I’m Associate Professor in Theoretical Philosophy and Senior Researcher at the Centre for Ethics of the University of Pardubice, Czech Republic. I’m also a Fellow of the Intercontinental Academy on Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence (ICA4), UBIAS. I teach Ethics of AI in the Master “AI, Mente, Impresa” of the University of Brescia, and Philosophy of Dialogue in the Master “Pratiche Dialogiche nelle Organizzazioni Complesse”. I’m a member of the Mind & Life ESRI Planning Committee “Learning with Others: Living Connections and Trasmission”.

Before joining the University of Pardubice, I was Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Senior Research Fellow at the Free University of Berlin, Germany, with a project on the role of emotions in group knowledge (2019/2021). Previously, I was a Senior Research Fellow at the IMéRA Institute of the Advanced Studies of the Aix-Marseille University, France (2018/2019), with a project on positive emotions. I also worked as Marie Curie Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, UK,  carrying on the EU funded project “Emotions First” (Marie Curie Individual Fellowship) at the Eidyn Centre. I worked as Teaching Fellow at the same University, both in the Department of Philosophy and at the Moray House School of Education (2016/2018). Before that, I worked as postdoctoral research fellow at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy (2013/2015).

My research field is Philosophy of Emotions at the c-risscross of Social Epistemology and the Ethics of Knowing. I also have specific expertise in Ancient Greek Philosophy, especially Plato. I’m interested in 4E Cognition, especially Enactivism, Pragmatism, Feminist Epistemology, Virtue and Vice Epistemology, and Environmental Ethics. I’m increasingly working on topics in Applied Social Epistemology, especially related to Critical Dialogue and Participatoru Sense-Making.

One of my main research aims is to argue that emotions can play a beneficial role in knowledge
acquisition (Candiotto 2019a, 2019d). In the last ten years, I have depicted the orchestration of emotions as extended in social epistemic practices, especially dialogical and cooperative ones (Candiotto 2016; Candiotto 2017a), with a focus on 4E cognition (embodied, embedded, enactive, extended cognition). In particular, I have studied the Socratic method of inquiry as distributed cognition (Candiotto 2016, 2017b, 2019d) for highlighting the role of emotions in dialogical interactions. I have also explored the epistemic role of emotions in Plato’s theory of mind (Candiotto 2018; Candiotto 2019f; Candiotto & Politis 2020; Candiotto & Renaut 2020). Moreover, I have also explored aporetic states as key loci of knowledge management (Candiotto 2015, 2019e, 2019g). In doing so, I examined the epistemic function of specific emotions, like wonder (Candiotto 2019c; Candiotto &
Politis 2020), shame (Candiotto 2015, 2018, 2019e, 2019g), and love (Candiotto 2019f, Candiotto & DeJaegher 2021). I applied these results to educational contexts, designing a model of Socratic Dialogue that relies on the cognitive role of emotions in critical thinking (Candiotto 2017b; Candiotto 2017d).

Academic History

I did my PhD at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, supervisor Prof. Luigi Vero Tarca, in collaboration with the UPR76 CNRS Paris and Sorbonne University of Paris under the supervision of Prof. Luc Brisson. My PhD topic focused on Plato’s Socratic dialogues: I argued for the necessity thesis about the role of shame in the Socratic elenchus, and the shared motivational states of the interlocutors in the dialogical inquiry.

My Postdoctoral research focused on the concept of relationship. I studied its meaning in the history of philosophy (mainly in Plato, Heidegger and Feminist philosophy) and I discussed it through the tools of Contemporary Social Epistemology and Metaphysics of Relation.

Since the Marie Curie Project, the specific field of my research has become Philosophy of Emotions. I understand emotions as “in-between”: Emotions are not private state of minds but active and dynamic processes between subjects. They emerge from our active interactions with others in processes of participatory sense-making. The research projects at Aix-Marseille University and at FU Berlin have further developed this account in collaboration with Jan Slaby, Hanne De Jaegher, and Roberta Dreon. I’m now working on a project on affective sense-making in epistemic responsibility at the Centre for Ethics of the University of Pardubice.

Within the pilot project Extended Cognition in the Classroom at the University of Edinburgh, I studied the affective dimension of trust in structural coupling with assistive technology(publication in progress). As a fellow of the Intercontinental Academy on Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence, I am further exploring research on the affective experience of the networked life, such as affective interactions in social media and cultural robotics.

