This paper attempts to explain the conceptual connections between happiness and well-being. It first distinguishes episodic happiness from happiness in the personal attribute sense. It then evaluates two recent proposals about the connection between happiness and well-being: (1) the idea that episodic happiness and well-being both have the same fundamental determinants, so that a person is well-off to a particular degree in virtue of the fact that they are happy to that degree, and (2) the (...) idea that happiness in the personal attribute sense can serve as a ‘‘proxy’’ for well-being, i.e., that a person’s degree of deep or robust happiness approximates their degree of well-being. It is argued that happiness in both these senses is conceptually, metaphysically, and empirically distinct from well- being. A new analysis of welfare, well-being as agential flourishing, can explain welfare’s real connection to happiness in both the episodic and personal attribute senses. It predicts that such happiness is only directly beneficial when it is valued, when it is a form of valuing, or when it underwrites (i.e., serves as the causal basis for) the disposition to realize one’s values. It is therefore a necessary—but not sufficient—condition for especially high levels of well-being. This analysis of welfare integrates many insights from the eudaimonic tradition of welfare and happiness research in psychology, and also addresses common criticisms of these eudaimonic models. (shrink)

Happiness is a universal human objective. We all want to be happy. But how we define, pursue, and maintain happiness often seems vague and elusive. That is why we need a personal philosophy of happiness. -/- This presentation lays out the underlying considerations and examines why other avenues of securing happiness are not succeeding. And it describes how we can arrive at our personal philosophy, guided by a deep understanding of our happiness. Happiness (...) then reveals itself not only as our ultimate objective but also as its own organizing principle: The Happiness Principle. -/- The presentation is divided into the following sections: -/- 1. Foundations. 2. The Necessity of an Independent Approach. 3. Substitute Strategies. 4. Trials of Happiness. 5. Happiness in Traditional Settings. 6. The Happiness Principle. 7. Philosophy of Happiness Book Genesis. 8. The Bane of Instructions. 9. Happiness in a Pluralistic Society. 10. Individual Strategies. 11. Defense Mechanisms. 12. Conclusion. -/- This is a 20-page transcript of a video presentation by Martin Janello. See the "Happiness Principle" page on the referenced website for access to the video. It is a primer for subjects discussed in more detail in my main work, titled "Philosophy of Happiness." More information about the book is available on the "Book" page of that site as well. (shrink)

Indian philosophy is a term that refers to schools of philosophical thought that originated in the Indian continent. Buddhism is one of the important school of Indian philosophical thought. Happiness is much pursued by individuals and society in all cultures. Eastern and western cultures have understood well-being and evolved ways and means to promote well-being over the years. Buddhism pursues happiness by using knowledge and practice to achieve mental equanimity. In Buddhism, equanimity, or peace of mind, is achieved (...) by detaching oneself from the cycle of craving that produces dukkha. So by achieving a mental state where you can detach from all the passions, needs and wants of life, you free yourself and achieve a state of transcendent bliss and well-being. The journey to attain a deeper form of happiness requires an unflinching look into the face of a reality where all life is seen as dukkha or mental dysfunction. Buddhism is a philosophy and practice that is extremely concerned with the mind and its various delusions, misunderstandings and cravings but, happily for us, sees a way out through higher consciousness and mindful practice. Perhaps it is because of this seemingly dim view of reality that happiness in Buddhism is so tremendously full; the ideas contained in Buddha's teachings point to a thorough engagement with lived reality. Ironically, it is through such an engagement with one's self, the world and reality that one is able to achieve a transcendent happiness. Equanimity, a deep sense of wellbeing and happiness, is attainable through proper knowledge and practice in everyday life. The objective of this paper is to the study the conception of happiness Buddhist philosophy. This paper is divided into four parts (i) meaning of Indian philosophy and its relation with Indian psychology, (ii) Buddhist philosophy, (iii) Buddhist conception of happiness and (iv) relevance of Buddhism in present day world. (shrink)

We answer the title question with a qualified “No.” We arrive at this answer by spelling out what the proper place of the concept 'happiness' is in a neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics: (1) Happiness in the sense of personal well-being has only a loose relation to virtue; it doesn't deserve any prominent place in virtue ethics. (2) Happiness in the sense of flourishing is impossible without virtue, but that doesn't imply that individual actions should aim at flourishing. (3) (...) Instead, flourishing sets the standard of good practical reasoning; it is hardly ever the proper aim of a practical inference. This paper begins with a common (mis)interpretation of neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics, on which it is a form of rational egoism. We then develop our alternative understanding against this foil. (shrink)

In modern days, person-computer communication systems have gradually penetrated our lives. One of the crucial technologies in person-computer communication systems, Speech Emotion Recognition (SER) technology, permits machines to correctly recognize emotions and greater understand users' intent and human-computer interlinkage. The main objective of the SER is to improve the human-machine interface. It is also used to observe a person's psychological condition by lie detectors. Automatic Speech Emotion Recognition(SER) is vital in the person-computer interface, but SER has challenges for accurate recognition. (...) In this work to resolve the above problem, automatic Speech enhancement shows that deep learning techniques effectively eliminate background noise. Using Deep leaning models for four states were created: happy, sad, angry, and intoxicated. Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) algorithm used to reduce the possibility of over fitting by randomly omitting neurons in the hidden layers. The proposed RNN method could be implemented in personal assistant systems to give better and more appropriate state-based interactions between humans. In the simulation results shows Improving accuracy, Time complexity, Error rate is also reduced to using the proposed method. -/- . (shrink)

The design process in Kashmiri carpet weaving is distributed over a number of actors and artifacts and is mediated by a weaving notation called talim. The script encodes entire design in practice-specific symbols. This encoded script is decoded and interpreted via design-specific conventions by weavers to weave the design embedded in it. The cognitive properties of this notational system are described in the paper employing cognitive dimensions (CDs) framework of Green (People and computers, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1989) and Blackwell (...) et al. (Cognitive technology: instruments of mind—CT 2001, LNAI 2117, Springer, Berlin, 2001). After introduction to the practice, the design process is described in ‘The design process’ section which includes coding and decoding of talim. In ‘Cognitive dimensions of talim’ section, after briefly discussing CDs framework, the specific cognitive dimensions possessed by talim are described in detail. (shrink)

Existing studies of the multi-group dynamics of prejudiced societies focus on the social- psychological knowledge behind the relevant processes. We instead create a multi-agent framework that simulates the propagation of prejudice and measures its tangible impact on prosperity. Levels of prosperity are tracked for individuals as well as larger social structures including groups and factions. We model social interactions using the Continuous Prisoner's Dilemma (CPD) and a new agent type called a prejudiced agent. Our simulations show that even modeling prejudice (...) as an exclusively out-group phenomenon nonetheless generates implicit in-group promotion, leading to higher relative prosperity of a prejudiced population. This skew in prosperity is seen to be correlated to factors such as size difference between groups, and the fraction of prejudiced agents in a group. Our model is a step towards a deeper understanding of the origins, propagation, and ramifications of prejudice through simulative studies grounded in apt theoretical backgrounds. (shrink)

