephen Levinson has explicitly challenged this assumption and proposed a 'neo-Whorfian'hypothesis according to which the frame of reference that is dominant in a given language infiltrates spatial representations in non-linguistic modalities. Our aim is to assess this hypothesis at the philosophical level and to explore the further possibility that perception may be perspective-free, at least at the most basic level, in the sense that it does not ...

The sense of control and the sense of agency

Psyche, 2007

Abstract:. The now growing literature on the content and sources of the phenomenology of first-pe... more Abstract:. The now growing literature on the content and sources of the phenomenology of first-person agency highlights the multi-faceted character of the phenomenology of agency and makes it clear that the experience of agency includes many other experiences as components. This paper examines the possible relations between these components of our experience of acting and the processes involved in action specification and action control. After a brief discussion of our awareness of our goals and means of action, it will focus on ...

Motor-images, self-consciousness, and autism

ABSTRACT

What Are They Up To? The Role of Sensory Evidence and Prior Knowledge in Action Understanding

by Etiene Koechlin, Elisabeth Pacherie, Valérian Chambon, and Philippe Domenech

PLoS ONE, 2011

On Commitments and Other Uncertainty Reduction Tools in Joint Action

by John Michael and Elisabeth Pacherie

In this paper, we evaluate the proposal that a central function of commitments within joint actio... more In this paper, we evaluate the proposal that a central function of commitments within joint action is to reduce various kinds of uncertainty, and that this accounts for the prevalence of commitments in joint action. While this idea is prima facie attractive, we argue that it faces two serious problems. First, commitments can only reduce uncertainty if they are credible, and accounting for the credibility of commitments proves not to be straightforward. Second, there are many other ways in which uncertainty is commonly reduced within joint actions, which raises the possibility that commitments may be superfluous. Nevertheless, we argue that the existence of these alternative uncertainty reduction processes does not make commitments superfluous after all but, rather, helps to explain how commitments may contribute in various ways to uncertainty reduction.

Time to act: the dynamics of agentive experiences

Actions unfold in time, and so do experiences of agency. Yet, despite the recent surge of interes... more Actions unfold in time, and so do experiences of agency. Yet, despite the recent surge of interest in the sense of agency among both philosophers and cognitive scientists, the import of the fact that agentive experiences unfold in time remains to this day largely under-appreciated. I argue that we should think of agentive experiences as continuants, whose contents evolve as actions unfold. I try to characterize these content-shifts, distinguishing two main dimensions of change, changes in scale or fine-grainedness and changes in tense, as well as the main action control and action specification processes that underlie them. I further argue that taking into account this temporal dynamics of agentive experiences can also help us better appreciate in what sense some of the apparently conflicting empirical models of the sense of agency proposed in recent years can be seen as complementary rather than as rival and help us refine integrative models.

Consciousness and agency

by Elisabeth Pacherie and Tim Bayne

There are three projects within the cognitive science of agency and consciousness that are of par... more There are three projects within the cognitive science of agency and consciousness that are of particular interest to neuroethics: the descriptive project, the genetic project, and the substantive project. The descriptive project is concerned with characterizing our everyday experience of, and beliefs about, agency. What is the folk view of agency? The aim of the genetic project is to
give an account of the psychological mechanisms involved in constructing our experience of, and beliefs about, agency. How is the folk view of agency to be explained? The substantive project is concerned with determining the degree to which our experiences of, and beliefs about, agency are correct and to what degree they might need to be revised in light of findings from the cognitive sciences. Is the folk view of agency basically correct or does it need to be modified in fundamental ways (as “will skeptics” argue)? This entry provides an overview of recent research relating to all three projects.

Intentions and motor representations: The interface challenge

by Myrto Mylopoulos and Elisabeth Pacherie

A full account of purposive action must appeal not only to propositional attitude states like bel... more A full account of purposive action must appeal not only to propositional attitude states like beliefs, desires, and intentions, but also to motor representations, i.e., non-propositional states that are thought to represent, among other things, action outcomes as well as detailed kinematic features of bodily movements. This raises the puzzle of how it is that these two distinct types of state successfully coordinate. We examine this so-called "Interface Problem". First, we clarify and expand on the nature and role of motor representations in explaining intentional action. Next, we characterize the respective functions of intentions and motor representations, the differences in representational format and content that these imply, and the interface challenge these differences in turn raise. We then evaluate Butterfill & Sinigaglia’s (2014) recent answer to this interface challenge, according to which intentions refer to action outcomes by way of demonstrative deference to motor representations. We present some worries for this proposal, arguing that, among other things, it implicitly presupposes a solution to the problem, and so cannot help to resolve it. Finally, we suggest that we may make some progress on this puzzle by positing a “content-preserving causal process” taking place between intentions and motor representations, and we offer a proposal for how this might work.