Deze aanvraag gaat over de ontwikkeling van Nederlandse culturele netwerken in Italië en vroege vormen van kunstmecenaat. Doel van het onderzoek zijn de werkwijze van Nederlandse kunstenaars binnen de Italiaanse atelierpraktijk, samenwerkingsvormen en de uitwisseling van beeldmotieven in Venetië en Rome. Kan Jan van Scorel als wegbereider worden gezien?

A recent movement in the philosophy of mind engages with the study of animal cognition to counter our tendency to model cognition in general mainly on human consciousness. Since it is now widely recognized that human behaviour is to a large extent the result of unconscious, ‘subpersonal’ processes, paradoxically, a notion of cognition that is not based on human consciousness can help us understand human cognition better. ‘De-anthropomorphizing’ cognition, however, is harder than it seems: the assumption that animals think, decide, remember in the same way as we seem to do—namely, as conscious, brain-based reflection—is implicit, but ubiquitous in thinking about animal minds. The proposed research project therefore aims to develop a non-anthropocentric understanding of cognition. It takes its cue from the so-called Skilled Intentionality Framework (SIF), which defines cognition as the way organisms respond to possibilities for action offered by their environments. Because the SIF is currently applied to human cognition only, stage one of the project aims to integrate SIF with the notion of ‘embodied habits’—something we do skilfully without consciously thinking—to make it applicable to nonhuman cognition as well. Stage two consists of a case study, in which decision-making in humans and several nonhuman animals will be scrutinized. The project contributes to a new field of academic inquiry in which the relation between human and animal minds is discussed. The implications of this contribution for philosophy of mind, empirical animal research, cognitive science and ethics will be charted in the final stage.

In many situations, experts at work act successfully, yet without deliberation. Architects, for example, perceive immediately the opportunities offered by the site of a new project, and intuitively improve the size of the door in one of their designs. One could label these manifestations of expert intuition as higher-level cognition, but still these experts are just acting unreflectively. The two central ideas behind my VIDI-proposal are (a) that these episodes of higher cognition can be understood along the same lines as everyday skillful unreflective activities, such as grasping a coffee cup or riding a bike; and (b) that our surroundings contribute to skillful action and cognition in a far more fundamental way than is generally acknowledged within philosophy and cognitive science. My overarching aim is to use these ideas to develop a novel conceptual framework for enactive cognitive science (Thompson, 2007; cf. Chemero, 2009). The cognition we find in expert intuition consists of responsiveness to multiple possibilities for action provided by our surroundings, or affordances. A cup affords grasping, the extended hand of a visitor invites a handshake, and the door solicits making it higher. My project is innovative in showing how high embodied cognition can reach. Thanks to my affordance-based framework, findings that were thought to be exclusively valid for everyday unreflective action (or for sensorimotor behavior) can now be applied to skilled higher cognition. Moreover, it brings the social back into cognitive science by clarifying how available affordances for action and cognition depend on socio-cultural practices. My project will also show how this broad philosophical framework can have concrete, real-world applications in the domains of architecture and psychiatry respectively. A PhD-project will advance the convergence of these ideas with influential work within cognitive neuroscience on the anticipating brain in which affordances (Friston, et al., 2012) are also central.

Imaging techniques such as computed tomography (CT), positron emission tomography (PET), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and functional MRI (fMRI) have revolutionized brain research and medical practice. These methods allow for visualization of the structure or activity of the brain, thereby providing information about and understanding of the brain. Many people interpret the visualizations produced by imaging techniques as straightforward pictures of real brain structures or activity. In reality, however, things are more complicated: the various types of brain imaging techniques rely on theoretical assumptions as well as complex technological and statistical methods, and interpreting the visualizations is not as unambiguous as it appears at first sight. Accordingly, the use of these techniques raises important philosophical questions regarding the nature of scientific observation, interpretation, and understanding. The project’s overall aim is to develop a comprehensive philosophical account of the nature and limits of understanding the brain by using imaging techniques. To achieve this aim the PhD candidate addresses, in collaboration with philosophers and scientific/medical experts, three key issues: (1) What kind of visual models of the brain are produced by imaging techniques? (2) What is the relation between visualization and scientific understanding? (3) Which values play a role in the scientific and medical practices of brain imaging? The results of the project are expected to illuminate the status, function and understanding of brain imaging in scientific and medical practice. The project will not only advance current debates in philosophy of science, but will also be relevant for neuroscientists and medical practitioners.

Recently, in the Netherlands and other European countries, controversies have arisen concerning Jewish and Muslim religious practices such as ritual slaughter and circumcision. These controversies are usually framed in terms of shifting relations between secular cultures and (orthodox) religion. Some criticise these practices in the name of secular and liberal values, often with reference to the Enlightenment and human or animal rights; others argue that secularist cultural hegemony exists in an uneasy relationship with religious freedom. A question which has so far remained in the background, is how the framing of these controversies, in terms of the relationship between secular critique of religion and (orthodox) religion, is related to how Jews and Muslims have been historically, and still remain, the objects of cultural stereotyping, racialisation and discrimination. This is a crucial question at a time when anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are issues of concern in Europe. This project therefore analyses the dynamic between critique of religion and the framing of Jews and Muslims, while also aiming to contribute to public reflection on this dynamic. One sub-project provides a conceptual-historical analysis of the dynamic between religious critique and the framing of Jews and Muslims in secular modern political theory. It subsequently examines the contributions of contemporary Dutch public intellectuals to the debate in light of that conceptual history. Another sub-project involves participants in controversies in the Netherlands concerning circumcision and ritual slaughter to evaluate the legitimacy of specific forms of religious critique. The principal applicant will write a synthesising study in Dutch. Dit project wordt uitgevoerd in samenwerking met Stichting Socrates.