If this can be seen as a long way from the beginning of the ancient history, where humans have envisioned different new things and then invented them to make their life’s working smoother and easier, then it can be found that they have attributed their discoveries to various aspects and names of Gods and tried to signify their belief in the form of portraying the God’s powers through the nature of their discovery. Rather, in much modern times, when humans have (...) developed the natural insights and prorated those in the form of a much more logically biased discovery, then, the atheists have started to dominate the scientific arena for their foreplay in the work of their discoveries. However, as time passes by, five special types of research communities have gathered to allocate their discovered data’s in the respective norms as such, i) Atheists to whom, there is in essence no God and nothing in this universe can be attributed to them. ii) Believer of only one God as a whole, where the principle of religious biasing is effluent and supreme in their regards of the physical laws associated with the life and stimuli, iii) Believer of multiple God’s as a whole which poses no such scientific evaluation but can be thought of as a conjugate mechanism for the creator of the universe, iv) A divine supreme, where there is exactly no God, but the whole universe is a manifestation of the nature, where nature indirectly focuses the presence of God’s or the supreme creator that maintains symmetry and working of the universe, v) The not-so-sure about mechanism of the God’s presence, where the researcher sometimes tends to belief in God when something magical happens and attribute all to their divine grace, or in times of failures where they accused them for not being philosophically intrinsic as to their own needs, and in times with the believe that, ‘we won’t believe what we can’t see!’, either in the middle of the good or bad moments or in general in a casual and carefree mode. But, this should be kept in mind, that, the Eastern mysticism has always signifies God’s action in terms of every scientific actions with a proper mythological essence which when accompanied by knowledge produces something so scientific in the ancient of the days, that modern day researchers also have had no options left than to attribute affirmation to the fantastic achievements in the ‘so’ ancient times discovery with a strict modern effluence. Therefore, to model this paper, I have gathered data’s and ideas from researchers of various fields mostly (PhDs) in their respective discipline, so as to emulate their minds in the norms of God and its associated beliefs. (shrink)

This article describes various ways actors in Kashmiri carpet weaving practice deploy a range of artifacts, from symbolic, to material, to hybrid, in order to achieve diverse cognitive accomplishments in their particular task domains: information representation, inter and intra-domain communication, distribution of cognitive labor across people and time, coordination of team activities, and carrying of cultural heritage. In this repertoire, some artifacts position themselves as naïve tools in the actors’ environment to the point of being ignored; however, their usage-in-context unfolds (...) their cognitive involvement in the tasks. These usages-in-context are shown through artifact analysis of their routine, improvised, and opportunistic uses, where cognitive artifacts like talim—the central artifact of this practice—are shown to play not only multifunctional roles beyond representation, but are also complemented by trade-specific skills bearing strong cognitive implications in a task. (shrink)

The design process in Kashmiri carpet weaving is a distributed process encompassing a number of actors and artifacts. These include a designer called naqash who creates the design on graphs, and a coder called talim-guru who encodes that design in a specific notation called talim which is deciphered and interpreted by the weavers to weave the design. The technological interventions over the years have influenced these artifacts considerably and triggered major changes in the practice, from heralding profound cognitive accomplishments in (...) manually driven design process causing major alterations in the overall structure of the practice. The recent intervention is by the digital technology: on the one hand, it has brought precision and speedy processing in the design process, and on the other, it has eliminated some of the crucial actors from the practice. This paper, which forms part of a larger study on the situated and distributed cognitive process in Kashmiri carpet-weaving practice, describes the technological makeover of the design artifacts involved in this practice over the years and their resultant cognitive impact on the design process as well as on the practice. (shrink)

The economy of Bangladesh mainly depends on agriculture. Any development can’t be possible because females and males are equally distributed in the country. Women can play a vital role if they properly participated in farm activities as well as in other income-generating activities outside the home. Rice mills are very much dependent on human labour, and almost 5 millions of unorganised workers are working in different rice mills, and more than 60 per cent of them is a female worker. But (...) the working environment suffers from different discrimination and harassment issues between male and female workers. The present study aimed to find out the socio-economic status of women labour at rice husking mill of Bangladesh. Discrimination between male and female workers and the factor affecting the standard of living of women’s household will be focused. The study was carried out in two districts namely Mymensingh and Sherpur. From each district, rice husking mill was selected by using a cluster sampling technique, and 70 male and 70 female labours were considered as a sample. The survey was conducted by direct interviews using a questionnaire. Data generated were analysed by using tabular and statistical techniques. The average family size of the respondents was 4.46, and 57.05% of the participants were females while 42.95% were males in the household and 65.71% of female had no education. 88% of the women’s main occupation was in the rice mill as a daily paid labour. Average wage rate of male and female worker was 184.31 Tk. And 135.95 Tk., respectively. Age, education, number of family member, total land, number of earning member, the wage of women labour and working time and experience were the factors influencing income and living standard of female labours. There were various social violence cases against female labours in the working environment of rice husking mills. In the study area, 93% of female workers get lower wages, 90% of them had no accommodation facility. Besides they did not have sanitation facility (80%), opportunity to take rest at the middle of work (64%) and meal support (71%). (shrink)

Past research has identified a number of asymmetries based on moral judgments. Beliefs about what a person values, whether a person is happy, whether a person has shown weakness of will, and whether a person deserves praise or blame seem to depend critically on whether participants themselves find the agent's behavior to be morally good or bad. To date, however, the origins of these asymmetries remain unknown. The present studies examine whether beliefs about an agent's “true self” explain these observed (...) asymmetries based on moral judgment. Using the identical materials from previous studies in this area, a series of five experiments indicate that people show a general tendency to conclude that deep inside every individual there is a “true self” calling him or her to behave in ways that are morally virtuous. In turn, this belief causes people to hold different intuitions about what the agent values, whether the agent is happy, whether he or she has shown weakness of will, and whether he or she deserves praise or blame. These results not only help to answer important questions about how people attribute various mental states to others; they also contribute to important theoretical debates regarding how moral values may shape our beliefs about phenomena that, on the surface, appear to be decidedly non-moral in nature. (shrink)

Władysław Tatarkiewicz work on philosophical and moral psychology, particularly on theory of happiness is still example of the best kind of analytical and close to phenomenological analysis of our speaking and thinking about the topics in question. He distinguishes four main different meanings of Polish word ‘szczęście’ and present a new classification of them based on two principles: the opposition of subjective and objective and between ordinary and philosophical language. Accordingly we can speak about luck, positive psychological states like (...) different kinds of good emotions or feelings and pleasure, Greek eudaimonia and specifically philosophical, a very correct concept of happiness as a rationally justified deep and comprehensive satisfaction of one’s life taken in its wholeness. In this paper I present critically his classification and argue that subjective meanings are always related to objective concepts. (shrink)

I argue that fitting envy plays a special role in safeguarding our happiness and flourishing. After presenting my theory of envy and its fittingness conditions, I contrast Kant’s view that envy is always unfitting with D’Arms and Jacobson’s defense of fitting envy as an evolutionarily-shaped response to a deep and wide human concern, that is, relative positioning. However, D’Arms and Jacobson don’t go far enough. First, I expand on their analysis of positional goodness, distinguishing between an epistemic claim, (...) according to which we use implicit or explicit comparison to know what position we occupy in a continuum of goodness, and thus to form judgments of goodness, and a metaphysical one, according to which much human goodness depends on implicit or explicit rankings and positionality. Second, I argue that fitting envy is not only intrinsically valuable qua fitting response to authentic goodness, but can be epistemically, morally and prudentially valuable. (shrink)

It is commonly assumed that Aristotle's ethical theory shares deep structural similarities with neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics. I argue that this assumption is a mistake, and that Aristotle's ethical theory is both importantly distinct from the theories his work has inspired, and independently compelling. I take neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics to be characterized by two central commitments: (i) virtues of character are defined as traits that reliably promote an agent's own flourishing, and (ii) virtuous actions are defined as the sorts of (...) actions a virtuous agent reliably performs under the relevant circumstances. I argue that neither of these commitments are features of Aristotle's own view, and I sketch an alternative explanation for the relationship between virtue and happiness in the Nicomachean Ethics. Although, on the interpretation I defend, we do not find in Aristotle a distinctive normative theory alongside deontology and consequentialism, what we do find is a way of thinking about how prudential and moral reasons can come to be aligned through a certain conception of practical agency. (shrink)

