Needs of the Mind: How the Aptic Normativity of Needs Can Guide Conceptual Adaptation

R&R at Philosophical Studies.

The article offers an account of “needs of the mind” in terms of a distinctively aptic normativity–a normativity of fittingness. After reconstructing the history of different conceptions of needs and their gradual subjectivization, the article focuses on conceptual needs and argues that they register a cognitive privation that goes beyond a shortage of words, marking a mismatch between our conceptual repertoire and our situation that reorients conceptual engineering from detached amelioration to situated adaptation. This makes a needs-first approach uniquely suited to guiding conceptual adaptation in times of technological disruption.

conceptual adaptation, needs, aptic normativity, privacy, technology, power

Download PDF