Papers in English by Laura Candiotto
Beyond the attention economy, towards an ecology of attending. A manifesto.
AI & Society, 2025
Open access: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00146-025-02405-8#Abs1
We endorse poli... more Open access: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00146-025-02405-8#Abs1
We endorse policymakers’ efforts to address the negative consequences of the attention economy’s technology but add that these approaches are often limited in their criticism of the systemic context of human attention. Starting from Buddhist philosophy, we advocate a broader approach: an ‘ecology of attending’ that centers on conceptualizing, designing, and using attention (1) in an embedded way and (2) focused on the alleviating of suffering. With ‘embedded’ we mean that attention is not a neutral, isolated mechanism but a meaning-engendering part of an ‘ecology’ of bodily, sociotechnical and moral frameworks. With ‘focused on the alleviation of suffering’ we mean that we explicitly move away from the (often implicit) conception of attention as a tool for gratifying desires. We analyze existing inquiries in these directions and urge them to be intensified and integrated. As to the design and function of our technological environment, we propose three questions for further research: How can technology help to acknowledge us as ‘ecological’ beings, rather than as self-sufficient individuals? How can technology help to raise awareness of our moral framework? And how can technology increase the conditions for ‘attending’ to the alleviation of suffering, by substituting our covert self-driven moral framework with an ecologically attending one? We believe in the urgency of transforming the inhumane attention economy sociotechnical system into a humane ecology of attending, and in our ability to contribute to it.
Please see the full list of authors in the paper
The Philosophy of Environmental Emotions, 2025
By drawing from Matthew Ratcliffe's theory of grief and employing an enactive perspective on the ... more By drawing from Matthew Ratcliffe's theory of grief and employing an enactive perspective on the love of nature, this chapter explores the motivational role of environmental grief in transgenerational environmental responsibility. By digging deeper into the embodied tensions experienced in loving a place that is dying, this chapter argues that it is out of the entanglement of love and grief that new meanings can be created, not as moving on but as an affective commitment to life despite the circumstances. Environmental grief is thus understood as grieving sense-making and it is experienced as existential groundless, from an embodied and embedded perspective. After introducing the intertwining of love and grief in human experience, the meaning of place in existentialist terms, and discussing the literature on place pathologies, the chapter focuses on the temporally extended affective experience of progressive abandonment from a place that is dying. It is argued that grief, even in the radical negation of meaning, is world-making, that is, it is a felt perspective on the world as a grief world. Crucially, it is added that the acknowledgement of groundlessness can also be generative of new meanings. These new meanings can come out of a continuous process of grieving as loving a place. This is presented not as a necessity but as a possibility that can be cultivated and a practice to uphold. So, the chapter ends with the ethical and political significance of environmental grief in localised yet networked environmental actions.
Human Studies, 2024
In this paper, I focus on the concept of embeddedness as the background against which eros is a f... more In this paper, I focus on the concept of embeddedness as the background against which eros is a force and a power in and through interactions. To go beyond an internalist account of eros, I engage in a dialogue with some philosophical accounts of desire from an enactive perspective.This enables me to shed light on the location of the embodied tension as "in-between" lovers and "all-around" them. Crucial to this tensional account of embedded eros is the intertwining between self and others' becomings in processes of participatory sense-making. Through participatory sense-making lovers make their worlds, creating new ways of being and knowing in the ensemble. I advance some steps towards an enactive ethics of eros where, I claim, the cultivation of the space in-between and all-around lovers is the key to avoid the traps of a degenerated form of eros.
