LeDoux’s (1996) pioneering work on the neurobiology of fear has played a crucial role in informing debates in the philosophy of emotion. For example, it plays a key part in Griffiths’s (1997) argument for why emotions don’t form a natural kind. Likewise, it is employed by Faucher and Tappolet (2002) to defend pro-emotion views, which claim that emotions aid reasoning (de Sousa 1987, Damasio 1994). LeDoux, however, now argues that his work has been misread (2012, 2016, 2017, 2019). He (...) argues that using emotion terms, like ‘fear’, to describe neuro-cognitive data adds a “surplus meaning”: it attributes phenomenal properties to survival circuits which they don’t possess. This paper aims to explore LeDoux’s new proposal, and examine the potentially devastating consequences that ensue for the aforementioned views. I end by addressing the worry that these lessons are conditional on LeDoux’s own higher-order theory of emotional consciousness being true. (shrink)

The article conceptualizes the term Pedagogy of Fear as the master narrative of educational systems around the world. Pedagogy of Fear stunts the active and vital educational growth of the young person, making him/her passive and dependent upon external disciplinary sources. It is motivated by fear that prevents young students—as well as teachers—from dealing with the great existential questions that relate to the essence of human beings. One of the techniques of the Pedagogy of Fear is (...) the internalization of the view that without evaluation and assessment we cannot know a child’s level or “worth”—and therefore are unable to help him/her if he is “slow in learning.” In contrast, Philosophy for/with Children offers a space for addressing existential questions, some of which deal with urgent social issues. The willingness to make philosophy inquiry an alternative already from an early age seeks to allow the child to challenge him/herself with new and fresh questions. Philosophy for/with Children does not regard children as a “space of lack” (experience, knowledge, values, etc.) The new and fresh philosophical perspective of children demands the presence of a willingness to engage in dialogue and rejection of the fear of the innocent and deep questions of philosophy. Shaking free of the Pedagogy of Fear and restoring honor to children’s questions demands a fundamental conceptual change within education. The replacement of existential certainty as it is depicted by adults in the existing education system with an existential question is a heavy intellectual task that in most cases is viewed as subversive—primarily on the part of the adult. It demands a return to starting points and a willingness to allow children a free and safe educational space in which to ground preliminary and fertile questions about themselves, their lives, their environment, and, most of all, the changing world they discover with the form of originality that is right for them. (shrink)

Philosophers have not been very preoccupied by the link between emotions and attention. The few that did (de Sousa, 1987) never really specified the relation between the two phenomena. Using empirical data from the study of the emotion of fear, we provide a description (and an explanation) of the links between emotion and attention. We also discuss the nature (empirical or conceptual) of these links.

A credible fear test is an in-depth interview process given to undocumented people of any age arriving at a U.S. port of entry to determine qualification for asylum-seeking. Credible fear tests as a typical immigration procedure demonstrate not only what structural epistemic violence looks like but also how this violence lives in and through the design of asylum policy. Key terms of credible fear tests such as “significant possibility,” “evidence,” “consistency,” and “credibility” can never be neutral in (...) the context of colonial administrative violence. We argue that these terms function as mechanisms of exclusion and demonstrate that the capacity to be violent (i.e. to be an instrument of violence) is built into these tests, ready to be deployed when an administration wants to stop certain people from certain places from entering without regard to their own ongoing occupation of Indigenous lands. Not only are such practices instruments of violence, but the concept of ‘violence’ continues to be organized, defined, and conceived within settler colonial epistemologies so as to exclude these administrative forms of violence deployed against Indigenous peoples and people of color from recognition and nameability. We argue that this is an intentional strategy of colonial power preservation that is functionalized through social processes that remain structurally stable and self-regenerating across historical and political changes. (shrink)

