Cognition is not, and could not possibly be, entirely representational in character. There is also a phenomenal form of cognitive expression that registers the intrinsic properties of mental states themselves. Arguments against the reality of this intrinsic phenomenal dimension to mental experience have focused either on its supposed impossibility, or secondly, the non-appearance of any such qualities to introspection. This paper argues to the contrary, that the registration of cognitive state properties does take place independently of representational content; and necessarily (...) so, since it supports an independent function—self-management. Given the fact that unlike a computer, the brain must, of necessity, operate itself, it needs to be in touch with itself to do so. Intrinsic phenomenal forms of cognitive expression allow the brain to do just that by registering characteristics of the cognitive states themselves. Self-management might well prove to constitute the prime reason for the emergence of subjectivity itself. (shrink)

This article argues that shame is fundamentally interpersonal. It is opposed to the leading interpretation of shame in the field of moral psychology, which is the cognitivist, morally rationally, autonomous view of shame as a negative judgment about the self. That view of shame abandons the social and interpersonal essence of shame. I will advance the idea, as developed by the tradition of philosophical anthropology and, in particular, in the works of Helmuth Plessner, Erwin Straus, F. J. J. Buytendijk, and (...) Maurice Merleau-Ponty, that shame is a heteronomous affective response that is caused by a breakdown in our fundamental interpersonal connection with others. It is a feeling that comes from the denial of our basic need to live with others in a state of trusting acceptance. (shrink)

This paper transforms a development of an argument against pantheism into an objection to the usual account of God within contemporary analytic philosophy. A standard criticism of pantheism has it that pantheists cannot offer a satisfactory account of God as personal. My paper will develop this criticism along two lines: first, that personhood requires contentful mental states, which in turn necessitate the membership of a linguistic community, and second that personhood requires limitation within a wider context constitutive of the ’setting’ (...) of the agent’s life. Pantheism can, I argue, satisfy neither criterion of personhood. At this point the tables are turned on the Swinburnian theist. If the pantheist cannot defend herself against the personhood-based attacks, neither can the Swinburnian, and for instructively parallel reasons: for neither doctrine is God in the material world; in the pantheist case God is identical with the world, in the Swinburnian case God transcends it. Either way both the pantheist and the Swinburnian are left with a dilemma: abandon divine personhood or modify the doctrine of God so as to block the move to personhood. (shrink)

The normative notion of fittingness figures saliently in the work of a number of ethical theorists writing in the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries and has in recent years regained prominence, occupying an important place in the theoretical tool kits of a range of contemporary writers. Yet the notion remains strikingly undertheorized. This article offers a (partial) remedy. I proceed by canvassing a number of attempts to analyze the fittingness relation in other terms, arguing that none is fully adequate. In (...) explaining why various analyses of fittingness fail, I draw into relief certain of the relation’s constitutive features and spotlight some of its interesting and important connections to various other properties. Along the way, I highlight the relation’s relevance to a number of ongoing debates in normative and metanormative philosophy. I conclude by indicating some directions for further research. (shrink)

Following neo-Aristotelians Alasdair MacIntyre and Martha Nussbaum, we claim that humans are story-telling animals who learn from the stories of diverse others. Moral agents use rational emotions, such as compassion which is our focus here, to imaginatively reconstruct others’ thoughts, feelings and goals. In turn, this imaginative reconstruction plays a crucial role in deliberating and discerning how to act. A body of literature has developed in support of the role narrative artworks (i.e. novels and films) can play in allowing us (...) the opportunity to engage imaginatively and sympathetically with diverse characters and scenarios in a safe protected space that is created by the fictional world. By practising what Nussbaum calls a ‘loving attitude’, her version of ethical attention, we can form virtuous habits that lead to phronesis (practical wisdom). In this paper, and taking compassion as an illustrative focus, we examine the ways that students’ moral education might usefully develop from engaging with narrative artworks through Philosophy for Children (P4C), where philosophy is a praxis, conducted in a classroom setting using a Community of Inquiry (CoI). We argue that narrative artworks provide useful stimulus material to engage students, generate student questions, and motivate philosophical dialogue and the formation of good habits which, in turn, supports the argument for philosophy to be taught in schools. (shrink)

