Boosting Cooperation. The Beneficial Function of Positive Emotions in Dialogical Inquiry

Humana Mente 11 (33) (2018)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to discuss and evaluate the role of positive emotions for cooperation in dialogical inquiry. I analyse dialogical interactions as vehicles for inquiry, and the role of positive emotions in knowledge gain is illustrated in terms of a case study taken from Socratic Dialogue, a contemporary method used in education for fostering group knowledge. I proceed as follows. After having illustrated the case study, I analyse it through the conceptual tools of distributed cognition and character-based virtue epistemology, focusing on the two functions that emotions seem to play in the process of knowledge-building. These functions are motives for joint inquiry, and building blocks of the affective environment where the inquiry takes place. Positive emotions such as love and gratitude foster knowledge generation by providing an environment for posing questions and exploring aspects of a specific topic that a subject would not investigate outside of a group. This analysis helps me defend the thesis for which positive emotions are beneficial for cooperation. Because cooperation is the process that leads a group to cognitive transformation, emotions that support cooperation are beneficial for group knowledge creation as well. I assume that the beneficial function that positive emotions play within dialogical inquiry is the one of enhancement of cooperation. A beneficial factor not only comprises positive emotions that facilitate and strengthen cooperation among the agents in their epistemic practices, but also consists of such emotions that nurture the epistemic agents, enhancing their responsibility to generate epistemic goods, as propositional knowledge or explanatory understanding, for example. Thus, the responsibility toward the epistemic practice disclose the ethical dimension of group inquiry.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

A new role for emotions in epistemology.Georg Brun & Dominique Kuenzle - 2008 - In Georg Brun, Ulvi Dogluoglu & Dominique Kuenzle (eds.), Epistemology and Emotions. Ashgate Publishing Company. pp. 1--31.
Emotional Insight by Michael S. Brady. [REVIEW]John M. Monteleone - 2014 - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 13:1-5.
Philosophizing about Our Emotions in the Classroom.Ann Margaret Sharp - 2008 - Proceedings of the Xxii World Congress of Philosophy 27:89-99.

Analytics

Added to PP
2018-06-07

Downloads
18 (#711,820)

6 months
4 (#320,252)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

The extended mind.Andy Clark & David J. Chalmers - 1998 - Analysis 58 (1):7-19.
The Phenomenological Mind.Shaun Gallagher & Dan Zahavi - 2008 - New York, NY: Routledge. Edited by Dan Zahavi.

View all 53 references / Add more references