The paper assumes that fear presents a certain degree of ambivalence. To say it with Hans Jonas (1903-1993), fear is not only a negative emotion, but may teach us something very important: we recognize what is relevant when we perceive that it is at stake. Under this respect, fear may be assumed as a guide to responsibility, a virtue that is becoming increasingly important, because of the role played by human technology in the current ecological crisis. Secondly, (...) fear and responsibility concern both dimensions of human action: private-individual and public-collective. What the ‘heuristics of fear’ teaches us, is to become aware of a deeper ambivalence, namely the one which characterizes as such human freedom, which may aim to good or bad, to self-preservation or self-destruction. Any public discussion concerning political or economic issues related with human action (at an individual or collective level) ought not to leave this essential idea out of consideration. (shrink)

Buddhists consider fear to be a root of suffering. In Chapters 2 and 7 of the Bodhicaryāvatāra, Śāntideva provides a series of provocative verses aimed at inciting fear to motivate taking refuge in the Bodhisattvas and thereby achieve fearlessness. This article aims to analyze the moral psychology involved in this transition. It will structurally analyze fear in terms that are grounded in, and expand upon, an Abhidharma Buddhist analysis of mind. It will then contend that fear, (...) taking refuge, and fearlessness are complex intentional attitudes and will argue that the transition between them turns on relevant changes in their intentional objects. This will involve analyzing the object of fear into four aspects and 'taking refuge' as a mode of trust that ameliorates these four aspects. This analysis will also distinguish two modes of taking refuge and show the progressive role each might play in the transition from fear to fearlessness. (shrink)

In the paper I am concerned with various manifestations of aesthetic fear and anxiety, that is, fear and anxiety triggered by works of art, which I am discussing from aesthetic as well as anthropological perspectives. I am analysing the link between fear and pleasure in catharsis, in Edmund Burke’s notion of the sublime, and in reference to Goya’s Black Paintings and to Paul Virilio’s thought. Both aesthetic fear and aesthetic anxiety exist alongside other emotions, such as (...) pity and sadness, and, most notably, with pleasure which is autonomous or arises from the fascination with evil. (shrink)

In this essay I will contend that there is something called holy fear, which expresses love for God. First I distinguish holy fear from certain types of unholy fear and from the type of fear regulated by the virtue of courage. Next, relying on the work of Thomas Aquinas, I consider the roles love and power play in holy and unholy fear and extend his analysis of the passion of fear by analogy to the (...) capital vices. I conclude that this extension illuminates the moral significance of John PaulII’s call not to be afraid and shows how this theme of his pontificate is inextricably linked to another great theme of his teaching, that of love as a gift of oneself. (shrink)

Phenomenological approaches to affectivity have long recognized the vital role that emotions occupy in our lives. In this paper, I engage with Jean-Paul Sartre's well-known and highly influential theory of the emotions as it is advanced in his Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions. I examine whether Sartre's account offers two inconsistent explications of the nature of emotions. I argue that despite appearances there is a reading of Sartre's theory that is free of inconsistencies. Ultimately, I highlight a novel (...) reading of Sartre's account of the emotions: one that is both phenomenologically accurate and supported by textual evidence. (shrink)

Chapter: WHITE PRIVILEGE AND THE COLOR OF FEAR This chapter focuses on the role that power, innocence and ignorance play in maintaining the position of white privilege. There are times when white people use their privilege in ways that overtly attempt to put and keep people of color in their places, but more often white privilege is less obvious. White privilege does not stand out in white peoples’ behavior at all times. When white behavior is normalized, it is masked. (...) At these times, white privilege and power hide behind the masks of innocence and the masks of ignorance. White people can mask from themselves and others their location with relations to power. In the film, The Color of Fear, David C. hides his power. As he hides his power, he keeps his privilege invisible, that is, behind a mask. In this chapter, we focus on the masking and unmasking of innocence and ignorance to get a better look at how the process of normalization of these masks makes whiteness powerful and consequently hides white privilege. The logic of power and privilege is reflected in the following relationship: -/- innocence + ignorance = Invisibility (of White Privilege) -/- . (shrink)

“What is it that agitates you, my dear Victor? What is it you fear?” -/- “The monster now becomes more vengeful. He murders Victor’s friend Henry Clerval and his wife Elizabeth on the night of her wedding to Victor, and Victor sets out in pursuit of the friend across the icy Artic regions. The monster is always ahead of him, leaving tell tale marks behind and tantalizing his creator. Victor meets with his death in the pursuit of the monster (...) he had created with a noble objective.” [ http://philpapers.org/profile/112741] . (shrink)