A central question for philosophical psychology is which mental faculties form natural kinds. There is hot debate over the kind status of faculties as diverse as consciousness, seeing, concepts, emotions, constancy and the senses. In this paper, I take emotions and concepts as my main focus, and argue that questions over the kind status of these faculties are complicated by the undeservedly overlooked fact that natural kinds are indeterminate in certain ways. I will show that indeterminacy issues have led to (...) an impasse in the debates over emotions and concepts. I first consider and reject one way of resolving this impasse. I then suggest a different method, which places more emphasis on a close analysis of predictive and explanatory practices in psychology. I argue that when we apply this method, a new position emerges: that it is indeterminate whether concepts or emotions are natural kinds. They are neither determinately natural kinds, nor determinately not natural kinds. Along the way, we will see that natural kinds have been put to two completely different theoretical uses, which are often been blurred together, and that they are ill-suited to fulfil one of them. (shrink)

In a theoretical reflection, the aim of this paper is primarily to discuss alterity in journalism. We believe that journalism plays a fundamental role in the construction of knowledge on similarities and differences between human beings, stressing social diversity as one of its purposes. We associate the concept of otherness, understood as a singular mode of existence of the “other”, with the purpose of journalism and with actions of empathy, sympathy and compassion. Based on a phenomenological perspective, we discuss the (...) importance of the meeting between the "self" and the "other", as well as the ability of journalists to perceive and narrate on the aspects that shape the identities of human beings. Moreover, we discuss otherness in journalistic narratives, approaching the relation between the lifeworld and the world of text... (shrink)

Ambivalence—where we experience two conflicting emotional responses to the same object, person or state of affairs—is sometimes thought to pose a problem for cognitive theories of emotion. Drawing on the ideas of the Stoic Chrysippus, I argue that a cognitivist can account for ambivalence without retreating from the view that emotions involve fully-fledged evaluative judgments. It is central to the account I offer that emotions involve two kinds of judgment: one about the object of emotion, and one about the subject's (...) response. (shrink)

Experience indicates that the questioning and democratic nature of the community of enquiry can be demanding and unsettling for teachers, present.

Aristotle and others suggest that a single virtue – ‘good temper’ – pertains specifically to anger. I argue that if good temper is a single virtue, it is constituted by aspects of a combination of other virtues. I present three categories of anger-relevant virtues – those that dispose one to anger; those that delay, mitigate, and qualify anger; and those required for effortful anger control – and show how virtues in each category make distinct contributions to good temper. In addition (...) to clarifying the relationship between anger and the virtues, my analysis has theoretical implications for virtue individuation more generally, and practical implications for character cultivation. (shrink)

According to psychological emotion theories referred to as appraisal theory, emotions are caused by appraisals (evaluative judgments). Borrowing a term from Jan Smedslund, it is the contention of this article that psychological appraisal theory is “pseudoempirical” (i.e., misleadingly or incorrectly empirical). In the article I outline what makes some scientific psychology “pseudoempirical,” distinguish my view on this from Jan Smedslund’s, and then go on to show why paying heed to the ordinary meanings of emotion terms is relevant to psychology, and (...) how appraisal theory is methodologically off the mark by employing experiments, questionnaires, and the like, to investigate what follows from the ordinary meanings of words. The overarching argument of the article is that the scientific research program of appraisal theory is fundamentally misguided and that a more philosophical approach is needed to address the kinds of questions it seeks to answer. (shrink)

This paper offers a qualified defense of a historically popular view that I call sentimental perceptualism. At a first pass, sentimental perceptualism says that emotions play a role in grounding evaluative knowledge analogous to the role perceptions play in grounding empirical knowledge. Recently, András Szigeti and Michael Brady have independently developed an important set of objections to this theory. The objections have a common structure: they begin by conceding that emotions have some important epistemic role to play, but then go (...) on to argue that understanding how emotions play that role means that there must be some alternative, emotion-independent route to obtaining knowledge of value. If there has to be such an emotion-independent route, then the perceptual analogy breaks down in a significant way. In this paper, I argue that the right ways for sentimental perceptualists to respond to each of these objections are revealed by thinking through how analogous objections applied to perception and the empirical domain would be answered. Although Szigeti's and Brady's objections should not persuade sentimental perceptualists to give up their view, the objections do put important constraints on what a form of the view has to be like in order to do exciting metaethical work. (shrink)

Evidence-based medicine has always required integration of patient values with ‘best’ clinical evidence. It is widely recognized that scientific practices and discoveries, including those of EBM, are value-laden. But to date, the science of EBM has focused primarily on methods for reducing bias in the evidence, while the role of values in the different aspects of the EBM process has been almost completely ignored.

