Cogent Arts & Humanities

An understanding of action and social interaction is crucial for an adequate account of the mind. The nature of these phenomena—and those related to them—have been of primary interest to philosophers from several traditions, including, for instance, phenomenologists, pragmatists, and analytic philosophers, as well as to cognitive scientists working in various disciplines.

Classic philosophical accounts construe intentional actions in terms of individual goals or intentions and collective actions in terms of goals or intentions that are shared with others (see e.g., Anscombe, Searle, Bratman). Multiple fields, however, offer new ideas that reframe the investigation of action and social interaction in a fruitful and insightful manner.

For example, studies on the nature of action control raise important questions on the problem of action individuation. If actions are at least partly defined by ‘action schemas’ or ‘action plans,’ it is legitimate to ask whether and how these plans or schemas confer unity on the different components of an individual or a collective action. Analogously, recent research in Developmental Psychology and Evolutionary Biology seem to call traditional definitions of intentional action into question by attributing goal-directed behaviour to subjects in early developmental stages and even to very simple organisms. Finally, current trends in embodied social cognition suggest that social interaction creates shared experiences and projects. On these accounts, participating in such experiences and projects affords us access to the minds of others.

Taking up these and analogous inputs from other disciplines, we invite papers that may advance the contemporary understanding of action and social interaction from a wide range of perspectives in philosophy and the cognitive sciences. The questions that the papers may address include, but are by no means limited to, the following:

• What is the relation between individual and collective action?
• How are individual or collective actions, goals, and intentions individuated?
• What are minimal forms of individual or collective action?
• What is the role of the experience of the body—especially proprioception—in developing skillful behavior, imitation, and social cognition?
• What is the significance of the hierarchical structure of action for the workings of action and social interaction?
• How do shared experiences shape, or in turn are shaped by, social interactions with other agents?

We welcome articles of all three article types accepted by Cogent Arts & Humanities (Research Articles, Review Articles, Critical Essays). The maximum word count for Research Articles and Review Articles is 9000 words. For Critical Essays, it is 7000 words.

All manuscripts submitted to this Article Collection will undergo a full peer-review; the Guest Advisor for this collection will not be handling the manuscripts (unless they are an Editorial Board member). Please review the journal scope and author submission instructions  prior to submitting a manuscript.

The deadline for submitting manuscripts is 30 November 2024.

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Dr. Stefano Vincini is currently research affiliate at the University of Parma. Previously, he was postdoctoral fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation at TU Dortmund University and held other postdoctoral positions at the University of Vienna and the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He received his PhD in Philosophy and his Cognitive Science Certificate from the University of Memphis, USA, in 2016. His primary areas of research are Phenomenology, Cognitive Science, and Philosophy of Mind, with a focus on the development of social cognition, imitation, and shared intentionality.

https://unipr.academia.edu/StefanoVincini
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Stefano-Vincini

Dr. Michael Butler is A Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. His primary research interests are in Phenomenology, Cognitive Science, and the Philosophy of Technology. He focuses on the social and interpersonal dimensions of selfhood--especially as they are mediated by emerging technologies.

https://www.philpeople.org/profiles/michael-butler
https://www.utrgv.edu/philosophy/faculty/index.htm

Associate Professor Glenda Satne is Associate Professor in Philosophy at the School of Liberal Arts, University of Wollongong. She specializes in Philosophy of Mind and Social Ontology. Her research focuses on E- approaches to cognition and sociality. She has published extensively on collective intentionality, collective and joint action, social cognition, plural practical knowledge, the second-person, social norms, normativity and the role played by social practices and culture in human evolution. She is also interested in meta-philosophy and naturalism, and methodological issues concerning the sciences of the mind.

https://scholars.uow.edu.au/glenda-satne/about
https://uow.academia.edu/GlendaSatne
https://philpeople.org/profiles/glenda-satne/publications

Disclosure Statement

Dr. Vincini, Dr. Butler, and Dr. Satne do not have any Conflicts to disclose.

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Keywords

1. Individual, joint, and collective action
2. Action individuation
3. Action control
4. Action and interaction in development
5. Imitation
6. Social cognition
7. Intersubjectivity and shared experiences
8. Phenomenological and pragmatist perspectives on (inter-)action
9. Embodied perspectives on (inter-)action

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