My central claim in this paper is that Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling is governed by the basic aim to articulate a real dilemma, and to elicit its proper recognition as such. I begin by indicating how Kierkegaard’s works are shaped in general by this aim, and what the aim involves. I then show how the dilemmaticstructure of Fear and Trembling is obscured in a recent dispute between Michelle Kosch and John Lippitt regarding the basic aims and upshot of (...) the book. Finally, I consider two critical questions: Why does Kierkegaard present his dilemmatic reasoning in the form of a “dialectical lyric”? And why does he write a book that aims only to articulate a dilemma, and not also to resolve it? (shrink)

According to one sort of epistemic relativist, normative epistemic claims (e.g., evidence E justifies hypothesis H) are never true or false simpliciter, but only relative to one or another epistemic system. In chapter 6 of Fear of Knowledge, Paul Boghossian objects to this view on the ground that its central notions cannot be explained, and that it cannot account for the normativity of epistemic discourse. This paper explores how the dogged relativist might respond.

In Humanity’s End: Why We Should Reject Radical Enhancement, Nicholas Agar presents a novel argument against the prospect of radical life-extension. Agar’s argument hinges on the claim that extended lifespans will result in people’s lives being dominated by the fear of death. Here we examine this claim and the surrounding issues in Agar’s discussion. We argue, firstly, that Agar’s view rests on empirically dubious assumptions about human rationality and attitudes to risk, and secondly, that even if those assumptions are (...) granted, the fears that Agar adverts to are unlikely to dominate people’s lives if and when radical life-extension is made possible. Further, we claim that the structure of the decision-making process around life-extension is unlikely to be the way that it would have to be in order for Agar’s claims about fear of death to make sense. Finally, we argue that Agar is implicitly committed to a narrow conception of human value. In response, we suggest that the pursuit of life-extension can itself be seen as an expression of certain important aspects of our distinctively human nature. (shrink)

In this paper I revisit a dispute between Mikel Burley and Robin Le Poidevin about whether or not the B-theory of time can give its adherents any reason to be less afraid of death. In ‘Should a B-theoretic atheist fear death?’, Burley argues that even on Le Poidevin’s understanding of the B-theory, atheists shouldn’t be comforted. His reason is that the prevalent B-theoretic account of our attitudes towards the past and future precludes treating our fear of death as (...) unwarranted. I examine his argument and provide a tentative defense of Le Poidevin. I claim that while Burley rightly spots a tension with a non-revisionary approach to our ordinary emotional life, he doesn’t isolate the source of that tension. The real question is how to understand Le Poidevin’s idea that on the B-theory, we and our lives are ‘eternally real’. I then suggest that there is a view of time that does justice to Le Poidevin’s remarks, albeit a strange one. The view takes temporal relations to be quasi-spatial and temporal entities to exist in a totum simul. (shrink)

The “Morbid Fear of the Subjective” (copyright by Roy Wood Sellars) represents a key-element of the American naturalist debate of the Mid-twentieth century. On the one hand, we are witnessing to the unconditional trust in the objectivity of scientific discourse, while on the other (and as a consequence) there is the attempt to exorcise the myth of the “subjective” and of its metaphysical privateness. This theoretical roadmap quickly assumed the shape of an even sociological contrast between the “democraticity” of (...) natural sciences and the fanaticism implicit in supernatural metaphysical systems. In between these two extremes stood phenomenology, in its early days on American soil. Its notion of “evidence”, which is less easily to naturalize than it might seem, was in fact hardly consistent with the widespread concept of “natural experience” of the world. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article is a response to 'Fear of death and the symmetry argument', in this issue. In that article, the author discusses the above Lucretian symmetry argument, and proposes a view that justifies the existing asymmetry in our attitudes towards birth and death. I begin by distinguishing this symmetry argument from a different one, also loosely inspired by Lucretius, which also plays a role in the article. I then describe what I take to be the author's solution to (...) the original symmetry argument and explain why I am unpersuaded by it. (shrink)

Zombies are bodies without minds: creatures that are physically identical to actual human beings, but which have no conscious experience. Much of the consciousness literature focuses on considering how threatening philosophical reflection on such creatures is to physicalism. There is not much attention given to the converse possibility, the possibility of minds without bodies, that is, creatures who are conscious but whose nature is exhausted by their being conscious. We can call such a ‘purely conscious’ creature a ghost.

