Alien Experience

Philosophers and psychologists often talk about the moral distance we put between the self we are trying to be and the emotions we still sometimes have. Tumulty instead argues that there can be a similar moral distance between the self you want to be and the experiences you have. She explains what drives discomfort with our patterns of perception and sensation. She argues that philosophers should not assume experience is too passive to generate this kind of discomfort with ourselves, and it suggests ways for coping with this discomfort when it occurs.

If I were a better human being, that person''s voice wouldn''t sound so shrill to me. Many of us may have had such thoughts. They give voice to the worrying intuition that if we were less affected by sexism and racism, or better at keeping our tempers, our fellow humans would look and sound differently to us. In Alien Experience, Maura Tumulty argues that we should take this sense of unease seriously. It is as philosophically significant as our unease over desires or fears that we disown. Making sense of this unease requires us to re-think the relation between experiences and standing commitments; to re-consider what we mean by self-control; and to attend to empirical questions about perception, attention, and tacit cognition.In taking up these issues, Alien Experience illuminates and questions a significant assumption that underlies debates in the philosophy of mind, moral psychology, and ethics: While we may be answerable (morally, ethically, legally) for our attitudes and emotions, we are not answerable in any interesting way for our perceptions and sensations. Tumulty argues that this assumption leads to a flattened view of the ways experiences are related to agency. Recognizing that we can be alienated from our experiences helps us appreciate distinctive opportunities for self-improvement.