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2024
Sentience, as the capacity to feel pleasure and pain, is often understood as a property of an org... more Sentience, as the capacity to feel pleasure and pain, is often understood as a property of an organism, and the main problem is to determine whether an organism possesses this property or not. This is not just an armchair worry. Sentient ethics grounds its normative prescriptions on sentience, so assessing if an organism possesses sentience is crucial for ethical reasoning and behaviour. Assessing if it is the case is far from simple and there is no stable agreement about it. This is the problem of sentience. In this paper, I argue that there is a problem intrinsic to the problem of sentience. I call it the "metaproblem of sentience". I claim that the assumptions that underlie the concept of sentience are what create the "problem of sentience". In the first part of the paper, I list and describe these assumptions and show how they create the problem of sentience in sentient ethics. In the second part, I offer enactive and pragmatist tools for tackling the problem of sentience. I advance a participatory account of sentience and show of relevance of the transcendental argument in ethical discourse. My own contribution is that the transcendental argument should be understood in a relational manner, from the experience of participatory sentience. So it is not just that life can be known only by life. Life can be cared for only by life. So, as in sentient ethics, it is out of my concern for sentient begins that I need to care for them. But, distinct from sentient ethics, may approach to participatory sentience would push to known sentience from how I care for sentient begins, from how I engage with them, from how I take part in their life. I conclude by stressing the significance of a participatory ethics of sentience.
Topoi, 2024
In this paper, we argue that the affective experience that permeates the employment of Assistive ... more In this paper, we argue that the affective experience that permeates the employment of Assistive Technology (AT) in special needs education is crucial for the integration of AT. "AT integration" generally means the fluid and automatic employment of AT for fulfilling certain tasks. Pritchard et al. (2021) have proposed a more specific conceptualisation of AT integration by saying that AT is integrated when it is part of the user's cognitive character. By discussing their proposal, in this paper, we argue that the user's affective experience is crucial for AT integration. To better appreciate the relevance of the affective experience in AT integration, we suggest shifting the perspective from the functionalist extended cognition framework, as Pritchard et al. (2021) propose, to affective scaffoldings. By affective scaffolding, we mean those items that are employed for emotion regulation (Colombetti and Krueger 2015), such as a glass of water for reducing one's anxiety while doing a presentation, or the arrangement of the living room for feeling at ease while meeting the boyfriend's parents for the first time. We understand affective scaffoldings from a pragmatist-oriented framework (Candiotto and Dreon 2021). So, we focus on the dispositions that are produced, nourished, and reset by the agents' affectively charged transactions with the world, AT included.
Passion, 2023
In this paper, I will consider a unique case in which changing one's character is part of a proce... more In this paper, I will consider a unique case in which changing one's character is part of a process of moral betterment when facing oppression. By engaging with the Dutch-Jewish intellectual and Holocaust victim Etty Hillesum, I will highlight the situated dimension of moral betterment as a practice that is driven by the pressure of concurrent events. I will claim that moral betterment does not need to come out of an internal will to change for the better. Instead, I will argue that "bearing real suffering" (Hillesum 1996: 220) is what makes compassion a potential source of moral betterment. This is possible because, in compassion, one experiences emotional friction between weakness and strength in facing the suffering caused by oppression.
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2022
Through a discussion of the socially extended mind, this paper advances the "not possible without... more Through a discussion of the socially extended mind, this paper advances the "not possible without principle" as an alternative to the social parity principle. By charging the social parity principle with reductionism about the social dimension of socially extended processes, the paper offers a new argumentative strategy for the socially extended mind that stresses its existential significance. The "not possible without principle" shows that not only is something more achieved through socially located processes of knowledge building, but also that, and more importantly, what is achieved is something that would not have been possible without social interaction. The social parity principle states that the result of an activity achieved via social interaction should be assumed functionally equivalent to a solitary investigation and is characterized by multiple realisability. Contrary to the social parity principle, the "not possible without principle" holds that the result would not have been achieved without the social interaction between (at least) two agents with specific existential needs. The socially extended mind never happens in a void. This means that the "not possible without" principle should be located in real-life, affectively charged, embodied experiences of skilful interactions between agents. This fundamental conceptual change via reference to the "existential necessity" that regulates socially extended processes is necessary in order to effectively lead the socially extended mind to a truly embedded and embodied account.
Constructivist Foundations, 2022
The first set of topics is dedicated to the theoretical framework I employ in my target article ... more The first set of topics is dedicated to the theoretical framework I employ in my target article "Loving the Earth by loving a place". I will explain (a) why sense-making is participatory from the beginning and (b) how a personal communication with a place is possible. The second set of topics tackles my proposal’s ethical and political significance. I will consider (c) the objection on how it is possible to love the unlovable and (d) the question of what should change for us to love nature.