I examine the nature of human-robot pet relations that appear to involve genuine affective responses on behalf of humans towards entities, such as robot pets, that, on the face of it, do not seem to be deserving of these responses. Such relations have often been thought to involve a certain degree of sentimentality, the morality of which has in turn been the object of critical attention. In this paper, I dispel the claim that sentimentality is involved in this type of (...) relations. My challenge draws on literature in the philosophy of art and in cognitive science that attempts to solve the so called paradox of fictional emotions, i.e., the seemingly paradoxical way in which we respond emotionally to fictional or imaginary characters and events. If sentimentality were not at issue, neither would its immorality. For the sake of argument, however, I assume in the remaining part of the paper that sentimentality is indeed at play and bring to the fore aspects of its badness or viciousness that have not yet been discussed in connection with robot pets. I conclude that not even these aspects of sentimentality are at issue here. Yet, I argue that there are other reasons to be worried about the wide-spread use of ersatz companionship technology that have to do with the potential loss of valuable, self-defining forms of life. (shrink)

Schadenfreude is the emotion we experience when we obtain pleasure from others’ misfortunes. Typically, we are not proud of it and admit experiencing it only sheepishly or apologetically. Philosophers typically view it, and the disposition to experience it, as moral failings. Two recent defenders of Schadenfreude, however, argue that it is morally permissible because it stems from judgments about the just deserts of those who suffer misfortunes. I also defend Schadenfreude, but on different grounds that overcome two deficiencies of those (...) recent defenses. First, my defense accounts for the wide range of circumstances in which we experience Schadenfreude. Those circumstances often involve feelings and judgments that are less noble and admirable than judgments regarding just deserts. Second, it accounts for the sheepish or apologetic feelings that commonly accompany Schadenfreude. The two recent defenses can account for those feelings only by holding that they are mistaken or misguided. In opposition to those who view Schadenfreude as a moral failing, I argue that it is morally permissible unless it is part of a causal chain that produces an immoral act. The moral permissibility of the emotion is necessary in order for individuals to have the emotional freedom that, in turn, is necessary for their well-being. Schadenfreude’s moral status is similar to a sexual fetish’s. Like a fetish, experiencing Schadenfreude is not immoral in itself, but sharing and discussing it with others is immoral in many contexts. (shrink)

I am extremely grateful to Rick Furtak and Alison McQueen for their valuable and challenging comments. My book is long and complicated, and it can hardly have been easy to internalize its details, both philosophical and political. The two authors have a very accurate grasp of my views, and I am delighted by that. I actually do not need to spend my time correcting misstatements of what I say. Both authors offer really interesting challenges to my views, about which it’s (...) a pleasure to think further.Reply to Rick FurtakFurtak is a very subtle thinker about the emotions. What makes his remarks especially illuminating is that he not only understands the nuances of my own position on emotions, especially as I develop it in Upheavals of Thought , but also has a wide-ranging grasp of the philosophical literature on emotions more generally. He poses questions of two sorts. One set concerns emotions of which I suggest that there is something .. (shrink)

Many natural scientists of the past and the present have imagined that they pursued their activity according to its own inherent rules in a realm distinctly separate from the business world, or at least in a realm where business tended to interfere with science from time to time, but was not ultimately an essential component, ‘because one thought that in science one possessed and loved something unselfish, harmless, self-sufficient, and truly innocent, in which man’s evil impulses had no part whatever’, (...) as Nietzsche once commented (Nietzsche 1974, p.106). With the extreme technological changes that have occurred in the last fifty years and the orchestrated management changes in the culture of science, it is now obvious that science is intimately tied to private businesses, industry, and society. Within this structure, the scientist has generally unknowingly defined him or herself in accordance with obsolete myths that have tended to handicap the scientist’s freedom of action, by obscuring the modern political and economic realities of science, and neglecting the inherent responsibilities of the scientist as a critical actor in the theater of human civilization. The increasing incorporation of academic science and private industry, and the governmentally supervised nature of modem academic science, has corrupted the traditional freedom and character of the scientist. In order to navigate oneself and find meaning within the new structure of science, scientists now desperately need a fresh ethos that at once considers modern realities of the politics and management of science, societal urgencies, and global politics, as well as establishing a moral perspective where modern scientists can be actors with their own intentionality and responsibility. -/- In the culture of science, myths and ideologies are of critical importance for the formation of the scientist, because these ideas determine how scientists conceive of themselves as professionals and free individuals. More importantly, these ideas determine how scientists approach scientific activity, which exists in a social context, and which ultimately has the potential to dramatically change the characteristics of civilization as it is played out on the political and technological battlefield. It is a commonly held notion in the community of the natural sciences that science now is essentially what it was when it was described by the Nobel laureates of the past; those sweet, cushioning, pleasant words consecrating the ‘temple of science’; the picture of a humble, rational, and noble Einstein is imprinted into our memories. By dismantling these obsolete myths of the scientist and surveying contemporary trends in science, this article will explore a more realistic perspective toward the field of science. The goal of this investigation is to determine the modern reality and ultimate meaning of ‘science as a vocation’ (Shorett 2003). Finally, moral philosophy will be demonstrated to be a critical clement in the self-assertion of the scientist and the elucidation of the meaning of science as a vocation in a global technological society. -/- From the Postscript, 2015: This article took final form when I was a postdoctoral researcher in Canada. Reading it now, I recognize the article still has value, despite its many flaws, hyperboles, and idealism. Many issues in the article have become increasingly relevant, such as the need to make constant trade-offs in courses of action and continuously search for more morally significant research paths. Perhaps the greatest goals in writing the article were to increase intellectual control over the path of my scientific research, to escape the increasing conformity and constraints on modern life, to participate in an open society, to formulate my personal goals and goal hierarchies, to dispel any delusions of overconfidence, and to not be corrupted. (shrink)

