Browsing by Author "Rice, Collin, committee member"

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Open Access
Adaptive disembodiment: towards an enactivist theory of body schematic sensorimotor autonomy
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) White, Halie Elizabeth, author; MacKenzie, Matthew, advisor; Rice, Collin, committee member; Snodgrass, Jeffrey, committee member
The enactivist approach to embodied cognition relies on a non-reductive biological naturalism that is recursive at higher levels of complexity in living systems. In addressing an account of cognition, I will consider Xabier Barandiaran's objection that biological autonomy properly sets biological norms but under-specifies sensorimotor normativity. Barandiaran suggests the implementation of pluralist autonomy to the meta-pattern of organization in the enactivist agent that becomes recapitulated. By forming an account of sensorimotor autonomy, we can then specify normativity at the sensorimotor (cognitive) level. In consideration of this issue, I will propose the body schema functions to provide sensorimotor autonomy to the embodied subject through motor stability and thus functions to specify normativity at the sensorimotor level. This then allows for what enactivists term 'sense-making' in terms of enacting affordance structures. The position I take within the enactivist frame is thus a pluralist autonomist view on cognition. I go on to consider how this view bears on cognitive case studies often addressed in body schema literature. Drawing primarily from the work of Shaun Gallagher, body schema interacts with and develops body image through primary and secondary intersubjective capacities. I argue that body image is intersubjectively constructed through joint attention, thus invoking considerations of one's social milieu. This consideration shifts the discussion to address how the pluralist autonomist enactivist, through body schema and body image interaction, can account for alterations of the body schema due to distortions in one's body image that result from oppression. This pluralist autonomist enactivist theory provides three benefits for understanding these alterations: (1) enactivism begins with a fundamental postulate that individuals are embedded in a world; (2) in distinguishing between different levels of autonomy, we can thus discuss different forms of normative interaction with the environment; (3) and finally, with differentiated forms of normativity, we can thus differentiate and track different modes of adaptation an embodied subject can take when faced with various sorts of perturbations. I argue that disembodiment can be seen as an adaptation of the body schema in relation to hostile environments where stigma targets the body image. This hostile environment does not allow one's comfortable and normative navigation of the world due to the hypervisibility of the body. I explore this case of adaptive disembodiment through fatphobia and public weight stigma.
Open Access
Doing better than truth: the conceptual engineering of a basic concept
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2025) Davis, Jordan, author; Kasser, Jeff, advisor; Rice, Collin, committee member; Prytherch, Ben, committee member
Truth can and should be replaced as a concept, or at least we should strongly consider doing so. Conceptual engineering is about determining what concepts we should use and the modification and creation of concepts to serve that purpose. One of the ongoing areas of research is determining just what the limits of conceptual engineering are. I approach this topic by exploring the possibility of conceptually engineering truth by replacing it as a concept and what that possibility means for replacing other concepts. More specifically, I use Kevin Scharp's proposal for replacing truth as model for how and why we might replace truth and how that might generalize to replacing other concepts. After a detailed discussion of the mechanics and motivations of Scharp's proposal, I argue that any substantive distinction between replacement and the revision fails because of the messiness of conceptual identity, and that, consequently, replacement is pervasive in conceptual engineering and philosophy more broadly. I continue by exploring various objections against the possibility and permissibility of replacement, focusing on truth in particular. I then show that under a framework where we treat concepts as tools that fulfill certain roles in addressing problems that those objections either fail or are defanged. I argue that such a framework is plausible based on how it approximates how we already think about things like concepts and the numerous benefits of adopting the framework. I explain how the framework addresses each objection both with respect to truth and basic concepts generally.