It is undeniable that human beings seek happiness and have difficulty finding it. This is not a new phenomenon: ever since ancient times man has wondered about what happiness is, where it lies and how to achieve it. For the Greeks, a people of deep pessimism, the search for happiness (eudaimonia) was a traditional theme of philosophy and it was precisely in Greece where Epicurus ́ (341-270 BC) doctrine of happiness emerged. A cursed and manipulated (...) author (just like his admirer Nietzsche), Epicurus has probably been the thinker who has most lucidly approached the question of eudaimonia. Its doctrine seeks and promises its followers happiness through pleasure (hedoné), self-sufficiency (autarky), friendship (philía) and mental calm (ataraxia), offering itself as medicine against the pain of flesh and the sufferings of the mind. But Epicurean hedonism, which harmonizes well with the ancient Apollonian maxim that wisdom consists of moderation and the knowledge of limits, is totally removed from both the tyranny of the happycracy and from the noxious culture of unrestrained and vacuous desire of contemporary postmodernity. This is precisely why Epicurus's timeless proposal for authentic happiness deserves to be known for everyone: for constituting an effective therapy against the ills that afflict the nihilistic human being of the neoliberal era. (shrink)

Past research has found that the value of a person's activities can affect observers' judgments about whether that person is experiencing certain emotions (e.g., people consider morally good agents happier than morally bad agents). One proposed explanation for this effect is that emotion attributions are influenced by judgments about fittingness (whether the emotion is merited). Another hypothesis is that emotion attributions are influenced by judgments about the agent's true self (whether the emotion reflects how the agent feels “deep down”). (...) We tested these hypotheses in six studies. After finding that people think a wide range of emotions can be fitting and reflect a person's true self (Study 1), we tested the predictions of these two hypotheses for attributions of happiness, love, sadness, and hatred. We manipulated the emotions' fittingness (Studies 2a-b and 4) and whether the emotions reflected an agent's true self (Studies 3 and 5), measuring emotion attributions as well as fittingness judgments and true self judgments. The fittingness manipulation only impacted emotion attributions in the cases where it also impacted true self judgments, whereas the true self manipulation impacted emotion attribution in all cases, including those where it did not impact fittingness judgments. These results cast serious doubt on the fittingness hypothesis and offer some support for the true self hypothesis, which could be developed further in future work. -/- . (shrink)

Charles Mills adhered to the highest standards of philosophical scholarship, while seeing his work firmly as a contribution to the cause of social justice. He had a deep appreciation for historical context and a history of ideas approach to racial/philosophical questions. He was one of the foremost Rawls interpreters or our time, though only a few years before his passing was he so recognized. He channeled his analytic training in his habit of demonstrating how a view is strengthened when (...) an author shows how objections can be systematically replied to. I wish he had tried to integrate class and race into a larger theoretical system, of both an explanatory and normative character. Class is sometimes an unnoted presence in his explanation of white supremacy. Charles saw himself contributing to a collective scholarly social justice project and was happy to acknowledge the greater expertise of others in allied areas to his. (shrink)

Desire satisfaction theorists and attitudinal-happiness theorists of well-being are committed to correcting the psychological attitudes upon which their theories are built. However, it is not often recognized that some of the attitudes in need of correction are evaluative attitudes. Moreover, it is hard to know how to correct for poor evaluative attitudes in ways that respect the traditional commitment to the authority of the individual subject's evaluative perspective. L. W. Sumner has proposed an autonomy-as-authenticity requirement to perform this task, (...) but this article argues that it cannot do the job. Sumner's proposal focuses on the social origins of our values and overlooks the deep psychological roots of other evaluative attitudes that are just as problematic for welfare. If subjective theories of welfare are to be at all plausible they may need to abandon or modify their traditional commitment to the authority of the individual subject. (shrink)

In this paper I consider Simone Weil’s notion of attention as the fundamental and necessary condition for mystical experience, and investigate Iris Murdoch’s secular adaptation of attention as a moral attitude. After exploring the concept of attention in Weil and its relation to the mystical, I turn to Murdoch to address the following question: how does Murdoch manage to maintain Weil’s idea of attention, even keeping the importance of mysticism, without Weil’s religious metaphysical background? Simone Weil returns to the importance (...) of attention throughout her writing. To attend, for Weil, means to empty oneself of all that is personal, primarily one’s will, which Weil sees as the essence of the human individual. This act imitates God’s act of creation, considered as a withdrawal in order to let something other than himself exist. Since such withdrawal represents God’s supreme act of love, salvation for human beings lies in the attempt to do likewise. By giving up one’s will, while desiring God with all of one’s soul, one creates the conditions for God to descend into the soul. This ‘passive activity’ is attention. Weil’s writings had a deep impact on Iris Murdoch’s moral philosophy. In particular, Weil’s concept of attention is carried into Murdoch’s thought almost unchanged, with one striking exception: the absence of God in Murdoch’s system. Just as surprisingly, Murdoch at the same time maintains that mysticism and spirituality are crucial for morality, nor does she wish to sever the connection between attention and mysticism. Is Murdoch being inconsistent? I believe not. But the idea of attention as a mystical concept, within a metaphysics which has no room for God, requires further examination. For Murdoch, attention is the central capacity of the morally good person. Attention is, like in Weil, connected with an emptying of the self (for Murdoch the Ego) and a renunciation of will, in order to let something external make an impression in the subject. However, in Murdoch’s philosophy such external impression is not given by God, but by reality itself. Thus far, it appears, the notion of mysticism would be unnecessary. Yet for Murdoch reality is not something that we passively perceive, but something that requires a moral faculty – attention – made up of selflessness and desire for the good, in order to be apprehended. Two elements of mysticism then begin to surface: firstly, apprehension of reality requires a faculty that is not purely intellectual, but that involves the whole of the individual, including intuitions that one may be unable to explain (which Murdoch is happy to call ‘the soul’); secondly, the reality thus apprehended is considered as transcendent, insofar as its truth, infinitely distant, transcends the individual’s complete grasp. Thus the mystic, in Murdoch’s system, is regarded as an ideal moral person, not because s/he is guided by God, but because of his/her selfless ability to attend to the world beyond oneself and intuit its moral and metaphysical truth. (shrink)