Environmental ethicists have been arguing for decades that swift action to protect our natural environment is morally paramount, and that our concern for the environment should go beyond its importance for human welfare. It might be thought that the widespread acceptance of moral anti-realism would undermine the aims of environmental ethicists. One reason is that recent empirical studies purport to show that moral realists are more likely to act on the basis of their ethical convictions than anti-realists. In addition, it (...) is sometimes argued that only moral realists can countenance the claim that nature is intrinsically valuable. Against this, we argue that the acceptance of moral anti-realism is no threat to the environmentalist cause. We argue, further, that the acceptance of moral realism is potentially an obstacle to delivering on a third core environmental ethicist demand: namely, that successful action on climate change and environmental destruction requires us to change some of our commonly-held ethical views and to achieve a workable consensus. (shrink)

The article addresses the problem of making life decisions by people during the period of late adolescence; describes the specifics of the influence of various factors, in particular, the sense of life orientations, life position, impulsivity; the questions of the influence of fear on the process of making life decisions by young people; and the influence of various types of fears on this process. -/- The results of the research show that the influence of fears on the process of (...) making life decisions during the late adolescence is largely determined by characteristics of this age period, such as the formation of identity and the affirmation of one’s own self in the society. Thus, the most influential types of fears during this period are sociophobia, which consists of fear of social opinions and fear of social interactions; and fortunophobia (fear of fate). Sociophobia has such a powerful influence because young people go through the process of separation from their parents and joining society as separate individuals, and therefore the society’s opinion about them as an identity becomes very important to them. Fortunophobia is essentially the fear of the unknown and unavoidable fate, which is an inseparable part of making any life decision, especially in such a young age when people are only making their first crucial life decisions. According to the conducted research, meaningfulness of life has a reverse effect on the impact of fears on making life decisions, which means that with a greater meaningfulness of the individual’s life, the impact of fears is reduced. At the same time, impulsiveness has a direct effect, i.e. the more impulsive an individual is, the more influence fear has on their making life decisions. Life position of “Me + World –” is the least influenced by fears during the process of making life decisions. Also, the influence of fears appears to be more of a motivating factor rather than constraining, which forces young people to act and change their lives. (shrink)

I begin by sketching the Epicurean position on death - that it cannot be bad for the one who dies because she no longer exists - which has struck many people as specious. However, alternative views must specify who is wronged by death (the dead person?), what is the harm (suffering?), and when does the harm take place (before death, when you’re not dead yet, or after death, when you’re not around any more?). In the second section I outline the (...) most sophisticated anti-Epicurean view, the deprivation account, according to which someone who dies is harmed to the extent that the death has deprived her of goods she would otherwise have had. In the third section I argue that deprivation accounts that use the philosophical tool of possible worlds have the counterintuitive implication that we are harmed in the actual world because counterfactual versions of us lead fantastic lives in other possible worlds. In the final section I outline a neo-Epicurean position that explains how one can be wronged by being killed without being harmed by death and how it is possible to defend intuitions about injustice without problematic appeal to possible worlds. (shrink)

This article contributes to the debate on the relationship between marketing and propaganda through an analysis of social marketing as a mode of governing in permanent campaigning. The working hypothesis is that social marketing operations are agitational rather than propagandistic. The conceptual approach stems from a comparison of propaganda and marketing with Fordist and post-Fordist modes of production and governance. The research into the role of agitation involves an empirical study of the UK government campaign against benefit fraud, the most (...) expensive of its kind. Using a combination of methodologies, the political context is framed through a discourse analysis that charts the historical emergence of the problem of benefit fraud and the material effects of this discourse on welfare spending allocation, content analysis is used to identify correspondences between different newspapers’ rhetoric and policy under different governments, and semiotic analysis helps to decode the message of the campaign against benefit fraud, as it relates to the overall government’s strategy on this issue. The study offers insights into the political strategy of the government of New Labour between 1997 and 2010 and its resort to agitational techniques, exposing the limitations of government marketing and public relations in the context of an overall crisis of its political legitimacy, in both economic and political terms. (shrink)

