To understand the human capacity for psychological altruism, one requires a proper understanding of how people actually think and feel. This paper addresses the possible relevance of recent findings in experimental economics and neuroeconomics to the philosophical controversy over altruism and egoism. After briefly sketching and contextualizing the controversy, we survey and discuss the results of various studies on behaviourally altruistic helping and punishing behaviour, which provide stimulating clues for the debate over psychological altruism. On closer analysis, these studies prove (...) less relevant than originally expected because the data obtained admit competing interpretations – such as people seeking fairness versus people seeking revenge. However, this mitigated conclusion does not preclude the possibility of more fruitful research in the area in the future. Throughout our analysis, we provide hints for the direction of future research on the question. (shrink)

One major insight derived from the moral twin earth debate is that evaluative and descriptive terms possess different levels of semantic stability, in that the meanings of the former but not the latter tend to remain constant over significant counterfactual variance in patterns of application. At the same time, it is common in metanormative debate to divide evaluative terms into those that are thin and those that are thick. In this paper, I combine debates about semantic stability and the distinction (...) between the thin and the thick by presenting a new seamless inferentialist account of thin and thick evaluative terms which, despite subsuming them under the same metasemantic analysis, can nevertheless account for their varying levels of semantic stability. According to this position of ‘seamless metaconceptualism’, thin and thick evaluative terms do not belong to different categories, but are both understood as metaconceptual devices which do not differ in kind, but in scope. By providing the same analysis for both thin and thick terms, seamless metaconceptualism not only entails that the latter cannot shoulder the philosophical work that some have attributed to them, but also removes much of their surrounding intrigue. (shrink)

This article considers film as a form of artificial intelligence (AI). This non-anthropocentric hypothesis was first formulated in 1946 by filmmaker and theorist Jean Epstein and regards film as the thinking performance of a technical apparatus, the cinematograph, which is a manifestation of machine thinking based on the holistic entanglement of thought and world, film and philosophy. The article pursues an enquiry into ‘thinking’: one of the most prominent and oldest topics considered in philosophy, and also essential to art and (...) film. Thinking is not only characterised as a sense (like sight or taste) but as a creative and, ultimately, intra-active act. The possibility of film as AI is approached not only from a Deleuzian angle, long appraised by film-philosophy, but also through questions recently raised by theories of artistic research and the speculative-materialist turn in contemporary philosophy. The latter have as a common denominator a strong critique of anthropocentrism in Western philosophy; the article enquires into this criticism from different angles and applies it to the main hypothesis of this analysis – to regard film as a form of AI. (shrink)

This paper examines key aspects of Allan Gibbard's psychological account of moral activity. Inspired by evolutionary theory, Gibbard paints a naturalistic picture of morality mainly based on two specific types of emotion: guilt and anger. His sentimentalist and expressivist analysis is also based on a particular conception of rationality. I begin by introducing Gibbard's theory before testing some key assumptions underlying his system against recent empirical data and theories. The results cast doubt on some crucial aspects of Gibbard's philosophical theory, (...) namely his reduction of morality to anger and guilt, and his theory of “normative governance.” Gibbard's particular version of expressivism may be undermined by these doubts. (shrink)

In this paper we have two related aims. First, we aim to present an account of what it is to treat women as sex-objects.1 Like other philosophical writers in the field, we hold that the central idea in an account of such treatment is the failure to treat women with proper respect in sexual behavior. This idea has been cashed out in terms of using,2 and in terms of dehumanization or failure to accord equal rights to freedom and welfare.3 However, (...) we believe that there is a central deficiency in most such philosophical accounts of treating women as sex-objects, namely, a failure to outline in any detail a theory of interpersonal norms so that one can grasp in more concrete terms what it is to avoid treating a woman as a sex-object. We aim to rectify this deficiency by presenting a model of interpersonal norms based on the work of the social psychologist Chris Argyris. (shrink)

The two main goals of this paper are to question the possibility of the existence of moral emotions and to decipher the notion of moral emotion. I start with a brief critical analysis of various philosophical understandings of moral emotions before setting out an evolutionary line of approach that seems promising at first glance: according to the functional evolutionary approach, moral emotions have the evolutionary function of sustaining cooperation. It turns out ultimately that this approach has its own drawbacks. I (...) finally propose to give up the idea of moral property intrinsic to some emotions; “moral” seems instead merely to label emotions when they occur in morally relevant contexts. (shrink)

This volume includes essays presented at the conference on Emotions and Rationality in Moral Philosophy held at the Universities of Neuchâtel and Bern in October 2005. The authors of this volume share the Humean insight that the ‘sentiments’ have a crucial role to play in elucidating the practice of morality. In a Humean fashion, they warn us against taking an intellectualist view of emotions and reject the rationalist account of morality.

This volume includes essays presented at the conference on Emotions and Rationality in Moral Philosophy held at the Universities of Neuchâtel and Bern in October 2005. The authors of this volume share the Humean insight that the ‘sentiments’ have a crucial role to play in elucidating the practice of morality. In a Humean fashion, they warn us against taking an intellectualist view of emotions and reject the rationalist account of morality.