Explanatory accounts of emotion require, among other things, theoretically tractable representations of emotional experience. Common methods for producing such representations have well-known drawbacks, such as observer interference or lack of ecological validity. Literature offers a valuable supplement. It provides detailed instructions for simulating emotions; when successful, it induces empathic emotions. It too involves distortions, through emotion-intensifying idealization and ideological biases. But these also relate to emotion study. There are three levels at which literature bears on emotion research: (1) the individual (...) work; (2) generic and related patterns; and (3) properties found widely across individual works and genres. Even at the third, most general level, literature suggests potentially important hypotheses about our pleasure in emotional simulation and our need to share emotional experiences. (shrink)

In a series of recent works, Julian Savulescu and Ingmar Persson insist that, given the ease by which irreversible destruction is achievable by a morally wicked minority, (i) strictly cognitive bio-enhancement is currently too risky, while (ii) moral bio-enhancement is plausibly morally mandatory (and urgently so). This article aims to show that the proposal Savulescu and Persson advance relies on several problematic assumptions about the separability of cognitive and moral enhancement as distinct aims. Specifically, we propose that the underpinnings of (...) Savulescu's and Persson's normative argument unravel once it is suitably clear how aiming to cognitively enhance an individual will in part require that one aim to bring about certain moral goods we show to be essential to cognitive flourishing; conversely, aiming to bring about moral enhancement in an individual must involve aiming to improve certain cognitive capacities we show to be essential to moral flourishing. After developing these points in some detail, and their implication for Savulescu's & Persson's proposal, we conclude by outlining some positive suggestions. (shrink)

Some have claimed that since machines lack emotional “qualia”, or conscious experiences of emotion, machine intelligence will fall short of human intelligence. I examine this objection, ultimately finding it unpersuasive. I first discuss recent work on emotion that suggests that emotion plays various roles in cognition. I then raise the following question: are phenomenal experiences of emotion an essential or necessary component of the performance of these cognitive abilities? I then sharpen the question by distinguishing between four possible positions one (...) might take. I reject one of these four positions largely on empirical grounds. But the remaining three positions all suggest that even if emotional qualia play an important role in human cognition, emotional qualia are not essential to the performance of these cognitive abilities in principle, so, e.g., a machine that lacks emotional qualia might still be able to perform them. (shrink)

The evidential value of moral intuitions has been challenged by psychological work showing that the intuitions of ordinary people are affected by distorting factors. One reply to this challenge, the expertise defence, claims that training in philosophical thinking confers enhanced reliability on the intuitions of professional philosophers. This defence is often expressed through analogy: since we do not allow doubts about folk judgments in domains like mathematics or physics to undermine the plausibility of judgments by experts in these domains, we (...) also should not do so in philosophy. In this paper I clarify the logic of the analogy strategy, and defend it against recent challenges by Jesper Ryberg. The discussion exposes an interesting divide: while Ryberg’s challenges may weaken analogies between morality and domains like mathematics, they do not affect analogies to other domains, such as physics. I conclude that the expertise defence can be supported by analogical means, though care is required in selecting an appropriate analog. I discuss implications of this conclusion for the expertise defence debate and for study of the moral domain itself. (shrink)

Experiences—visual, emotional, or otherwise—play a role in providing us with justification to believe claims about the world. Some accounts of how experiences provide justification emphasize the role of the experiences’ distinctive phenomenology, i.e. ‘what it is like’ to have the experience. Other accounts emphasize the justificatory role to the experiences’ etiology. A number of authors have used cases of cognitively penetrated visual experience to raise an epistemic challenge for theories of perceptual justification that emphasize the justificatory role of phenomenology rather (...) than etiology. Proponents of the challenge argue that cognitively penetrated visual experiences can fail to provide the usual justification because they have improper etiologies. However, extant arguments for the challenge’s key claims are subject to formidable objections. In this paper, I present the challenge’s key claims, raise objections to previous attempts to establish them, and then offer a novel argument in support of the challenge. My argument relies on an analogy between cognitively penetrated visual and emotional experiences. I argue that some emotional experiences fail to provide the relevant justification because of their improper etiologies and conclude that analogous cognitively penetrated visual experiences fail to provide the relevant justification because of their etiologies, as well. (shrink)

