James M. Dow

They are one personThey are two aloneThey are three togetherThey are for each other— Stephen StillsJose Luis Bermúdez has presented an argument for the “Symmetry Thesis”—that a subject's psychological awareness is constitutively linked to his awareness of other minds—by outlining an account of joint engagement. I critique Bermúdez's Neo-Lockean account of joint engagement. Since it depends upon a psychological sortal, it cannot show that self-ascription is constituted by intersubjective relations in joint engagement. It is also too rich because grasping sortals—especially a psychological sortal—is a more difficult ability than joint engagement. Instead of the Neo-Lockean account, I propose the “Persons Theory” of joint engagement, according to which the recognition and acknowledgement of oneself as a person among persons is central. I argue that the Persons Theory can show that self-ascription is constituted by intersubjective relations in joint engagement and is not too rich, because recognition and acknowledgement of persons is not a more difficult ability than joint engagement. I offer two objections to my argument, and overturn both. I conclude by suggesting that the Persons Theory provides a genuinely new account of mentalizing that differs from the theory-theory and the simulation theory.

Nature aesthetics is concerned with four core questions: What is a natural environment? What is relevant, psychologically speaking, to the aesthetic appreciation of natural environments? How ought we to aesthetically appreciate natural environments? What is the relationship between nature aesthetics and environmental ethics? In this essay, I first address in Section 2 whether theorizing about nature aesthetics is possible by challenging the non‐aesthetics view, according to which aesthetic appreciation of nature is not possible, and the relativity view, according to which aesthetic appreciation of nature is possible, but it is an anything goes affair. In Section 3, I outline the core arguments for scientific cognitivism and provide objections to those arguments, making room for alternative views. In Section 4, I outline the distinction between cognitivism and non‐cognitivism and discuss the benefits of the engagement view. In Section 5, I outline the sympathetic imagination view of nature aesthetics. In Section 6, I discuss the emotions view. In Section 7, after summarizing the lessons learned from these debates, I argue for a new view— Enacting Nature's Value— which proposes that we need to rethink nature aesthetics in terms of an enactivist account of aesthetic agency according to which the aesthetic appreciation of nature is a skilled action. In Section 8, I close by considering four future directions for nature aesthetics in the second generation of inquiry.

Four views concerning environmental disobedience are discussed in this chapter, focusing on the moral justification of lawbreaking on behalf of natural environments. The traditional view suggests that accounts of ordinary civil disobedience understood through the Rawlsian tradition can be extended to capture cases of environmental disobedience. The revisionary view argues that the concept of civil disobedience needs to be revised in order to account for environmental disobedience, ecosabotage in particular. The radical view militates against basic assumptions of civil disobedience to argue that ecosabotage counts as forms of civil disobedience. The envisionary view suggests that environmental disobedience is best understood as a creative performance, a type of beautiful trouble or creative disruption that expresses environmental values that we must use the moral imagination to understand.

Hubert Dreyfus has argued that cases of absorbed bodily coping show that there is no room for self-awareness in flow experiences of experts. In this paper, I argue against Dreyfus’ maxim of vanishing self-awareness by suggesting that awareness of agency is present in expert bodily action. First, I discuss the phenomenon of absorbed bodily coping by discussing flow experiences involved in expert bodily action: merging into the flow; immersion in the flow; emergence out of flow. I argue against the claim that flow experience does not involve an awareness of agency for each of these features, while conceding that fluent agency does not involve self-awareness in the thetic sense. I challenge the assumption that the awareness of fluent agency must be understood in terms of a thetic awareness of agency. Instead, I develop an Anscombean account of the awareness of fluent agency in terms of the phenomenal character of knowing one’s aims. I respond to the challenge that if an Anscombean account of the awareness of agency is to succeed, then agents must be able to answer Anscombean questions. I consider the objection that awareness of agency is not a form of self-awareness by outlining an account of self-awareness as self-synthesis that is distinct from self-perception and self-ascription, but which makes room for self-awareness in expert bodily action.

Philosophers and psychologists have traditionally understood folk psychology to emerge in one of two ways: either first through the origin of the function of self-consciousness or first through the origin of the function of mindreading. The aim of this paper is to provide reasons to doubt that those options exhaust the possibilities. In particular, I will argue that in the discussion about whether self-consciousness or mindreading evolved first, we have lost sight of a viable third option. I will urge that mindsharing—the kind of intersubjectivity involved in joint engagement—may have been an important precursor to the ascription of mentalstates to selves and others. I analyze arguments for the view that mindreading evolved prior to self-consciousness, which I call “the mindreading priority account.” I acknowledge that proponents of the mindreading priority account are correct to stress the importance of our social natures in the emergence of self-consciousness. However, such accounts have focused too narrowly on mindreading as the biological function that is the basis of the development of self-consciousness. I argue that there are methodological reasons to doubt that mindreading is prior to self-consciousness, because awareness of oneself and awareness of others is symmetrical. I argue that there are empirical reasons to doubt that there is evidence for an adaptation explanation for mindreading. I provide a skeptical argument against the mindreading priority account by critiquingtwo central assumptions of that account, namely that mindreading is an adaptation and self-consciousness is a byproduct of mindreading. I consider an alternative view of mindsharing as the function of folk psychology and suggest that the mindsharing account may be on better grounds than the mindreading account in terms of providing an explanation of the origins of self-consciousness. In addition, I will outline an account of the development of self-consciousness and mindreading that emerges from mindsharing. In the conclusion, I will consider two objections to my account and reply to both objections.