Constructivist Foundations, 2022
Context • I extend the enactive account of loving in romantic relationships that I developed with... more Context • I extend the enactive account of loving in romantic relationships that I developed with Hanne De Jaegher
to the love of nature. > Problem • I challenge a universal conceptualization of love of nature that does not account
for the differences that are inherent to nature. As an alternative, I offer a situated account of loving a place as participatory
sense-making. However, a question arises: How is it possible to communicate with the other-than-human?
> Method • I use panpsychist and enactive conceptual tools to better define this situated approach to the love of nature
and to reply to the research question. In particular, I focus on Mathews’s “becoming native” and the generative
tensions that unfold in a dialectic of encounter when a common language is not shared. > Results • The fundamental
difference experienced in encountering the other-than-human is generative for building up the human–Earth connection
if we let each other be listened to. I describe the ethical dimension that permeates this type of “enactive listening”
at the core of a situated account of love of nature. > Implications • Love of nature is of paramount importance in our
current climate crisis characterized by environmental anxiety, despair, and anger. A situated love of nature emphasizes
the importance of community-based local interventions to preserve the Earth. Love, thus understood as a fundamental
moral and political power, is a catalyst for environmental activism. > Constructivist content • My article links to
participatory sense-making as defined by De Jaegher and Di Paolo, and De Jaegher’s loving epistemology. It offers a
broader understanding of participatory sense-making that includes the other-than-human. It also introduces the new
concept of “enactive listening.”
Journal of Ethics, 2021
In this paper, we introduce an enactive account of loving as participatory sense-making inspired ... more In this paper, we introduce an enactive account of loving as participatory sense-making inspired by the "I love to you" of the feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray. Emancipating from the fusionist concept of romantic love, which understands love as unity, we conceptualise loving as an existential engagement in a dialectic of encounter, in continuous processes of becoming-in-relation. In these processes, desire acquires a certain prominence as the need to know (the other, the relation, oneself) more. We build on Irigaray's account of love to present a phenomenology of loving interactions and then our enactive account. Finally, we draw some implications for ethics. These concern language, difference, vulnerability, desire, and self-transformation.
Platonism: Ficino to Foucault, 2021
In the last years of his life Michel Foucault devoted himself to the study of classical antiquity... more In the last years of his life Michel Foucault devoted himself to the study of classical antiquity, focusing on what he called the ‘technologies of the self’, i.e., a system of therapeutic and ethical practices that constructed the ancient subject within a horizon of freedom. The motivations that led Foucault to undertake this study are still an object of debate today. The present study endorses the approach of those authors (such as Arnold Davidson and Judith Revel) who identify a continuity in the development of Foucault’s oeuvre. In this respect, I share Davidson’s and Revel’s views and do not interpret Foucault’s return to antiquity as a moment of self-absorption, an abandonment of politics or a way out from the pessimism characterizing the previous period of his work, as pointed out by Alexander Nehamas. Arguably, by studying the ancients, Foucault intended to elaborate possibilities of action for the present, without however searching in the past for solutions to problems which characterised a different age. In other words, for Foucault the study of classical thought enables to historicise our point of view and to conceive the possibility of other forms of life. It does not seek a ready-made model requiring implementation, but entails a perspectival exercise which aims at engendering effective forms of resistance and production. The critical posture of the intellectual is thus conjugated with a practice of self-transformation which enables the wider context in which the subject acts/reacts to be changed. From this perspective, Foucault emphasises the relation between government of the self and government of others, historicising philosophy and demonstrating how it encompassed a knowledge which was indissolubly bound to praxis. Mario Vegetti has criticized Foucault for reducing antiquity to a pacified form of Platonism or Neoplatonism, incapable of capturing the conflict and political tensions of the period. The present analysis intends to demonstrate that this is not the case, and it highlights how much Foucault drew from the notion of ergon that he learned from a very Socratic Plato for developing an account of transformative philosophy as mode of life embedded in the power dynamics.