A further area of my accomplishments pertains to the contemporary philosophical practices and the consequent practice of philosophy in educational contexts (I also have a Post-graduate specialization in Philosophy for Children and Communities, University of Padua). In the last years I tested some philosophical practices, based on Socratic Dialogue, and have proven to be effective mainly in the health-care sector. As Marie Curie Fellow I worked with the Edinburgh Chaplaincy for developing a training on compassion within the University.

Webpages

To download my articles https://upce.academia.edu/LauraCandiotto

For Italian readers: www.candiottolaura.wordpress.com (last update 2016)

My institutional profile page: https://centreforethics.upce.cz/en/doc-laura-candiotto-phd-0

References

Candiotto, L. 2022. “Epistemic emotions and co-inquiry”. Topoi, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-021-09789-4
– 2019a. “Emotions in-between. The affective dimension of participatory sense-making”. In The Valueof Emotions for Knowledge, ed. L. Candiotto, pp. 235-260. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
– 2019b. “Epistemic Emotions and the Value of Truth”. Acta Analytica. https://doi.org/ 10.1007/s12136-019-00416-x
– 2019c. “Epistemic Emotions. The Case of Wonder”, Aurora. Journal of Philosophy, v.31, n.54.
http://doi.org/10.7213/1980-5934.31.054.DS11
– 2019d. “From Philosophy of Emotion to Epistemology: Some Questions About the Epistemic
Relevance of Emotions”, in The Value of Emotions for Knowledge, ed. L. Candiotto, pp. 3-24. London:Palgrave Macmillan.
– 2019e. “Pl a t o’ s dialogically extended cognition. Cognitive transformation as elenctic catharsis”, in The Routledge Handbook of Classics and Cognitive Theory, eds. P. Meineck, W. M. Short and J. Devereux, pp. 202-215. London and New York: Routledge.
– 2019f. “The Divine Feeling: The Epistemic Function of Erotic Desire in Plato’s Theory of
Recollection”. Philosophia. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-019-00108-1
– 2019g. “The Virtues of Epistemic Shame in Critical Dialogue”, in Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Shame: Theory, Method, Norms, Cultures, and Politics, ed. C. Mun, Lexington Books/Rowman & Littlefield.
– 2018. “Purification through emotions. The role of shame in Plato’s Sophist 230b4-e5”, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 50, Issue 6-7: 576-585.
– 2017a. “Boosting cooperation. The beneficial function of positive emotions in dialogical inquiry”.Humana.Mente. Journal of Philosophical Studies, special issue: “The learning brain and the classroom”,eds. A. Tillas, B. Kaldis, Vol. 33, pp. 59–82.
– 2017b. “Emotions in dialogue. A new proposal: the integral Socratic dialogue”. In Socrate à l’agora. Que peut la parole philosophique, ed. M. De Moor, pp. 79-92. Paris: Vrin.
– 2017c. “Epistemic emotions: the building blocks of intellectual virtues”, Studi di estetica 1/2017: 7-25.
– 2017d. “Socratic Dialogue faces the history. Dialogical inquiry as philosophical and politically
engaged way of life”, Culture and Dialogue, 5(2): pp. 157-172. DOI: 10.1163/24683949-12340031
– 2016. “Extended affectivity as the cognition of the primary intersubjectivity”, Phenomenology and Mind 11: 232-241.
– 2015. “Aporetic State and Extended Emotions”. Etica e Politica/Ethics & Politics, XVII, 2015(2), special issue on “The Legacy of Bernard Williams’s Shame and Necessity”, ed. A. Fussi, pp. 233-248.
Candiotto, L., De Jaegher, H. 2021. “Love in-between”. The Journal of Ethics.
Candiotto, L., Dreon, R. 2021. “Affective scaffoldings as habits. A pragmatist Approach”. Frontiers in Psychology https:// doi. org/ 10. 3389/ fpsyg. 2021. 629046
Candiotto, L., Piredda, G. 2019. “The Affectively Extended Self: A Pragmatist Approach”. HUMANA.MENTE Journal of Philosophical Studies, 12(36), pp. 121-145.
Candiotto, L., Politis, V. 2020. “Epistemic wonder and the beginning of the enquiry: Plato’s Theaetetus 155d2-4 and its wider significance”, in Emotions in Plato, eds. L. Candiotto, O. Renaut, pp. 17-38. Leiden: Brill.
Candiotto, L., Renaut, O. eds. 2020. Emotions in Plato, Leiden: Brill.