Jakob Friedrich Fries (1773-1843): A Philosophy of the Exact Sciences -/- Shortened version of the article of the same name in: Tabula Rasa. Jenenser magazine for critical thinking. 6th of November 1994 edition -/- 1. Biography -/- Jakob Friedrich Fries was born on the 23rd of August, 1773 in Barby on the Elbe. Because Fries' father had little time, on account of his journeying, he gave up both his sons, of whom Jakob Friedrich was the elder, to the Herrnhut Teaching (...) Institution in Niesky in 1778. Fries attended the theological seminar in Niesky in autumn 1792, which lasted for three years. There he (secretly) began to study Kant. The reading of Kant's works led Fries, for the first time, to a deep philosophical satisfaction. His enthusiasm for Kant is to be understood against the background that a considerable measure of Kant's philosophy is based on a firm foundation of what happens in an analogous and similar manner in mathematics. -/- During this period he also read Heinrich Jacobi's novels, as well as works of the awakening classic German literature; in particular Friedrich Schiller's works. In 1795, Fries arrived at Leipzig University to study law. During his time in Leipzig he became acquainted with Fichte's philosophy. In autumn of the same year he moved to Jena to hear Fichte at first hand, but was soon disappointed. -/- During his first sojourn in Jenaer (1796), Fries got to know the chemist A. N. Scherer who was very influenced by the work of the chemist A. L. Lavoisier. Fries discovered, at Scherer's suggestion, the law of stoichiometric composition. Because he felt that his work still need some time before completion, he withdrew as a private tutor to Zofingen (in Switzerland). There Fries worked on his main critical work, and studied Newton's "Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica". He remained a lifelong admirer of Newton, whom he praised as a perfectionist of astronomy. Fries saw the final aim of his mathematical natural philosophy in the union of Newton's Principia with Kant's philosophy. -/- With the aim of qualifying as a lecturer, he returned to Jena in 1800. Now Fries was known from his independent writings, such as "Reinhold, Fichte and Schelling" (1st edition in 1803), and "Systems of Philosophy as an Evident Science" (1804). The relationship between G. W. F. Hegel and Fries did not develop favourably. Hegel speaks of "the leader of the superficial army", and at other places he expresses: "he is an extremely narrow-minded bragger". On the other hand, Fries also has an unfavourable take on Hegel. He writes of the "Redundancy of the Hegelistic dialectic" (1828). In his History of Philosophy (1837/40) he writes of Hegel, amongst other things: "Your way of philosophising seems just to give expression to nonsense in the shortest possible way". In this work, Fries appears to argue with Hegel in an objective manner, and expresses a positive attitude to his work. -/- In 1805, Fries was appointed professor for philosophy in Heidelberg. In his time spent in Heidelberg, he married Caroline Erdmann. He also sealed his friendships with W. M. L. de Wette and F. H. Jacobi. Jacobi was amongst the contemporaries who most impressed Fries during this period. In Heidelberg, Fries wrote, amongst other things, his three-volume main work New Critique of Reason (1807). -/- In 1816 Fries returned to Jena. When in 1817 the Wartburg festival took place, Fries was among the guests, and made a small speech. 1819 was the so-called "Great Year" for Fries: His wife Caroline died, and Karl Sand, a member of a student fraternity, and one of Fries' former students stabbed the author August von Kotzebue to death. Fries was punished with a philosophy teaching ban but still received a professorship for physics and mathematics. Only after a period of years, and under restrictions, he was again allowed to read philosophy. From now on, Fries was excluded from political influence. The rest of his life he devoted himself once again to philosophical and natural studies. During this period, he wrote "Mathematical Natural Philosophy" (1822) and the "History of Philosophy" (1837/40). -/- Fries suffered from a stroke on New Year's Day 1843, and a second stroke, on the 10th of August 1843 ended his life. -/- 2. Fries' Work Fries left an extensive body of work. A look at the subject areas he worked on makes us aware of the universality of his thinking. Amongst these subjects are: Psychic anthropology, psychology, pure philosophy, logic, metaphysics, ethics, politics, religious philosophy, aesthetics, natural philosophy, mathematics, physics and medical subjects, to which, e.g., the text "Regarding the optical centre in the eye together with general remarks about the theory of seeing" (1839) bear witness. With popular philosophical writings like the novel "Julius and Evagoras" (1822), or the arabesque "Longing, and a Trip to the Middle of Nowhere" (1820), he tried to make his philosophy accessible to a broader public. Anthropological considerations are shown in the methodical basis of his philosophy, and to this end, he provides the following didactic instruction for the study of his work: "If somebody wishes to study philosophy on the basis of this guide, I would recommend that after studying natural philosophy, a strict study of logic should follow in order to peruse metaphysics and its applied teachings more rapidly, followed by a strict study of criticism, followed once again by a return to an even closer study of metaphysics and its applied teachings." -/- 3. Continuation of Fries' work through the Friesian School -/- Fries' ideas found general acceptance amongst scientists and mathematicians. A large part of the followers of the "Fries School of Thought" had a scientific or mathematical background. Amongst them were biologist Matthias Jakob Schleiden, mathematics and science specialist philosopher Ernst Friedrich Apelt, the zoologist Oscar Schmidt, and the mathematician Oscar Xavier Schlömilch. Between the years 1847 and 1849, the treatises of the "Fries School of Thought", with which the publishers aimed to pursue philosophy according to the model of the natural sciences appeared. In the Kant-Fries philosophy, they saw the realisation of this ideal. The history of the "New Fries School of Thought" began in 1903. It was in this year that the philosopher Leonard Nelson gathered together a small discussion circle in Goettingen. Amongst the founding members of this circle were: A. Rüstow, C. Brinkmann and H. Goesch. In 1904 L. Nelson, A. Rüstow, H. Goesch and the student W. Mecklenburg travelled to Thuringia to find the missing Fries writings. In the same year, G. Hessenberg, K. Kaiser and Nelson published the first pamphlet from their first volume of the "Treatises of the Fries School of Thought, New Edition". -/- The school set out with the aim of searching for the missing Fries' texts, and re-publishing them with a view to re-opening discussion of Fries' brand of philosophy. The members of the circle met regularly for discussions. Additionally, larger conferences took place, mostly during the holidays. Featuring as speakers were: Otto Apelt, Otto Berg, Paul Bernays, G. Fraenkel, K. Grelling, G. Hessenberg, A. Kronfeld, O. Meyerhof, L. Nelson and R. Otto. On the 1st of March 1913, the Jakob-Friedrich-Fries society was founded. Whilst the Fries' school of thought dealt in continuum with the advancement of the Kant-Fries philosophy, the members of the Jakob-Friedrich-Fries society's main task was the dissemination of the Fries' school publications. In May/June, 1914, the organisations took part in their last common conference before the gulf created by the outbreak of the First World War. Several members died during the war. Others returned disabled. The next conference took place in 1919. A second conference followed in 1921. Nevertheless, such intensive work as had been undertaken between 1903 and 1914 was no longer possible. -/- Leonard Nelson died in October 1927. In the 1930's, the 6th and final volume of "Treatises of the Fries School of Thought, New Edition" was published. Franz Oppenheimer, Otto Meyerhof, Minna Specht and Grete Hermann were involved in their publication. -/- 4. About Mathematical Natural Philosophy -/- In 1822, Fries' "Mathematical Natural Philosophy" appeared. Fries rejects the speculative natural philosophy of his time - above all Schelling's natural philosophy. A natural study, founded on speculative philosophy, ceases with its collection, arrangement and order of well-known facts. Only a mathematical natural philosophy can deliver the necessary explanatory reasoning. The basic dictum of his mathematical natural philosophy is: "All natural theories must be definable using purely mathematically determinable reasons of explanation." Fries is of the opinion that science can attain completeness only by the subordination of the empirical facts to the metaphysical categories and mathematical laws. -/- The crux of Fries' natural philosophy is the thought that mathematics must be made fertile for use by the natural sciences. However, pure mathematics displays solely empty abstraction. To be able to apply them to the sensory world, an intermediatory connection is required. Mathematics must be connected to metaphysics. The pure mechanics, consisting of three parts are these: a) A study of geometrical movement, which considers solely the direction of the movement, b) A study of kinematics, which considers velocity in Addition, c) A study of dynamic movement, which also incorporates mass and power, as well as direction and velocity. -/- Of great interest is Fries' natural philosophy in view of its methodology, particularly with regard to the doctrine "leading maxims". Fries calls these "leading maxims" "heuristic", "because they are principal rules for scientific invention". -/- Fries' philosophy found great recognition with Carl Friedrich Gauss, amongst others. Fries asked for Gauss's opinion on his work "An Attempt at a Criticism based on the Principles of the Probability Calculus" (1842). Gauss also provided his opinions on "Mathematical Natural Philosophy" (1822) and on Fries' "History of Philosophy". Gauss acknowledged Fries' philosophy and wrote in a letter to Fries: "I have always had a great predilection for philosophical speculation, and now I am all the more happy to have a reliable teacher in you in the study of the destinies of science, from the most ancient up to the latest times, as I have not always found the desired satisfaction in my own reading of the writings of some of the philosophers. In particular, the writings of several famous (maybe better, so-called famous) philosophers who have appeared since Kant have reminded me of the sieve of a goat-milker, or to use a modern image instead of an old-fashioned one, of Münchhausen's plait, with which he pulled himself from out of the water. These amateurs would not dare make such a confession before their Masters; it would not happen were they were to consider the case upon its merits. I have often regretted not living in your locality, so as to be able to glean much pleasurable entertainment from philosophical verbal discourse." -/- The starting point of the new adoption of Fries was Nelson's article "The critical method and the relation of psychology to philosophy" (1904). Nelson dedicates special attention to Fries' re-interpretation of Kant's deduction concept. Fries awards Kant's criticism the rationale of anthropological idiom, in that he is guided by the idea that one can examine in a psychological way which knowledge we have "a priori", and how this is created, so that we can therefore recognise our own knowledge "a priori" in an empirical way. Fries understands deduction to mean an "awareness residing darkly in us is, and only open to basic metaphysical principles through conscious reflection.". -/- Nelson has pointed to an analogy between Fries' deduction and modern metamathematics. In the same manner, as with the anthropological deduction of the content of the critical investigation into the metaphysical object show, the content of mathematics become, in David Hilbert's view, the object of metamathematics. -/-. (shrink)