Neosentimentalist accounts of value need an explanation of which of the sentiments they discuss are pro-attitudes, which attitudes are con-attitudes, and why. I argue that this project has long been neglected in the philosophical literature, even by those who make extensive use of the distinction between pro- and con-attitudes. Using the attitudes of awe and respect as exemplars, I argue that it is not at all clear what if anything makes these attitudes pro-attitudes. I conclude that neither our intuitive sense (...) of the distinction nor the vague accounts of it that exist in the philosophical literature are especially helpful in sorting out the hard cases. What is needed is a more explicit and thorough account of what the valence of our attitudes consists in. (shrink)

Two studies demonstrate that a dispositional proneness to disgust (“disgust sensitivity”) is associated with intuitive disapproval of gay people. Study 1 was based on previous research showing that people are more likely to describe a behavior as intentional when they see it as morally wrong (see Knobe, 2006, for a review). As predicted, the more disgust sensitive participants were, the more likely they were to describe an agent whose behavior had the side effect of causing gay men to kiss in (...) public as having intentionally encouraged gay men to kiss publicly— even though most participants did not explicitly think it wrong to encourage gay men to kiss in public. No such effect occurred when subjects were asked about heterosexual kissing. Study 2 used the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Nosek, Banaji, & Greenwald, 2006) as a dependent measure. The more disgust sensitive participants were, the more they showed.. (shrink)

Donald Gustafson has argued that grief centres on a combination of belief and desire:The belief that the subject has suffered an irreparable loss.The desire that this should not be the case.And yet, as Gustafson points out, if the belief is true, the desire cannot be satisfied. Gustafson takes this to show that grief inevitably implies an irrational conflict between belief and desire.I offer a partial defence of grief against Gustafson's charge of irrationality. My defence rests on two elements. First, I (...) offer an alternative model of emotion, which presents emotions as complex episodes, initiated by emotional appraisals. Secondly, I appeal to John Bowlby's account of grief to argue that grief involves two forms of sadness (anguish and desolation) which Gustafson's analysis runs together. I concede that anguish does characteristically involve an element of irrationality. But the irrationality of anguish does not arise from an apparently gratuitous clash between belief and desire, but from a conflict between emotion and belief—a form of irrationality that is both familiar and easily explained. Moreover, desolation need not involve any irrationality. (shrink)

In both psychology and philosophy, cognitive theories of emotion have met with increasing opposition in recent years. However, this apparent controversy is not so much a gridlock between antithetical stances as a critical debate in which each side is being forced to qualify its position in order to accommodate the other side of the story. Here, I attempt to sort out some of the disagreements between cognitivism and its rivals, adjudicating some disputes while showing that others are merely superficial. Looking (...) at evidence from neuroscience and social psychology, as well as thought experiments and theoretical arguments, I conclude that it is necessary to acknowledge both that emotions have intentional content and that they involve somatic agitation. I also point out some of the more promising directions for future research in this area. (shrink)

By briefly sketching some important ancient accounts of the connections between psychology and moral education, I hope to illuminate the significance of the contemporary debate on the nature of emotion and to reveal its stakes. I begin the essay with a brief discussion of intellectualism in Socrates and the Stoics, and Plato's and Posidonius's respective attacks against it. Next, I examine the two current leading philosophical accounts of emotion: the cognitive theory and the noncognitive theory. I maintain that the noncognitive (...) theory better explains human behavior and experience and has more empirical support than the cognitive theory. In the third section of the essay I argue that recent empirical research on emotional contagion and mirroring processes provides important new evidence for the noncognitive theory. In the final section, I draw some preliminary conclusions about moral education and the acquisition of virtue. (shrink)

After many years of neglect, philosophers are increasingly turning their attention to the emotions, and recently we have seen a number of different accounts of emotion. In this article, we will first consider what facts an account of emotion needs to accommodate if it is going to be acceptable. Having done that, we will then consider some of the leading accounts and see how they fare in accommodating the facts. Two things in particular will emerge. First, an adequate account of (...) emotion cannot be provided without taking into account a wide range of issues in philosophy of mind that extend beyond the emotions in particular. Secondly, the diversity of emotional phenomena makes it especially hard to provide anything like a comprehensive account of emotion; philosophers not only disagree over what are the essential properties of emotion, but also over what are central cases. (shrink)

