Emotions in knowledge production

ABSTRACT

This synoptic review surveys the philosophical literature on the epistemology of emotions to identify the role of emotions in knowledge production. It analyses their evaluative, motivational, hermeneutical and social functions as embedded in epistemic practices and cultures. The focus on situated epistemic emotions stresses the importance of developing an ethics of knowledge production. The review introduces some new proposals for fostering inquiry in this field, drawing from agency-based accounts of emotions (enactivism, in particular) and virtue epistemology.

KEYWORDS:

• Theories of emotion
• epistemic emotions
• science-making
• epistemic cultures
• virtue epistemology
• situated affectivity
• agency-based accounts of emotions
• enactivism

Acknowledgement

Thanks to Jan Slaby for the enriching and stimulating co-teaching experience in our undergraduate course on the ‘Epistemology of Emotions’ at the Free University of Berlin and to our students for their active participation in the discussion.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Notably, Colombetti’s enactive account of emotion could be categorised differently and be listed in the agency-based account. The reason is that it turns the passivity of emotion, which is typically ascribed by the feeling theories, into the enactment of the constitutive relationship between an organism and its environment. However, it is a prominent example of feeling theories because emotions are considered embodied feelings. The difference is that these feelings are not understood as merely passive reactions to external stimuli in the enactive approach to emotion and, so, Colombetti’s approach can fit the agency-based accounts as well.

2 For an overview of the phenomenological account of emotion, see Szanto and Landweer (2020).

3 A criticism to the attempt to define emotion with a clear-cut concept of definition has been notably addressed by Amélie Rorty (1980).

4 In dialogue with other colleagues and traditions of thought, especially Pragmatism and Feminism, for example in Candiotto and Piredda (2019), Candiotto and De Jaegher (2021) and Candiotto and Dreon (2021).

5 This approach is quite common in the psychological literature on emotion, and it has recently been brought to the attention of philosophers, for example by Brady (2019).

6 For an updated review of the different approaches, see Candiotto (2020, 2022).

7 For the epistemic emotions’ crucial function of directing the attention to something that matter to the subject, see Brady (2013).

8 There are important exceptions, especially in Solomon (1976), Slaby (2008), Goldie (2012) and Colombetti (2014), that come from the phenomenological and existential traditions of thought.

9 For an overview of the core features and different approaches in virtue epistemology, see Battaly (2018).

10 A special issue of the journal HUMANA MENTE (vol. 14, n. 39, 2021) has recently been dedicated to this topic. See in particular the papers by Axtell (2021), Candiotto (2021) and Pritchard (2021). This special issue has also highlighted that this implies exploring intellectual vices as well, by focusing on hermeneutical injustice or epistemic oppression. See in this regard the papers by Boncompagni (2021) and Rogers (2021).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Centre for Ethics of the University of Pardubice under the grant CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/15_003/0000425 of the Operational Programme Research, Development, and Education.

Notes on contributors

Laura Candiotto

Laura Candiotto is Associate Professor in Philosophy at the Centre for Ethics of the University of Pardubice, Czech Republic. She is a Fellow of the 4th Intercontinental Academy on ‘Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence’ (UBIAS) and Chair of the ESRI Planning Committee of Mind & Life Europe. Her research focuses on epistemic emotions as embedded in dialogical interactions and communities of inquiry. She has worked on love, wonder, shame, and compassion bridging her expertise in the Socratic method of inquiry and the enactive approach to participatory sense-making. Most recently, she focused on the role of emotions in cultural robotics, responsible AI and social media. She is now exploring the continuity between life, sentience and mind, contributing to the development of an enactive ethics grounded on emotion as what reveals existential concerns and values, especially regarding environmental issues. Among her recent publications are: ‘Extended Loneliness. When Hyperconnectivity makes us feel alone’ (Ethics and Information Technology 2022); ‘What I cannot do without you. Towards a truly embedded and embodied account of the socially extended mind’ (Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 2022); ‘Loving the Earth by loving a place’ (Constructivist Foundations 2022); and ‘Epistemic Emotions and Co-Inquiry: A Situated Approach’ (Topoi 2022). Websites: www.emotionsfirst.org; https://centreforethics.upce.cz/en/doc-laura-candiotto-phd; https://upce.academia.edu/LauraCandiotto