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) was a universal genius, making original contributions to law, mathematics, philosophy, politics, languages, and many areas of science, including what we would now call physics, biology, chemistry, and geology. By profession he was a court counselor, librarian, and historian, and thus much of his intellectual activity had to be fit around his professional duties. Leibniz’s fame and reputation among his contemporaries rested largely on his innovations in the field of mathematics, in particular his discovery of the (...) calculus in 1675. Another of his enduring mathematical contributions was his invention of binary arithmetic, though the significance of this was not recognized until the 20th century. These days, a good proportion of scholarly interest in Leibniz is focused on his philosophy. Among his signature philosophical doctrines are the pre-established harmony, the theory of monads, and the claim that ours is the best of all possible worlds, which forms the central plank of his theodicy. For Leibniz, philosophy was not the discovery of deep truths of interest only to other philosophers, but a practical discipline with the means to increase happiness and well-being. Philosophical truths, he believed, revealed the beauty and rational order of the universe, and the justice and wisdom of its creator, and accordingly could inspire contentment and peace of mind. Leibniz’s other intellectual projects were likewise geared toward the improvement of the human condition. He lobbied tirelessly for the establishment of scientific societies, devised measures to improve public health, and was actively engaged in projects to unite the churches and so end the religious strife that marred the Europe of his day. He was also engaged in politics for much of his career, and often took on a diplomatic role, sometimes officially and other times not. In the political sphere, Leibniz did not wield true power but was a man with influence, obtained in no small part by his cultivation of relationships with leaders and sovereigns both inside and outside Germany. The sheer range of Leibniz’s interests, projects, and activities can make him a difficult figure to study, and the vast quantity of his writings only compounds the problem (around fifty thousand of his writings survive). Nevertheless, even a sampling of Leibniz’s work is enough to get a sense of his vision, originality, and intellectual depth, and good secondary literature will only enhance this. The items in this bibliography were chosen with this in mind. (shrink)

Chris Marker’s portrait of Alexandre Medvedkine in the 1993 film Le tombeau d’Alexandre/The Last Bolshevik is highly instructive of his own relationship to Soviet cinema. Most especially, this difficult or troubled rapport with the antecedents to cinéma vérité in the West (and its protean formal properties, in terms of structure and often satirical-critical commentary) comes forth in the figures he assembles to comment upon Medvedkine’s life work. When Medvedkine’s Scast’e (Le Bonheur/Happiness) (1934) leaked to the West (c.1967), sent like (...) an “SOS” in multiple bottles to various film archives (one by one from deep within the Soviet film world), Marker and SLON received a copy by way of Jacques Ledoux (curator of the Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique, in Belgium). The film opened the floodgates of a retrospective survey of Soviet filmmaking repressed and forgotten other than by remote and distant figures (partisans) who somehow survived the Stalinist purges of the 1930s. (shrink)

Religious experience is one of the fundamental problems of the philosophy of religion. Although it has entered the literature as a proof of God; discussions focus on its nature. The basic approaches to the nature of religious experience are: religious experience as a feeling, religious experience as a perception, religious experience as a comment. The main reason that makes the nature of religious experience controversial is that it consists of two concepts that have a wide range of meaning, such as (...) religion and experience. The meanings that individuals and traditions attach to these two concepts determine the understanding of religious experience. The beginning of religious experience as a term corresponds to the periods of Protestantism. With the emphasis of Enlightenment on the mind, the meanings attributed to religious experience have been reduced and narrowed. In the literature, religious experience is unclear, cannot be transferred to others, instant and extraordinary experiences. The preliminary acceptance of this article is that the meanings attributed to the term religious experience are narrowed and it is wrong to use the term in the same sense for different traditions. This article assumes that the reader knows the current discussion of the problem. Rather than reacting to the concerns of current debate, it takes a more proactive and pre-opener approach. Rather than reacting to the concerns of the current debate, it takes a more proactive approach to the subject. This paper will present a different reading of religious experience than the literature as a problem of the Philosophy of Religion. In this context, the concept of God, universe and human being in al-Ghazali will be firstly revealed as the ontological background of religious experience; then a description of the concept of religious experience will be proposed on this ontological basis. If you mean an experience related to religion, which is within religious boundaries with religious experience; Islam for a Muslim, that all experiences that cater to all aspects of human existence and religious boundaries cannot be the person to enter into any human experience that is experienced throughout the religious life. Certainly, here we can talk about the experiences that religion has ordered and forbidden, or in other words, experiences that religion regards as positive or negative. If an experience related to God is meant for religious experience, here are two cases: when the truth comes to the essence and attributes of God, the human experience does not reach there and in this sense, a religious experience is not possible. If the acts of God are mentioned; all the experiences that people live in are religious in this sense, because everything outside of their own is a deed of God, and whatever happens in the world of being, takes place within God's deeds. Here, too, whether or not people are aware of it, can be mentioned in other words, from conscious and unconscious religious experiences, which is the deciding factor. Faith, then, can be regarded as the first step of the conscious religious experience. If you are referring to experiences that seem to be unusual for those who are religious and have no religious experience, it is an extraordinary experience to go on a journey itself, compared to not going on a journey. That is to say, the faith itself, which is to ascend to a journey to perfection, is an extraordinary experience compared to those who are not on this path, that is, those who do not have it. For instance for children, the experiences of the elders are extraordinary, and therefore being ordinary and extraordinary is a relative concept. It is necessary to acknowledge the differences in conscious religious experiences mentioned above in the meaning of intense and deep living in themselves. There is a deeper and more intense experience that expresses progress in a journey that leads to God in the sense of the strengthening of faith. This is the kind of experience that most people have not experienced in this sense that the task of the person who is experienced in his own journey is not to stick to them and continue on their way. So living out of order for a Muslim is seen as a barrier that must be encountered and which should not be lingered on, while experiencing something extraordinary has a distinctive place for religious experience in current debates. The issue is not that they cannot be explained but they are not deliberately explained due to the fear of misunderstanding. This can be regarded as a method of education that older adults use to train minors. As a result, if we would define a religious experience according to al-Ghazali, we can say that religion is a journey made towards God, and religious experience is the experience of traveling to God. Traveling to him means to get close to Him, but this approach is not in spatial means but in perfection means. So, religious experience is the journey to perfection of the man himself. Man's perfection is to have the attributes of God who have absolute perfection. These attributes are present in man's own essence. What a person must do, is to place an effort to make these virtual adjectives real. This journey is basically an existential necessity as it provides the happiness that is essential to human existence. In this journey, which can be understood as becoming a human being who was born as a human being. It should also be added that it is not possible to be absolutely perfect and to reach the reality of God himself in this endless journey of perfection. Therefore, the absolute perfection belongs to God, and it is necessary to understand the concept of perfect human being as a person who has traveled in the journey to perfection. (shrink)