We argue that lack of direct and conscious control is not, in principle, a reason to be afraid of machines in general and robots in particular: in order to articulate the ethical and political risks of increasing automation one must, therefore, tackle the difficult task of precisely delineating the theoretical and practical limits of sustainable delegation to robots.

Is aesthetics, as has recently been claimed, now able to meet the accusations often levelled against it? This essay examines counters to three of the most common: that aesthetics is based around overly narrow conceptions of "art" and "the aesthetic"; that aesthetics is politically disengaged; and that aesthetics fails to engage with actual art objects and their histories.

Emotion plays an important role in securing social stability. But while emotions like fear, anger, and guilt have received much attention in this context, little work has been done to understand the role that anxiety plays. That’s unfortunate. I argue that a particular form of anxiety—what I call ‘practical anxiety’—plays an important, but as of yet unrecognized, role in norm-based social regulation. More specifically, it provides a valuable form of metacognition, one that contributes to social stability by helping individuals (...) negotiate the challenges that come from having to act in the face of unclear norms. (shrink)

Why and how do norms emerge? Which norms emerge and why these ones in particular? Such questions belong to the ‘problem of the emergence of norms’, which consists of an inquiry into the production of norms in social collectives. I address this question through the ethnographic study of the emergence of ‘norms against violence’ in the political collective Occupy Geneva. I do this, first, empirically, with the analysis of my field observations; and, second, theoretically, by discussing my findings. In consequence (...) of two episodes categorized as sexual assaults that occurred in their camp, the members of Occupy Geneva decided to tackle those issues in a general assembly. Their goal was to amend their first charter of good conduct in order to reform its norms and complete it with norms aiming to regulate ‘facts’ of ‘unjustified violence’. During a collective deliberation, new norms were devised, debated and consensually adopted. The writing of the new charter took place in a second general assembly during which the wording of the written norms was collectively decided. I show that indignation over the sexual assaults was the main motive that led to the collective deliberation, and that the entire process of the making of these norms was characterized by different collective emotions. Indeed, indignation, contempt and fear played major roles in the emergence of norms prohibiting violence, allowing punishment and exclusion of wrongdoers, and prescribing collective intervention against an aggressor to neutralize the threat represented. These findings prompt me to hypothesize that social norms emerge from emotions thanks to the latters’ internal structure; and that emotions provide causal and grounding explanations for this emergence. Thus, emotions allow us to answer the questions: ‘Why do norms emerge?’ and ‘Why do they have their specific forms?’ In short, I argue that social norms have emotional foundations. (shrink)

Can we ever have politics without the noble lie? Can we have a collective political identity that does not exclude or define ‘us’ as ‘not them’? In the Ethics, Spinoza argues that individual human emotions and imagination shape the social world. This world, he argues, can in turn be shaped by political institutions to be more or less hopeful, more or less rational, or more or less angry and indignant. In his political works, Spinoza offered suggestions for how to shape (...) a political imaginary and create collective identities that are more guided by hope than by fear or anger. In this talk, using the framework of Spinoza's theory of emotions, I will investigate how Barack Obama's promise of 'hope' was translated into Donald Trump's rhetoric of hate. Such a transition, from hope to fear is one that would be unsurprising to Spinoza. Spinoza worried about the political and personal effectiveness of hope. He argued that hope can easily be turned into what he called ‘indignatio’ or indignation – an emotion that he believed eroded trust in political institutions and was the limit of state power. Spinoza warned about the danger of governance that relies upon the emotions of anger and hatred. In the Ethics, Spinoza painstakingly reconstructs the way in which individual emotions, ideas and motivations are shaped within social worlds. He argued that emotions based on pain, including hatred and indignation, diminish the power of the individuals who experience them and the political collective in which those individuals reside. Anger, fear and indignation weaken the state. In the second section of the paper, I will set out how the Trump administration’s reliance on the motivational forces of hate and anger risk what Spinoza called indignation. Trump's reliance on exclusionary conceptions of American identity have fanned the flames of racial, ethnic and religious hatred to motivate his base have had widespread social and political effects. I will offer arguments and examples which bear out the Spinozan worries about the effects of anger and indignation on the political and the social. Spinoza’s political works were written not just to explain the worries about an angry and indignant multitude, but also to show how to turn political indignation and anger into a chastened, and perhaps more rational, hope. Finally, I will propose that we may derive from Spinoza participatory, democratic institutions and collective identities that can overcome this indignation. (shrink)