Utilitarianism has dominated media ethics for a century. For Mill, individual autonomy and neutrality are the foundations of his On Liberty and System of Logic, as well as his Utilitarianism. These concepts fit naturally with media ethics theory and professional practice in a democratic society. However, the weaknesses in utilitarianism articulated by Ross and others direct us at this stage to a dialogic ethics of duty instead. Habermas's discourse ethics, feminist ethics, and communitarian ethics are examples of duty ethics rooted (...) in the dialogic relation that enable us to start over intellectually. (shrink)

This chapter describes a perspective on emotion, according to which emotions are: 1. Designed to function in a social context: an emotion is often an act of relationship reconfiguration brought about by delivering a social signal; 2. Forms of skillful engagement with the world which need not be mediated by conceptual thought; 3. Scaffolded by the environment, both synchronically in the unfolding of a particular emotional performance and diachronically, in the acquisition of an emotional repertoire; 4. Dynamically coupled to an (...) environment which both influences and is influenced by the unfolding of the emotion We draw heavily on ‘transactional’ accounts of emotion proposed by some contemporary psychologists. Although these authors do not, to our knowledge, conceive their work as a contribution to the ‘situationist’ literature that is the focus of this volume, we contend that their proposals constitute a fairly exact, affective parallel to situationist ideas about cognition. The primary aim of this chapter is to demonstrate that a situated approach to emotion already exists and is backed by a substantial experimental literature. (shrink)

In contemporary discourses, it has become common sense to acknowledge that humans and some species of animals, from their very inception, are embedded in social and intersubjective contexts. As social beings, we live, interact, communicate, and cooperate with others for a range of different reasons: sometimes we do so for strategic and instrumental reasons, while at other times it is purely for its own sake. Moreover, in one way or another, we encounter others not only as rational but also as (...) sentient beings; our interactions with others are shaped by reason, though not exclusively so. They are also affected by our emotions, feelings, moods, and environments. In this way, we seek understanding both for and by others. We are able to recognize, interpret, and categorize others’ expression and behavior; in turn, we express our emotions, desires, and motivations to act towards others and hope that others will react adequately and appropriately. Empathy is usually understood as the capacity to apprehend others’ mental states—especially emotions. In recent decades, it has become one of the most widely discussed concepts, especially in the philosophy of mind, ethics, and aesthetics. Although there is a vast array of publications on the topic of empathy, a number of controversies have persisted, particularly in relation to how the process, outcome, and value of empathy should be understood. One recent debate concerns the question of whether we directly perceive others’ mental states or whether we rather imagine their perspective. Another central discussion is ongoing regarding empathy in respect of narratives and fictional characters. The aim of this Special Issue is to interrelate these two branches—fiction and imagination—and to examine the role of imagination in the empathic process, especially in relation to the thesis of direct perception of others’ mental states. Despite the wealth of recent research into empathy that has emerged from a diverse range of disciplinary perspectives, there is still no consensus about the nature and role of imagination and whether empathizing with fictions should be categorically or just gradually distinguished from empathizing with real persons. (shrink)

This essay looks at the important, but often neglected, contribution that self‐interpretation makes to emotional self‐knowledge. We engage in acts of self‐interpretation when (A) we try to understand what it is that we are feeling, or, relatedly, what it is that we ought to be feeling. On such occasions, we draw upon social and personal narratives as well as on the emotional conceptual repertoires at our disposal. We also engage in acts of self‐interpretation when (B) we try to ascertain the (...) meaning or significance of an emotion, treating it as a datum, or piece of evidence, upon which to make inferences or further Interpretations. Although we often seem to have first‐person privileged access to our mental states, the third‐person strategy of self‐interpretation can be a valuable source of self‐knowledge. I focus here upon the role that self‐interpretation plays in providing us with knowledge about our emotional experiences. (shrink)

Several philosophers think there are important analogies between emotions and perceptual states. Furthermore, considerations about the rational assessibility of emotions have led philosophers—in some cases, the very same philosophers—to think that the content of emotions must be propositional content. If one finds it plausible that perceptual states have propositional contents, then there is no obvious tension between these views. However, this view of perception has recently been attacked by philosophers who hold that the content of perception is object‐like. I shall (...) argue for a view about the content of emotions and perceptual states which will enable us to hold both that emotional content is analogous to perceptual content and that both emotions and perceptual states can have propositional contents. This will involve arguing for a pluralist view of perceptual content, on which perceptual states can have both contents which are proposition‐like and contents which are object‐like. I shall also address two significant objections to the claim that emotions can have proposition‐like contents. Meeting one of these objections will involve taking on a further commitment: the pluralist account of perceptual content will have to be one on which the contents of perception can be non‐conceptual. (shrink)