This paper expands on another which focussed on Socrates’s question: ‘How should one live?’. The present paper also focusses on the ‘meaning of life’ and ‘meaning in life’ issues, and more on rights. To fully rationally answer Socrates’s question, we need to answer the epistemic question: ‘How can one know how one should live?’. This paper attempts to answer both. And knowing how one should live fundamentally involves knowing what values one should live by. This includes which rights one should (...) have and which rights others should have. So one’s values include how one should treat all persons (and (other) animals, the environment and so on.) All this relates to what one finds meaningful in life and the meaning or point of one’s life. In sum, all the notions in this paper’s title are interrelated. The issue of rationality is crucial here. Just one example here (qualified later) is that our rationality gives us cognitively meaningful notions. ‘Rationality’ here only concerns knowledge, e.g., ways to acquire scientific knowledge, and meta-knowledge concerning values. No values or rights as such are rational or knowledge. However:- Many factors are required for human rationality to exist and develop, e.g., life, mental health and evidence-based education. Human rationality’s need for those factors, hence their value to rationality, is rationally-unquestionable – and that applies to the practised values prescribing the prescribable factors. With this, there are rationally-unquestionable rights to those factors. Those prescribable factors require certain interrelated epistemic, moral, social, political, legal, educational and other values/rights to be practised. This implies a pro-rationality values-theory with one obligatory, general end – a uniquely rationally-unquestionable end. This end provides the basis for answering Socrates’s question as rationally (correctly) as is possible for values/rights. That end is fundamentally epistemic, namely ‘Be pro-rationality’, yet the theory has deeply-humanly-meaningful, universal applications. It has implications for current and all possible moral, social, political, legal, educational, environmental etc issues. E.g., the theory shows that human rationality crucially requires love and certain other emotions, health-care, education and upbringing. These require certain right to be respected and practised. With this, the paper discusses affection, free speech, journalism, psychotherapy, political and sexual consent, responsibilities, freedom and government. The theory’s general sub-values prescribe much prescribed by some other theories, e.g., broad and deep knowledge-acquisition (in certain areas), rationally-critical thinking, non-sexism, non-racism, general types of liberalism, holistic flourishing, happiness, unselfishness and fairness. However, all other values-theories lack pro-rationality theory’s maximum possible rational-unquestionability, internal coherence and coherence with rationality. The theory encourages (the right to) total freedom in a-rationality areas, areas irrelevant to its obligatory end. The theory inherently requires its advocates to be (self )critical, rationally viewing the theory’s necessarily human-suggested specifics as often fallible or unavoidably approximate. So the theory is a work-in-progress. (shrink)

To fully rationally answer Socrates’s question, ‘How should one live?’, we need to answer the epistemic question: ‘How can one know how one should live?’. This paper attempts to answer both. ` The issue of rationality is crucial here. ‘Rationality’ here only concerns knowledge, e.g., ways to acquire scientific knowledge, and meta-knowledge concerning values. No values as such are rational or knowledge. However:- Many factors are required for human rationality to exist and develop, e.g., life, mental health and evidence-based education. (...) Human rationality’s need for those factors, hence their value to rationality, is rationally-unquestionable – and that applies to the practised values prescribing the prescribable factors. Those prescribable factors require certain interrelated epistemic, moral, social, political, legal, educational and other values to be practised. This implies a pro-rationality values-theory with one obligatory, general end – a uniquely rationally-unquestionable end. This end provides the basis for answering Socrates’s question as rationally (correctly) as is possible for values. That end is fundamentally epistemic, namely ‘Be pro-rationality’, yet the theory has deeply-humanly-meaningful, universal applications. It has implications for current and all possible moral, social, political, legal, educational, environmental etc issues. E.g., the theory shows that human rationality crucially requires certain emotions, health-care, education and upbringing. With this, the paper discusses affection, free speech, journalism, psychotherapy, political and sexual consent, rights, responsibilities, freedom and government. The theory’s sub-values prescribe much prescribed by some other theories, e.g., broad and deep knowledge-acquisition (in certain areas), rationally-critical thinking, non-sexism, non-racism, general types of liberalism, holistic flourishing, happiness, unselfishness and fairness. However, all other values-theories lack pro-rationality theory’s maximum possible rational-unquestionability, internal coherence and coherence with rationality. The theory encourages total freedom in a-rationality areas, areas irrelevant to its obligatory end. The theory inherently requires its advocates to be (self )critical, rationally viewing the theory’s necessarily human-suggested specifics as often fallible or unavoidably approximate. So the theory is a work-in-progress. (shrink)

‘Rationality’ here only concerns knowledge, e.g., ways to acquire scientific knowledge. Many factors are required for human rationality to exist and develop, e.g., life and evidence-based education. Rationality’s need for those factors, hence their value to rationality, is rationally-unquestionable. Those factors require certain educational, moral, political, social, health-care etc values to be practised. This implies a pro-rationality education-theory and related values-theory, with one obligatory, general end – a uniquely rationally-unquestionable end. That theory has deeply-humanly-meaningful, universal applications: the theory has implications (...) for current and all possible educational, moral etc issues. The theory’s sub-values prescribe much prescribed by some other theories, e.g., broad and deep knowledge-acquisition, critical thinking, non-sexism, non-racism, types of liberty, holistic flourishing, happiness, unselfishness and fairness. However, other theories lack pro-rationality theory’s maximum possible rational-unquestionability, internal coherence and coherence with rationality. The theory encourages freedom in a-rationality areas, areas irrelevant to its obligatory end. The theory inherently requires its advocates to be (self )critical, rationally viewing their human-suggested specifics as often fallible or unavoidably approximate. Similarly for students and educators. (shrink)

Istopadesa by Acarya Pujyapada is a concise work of 51 didactic verses leading the reader from the empirical to the transcendental, from the mundane to the sublime, through an experiential process of self-realization, rather than through a metaphysical study of the soul-nature. Concise but deep in import, Istopadesa unambiguously establishes the glory of the Self. It is an essential reading for the ascetic. The householder too who ventures to study it stands to benefit much as the work establishes the (...) futility of the worldly objects and pursuits, and strengthens right faith, the basis for all that is good and virtuous. (shrink)

Recent scientific research has settled on a purely descriptive definition of happiness that is focused solely on agents’ psychological states (high positive affect, low negative affect, high life satisfaction). In contrast to this understanding, recent research has suggested that the ordinary concept of happiness is also sensitive to the moral value of agents’ lives. Five studies systematically investigate and explain the impact of morality on ordinary assessments of happiness. Study 1 demonstrates that moral judgments influence assessments of (...) happiness not only for untrained participants, but also for academic researchers and even in those who study happiness specifically. Studies 2 and 3 then respectively ask whether this effect may be explained by general motivational biases or beliefs in a just world. In both cases, we find evidence against these explanations. Study 4 shows that the impact of moral judgments cannot be explained by changes in the perception of descriptive psychological states. Finally, Study 5 compares the impact of moral and non-moral value, and provides evidence that unlike non-moral value, moral value is part of the criteria that govern the ordinary concept of happiness. Taken together, these studies provide a specific explanation of how and why the ordinary concept of happiness deviates from the definition used by researchers studying happiness. (shrink)