Many Epicurean arguments for the claim that death is nothing to us depend on the ‘Experience Constraint’: the claim that something can only be good or bad for us if we experience it. However, Epicurus’ commitment to the Experience Constraint makes his attitude to will-writing puzzling. How can someone who accepts the Experience Constraint be motivated to bring about post mortem outcomes?We might think that an Epicurean will-writer could be pleased by the thought of his/her loved ones being provided for (...) after his/her death. Warren has argued that this does not dissolve the puzzle, since it involves a hope which the Epicurean should take to be empty just as the fear of death is empty. However, if it is a necessary condition of an emotion’s being empty that it involve accepting a claim which is not only false but also harmful it is not clear that this hope is indeed ‘empty’: there is a crucial disanalogy between fearing death and hoping for the prosperity of one’s children here. And if emptiness does... (shrink)

There have been several recent attempts to think about psychological kinds as homologies. Nevertheless, there are serious epistemic challenges for individuating homologous psychological kinds, or cognitive homologies. Some of these challenges are revealed when we look at competing claims of cognitive homology. This paper considers two competing homology claims that compare human anger with putative aggression systems of nonhuman animals. The competition between these hypotheses has been difficult to resolve in part because of what I call the boundary problem: boundaries (...) between instances of psychological kinds (e.g., anger and fear) cannot be directly observed. Thus, there are distinctive difficulties for individuating psychological kinds across lineages. I draw four conclusions from this case study: First, recent evidence from the neuroscience of fear suggests that one of the proposed homologies involves a straightforward conflation of anger and fear. Second, this conflation arises because of the boundary problem. Third, there is an implicit constraint on the operational criteria that is easy to overlook in the psychological case. In this case, ignoring the constraint is part of the problem. Fourth, this is a clear case in which knowledge of homology cannot be accumulated piecemeal. Identifying homologs of human anger requires identifying homologs of fear. (shrink)

The article discusses the evolutionary development of horror and fear in animals and humans, including in regard to cognition and physiological aspects of the brain. An overview of the social aspects of emotions, including the role that emotions play in interpersonal relations and the role that empathy plays in humans' ethics, is provided. An overview of the psychological aspects of monsters, including humans' simultaneous repulsion and interest in horror films that depict monsters, is also provided.

Is fear a ‘deficient mode’ of anxiety? This claim made by Martin Heidegger in ‘Being and Time’ (1927) depends on an analysis of intentionality. Emotions take objects: to love, to hate, to fear is to love, to hate, to fear someone or something. Yet anxiety, Heidegger maintains (‘Being and Time’ § 40), is about “nothing” (“nichts”) rather than “something” (“etwas”). Heidegger then turns lack of knowledge or understanding of what one’s anxiety is about into a revelation of (...) “Nothing” (“Die Angst offenbart das Nichts”; ‘Being and Time’ § 40) – a state meant to manifest freedom. Yet freedom is not increased but diminished if and when someone cannot judge the direction, extent and power of a threat. Concrete, determinate thought liberates; someone is less free in anxiety than in fear. (shrink)

