Cosgrove, Melissa: Against the Insulated Mind: Toward a Feminist Philosophy of Cognition

Philosophy of mind has often modeled cognition as an internal process unfolding within insulated individuals, abstracted from relations of power, care, and dependency — including the cognitive labor of care work and the mental load that sustains household and family life. This paper argues that such models cannot remain methodologically coherent when examined through feminist theoretical commitments. Drawing on feminist epistemology, phenomenology, care ethics, and disability theory, it shows th