From an outsider's perspective, today's Popular China might appear as a self-confident and triumphant country. However, a large-scale examination of the country's recent moral controversies reveals a very different picture, one that has much to do with the widespread local public perception of an ongoing “moral crisis”, whose examination requires careful attention placed on the ethical and affective aspects of the everyday lives of today's Chinese people. In this article, I propose to examine the anguish that Chinese bachelor youths and (...) their concerned parents undergo and express, as they are confronted with the difficult process of finding a suitable mate for marriage. I examine the fears their celibacy generates, the mutual distrust that participants taking part in bachelors’ parents gatherings demonstrate, and the disputes these encounters engage. I analyze the moral world of today's urban China from the perspective of the very feelings and affects that pervade it. Highlighting the ways in which my interlocutors shared their emotions with me along the course of my fieldwork, carried out in the cities of Beijing and Chengdu, I will insist on the importance of these affects within an anthropological approach. The moral sensitivities contained in the maintenance of the economic and social situations of one's family reveal themselves as an exceptional resource for knowledge. By examining the political economy of sentiments within which parents and their children find themselves entrapped, I argue that we can gain a deeper understanding of the concrete consequences of today's societal transformations. (shrink)

This study is a contribution to the bioethical debate about new and possibly emerging reproductive technologies. Its point of departure is the intuition, which many people seem to share, that using such technologies to select non-disease traits – like sex and emotional stability - in yet unborn children is morally problematic, at least more so than using the technologies to avoid giving birth to children with severe genetic diseases, or attempting to shape the non-disease traits of already existing children by (...) environmental means, like education. The study employs philosophical analysis for the purpose of making this intuition intelligible and judging whether it is justified. Different ways in which the moral problems posed by reproductive technologies are often framed in bioethical debates are criticised as inadequate for this task. In particular, it is argued that the intuition cannot fully be made sense of in terms of harm to the children that such technologies help create. The study attempts to elaborate an alternative to that broadly consequentialist approach, by drawing on Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of technology, Hans Jonas’s ethics, and Aristotle’s practical philosophy, as it has been received and developed in the hermeneutical tradition. It is suggested that reproductive choices, unlike decisions for already born children, are characterised by a peculiar one-sidedness: the future child appears to the parents as something wholly theirs to decide about, not as a concrete other with whom they must interact in a responsive and attuned way. This is problematic because it means that such choices cannot call upon the particularised moral understanding only gained in interpersonal encounters. In particular, it makes them easily shaped by various tendencies, to which parents are always susceptible, to relate to children in instrumentalising ways, and at risk of reinforcing such tendencies. However, this does not mean that all uses of reproductive technologies are equally troubling. When selecting against severe disease the parents can rely on a widely shared illness experience to escape the dangers that one-sidedness involves. It is concluded that the intuition under discussion, thus explicated and in some ways qualified, makes sense morally. (shrink)

In moral psychology, it has long been argued that empathy is a necessary capacity of both properly developing moral agents and developed moral agency . This view stands in tension with the belief that some individuals diagnosed with autism—which is typically characterized as a deficiency in social reciprocity —are moral agents. In this paper we propose to explore this tension and perhaps trouble how we commonly see those with autism. To make this task manageable, we will consider whether high functioning (...) individuals diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder are capable of empathetic responses. If they are, then they possess a capacity that, on the view above, is required for moral agency. If they are not so capable, and yet sometimes engage in moral behaviour, this casts some doubt on the claim that empathy is required for moral agency. This second possibility will necessitate an exploration of the capacity of some individuals with autism to engage in moral behaviour, giving us further grounds to re-see these individuals as moral agents. (shrink)

In this paper, we start exploring the affective and ethical dimension of what De Jaegher and Di Paolo (Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 6:485–507, 2007 ) have called ‘participatory sense-making’. In the first part, we distinguish various ways in which we are, and feel, affectively inter-connected in interpersonal encounters. In the second part, we discuss the ethical character of this affective inter-connectedness, as well as the implications that taking an ‘inter-(en)active approach’ has for ethical theory itself.