Realists in normative political theory aim to defend the importance of “distinctively political thought” as opposed to the applied ethics they believe characterizes much contemporary political theory and causes it to misunderstand and make mistakes about its subject matter. More conventional political theorists have attempted to respond to realism, including Jonathan Leader Maynard and Alex Worsnip, who have recently criticized five supposedly realist arguments for a distinctive political normativity. However, while Leader Maynard and Worsnip's arguments are themselves less decisive than (...) they suppose, the problem with their response may lay elsewhere. Their response supposes that more conventional political theory could, in principle, be defended at an abstract general level. This may not be possible though, given the difficulty of arriving at agreed interpretations of the concepts involved and the desiderata for a successful normative political theory. It also risks missing the point of realism, which is to use different forms of normative inquiry to explore questions which have not always been central to conventional normative political theory. Judith Shklar's excellent work on vices and the liberalism of fear nicely illustrates this problem. (shrink)

During the last century the new, exciting field of Artificial Intelligence has risen. With its promises, fears for the uncertain future development of this area started to rise. Is it going to be sentient? Is it going to be smarter than us? Is it going to "understand" our uselessness? Is it going to decide that we are no more fundamental? And consequently decide to end our species? These and more questions emerged, nourished by the apprehension of the possible dangers that (...) we would need to face. A number of possible solutions were proposed, to try to limit these yet-to-exist new beings. But none of them got universally accepted, thus leaving this primordial fright unscathed. In this paper a novel point of view is considered where, instead of limiting and preventing the possible worst outcomes, an analysis of the human psyche is performed. This work of introspection grants us the great power of copying: once we understand how our psyche is divided - or "stratified" - and how we can, socially speaking, live together and coexist, we are able to try and replicate this abstract structure inside the "mind" of an hypothetical new artificial being. Using - and possibly improving - this set of abstract mental tools and intrinsic barriers for the creation of a new being should, hypothetically, remove the chance - and the fear - of a future repercussion from its original root. (shrink)

Emotional states of consciousness, or what are typically called emotional feelings, are traditionally viewed as being innately programed in subcortical areas of the brain, and are often treated as different from cognitive states of consciousness, such as those related to the perception of external stimuli. We argue that conscious experiences, regardless of their content, arise from one system in the brain. On this view, what differs in emotional and non-emotional states is the kind of inputs that are processed by a (...) general cortical network of cognition, a network essential for conscious experiences. Although subcortical circuits are not directly responsible for conscious feelings, they provide non-conscious inputs that coalesce with other kinds of neural signals in the cognitive assembly of conscious emotional experiences. In building the case for this proposal, we defend a modified version of what is known as the higher-order theory of consciousness. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Plato's Apology is the principal text on which Kierkegaard relies in arguing for the idea that Socrates is fundamentally an ironist. After providing an overview of the structure of this argument, I then consider Kierkegaard's more general discussion of irony, unpacking the distinction he draws between irony as a figure of speech and irony as a standpoint. I conclude by examining Kierkegaard's claim that the Apology itself is “splendidly suited for obtaining a clear concept (...) of Socrates' ironic activity,” considering in particular Kierkegaard's discussion of Socrates' remarks about death and his use of Friedrich Ast's commentary to help his readers to discover the irony that he contends runs throughout Socrates' defense speech. (shrink)

Aristotle’s Poetics is the first philosophical account of an art form and is the foundational text in the history of aesthetics. The Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Aristotle and the Poetics is an accessible guide to this often dense and cryptic work. Angela Curran introduces and assesses: Aristotle’s life and the background to the Poetics the ideas and text of the Poetics , including mimēsis ; poetic technē; the definition of tragedy; the elements of poetic composition; the Poetics’ recommendations for tragic (...) plot patterns; catharsis ; epic and comedy; the nature of our emotional response to drama; the proper pleasure of tragedy; and the role that art plays in a human life the relevance of Aristotle’s work in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and philosophical psychology to the Poetics a comparison of Plato and Aristotle on the value of mimetic art the continuing importance of Aristotle’s Poetics to contemporary philosophy, aesthetics, and philosophy of film. (shrink)

In response to Zack’s “White Privilege​ and Black Rights”, I consider her account of the hunting schema in light of police violence against black women. I argue that although Zack provides us with a compelling account of racial profiling and police brutality, the emotional aspect she attributes to the hunting schema is too charitable. I then claim that Zack’s hunting schema fails to account for state violence against black women and in doing so she only tells a partial story of (...) comparative injustice as it relates to police brutality of blacks. (shrink)

The nature of time is perceived by intellectuals variedly. An attempt is made in this paper to reconcile such varied views in the light of the Upanishads and related Indian spiritual and philosophical texts. The complex analysis of modern mathematics is used to represent the nature and presentation physical and psychological times so differentiated. Also the relation between time and energy is probed using uncertainty relations, forms of energy and phases of matter.