Deep brain stimulation has been of considerable interest to bioethicists, in large part because of the effects that the intervention can occasionally have on central features of the recipient’s personality. These effects raise questions regarding the philosophical concept of authenticity. In this article, we expand on our earlier work on the concept of authenticity in the context of deep brain stimulation by developing a diachronic, value-based account of authenticity. Our account draws on both existentialist and essentialist approaches to (...) authenticity, and Laura Waddell Ekstrom’s coherentist approach to personal autonomy. In developing our account, we respond to Sven Nyholm and Elizabeth O’Neill’s synchronic approach to authenticity, and explain how the diachronic approach we defend can have practical utility, contrary to Alexandre Erler and Tony Hope’s criticism of autonomy-based approaches to authenticity. Having drawn a distinction between the authenticity of an individual’s traits and the authenticity of that person’s values, we consider how our conception of authenticity applies to the context of anorexia nervosa in comparison to other prominent accounts of authenticity. We conclude with some reflections on the prudential value of authenticity, and by highlighting how the language of authenticity can be invoked to justify covert forms of paternalism that run contrary to the value of individuality that seems to be at the heart of authenticity. (shrink)

Default logic has been a very active research topic in artificial intelligence since the early 1980s, but has not received as much attention in the philosophical literature thus far. This paper shows one way in which the technical tools of artificial intelligence can be applied in contemporary epistemology by modeling a paradigmatic case of deep disagreement using default logic. In §1 model-building viewed as a kind of philosophical progress is briefly motivated, while §2 introduces the case of deep (...) disagreement we aim to model. On the heels of this, §3 defines our formal framework, viz., a refined Horty-style default logic. §4 then uses the framework to model deep disagreement, and finally §5 provides a critical discussion of the result. (shrink)

Disagreements that resist rational resolution, often termed “deep disagreements”, have been the focus of much work in epistemology and informal logic. In this paper, I argue that they also deserve the attention of philosophers of mathematics. I link the question of whether there can be deep disagreements in mathematics to a more familiar debate over whether there can be revolutions in mathematics. I propose an affirmative answer to both questions, using the controversy over Shinichi Mochizuki’s work on the (...) abc conjecture as a potential example of both phenomena. I conclude by investigating the prospects for the resolution of mathematical deep disagreements in virtue-theoretic approaches to informal logic and mathematical practice. (shrink)

Deep learning algorithms are rapidly changing the way in which audiovisual media can be produced. Synthetic audiovisual media generated with deep learning—often subsumed colloquially under the label “deepfakes”—have a number of impressive characteristics; they are increasingly trivial to produce, and can be indistinguishable from real sounds and images recorded with a sensor. Much attention has been dedicated to ethical concerns raised by this technological development. Here, I focus instead on a set of issues related to the notion of (...) synthetic audiovisual media, its place within a broader taxonomy of audiovisual media, and how deep learning techniques differ from more traditional approaches to media synthesis. After reviewing important etiological features of deep learning pipelines for media manipulation and generation, I argue that “deepfakes” and related synthetic media produced with such pipelines do not merely offer incremental improvements over previous methods, but challenge traditional taxonomical distinctions, and pave the way for genuinely novel kinds of audiovisual media. (shrink)

This paper constructs a model of metaphysical indeterminacy that can accommodate a kind of ‘deep’ worldly indeterminacy that arguably arises in quantum mechanics via the Kochen-Specker theorem, and that is incompatible with prominent theories of metaphysical indeterminacy such as that in Barnes and Williams (2011). We construct a variant of Barnes and Williams's theory that avoids this problem. Our version builds on situation semantics and uses incomplete, local situations rather than possible worlds to build a model. We evaluate the (...) resulting theory and contrast it with similar alternatives, concluding that our model successfully captures deep indeterminacy. (shrink)

This paper treats of Husserl’s phenomenology of happiness or eudaimonia in five parts. In the first part, we argue that phenomenology of happiness is an important albeit relatively neglected area of research, and we show that Husserl engages in it. In the second part, we examine the relationship between phenomenological ethics and virtue ethics. In the third part, we identify and clarify essential aspects of Husserl’s phenomenology of happiness, namely, the nature of the question concerning happiness (...) and the possibility of a phenomenological answer, the power of the will, the role of vocation, the place of obligation, the significance of habituation, the necessity of selfreflection and self-criticism, the importance of sociability and solidarity, the impact of chance and destiny, and the specter of regret. In the fourth part, we establish the inextricable linkage between Husserl’s metaethics and his metaphysics. In the fi ft h part, we provide a provisional exploration of his conception of the connection between happiness and blessedness. We acknowledge that there is an extensive literature on Husserl’s phenomenological ethics, and our study has benefitted greatly from it, but we also suggest that our holistic approach critically clarifies his description of happiness, virtue, and blessedness by fully recognizing that his phenomenological metaethics is embedded in his phenomenological metaphysics. (shrink)

In this paper I articulate and respond to Kent Hurtig's objection to the fitting attitude account of value (FA). According to the objection, when a good or bad state of affairs is indexed to the actual world, but is such that the actual world does not contain anyone for whom it is fitting to (dis)favor it, it cannot be fitting for anyone in a non-actual world to (dis)favor it. So there are good or bad states of affairs that it is (...) not fitting for anyone to (dis)favor. First I comment on a solution proposed by Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen. Then I argue that if, due to their location in modal space, the relevant states of affairs cannot even be evaluated as good or bad (and a fortiori favored or disfavored) by readers, then such cases are dialectically powerless against FA; if, on the other hand, they can be evaluated as good or bad—despite their location in modal space—then they can also be favored or disfavored, and it will be fitting for us (if for no one else) to favor or disfavor them, thus defusing the challenge. (shrink)

In this paper, we engage in dialogue with Jonathan Pugh, Hannah Maslen, and Julian Savulescu about how to best interpret the potential impacts of deep brain stimulation on the self. We consider whether ordinary people’s convictions about the true self should be interpreted in essentialist or existentialist ways. Like Pugh et al., we argue that it is useful to understand the notion of the true self as having both essentialist and existentialist components. We also consider two ideas from existentialist (...) philosophy – Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir’s ideas about “bad faith” and “ambiguity” – to argue that there can be value to patients in regarding themselves as having a certain amount of freedom to choose what aspects of themselves should be considered representative of their true selves. Lastly, we consider the case of an anorexia nervosa-patient who shifts between conflicting mind-sets. We argue that mind-sets in which it is easier for the patient and his or her family to share values can plausibly be considered to be more representative of the patient’s true self, if this promotes a well-functioning relationship between the patient and the family. However, we also argue that families are well-advised to give patients room to figure out what such shared values mean to them, since it can be alienating for patients if they feel that others try to impose values on them from the outside. (shrink)

There is an intuitive connection between well-being and happiness. Accordingly, many theories of well-being hold that well-being consists in (either unqualified or properly qualified) happiness. Traditional happiness-based theories are subject, however, to several important objections. The goal in this chapter is to offer a new happiness-based theory that is immune to the main objections raised against traditional happiness-based theories. The authors’ own fitting happiness theory of well-being can be seen as the combination of the (...) following claims. The first is that happiness consists in a broadly positive balance of affective states such as emotions, moods, and sensory pleasures. The second is that emotions, moods, and sensory pleasures are different kinds of perceptual experiences of evaluative properties. The third claim is that, insofar as happiness is constituted by states that have fittingness conditions, it is possible to assess happiness itself as fitting or unfitting. The last claim is that well-being consists in fitting happiness thus defined. (shrink)

