Author: Pablo Fernandez Velasco

Publisher:

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13:

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There is a large body of literature investigating spatial disorientation --ranging from geography to neuroscience--, but there is no unified understanding of the phenomenon. In response to this heterogeneity, the present doctoral thesis advances a unified theory of spatial disorientation.Disorientation is, at heart, a subjective phenomenon, and it is by devoting proper attention to its subjective aspects that we can reach the sought-for integrative account. Qualitative empirical research --such as a corpus of subjective reports collected through Qualtrics and ethnographic fieldwork with Evenki indigenous hunters in arctic Siberia-- guides both the conceptual analysis and the phenomenological investigation in this thesis. The phenomenological analysis of disorientation reveals the link between our sense of space and our sense of possibility. During our everyday orientation, there is an ongoing integration of indexical and non-indexical spatial representations of our environment. The result is that in our standard experience of a well-known environment there is always an out-of-sight spatial configuration looming beyond the horizon of our experience and framing that horizon. When we are disoriented, we lose this sense of where our out-of-sight surroundings are located with respect to our present position. Most often, during disorientation we find ourselves in a space that is both impoverished and oppressive. We lose not only our sense of the structure of our environment, but also of our possibilities within that environment. This commonly results in confusion, anxiety and helplessness. The conceptual and phenomenological analysis in this monograph help advance its central thesis, which is that the best way to characterize disorientation is as a metacognitive feeling. Here, the way to understand metacognitive feelings (like the feeling of knowing or the feeling of familiarity) is as affective experiences concerning the subject's own mental states, processes or capacities. In our case, a cognitive subsystem evaluates and regulates the subject's active navigational processes, and this results in the experience of disorientation.Disorientation works not only as a way of evaluating the spatial representations inside an individual's head. Disorientation plays a role in evaluating navigational processes that can be distributed beyond the individual, onto cognitive artefacts (e.g. a map or a GPS), the environment (e.g. a trail signage system) and even groups of people (e.g. a guide or a hunting companion). When there are reasons to withdraw confidence in the ongoing navigational system, disorientation emerges to regulate the situation dynamically. Because disorientation is at the intersection of so many crucial aspects of human cognition, when we throw a light onto the phenomenon, we gain insight into some of those aspects as well. We see also how feelings (disorientation being a prime example) guide us so that we can fit within the broad cognitive ecosystems that we humans inhabit. We see as well how distributed cognitive processes modulate our experience of space, and how that experience of space in turn structures our experience of the world and of ourselves. And of course, we see what happens when that familiar structure falls away.

Download or read book A Unified Theory of Disorientation written by Pablo Fernandez Velasco and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is a large body of literature investigating spatial disorientation --ranging from geography to neuroscience--, but there is no unified understanding of the phenomenon. In response to this heterogeneity, the present doctoral thesis advances a unified theory of spatial disorientation.Disorientation is, at heart, a subjective phenomenon, and it is by devoting proper attention to its subjective aspects that we can reach the sought-for integrative account. Qualitative empirical research --such as a corpus of subjective reports collected through Qualtrics and ethnographic fieldwork with Evenki indigenous hunters in arctic Siberia-- guides both the conceptual analysis and the phenomenological investigation in this thesis. The phenomenological analysis of disorientation reveals the link between our sense of space and our sense of possibility. During our everyday orientation, there is an ongoing integration of indexical and non-indexical spatial representations of our environment. The result is that in our standard experience of a well-known environment there is always an out-of-sight spatial configuration looming beyond the horizon of our experience and framing that horizon. When we are disoriented, we lose this sense of where our out-of-sight surroundings are located with respect to our present position. Most often, during disorientation we find ourselves in a space that is both impoverished and oppressive. We lose not only our sense of the structure of our environment, but also of our possibilities within that environment. This commonly results in confusion, anxiety and helplessness. The conceptual and phenomenological analysis in this monograph help advance its central thesis, which is that the best way to characterize disorientation is as a metacognitive feeling. Here, the way to understand metacognitive feelings (like the feeling of knowing or the feeling of familiarity) is as affective experiences concerning the subject's own mental states, processes or capacities. In our case, a cognitive subsystem evaluates and regulates the subject's active navigational processes, and this results in the experience of disorientation.Disorientation works not only as a way of evaluating the spatial representations inside an individual's head. Disorientation plays a role in evaluating navigational processes that can be distributed beyond the individual, onto cognitive artefacts (e.g. a map or a GPS), the environment (e.g. a trail signage system) and even groups of people (e.g. a guide or a hunting companion). When there are reasons to withdraw confidence in the ongoing navigational system, disorientation emerges to regulate the situation dynamically. Because disorientation is at the intersection of so many crucial aspects of human cognition, when we throw a light onto the phenomenon, we gain insight into some of those aspects as well. We see also how feelings (disorientation being a prime example) guide us so that we can fit within the broad cognitive ecosystems that we humans inhabit. We see as well how distributed cognitive processes modulate our experience of space, and how that experience of space in turn structures our experience of the world and of ourselves. And of course, we see what happens when that familiar structure falls away.