HUMANA.MENTE Journal of Philosophical Studies, 2019
In this paper we suggest an understanding of the self within the conceptual framework of situated... more In this paper we suggest an understanding of the self within the conceptual framework of situated affectivity, proposing the notion of an affectively extended self and arguing that the construction, diachronic reshaping and maintenance of the self is mediated first by affective interactions. We initially consider the different variations on the conception of the extended self that have been already proposed in the literature (Clark & Chalmers 1998; Heersmink 2017, 2018; Krueger 2018; Wilson, Lenart 2015). We then propose our alternative, contextualising it within the current debate on situated affectivity. While the idea that we exploit the external environment in order to manage our affective life is now rather widespread among philosophers (e.g. Colombetti & Krueger 2015, Piredda 2019), its potential consequences for and connections with the debate on the self remain underexplored. Drawing on James' intuition of the "material self", which clearly connects the self and the emotions in agency, and broadly envisioning an extension of the self beyond its organismic boundaries, we propose our pragmatist conception of the self: an affectively extended self that relies on affective artifacts and practices to construct its identity extended beyond skin and skull.
Aurora, 2019
In this paper I discuss the reasons for which we may consider wonder an epistemic emotion. I defe... more In this paper I discuss the reasons for which we may consider wonder an epistemic emotion. I defend the thesis for which a specific type of wonder is aporia-based and that since it is aporia-based, this wonder is epistemic. The epistemic wonder is thus an interrogating wonder which plays the epistemic function of motivation to questioning in processes of inquiry. I first introduce the contemporary debate on epistemic emotions, and then I analyze the characteristics that make of wonder an epistemic emotion, from a data-based, phenomenological, and conceptual perspective.
Acta Analytica, 2020
In this paper, I discuss the intrinsic value of truth from the perspective of the emotion studies... more In this paper, I discuss the intrinsic value of truth from the perspective of the emotion studies in virtue epistemology. The strategy is the one that looks at epistemic emotions as driving forces towards truth as the most valuable epistemic good. But in doing so, a puzzle arises: how can the value of truth be intrinsic (as the most valuable epistemic good) and instrumental (being useful to the epistemic agent)? My answer lies in the
difference established by Duncan Pritchard (Pritchard 2014) between epistemic value and the value of the epistemic applied to the case of subjective motivations to knowing.
I argue that the value of truth is intrinsic as epistemic value and that this is not only compatible with the idea that truth can have different kinds of instrumental values but also that the subjective value of truth, disclosed by epistemic emotions, can make the value of truth stronger if regulated within patterns of virtuous enquiry.
Springer Campaign for the World Philosophy Day 2019, 2019
This is a blog I wrote for the Springer Campaign for the World Philosophy Day 2019
The Value of Emotions for Knowledge, ed. L. Candiotto, 2019
The aim of the chapter is to discuss and evaluate the epistemic role of emotions in participatory... more The aim of the chapter is to discuss and evaluate the epistemic role of emotions in participatory sense-making, assuming 4Ecognition as background. I first ask why could emotions be beneficial for the collective processes of knowledge, especially discussing Battaly (Extending Epistemic Virtue: Extended Cognition Meets Virtue-Responsibilism, in Extended Epistemology. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2018) and arguing for a conceptualisation of emotions as socially extended motivations in virtue epistemology; then, I discuss participatory sense-making (De Jaegher and Di Paolo, Participatory Sense-Making: An Enactive Approach to Social Cognition, in Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 6:485–507, 2007; Making Sense in Participation, in Intersubjectivity: A Cognitive and Social Perspective to the Study of Interactions. IOS Press, Amsterdam, 2008; Fuchs and De Jaegher, Enactive Intersubjectivity: Participatory Sense-Making and Mutual Incorporation, in Phenomenology and Cognitive Science 8:465–486, 2009), both conceptually and phenomenologically, arguing for a fundamental role played by emotions in boosting epistemic cooperation and determining the quality of social bonds. I advocate their specific function in epistemic cooperation. Epistemic cooperation is what brings about the generation of a shared meaning in participatory sense-making and thus, since emotions function as socially extended motivations, they boost the relationships among the agents, bonding them to the aims of their epistemic community.