In the novel A Burnout-Out Case, Graham Greene argues for an intimate relationship between burnout and happiness. The novel claims that a life worth living is a continuous balancing between something painful, e.g. burnout and something desirable, e.g. happiness. In this essay, I try to make a case for the happiness of burnout. By examining the case story of a young artist, who suffered from burnout, I describe how such suffering might open up for a necessary reevaluation (...) of the values that actually make sense. Such creation of new values is what eventually leads to more happy moments, not happiness per se. This essay provides a philosophical reflection regarding the relationship between happiness and burnout in order to say something regarding which life is worth living. (shrink)

What is happiness? Is happiness about feeling good or about being good? Across five studies, we explored the nature and origins of our happiness concept developmentally and crosslinguistically. We found that surprisingly, children as young as age 4 viewed morally bad people as less happy than morally good people, even if the characters all have positive subjective states (Study 1). Moral character did not affect attributions of physical traits (Study 2), and was more powerfully weighted than subjective (...) states in attributions of happiness (Study 3). Moreover, moral character but not intelligence influenced children and adults’ happiness attributions (Study 4). Finally, Chinese people responded similarly when attributing happiness with two words, despite one (“Gao Xing”) being substantially more descriptive than the other (“Kuai Le”) (Study 5). Therefore, we found that moral judgment plays a relatively unique role in happiness attributions, which is surprisingly early emerging and largely independent of linguistic and cultural influences, and thus likely reflects a fundamental cognitive feature of the mind. (shrink)

In this chapter, I highlight the differences between the two goods of happiness and meaningfulness. Specifically, I contrast happiness and meaning with respect to six value-theoretic factors, among them: what the bearers of these values are, how luck can play a role in their realization, which attitudes are appropriate in response to them, and when they are to be preferred in a life. I aim not only to show that there are several respects in which happiness and (...) meaning differ as categories of value, but also to bring out some of the logical relationships between the differences, for example, to note that the value’s bearer affects its susceptibility to luck. (shrink)

The current situation amidst the pandemic has caused such negativities to people, especially among students. It has affected thewell-being and happiness that everyone experiences. In, on the other hand, students who were enrolled amidst the pandemic were more likely to experience mental exhaustion such as anxiety and depression, as this current situation limits and affect their academic performances and the level of happiness they feel. This study investigates the relationship between happiness and depression among senior high school (...) students here in the Philippines. The findings revealed a significant correlation between happiness and depression (r=0.041). (shrink)

Why is it that some instances of disagreement appear to be so intractable? And what is the appropriate way to handle such disagreements, especially concerning matters about which there are important practical and political needs for us to come to a consensus? In this paper, I consider an explanation of the apparent intractability of deep disagreement offered by hinge epistemology. According to this explanation, at least some deep disagreements are rationally unresolvable because they concern ‘hinge’ commitments that are (...) unresponsive to rational considerations. This explanation, if correct, seems to have troubling implications for how we should respond to deep disagreement. If my position on a topic is not responsive to rational considerations, then what choice have I but to dogmatically hold to that position, and simply dismiss the views of those with whom I disagree? I address this problem by identifying an attitude of intellectual humility that is appropriate to have towards one's hinge commitments, and suggest that this attitude provides the basis for a non-rational, constructive way to resolve deep disagreement. (shrink)

Under the current Mental Health Act of England and Wales, it is lawful to perform deep brain stimulation in the absence of consent and independent approval. We argue against the Care Quality Commission's preferred strategy of addressing this problematic issue, and offer recommendations for deep brain stimulation-specific provisions in a revised Mental Health Act.

Anaxarchus accompanied Pyrrho on Alexander the Great’s expedition to India and was known as “the Happy Man” because of his impassivity and contentment. Our sources on his philosophy are limited and largely consist of anecdotes about his interactions with Pyrrho and Alexander, but they allow us to reconstruct a distinctive ethical position. It overlaps with several disparate ethical traditions but is not merely a hodge-podge; it hangs together as a unified whole. Like Pyrrho, he asserts that things are indifferent in (...) value and that realizing this indifference leads to contentment. But this doctrine of indifference is rooted in Democritean atomism. And in his pursuit of pleasure and dismissiveness of conventional standards of what is just, noble, and pious, Anaxarchus is closer to fifth century thinkers such as Aristippus, Antiphon, and Critias. (shrink)

This article seeks to get clear on an important feature of a theistic way of life: namely, the appeal to ‘deep desires’ as part of an ethical and spiritual life-orientation. My main thesis is that such appeals should primarily be seen as pertaining to our acquired second nature and the space of meaning it makes possible, rather than first nature or innateness. To appeal to the ‘depth’ of a desire, on this account, is to say something about its normative (...) importance: it is something of profound significance for our human fulfilment about which we ought to be concerned, and it correlates with the normative ‘height’ of the object of desire. Thus, our deepest desire correlates with what is seen as the highest or most worthy object of our desire (or love), which the theist claims is God. This view is contrasted with subjectivist accounts where desires are seen as ‘deep’ in that they structure our identity. My account affirms that deep desires structure our identity, but they do so because of their perceived objective normative importance. I also seek to show how we should affirm Alasdair MacIntyre's claim that ‘the deepest desire of every [human] being, whether they acknowledge it or not, is to be at one with God’. (shrink)

Although the discipline of vice epistemology is only a decade old, the broader project of studying epistemic vices and failings is much older. This paper argues that contemporary vice epistemologists ought to engage more closely with these earlier projects. After sketching some general arguments in section one, I then turn to deep epistemic vices: ones whose identity and intelligibility depends on some underlying conception of human nature or the nature of reality. The final section then offers a case study (...) from a vice epistemic tradition that emerged in early modern English natural philosophy. (shrink)

In the last few decades psychologists have gained a clearer picture of the notion of happiness and a more sophisticated account of its explanation. Their research has serious consequences for any ethic based on the maximization of happiness, especially John Stuart Mill’s classical eudaimonistic utilitarianism. In the most general terms, the research indicates that a congenital basis for homeostatic levels of happiness in populations, the hedonic treadmill effect, and other personality factors, contribute to maintain a satisfactory level (...) of happiness over the long run for a large percentage of any population, and relatively independently of the circumstances of the population. Consequently, although there are certainly ethical reasons to address the conditions of persons and populations, it is of marginal value to base such decisions on improvements in their levels of happiness. The happiness of others is not a sensible criterion for ethical decision-making. (shrink)

“Happiness” is an evaluative, not a value-neutral psychological, concept.

The existence of deep moral disagreement is used in support of views ranging from moral relativism to the impossibility of moral expertise. This is done despite the fact that it is not at all clear whether deep moral disagreements actually occur, as the usually given examples are never of real life situations, but of some generalized debates on controversial issues. The paper will try to remedy this, as any strength of arguments appealing to deep moral disagreement is (...) partly depended on the fact the disagreement exists. This will be done by showing that some real life conflicts that are intractable, i.e. notoriously difficult to resolve, share some important features with deep moral disagreement. The article also deals with the objection that the mere conceptual possibility renders illustrations of actually happening deep moral disagreements unnecessary. The problem with such objection is that it depends on theoretical assumptions (i.e. denial of moral realism) that are not uncontroversial. Instead, the article claims we need not only suppose deep moral disagreements exist because they actually occur when some intractable conflicts occur. Thus, in so far as to the deep moral disagreement’s existence, the arguments appealing to it are safe. But as intractable conflicts can be resolved, by seeing deep moral disagreements as constitutive part of them, we might have to consider whether deep moral disagreements are resolvable too. A brief suggestion of how that might look like is given in the end of the paper. (shrink)