Situated cognition and practical knowledge

Is knowledge heterogeneous, or must we accept, following Gilbert Ryle, a dualism between theoretical knowledge and know-how? The question has an ancient origin, but is still topical, as witnessed by the recent defense of a sophisticated form of intellectualism, according to which know-how is only a special case of theoretical knowledge.

In this presentation, I propose to address this question in the context of the situated cognition program. I will focus on the relationship between know-how and the perception of affordances, and their role in anchoring an agent in a specific situation. I will defend the hypothesis that what an agent knows when he knows how to do something can be fully described in propositional terms, without allowing know-how to be reduced to theoretical knowledge. This hypothesis lies at an intermediate level between a strict dualism of knowledge and sophisticated intellectualism.

Jérôme Dokic

Jérôme Dokic is a philosopher who has been Director of Studies at EHESS since 2004. He is a member of the Institut Jean-Nicod (CNRS-EHESS-ENS).

He has published numerous essays, mainly in the fields of philosophy of mind and cognitive science. His works include La philosophie du son (with Roberto Casati; Chambon, 1994), L'esprit en mouvement. Essay on Cognitive Dynamics (Stanford, 2001), Ramsey. Truth and Success (with Pascal Engel; Routledge, 2002) and Qu'est-ce que la perception? (Vrin, 2004, 2009).

Research

Jérôme Dokic works on themes of philosophical interest that are also closely related to cognitive science. One aspect of his current project concerns the affective phenomenology that accompanies our experience of the world, insofar as it is made up of feelings of presence, familiarity or trust, and their opposite (the feeling of absence, or the feeling ofUnheimlichkeit highlighted by Freud). He has studied these phenomena in the case of ordinary perception, pathological perception (derealization, Parkinson's, Capgras and Fregoli syndromes), virtual reality and sensory substitution (i.e., technical devices that compensate for the absence of a sensory modality, such as sight or hearing). A second strand deals with perspectival phenomena in perception, imagination and memory, i.e. the nature and role of the point of view (e.g. actor or observer) in perceptual presentation and imaginative or memorial recreation. Finally, a third strand involves the study of the social dimension of perception, particularly when it manifests itself in the form of "social affordances", i.e. more or less directly perceptible opportunities to act together.