Becko Copenhaver is Professor of Philosophy and Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology at Washington University in St. Louis. She studies the philosophy of mind and the history of the philosophy of mind in 17th and 18th century Britain and Europe.
What do you do at the APA?
I’m the Secretary-Treasurer of the Pacific Division and have been since 2016. No one really knows what the Secretary-Treasurer does, which is kind of nice, because it’s meaningful service without really being visibly out there. Basically, we oversee and help the Program Chair and Program Committee, negotiate hotel contracts, select hotel sites, organize and schedule the Affiliated Group program part of the meeting, and slot all the sessions into rooms. We also sit on the APA Board of Officers. Most people on the board are there for only three years, so along with our Executive Director, Amy Ferrer, the Board Chair, Lanier Anderson, and the Vice Chair, Richard Bett, the Secretary-Treasurers are the long institutional memory members of the board.
How did you come to be a part of the staff/leadership?
Oh gosh. I was on the Program Committee when I was just starting out and didn’t know anybody. I was at a meeting in San Francisco, having coffee in the lobby and feeling intimidated and anxious. A nice man across from me asked what I thought of the program, and I said I wasn’t objective as I had helped put it together. Well, that was Dom Lopes, the previous Secretary-Treasurer! Seeing Dom do the job so expertly made me comfortable thinking about taking it on. I’m one of those people who has to do some service, but I want it to matter, and matter to the people in my community. Philosophers are my people, so this was perfect.
What is your work about?
I’ve always felt strongly that the mind is developed in, directed at, and engaged in the world, including the social world. This may seem obvious, but cultures in the European tradition tend to be highly individualist and tend to think of the mind as, to use a phrase from David Foster Wallace, “our very own little skull-sized kingdoms.” Everything I do is motivated by my strong antipathy to this individualist, static, isolated view of the mind.
For me, part of that requires asking the question “how did we even get here in the first place?” Doing philosophy historically is one way of doing empirically informed philosophy, since history is an empirical matter. I bounce back and forth between the modern origins of this view and current work in philosophy of mind and psychology to develop a positive alternative. That positive alternative is naturalistic—it takes as basic that we’re animals in a natural world with an evolutionary history—and emphasizes the developmental aspects of our mental capacities and the differences such developments make in our experiences of the world. The view assumes that our mental capacities are what allow us to navigate a complex environment, including a social environment, as practical agents, and so emphasizes the ways in which we rely on the world and on one another for our mentality.
In addition to being individualist, the standard view also draws a stark, often a priori, distinction between cognition and perception, while over-intellectualizing cognition and impoverishing perception. My work homes in on this set of (what I regard as) errors. I’m suspicious of the stark distinction, which I think is an empirical matter, and I view perception as far more rich, adaptive, and flexible than depicted in the standard account. Some of my more controversial views in this area are that typical adult humans can develop perceptual (rather than purely intellectual) sensitivity to sophisticated features in their environments, including evaluative and aesthetic features, such as ‘being cruel’ or ‘being beautiful.’
How is your work relevant to historical ideas?
The view against which I provide an alternative was developed in the 17th and 18th centuries in Britain and Europe. It was, and in some ways still is, the dominant way of thinking about the relationship between mind and world. So, I study these beginnings to show that the view has a history and is contingent: we have this view because we inherited it and there’s no reason to place the burden of proof on those who offer an alternative to it. And there were other people at that time—Thomas Reid, in particular—who resisted the view as it was being developed. His philosophy is thus a resource in criticizing the standard account and envisioning a more world-directed picture of mentality.
Do you have any pets? If so, tell us about them.
I have the most amazing cat: Roscoe. He was a rescue kitten from Pendleton, Oregon (I used to live in Oregon) who was barely bigger than my eyeglasses when he came to stay with me. Now he is 17 pounds! He’s a very high-contrast Tabby with white tuxedo marks. He is extraordinarily friendly and shows off to anyone who comes for a visit. He has very thick, almost waterproof fur and when he gets spooked only his tail poofs up, but boy does it poof.
What do you like to do outside work?
I love to ride my bike. St. Louis isn’t the best bike town for bike commuting, but it has wonderful parks that are great to ride around in. I also like to do printmaking, painting, and other little crafty projects. I read a lot of science fiction. I started walking a lot during the pandemic because I couldn’t really do anything else. My focus was so lost that I couldn’t read or write. I couldn’t even watch TV! So, I walked and walked. I like to cook and eat very fancy foods. And somehow, I have the very best friends in the world, all over the world, so I always love to hang out with them.
What’s your top tip or advice for APA members reading this?
You are the APA! I don’t know why, but so many of us tend to think that the APA is some kind of outside force that comes in and does things to philosophers (sometimes just to irritate them). Think about how weird that would be. Take it from me: non-philosophers are not that into us. It’s us. It’s your colleagues. And other than the amazing staff in the administrative office, it’s all volunteers. Philosophers: we’re not going to make it without each other. Please serve. We need you.