Although the role of imagination in moral reasoning is often neglected, recent literature, mostly of pragmatist signature, points to imagination as one of its central elements. In this article we develop some of their arguments by looking at the moral role of imagination in practice, in particular the practice of neonatal intensive care. Drawing on empirical research, we analyze a decision-making process in various stages: delivery, staff meeting, and reflection afterwards. We show how imagination aids medical practitioners demarcating moral categories, (...) tuning their actions, and exploring long-range consequences of decisions. We argue that imagination helps to bring about at least four kinds of integration in the moral decision-making process: personal integration by creating a moral self-image in moments of reflection; social integration by aiding the conciliation of the diverging perspectives of the people involved; temporal integration by facilitating the parties to transcend the present moment and connect past, present, and future; and epistemological integration by helping to combine the various forms of knowledge and experience needed to make moral decisions. Furthermore, we argue that the role of imagination in these moral decision-processes is limited in several significant ways. Rather than being a solution itself, it is merely an aid and cannot replace the decision itself. Finally, there are also limits to the practical relevance of this theoretical reflection. In the end, it is up to care professionals as reflective practitioners to re-imagine the practice of intensive care and make the right decisions with hope and imagination. (shrink)

In the context of the fairly recent Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRC), I examine phenomenologically the nature of truth as the essential condition for overcoming social and political conflicts, and as an instrument for enforcing so-called “transitional justice” periods and promoting reconciliation. I also briefly approach the limits of this truth’s possibility of being recognized, if its evaluative and practical dimensions and its appeal to an “intelligence of emotions” do not prevail over its merely theoretical claims. Though not expounding Schutz’s (...) and Husserl’s contributions, and meditating on phenomena they did not deal with, I carry out this reflection inspired by their work and methodological approach. The case study used as an intuitive illustration is the recent Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission. (shrink)

It is widely assumed that emotions have particular intentional objects. This assumption is consistent with the way that we talk: when we attribute states of anger, we often attribute anger at someone, or at something. It is also consistent with leading theories of emotion among philosophers and psychologists, according to which emotions are like judgments or appraisals. However, there is evidence from the social psychology literature suggesting that this assumption is actually false. I will begin by presenting a criterion for (...) determining whether a mental state has a particular object. It is not sufficient for that state to be caused by an object or by a representation of a given object—the state must influence the subject’s thought and behavior in ways that are specific to that object. I will present evidence that emotions fail this test, and describe some of the reasons why we persistently attribute objects to our emotions. My view may seem untenable, because the literature on various aspects of emotional life such as normativity, linguistic expression, and behavioral influence consistently appeals to intentional objects. I will conclude by presenting a sketch of how I could address this concern. (shrink)

Many philosophical and public discussions of the ethical aspects of violent computer games typically centre on the relation between playing violent videogames and its supposed direct consequences on violent behaviour. But such an approach rests on a controversial empirical claim, is often one-sided in the range of moral theories used, and remains on a general level with its focus on content alone. In response to these problems, I pick up Matt McCormick’s thesis that potential harm from playing computer games is (...) best construed as harm to one’s character, and propose to redirect our attention to the question how violent computer games influence the moral character of players. Inspired by the work of Martha Nussbaum, I sketch a positive account of how computer games can stimulate an empathetic and cosmopolitan moral development. Moreover, rather than making a general argument applicable to a wide spectrum of media, my concern is with specific features of violent computer games that make them especially morally problematic in terms of empathy and cosmopolitanism, features that have to do with the connections between content and medium, and between virtuality and reality. I also discuss some remaining problems. In this way I hope contribute to a less polarised discussion about computer games that does justice to the complexity of their moral dimension, and to offer an account that is helpful to designers, parents, and other stakeholders. (shrink)

This paper is devoted to the study of the emotions in Edith Stein’s early work On the Problem of Empathy. After presenting her work embedded in the tradition of the early phenomenology of the emotions, I shall elaborate the four dimensions of the emotional experience according to this authoress, the link between emotions and values and the phenomenon of the living body. I argue that Stein’s account on empathy remains incomplete as long as we ignore the complex phenomenology of emotions (...) underlying her work. (shrink)

Šiame straipsnyje analizuojama ryškėjanti tendencija sutapatinanti rūpesčio etiką su sentimentalizmu. Lyginant šios tendencijos atstovo Michaelo Slote’o ir vienos iš rūpesčio etikos kūrėjų Nel Noddings filosofiją, analizuojamas rūpesčio etikos ir sentimentalizmo santykis, pastarojo galimybės adekvačiai konceptualizuoti rūpesčio / rūpinimosi specifiką. Teigiama, kad sentimentalizmo konceptualinis žodynas, grindžiamas empatijos sąvoka, užgožia reliacinį rūpesčio etikos pobūdį. Straipsnyje empatijos sąvokai priešpriešinama dėmesio sąvoka, kurią nemaža dalis rūpesčio etikos atstovų pasitelkia apibrėžti moralinį rūpestį / rūpinimąsi. Analizuojant Simone Weil ir Iris Murdoch filosofiją, atskleidžiama dėmesio sąvokos reikšmė (...) rūpesčio etikai. (shrink)