Abstract
While the current discussion on embodied cognition provides valuable accounts of an agent’s bodily sensitivity to instrumental possibilities (“I can”), in this paper I investigate felt demands as the bodily-affective dimension of the agent’s recognition of deontic powers such as obligations (“I ought”). I argue that there is a close kinship between felt demands and affordances in the stricter sense. I will suggest that what is unique about felt demands on an experiential level is that they involve an evaluative perspective arising from acute or anticipated shame-like feelings. The conclusion is that the recognition of deontic power is also a matter of bodily sensitivity.
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Notes
It is worth briefly mentioning that there may also be a third form of affordances such as “the coast is clear” which may solicit you to climb over the fence. This sort of affordance would be unintelligible without there being a felt demand in the background conditioning the subject’s space of possibilities. In case the demand in question is fading or has already been overridden, such “impurely” instrumental possibilities may serve as a first indication of a demand having been a conditioning factor in the situation.
A more radical argument which I cannot discuss here has been made by Hutto (2012).
See Dreyfus and Kelly 2007, 52 for a similar example which also draws on gestalt theory. Here the person steps back in order to get a better view on a painting.
Determining which action best fulfils a demand for solidarity is a task that overtaxes our immediate instincts and responses. Recognizing that the other person is in deep grief may spontaneously prompt us to utter words of solace, but in some circumstances we may find upon critical reflection that the best we can do for the other person is to leave them in peace. This is probably in agreement with much of the spirit of Levinas’ discourse, though arguably not with its hyperbolic tone that often seems to intend a hyper-moral compliance with what the other person claims.
See Williams 1993, 92 ff. for an argument for why we might include guilt in a wider conception of shame.
See Schmitz 2012, 16; Williams and Gantt 2012, 428. On this basis, even further distinctions have been suggested, for instance whether the experiential details reveal the demand in question to be a matter of conscience as in Marty’s case or rather a matter of respect for the opinion of others as, for instance, avoiding eating meat in the presence of vegetarians (see Schmitz 2012, 22).
Deonna and Teroni 2012, 81. See also Slaby 2008, 434 ff. and Colombetti 2014, 122 ff., as well as Helm 2009, 249: “[T]o feel fear is to be pained by danger, whereas to feel anger is to be pained by an offense […]. In short, emotions are pleasant or painful precisely in that they are feelings of these evaluations impressing themselves on us.” Helm himself is skeptical about the bodily dimension of these feelings, but this seems to result from a rather narrow perspective which conceives of bodily feelings as only capable of having the body and its states as their object (ibid.).
There are many aspects of Levinas’ rich work which deserve more attention than I can afford here. For instance, Levinas’ claim that the face of the other person resists one’s attempts to fix that person in terms of categories (Levinas 1969, 87, 200) could be interpreted in terms of kinaesthetically felt (im-)possibilities of treating the other person as a purely instrumental item getting in one’s way. A closer examination of this and many other observations concerning the face-to-face encounter with other persons would surely enrich the account outlined here.
Analogously, if you returned the purse, there would have to be a pattern of reactive attitudes along the following lines: gratitude in your neighbour, “self-approbation” in yourself and approbation in the witnesses (see Helm 2017, 14).
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Nörenberg, H. Moments of recognition: deontic power and bodily felt demands. Phenom Cogn Sci 19, 191–206 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-019-09622-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-019-09622-9