Theory of multiple thinking environments As there is a physical environment, there exists a psychological environment that governs many psychological processes including our thinking. This psychological environment is unique to each person and is framed in the initial few years since the child is born and represents the native environment of that person. This psychological environment is a collection of all those elements responsible for it to become a source of thought and maintain that thought for its life cycle. (In (...) this context I am limiting this concept to explain the thinking process). Though the extensive list of parameters should include many parameters the collection basically should consists of values that are stored in the mind like memories, beliefs, feelings, perceptions and some unknown factors. One such unknown factor is a controlling factor which control values for a specific thinking environment. This psychological environment is mother for many Thinking environments. Mind is capable of creating, nurturing, sustaining, interacting and destroying multiple thinking environments from its native psychological environment resulting in to various thoughts, diminishing or strengthening, to fathom in to either memories or actions. Thinking environments are basically two types, reactive and neutral. Thinking environments are temporary i.e., they are mostly limited to a task or situation or condition etc. Neither psychological environment nor thinking environments have physical existence and every action by a person impacts his psychological environment. (shrink)

In this chapter, I deal with some of the reasons why the United States should not institute any implicit or explicit religion-based tests as grounds for immigration. I argue it is extremely impractical to formulate and execute a test that would be effective in rooting out extremists. However, even if such a test could be devised, immigration requirements that link religion to belonging inevitably foster an irrational fear of an entire group of people as perpetual outsiders. Furthermore, religion-based immigration (...) tests set up a state apparatus where the government surveils its residents for their thoughts and beliefs. (shrink)

There is a growing sense of unease around algorithmic modes of governance ('algocracies') and their impact on freedom. Contrary to the emancipatory utopianism of digital enthusiasts, many now fear that the rise of algocracies will undermine our freedom. Nevertheless, there has been some struggle to explain exactly how this will happen. This chapter tries to address the shortcomings in the existing discussion by arguing for a broader conception/understanding of freedom as well as a broader conception/understanding of algocracy. Broadening the (...) focus in this way enables us to see how algorithmic governance can be both emancipatory and enslaving, and provides a framework for future development and activism around the creation of this technology. (shrink)

The question of forgiveness in politics has attained a certain cachet. Indeed, in the fifty years since Arendt commented on the notable absence of forgiveness in the political tradition, a vast and multidisciplinary literature on the politics of apology, reparation, and reconciliation has emerged. To a novice scouring the relevant literatures, it might appear that the only discordant note in this new veritable symphony of writings on political forgiveness has been sounded by philosophers. There is a more-than-healthy cynicism directed at (...) what many philosophers see as an uncritical promotion of forgiveness, which – they fear – risks distorting and cheapening forgiveness as a moral ideal, on the one hand, and ignoring the moral and political values of justice, accountability and the cessation of harmful relationships, on the other. Are philosophical fears about the dangers of thinking about forgiveness in political terms warranted – or do they perhaps depend in part on conceptual conservatism regarding what exactly political forgiveness might be? I argue that most, if not all, standard objections to political forgiveness emerge from theoretical reliance on a picture of forgiveness I will call the Emotional Model. Once we make conceptual space for descriptions of forgiveness in performative and social terms, the concept is more easily adapted to a political account without at least some of the risks feared by philosophers. (shrink)

This article surveys different philosophical theories about the nature of truth. We give much importance to truth; some demand to know it, some fear it, and others would even die for it. But what exactly is truth? What is its nature? Does it even have a nature in the first place? When do we say that some truth-bearers are true? Philosophers offer varying answers to these questions. In this article, some of these answers are explored and some of the (...) problems raised against them are presented. (shrink)