The Value of Emotions for Knowledge, ed. L. Candiotto, 2019
The aim of this chapter is to discuss the relevance that emotions can play in our epistemic life ... more The aim of this chapter is to discuss the relevance that emotions can play in our epistemic life considering the state of the art of the philosophical debate on emotions. The strategy is the one of focusing on the three main models on emotions as evaluative judgements, bodily feelings, and perceptions, following the fil rouge of emotion intentionality for rising questions about their epistemic functions. From this examination, a major challenge to mainstream epistemology arises, the one that asks to provide prominence to the epistemic agent and to her affects. This chapter discusses these implications, also providing an overview of the many alternatives available nowadays in epistemology, arguing for an open, comprehensive, and interdisciplinary approach to emotions in knowledge.
Philosophia, 2019
In the so-called "erotic dialogues", especially the Symposium and the Phaedrus, Plato explained w... more In the so-called "erotic dialogues", especially the Symposium and the Phaedrus, Plato explained why erotic desire can play an epistemic function, establishing a strong connection between erotic desire and beauty, "the most clearly visible and the most loved" (Phaedr. 250e1) among the Ideas. Taking the erotic dialogues as a background, in this paper I elucidate Plato's explanation in another context, the one of the Phaedo (72e3-77a5), for discussing the epistemic function of erotic desire in relation to the deficiency argument and the affinity argument. My claim is that the erotic desire of the philosopher is activated by the recognition of traces of the Ideas as something that the material world lacks and that, nevertheless, his soul is familiar with. This desire for the Ideas triggers the process of recollection, and thus erotic desire acquires a decisive role in the acquisition of knowledge in the Phaedo. In the final section of the paper, I highlight the contemporary relevance of Plato's epistemology of erotic desire.
The Virtues of Epistemic Shame in Critical Dialogue
Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Shame Methods, Theories, Norms, Cultures, and Politics, ed. C. Mun, 2019
Plato, in the famous sixth definition of sophistry in the Sophist (230b4–230e5), depicted kathars... more Plato, in the famous sixth definition of sophistry in the Sophist (230b4–230e5), depicted katharsis as the function played by shame in those aporetic states triggered by Socrates via the elenchus (cross-examination or refutation) of an interlocutor’s opinions (Candiotto 2015; 2018; 2019). This kind of epistemic purification made the epistemic agent aware of their faults, nurtured their desire to overcome this unpleasant situation, and thus, pushed them to struggle for knowledge within a process of collective inquiry. Bringing this conceptualization of shame to bear on the contemporary discourse on epistemic emotions entails that shame, in getting rid of false beliefs, is an affective tool for the epistemic enhancement of cognitive agents. Following the aporetic tradition, I maintain that the epistemic function of an aporetic state—specifically, the function of motivating one to face contradictions—is to purify the soul of its illness, which is understood here as the holding of a false belief. Moreover, this kind of purification is a crucial phase in the struggle for truth since it permits one to free their soul from the pernicious ignorance of having an unmotivated presumption of knowledge.
I first examine the function of aporetic states in the Socratic method and then in cooperative group learning, depicting their epistemic valence as purification from false beliefs.1 Aporetic states are disruptive mental states wherein one faces some contradiction that one does not know how to resolve, which then leads to an epistemic doubt that breaks one’s process of inquiry—as when one does not know how to solve a moral dilemma or when one finds some paradoxical conclusion in their argument. These states are endowed with a complex phenomenology, from bodily feelings to different kinds of emotional responses. My aim is to analyze the role played by one of these emotional responses—shame—by recognizing its epistemic primacy in the process of cognitive transformation. Second, I discuss the notion of cognitive
transformation as the outcome of the beneficial cathartic function played by
shame in epistemic purification. Third, I extend this analysis to the conditions
that are required to avoid shame’s well-known shortcomings, thereby introducing
lovely shame as a novel hermeneutical tool for detecting the virtuous
side of epistemic shame. I finally conclude by framing the virtues of lovely shame within the context of Socratic skepticism.
Plato's Statesman Revisited, eds. B. Bossi, T. Robinson, pp. 231-245. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter 2018., 2018
The aim of the paper is to clarify why the separation from the sophists is
an issue for Plato in ... more The aim of the paper is to clarify why the separation from the sophists is
an issue for Plato in the Statesman; to provide three answers that seek to frame the question of the relationship between Socrates and sophistry; and to re-examine the issue after the Sophist, and offer a new solution.
