In her book Experience Embodied, Anik Waldow challenges and reimagines the traditional interpretative approach to the concept of experience in the early modern period. Traditionally, commentators have emphasized early moderns’ views on the first-person perspective and eschewed the relevance of our embodiment to their epistemological outlooks. My focus here is on Waldow’s chapter on Hume, wherein she analyzes Hume’s account of our capacity for reflective moral judgment, arguing that he understands it as natural despite the countless ways in which our (...) embodied social experiences impinge on it. After detailing Waldow’s contributions, I clarify, corroborate, and criticize them. Since I contend that Waldow is broadly successful in her interpretative efforts, I suggest that she undermines the traditional interpretative approach to experience in the early modern period, but not in the sense that she moves us away from the epistemological towards other lenses. Rather, Waldow should be understood as showing that, at least in the case of Hume’s metaethics, the epistemological is embodied, is social, and is both cognitive and sentimental. (shrink)

In her book Experience Embodied Anik Waldow devotes a chapter to “Locke’s Experimental Persons.” Her chapter aims to show how Locke’s views on persons, personal identity, and moral agency in his Essay concerning Human Understanding build on his esteem-based approach to education that he develops in Some Thoughts concerning Education. After outlining main contributions that Waldow makes in her chapter, I turn to three issues that in my view deserve further consideration. First, I draw attention to the question of how (...) Locke’s esteem-based education can be reconciled with his moral views in the Essay. I propose that the question of how children become persons or moral agents who see their actions bound by divine law is worth examining with more detail. Second, I contrast Waldow’s interpretation of what a Lockean action is with an alternative interpretation and show that this has implications for how we understand the role of consciousness in Locke’s account of persons and personal identity. Third, I take a closer look at Waldow’s view that consciousness has an epistemic function in Locke’s account of persons and personal identity and highlight advantages of also acknowledging a metaphysical function of consciousness. (shrink)

I should like to begin this paper by thanking Anik Waldow for drawing my attention to a debate between Jean Jacques Rousseau and the philosophes about the proposal to build a theatre in Geneva, wit...

In this article, I engage with the queries, comments, and suggestions raised by my commentators. I proceed in the order of the original contributions, which more or less follows the order to the ch...

The fifth chapter of _Experience Embodied_ is devoted to Herder’s theory of cognition and the epistemic merits of the capacity for ‘sympathy’, or ‘empathy’ – what Herder calls _Einfühlung_, and which Waldow renders more accurately as ‘affective immersion’. I situate Waldow’s reading of Herder as a member of the epistemological tradition within the debate on Herder’s relationship to the Enlightenment. Waldow’s reading, I contend, is congruent with the view of Herder as an Enlightenment, rather than anti-Enlightenment, figure. I focus on (...) what Waldow calls ‘the problem of the conceivability of difference’ (Waldow 2020, 185) and how she charts Herder’s proposed method of Einfühlung and the need for ‘affective immersion’ to address this problem. However, I also identify three potential problems, which Waldow does not address, that can arise when _Einfühlung_is taken too far: the first is that it may lead to relativism, and thus to incoherence; the second is reductionism, which can eliminate, rather than draw attention to, difference – thereby achieving the opposite goal; while the third is that relying solely on _Einfühlung_as a method can lead us into error, as it is speculative and lacks an external truth criterion. (shrink)

Recent decades have seen increased attention to the empirical and naturalistic dimensions of Kant’s philosophy, across both his theoretical and practical philosophy. Anik Waldow’s impressively wide...

Опонуючи дискусійній рецепції метафізики Декарта, автор зосереджується на її тлумаченні як умов особистісної самореалізації. Інтерпретація мислителя в контексті незавершеної революції Коперника прояснює чинники актуалізації належних засадин людської поведінки. У процесі звернення до приватного листування обґрунтовується правомірність а) оцінки періоду роботи над незавершеними «Правилами для керування розумом» як етапу метафізики та б) з’ясування мотивів роботи над незавершеним ним текстом. Аналіз спадщини Декарта як осмислення умов розбудови особистості увиразнює її змістовну спорідненість із вченням Канта. Йдеться насамперед про межі людського знання як передумову (...) свободи, а також про принципову відмінність знань людини та зовнішніх речей. Глибоке знайомство з метафізикою Декарта свідчить про її дистанціювання від науки та релігії та його розважливе ставлення до ідеї абсолютизації мислення. А оскільки усвідомлення метафізичності людської природи зумовлює звертання Декарта до мистецтва, то подальші перспективи дослідження автор пов’язує з вивченням його ролі. (shrink)

In her book Experience Embodied (Waldow 2020), Anik Waldow explains the relevant notion of experience as follows: ‘key to understanding experience as a phenomenon that requires a human body is the...

This essay examines Locke’s chapter “Of Identity and Diversity” (Essay 2.27) in the context of the series of chapters on ideas of relations (Essay 2.25–28) that precede and follow it. I begin by introducing Locke’s account of how we acquire ideas of relations. Next, I consider Locke’s general approach to individuation and identity over time before I show how he applies his general account of identity over time to persons and personal identity. I draw attention to Locke’s claim that “person” (...) is a forensic term and analyse his arguments for why the sameness of a human being and the sameness of a substance or soul are neither necessary nor sufficient for personal identity. Instead, Locke argues that personal identity consists in sameness of consciousness. Locke regards persons as moral agents who are accountable for their actions. If a person now is held accountable for a past action it is important that the person now is the same person as the person who did the action. This means that moral accountability presupposes personal identity. Additionally, it will be important to consider whether the person deserves reward or punishment for the action. Locke’s account of moral relations, which he develops in Essay 2.28, addresses this issue and I show how it supplements his account of persons and personal identity. (shrink)