Within the framework of the searches about the new philosophic practices with the children, teachers-researchers and primary school teachers specialized in French educational systéme, gather for a collaborative search.The group observes the practices of his members and notes that they tend to modify the temporal representations on which teachers usually lean to think and act in their class. These changes have important consequences that are sometimes difficult to identify.The co-explicitation interviews presented here have led to the awareness and recognition of (...) knowledges of experience of the practitioners and to the developpment of théorical knwoledges. (shrink)

The idea that the state has a duty to protect minority cultures has become so influential that cultural rights might seem a logical extension of T. H. Marshall's idea of citizenship rights; that is, the most recent set of rights to enable the citizen to be a fully participating member of the political community. This article takes the view, however, that citizens do not have cultural rights in the sense of rights to the protection of their minority cultures per se. (...) Instead, we should consider how citizens have an entitlement to culture in the broadest sense, as a constituent of equal well-being. On this view, the state has a duty to enable its citizens to live well. Cultural enrichment may require the protection of endangered ways of life—such as those of minority cultures—but only if these cultures do not run afoul of citizens' equal well-being as autonomous individuals. (shrink)

This article is an innovative piece and at the same time—a timely piece, in a world of global warming. A time in which fierce scientific debates are being fought over anthropogenic impact. Yet the general public would appear to ‘feel’ the change, without any need for measurement and contesting of findings. This ‘feeling’ is manifest in the Earth Hour. It is this collective act which I would argue is borne out of feelings for the earth. Feelings which tell people instinctively (...) a change in behaviour is needed. This article therefore examines the semiotics of a jurisprudence which is premised on feelings. Feelings towards the Djang—a primordial force expounded by the Australian Aboriginal Senior Law Man Bill Neidjie of the world heritage listed—Kakadu National Park, Australia. He foresaw the climatic shifts and wanted to assist European Australians—Balanda to help avert the possible consequence. (shrink)

Der Liberalismus ist eine normative Theorie dazu, was sich Menschen wechselseitig schulden, d. h. was ihnen im Umgang miteinander erlaubt, ver- und geboten ist. Als solche normative Theorie des wechselseitigen Miteinanders kann der Liberalismus sowohl Aussagen dazu beinhalten, welche Rechte und Pflichten Personen gegenüber anderen Personen haben, als auch dazu, wie das politische Miteinander gestaltet sein sollte, d. h. welche Pflichten und Ansprüche der Staat gegenüber seinen Bürger*innen hat bzw. die Bürger*innen gegenüber dem Staat haben. Denn in vielen modernen Gesellschaften (...) schreiben Personen die Regeln ihres wechselseitigen Miteinanders (etwa dass man andere nicht körperlich schädigen oder bestehlen darf) öffentlich fest, indem sie diese in kodifiziertes und vom Staat sanktioniertes Recht überführen. (shrink)

What would a person look like if she were to possess a virtue like compassion or courage? This is the question that will come to mind when contemplating the hau.

Feminist explorations of the sublime and the beautiful have developed in markedly different directions. This is not surprising given the different histories of the two terms. Whereas the nature of the beautiful had been of key importance to Plato, Aristotle, and other ancient Greek and Roman philosophers, it was only during the Englightenment period that a strong contrast was established between the beautiful and the sublime. But this was also the time when there was a decisive shift away from regarding (...) the well-honed male body as best exemplifying the ideal of the beautiful, and beauty itself was domesticated and downgraded. As Mary Wollstonecraft registered in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (Wollstonecraft 1996 [1792])--one of the earliest European feminist texts--to associate women with the duties of being beautiful in this newly demoted mode was, in effect, to give them the status of subordinate beings. Instead, Wollstonecraft aspired to the newly emergent category of the sublime, which was all too frequently being denied to ideally "feminine" women. (shrink)

This article addresses the unusually elaborate dramatic context in Plato’s Protagoras and effect of sophistry on democratic Athens. Because Socrates evokes Odysseus’ κατάβασις in the Odyssey to describe the sophists in Callias’ house (314c-316b), I propose that Socrates depicts the sophists as bodiless shades residing in Hades. Like the shades dwelling in Hades with no connection to embodied humans on Earth, the sophists in the Protagoras are non-Athenians with no consideration for the democratic body of the Athenian πόλις. I conclude (...) that sophistry can be detrimental to Athenian democracy because it can produce education inequality founded on wealth inequality. (shrink)

Over the COVID-19 period, much attention has been paid to the governance relationship between citizens and the state. In this article, however, we focus on a feature that is less evident in the day-to-day living of the social contract: the relationship between citizens. Because this horizontal cohesion is critical to the social contract, we suggest that it should not be neglected, even amid a deepening crisis of state–citizen relations. Using the case of South Africa's vaccine roll-out as an illustration, we (...) argue that certain kinds of state failures – failures in making complex fairness decisions, in treating citizens as equals when enacting these decisions, and in providing public justification for these decisions – risk dual damage to both citizen–state and citizen–citizen relations and so undermine an already fragile social contract. (shrink)

The problem of truth and the liar paradox is one of the most extensive problems of philosophy. The liar paradox can be avoided by assuming a so-called theory of partial truth instead of a classical theory of truth. Theories of partial truth, however, cannot solve the so-called strengthened liar paradox, which is the problem that many semantic statements about the so-called strengthened liar cannot be true in a theory of partial truth. If such semantic statements were true in the theory, (...) another paradox would emerge. To proponents of contextual accounts, which assume that the concept of truth is context-dependent, the strengthened liar paradox is the core of the liar problem. This book provides an overview of current contextual approaches to the strengthened liar paradox. For this purpose, the author investigates formal theories of truth that result from formal reconstructions of such contextual approaches. (shrink)