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Papers in English by Laura Candiotto
We endorse policymakers’ efforts to address the negative consequences of the attention economy’s technology but add that these approaches are often limited in their criticism of the systemic context of human attention. Starting from Buddhist philosophy, we advocate a broader approach: an ‘ecology of attending’ that centers on conceptualizing, designing, and using attention (1) in an embedded way and (2) focused on the alleviating of suffering. With ‘embedded’ we mean that attention is not a neutral, isolated mechanism but a meaning-engendering part of an ‘ecology’ of bodily, sociotechnical and moral frameworks. With ‘focused on the alleviation of suffering’ we mean that we explicitly move away from the (often implicit) conception of attention as a tool for gratifying desires. We analyze existing inquiries in these directions and urge them to be intensified and integrated. As to the design and function of our technological environment, we propose three questions for further research: How can technology help to acknowledge us as ‘ecological’ beings, rather than as self-sufficient individuals? How can technology help to raise awareness of our moral framework? And how can technology increase the conditions for ‘attending’ to the alleviation of suffering, by substituting our covert self-driven moral framework with an ecologically attending one? We believe in the urgency of transforming the inhumane attention economy sociotechnical system into a humane ecology of attending, and in our ability to contribute to it.
Please see the full list of authors in the paper
to the love of nature. > Problem • I challenge a universal conceptualization of love of nature that does not account
for the differences that are inherent to nature. As an alternative, I offer a situated account of loving a place as participatory
sense-making. However, a question arises: How is it possible to communicate with the other-than-human?
> Method • I use panpsychist and enactive conceptual tools to better define this situated approach to the love of nature
and to reply to the research question. In particular, I focus on Mathews’s “becoming native” and the generative
tensions that unfold in a dialectic of encounter when a common language is not shared. > Results • The fundamental
difference experienced in encountering the other-than-human is generative for building up the human–Earth connection
if we let each other be listened to. I describe the ethical dimension that permeates this type of “enactive listening”
at the core of a situated account of love of nature. > Implications • Love of nature is of paramount importance in our
current climate crisis characterized by environmental anxiety, despair, and anger. A situated love of nature emphasizes
the importance of community-based local interventions to preserve the Earth. Love, thus understood as a fundamental
moral and political power, is a catalyst for environmental activism. > Constructivist content • My article links to
participatory sense-making as defined by De Jaegher and Di Paolo, and De Jaegher’s loving epistemology. It offers a
broader understanding of participatory sense-making that includes the other-than-human. It also introduces the new
concept of “enactive listening.”
difference established by Duncan Pritchard (Pritchard 2014) between epistemic value and the value of the epistemic applied to the case of subjective motivations to knowing.
I argue that the value of truth is intrinsic as epistemic value and that this is not only compatible with the idea that truth can have different kinds of instrumental values but also that the subjective value of truth, disclosed by epistemic emotions, can make the value of truth stronger if regulated within patterns of virtuous enquiry.
I first examine the function of aporetic states in the Socratic method and then in cooperative group learning, depicting their epistemic valence as purification from false beliefs.1 Aporetic states are disruptive mental states wherein one faces some contradiction that one does not know how to resolve, which then leads to an epistemic doubt that breaks one’s process of inquiry—as when one does not know how to solve a moral dilemma or when one finds some paradoxical conclusion in their argument. These states are endowed with a complex phenomenology, from bodily feelings to different kinds of emotional responses. My aim is to analyze the role played by one of these emotional responses—shame—by recognizing its epistemic primacy in the process of cognitive transformation. Second, I discuss the notion of cognitive
transformation as the outcome of the beneficial cathartic function played by
shame in epistemic purification. Third, I extend this analysis to the conditions
that are required to avoid shame’s well-known shortcomings, thereby introducing
lovely shame as a novel hermeneutical tool for detecting the virtuous
side of epistemic shame. I finally conclude by framing the virtues of lovely shame within the context of Socratic skepticism.
an issue for Plato in the Statesman; to provide three answers that seek to frame the question of the relationship between Socrates and sophistry; and to re-examine the issue after the Sophist, and offer a new solution.