This book provides a much-needed, straightforward introduction to moral philosophy. It will particularly benefit students following courses containing an ethics module, including philosophy from AS level onwards, religious studies, law and medicine, but it has also been written for any reader puzzled by moral disputes and dilemmas. Written in an easy and approachable style and packed with lively examples from everyday life, the first section of the book clearly explains and assesses the arguments for and against the rival moral theories (...) of utilitarianism, Kantianism, Divine Command Theory and virtue ethics. The second section develops this by analysing the conflicting advice each moral theory gives regarding four controversial areas of life, namely euthanasia, abortion, animal rights and the environment. The final section concludes with an account of the vital debate concerning whether the difference between right and wrong is an objective fact discovered by us, like gravity, or is instead a human creation and invented by us, like tax laws. Throughout the book moral arguments are broken down into their component parts and explained in clear and simple stages so that readers not previously familiar with philosophical reasoning are aware at all times of where they are in the debate, and where the strengths and weaknesses lie in each position. As such, it is an ideal introduction to critical thinking as well as to moral philosophy. (shrink)

According to spacetime state realism, the fundamental ontology of a quantum mechanical world consists of a state-valued field evolving in four-dimensional spacetime. One chief advantage it claims over rival wave-function realist views is its natural compatibility with relativistic quantum field theory. I argue that the original density operator formulation of SSR cannot be extended to QFTs where the local observables form type III von Neumann algebras. Instead, I propose a new formulation of SSR in terms of a presheaf of local (...) state spaces dual to the net of local observables studied by algebraic QFT. 1Introduction2Spacetime State Realism in Quantum Field Theory 2.1Equivalence thesis3Entanglement and the Type III Property 3.1No-Go Lemma 13.2No-Go Lemma 24State Space Axioms for Quantum Field Theory 4.1Revised equivalence thesis5Discussion. (shrink)

What is art? The philosophers and historians contributing to this volume address the assertion that the term "art" no longer holds meaning.

Toward the end of his book Jokes, perhaps the best known philosophical treatment of the subject, Ted Cohen includes a notorious joke about a group of young Black men who are deterred from committing a gang rape by being thrown a basketball. This is a joke that perplexes Cohen and that he admits plays into stereotypes that presuppose the mindless obsession of Black youths with basketball as well as their unbridled sexuality. He agrees that the joke is morally bad and (...) that it would be a better world without it. But he denies that its evil compromises its alleged funniness. He writes: “Wish that there were no mean jokes. Try remaking the world so that such jokes will have no place, will not arise. But do not deny that they are funny. That denial is a pretense that will help nothing.” In this paper, I want to challenge the claim that the moral defectiveness of a joke, especially a racist joke, cannot ever compromise its capacity to be funny. (shrink)

Noel Carroll, film scholar and philosopher, offers the first serious look at the aesthetics of horror. In this book he discusses the nature and narrative structures of the genre, dealing with horror as a "transmedia" phenomenon. A fan and serious student of the horror genre, Carroll brings to bear his comprehensive knowledge of obscure and forgotten works, as well as of the horror masterpieces. Working from a philosophical perspective, he tries to account for how people can find pleasure in having (...) their wits scared out of them. What, after all, are those "paradoxes of the heart" that make us want to be horrified? (shrink)

Introduction Most of the papers gathered here were contributions to a series of joint meetings of the Department of Social Administration and Social Work ...

This chapter critically explores the notion of medium specificity both in its classical form, as represented by figures such as Rudolf Arnheim and André Bazin, and in its current revised versions as proposed by philosophers such as Berys Gaut, Dominic Lopes, and Ted Nannicelli. The thesis of this entry is that the idea of medium specificity is flawed in all of its variations.

In this essay, then, I would like to address what I believe are the most compelling epistemic arguments against the notion that literature (and art more broadly) can function as an instrument of education and a source of knowledge.

Noel Carroll, film scholar and philosopher, offers the first serious look at the aesthetics of horror. In this book he discusses the nature and narrative structures of the genre, dealing with horror as a "transmedia" phenomenon. A fan and serious student of the horror genre, Carroll brings to bear his comprehensive knowledge of obscure and forgotten works, as well as of the horror masterpieces. Working from a philosophical perspective, he tries to account for how people can find pleasure in having (...) their wits scared out of them. What, after all, are those "paradoxes of the heart" that make us want to be horrified? (shrink)

Presents an interpretation of the famous engraved title page of Hobbes's Leviathan, in which the ‘person’ of the state is depicted as a colossal figure composed of smaller individual figures. It argues that the origins of this design can be found in an optical device developed by the French scientist Jean François Niceron, which used a specially cut lens to create a single composite figure out of separate smaller figures; and it explores the significance of this for Hobbes's theory of (...) ‘representation’. (shrink)

In this synthetic introduction to the history of the philosophy of art, Noël Carroll elucidates and analyzes selected writings on art by Plato, Aristotle, Hutcheson, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Tolstoy, and Bell. Carroll’s narrative tracks developments between major positions in philosophy of art, ranging from the idea that art is unavoidably embedded in society to the evolution of the notion that art is autonomous ("art for art’s sake"), thereby setting the stage for continuing debates in the philosophy of art. (...) Presupposing no prior background, and useful on its own or accompanying the reading of primary works, _Classics in Western Philosophy of Art_ is ideal as a text for introductory undergraduate and graduate courses in philosophy of art and aesthetics, or for anyone interested in learning about the origin of some of our most fundamental conceptions of art in the Western tradition. (shrink)

In 1677-8 Robert Boyle fell victim to a French confidence trickster, Georges Pierre des Clozets, who claimed to belong to a secret society of alchemists, 'the Asterism'; the leader of the Asterism was described as the 'Patriarch of Antioch', resident in Constantinople. New evidence shows that Georges Pierre had contrived to publish two short articles about this 'Patriarch' in a Dutch newspaper, and that one of these was given to Boyle to corroborate Pierre's claims. These articles provide further information about (...) the nature of Pierre's invention. Most importantly, they show that his 'Patriarch of Antioch' was modelled on, and explicitly connected to, a contemporary alchemist in whom Boyle already had an interest: Francesco Giuseppe Borri. (shrink)

Candidates for fundamental physical laws rarely, if ever, employ higher than second time derivatives. Easwaran sketches an enticing story that purports to explain away this puzzling fact and thereby provides indirect evidence for a particular set of metaphysical theses used in the explanation. I object to both the scope and coherence of Easwaran's account, before going on to defend an alternative, more metaphysically deflationary explanation: in interacting Lagrangian field theories, it is either impossible or very hard to incorporate higher than (...) second time derivatives without rendering the vacuum state unstable. The so-called Ostrogradski instability represents a powerful constraint on the construction of new field theories and supplies a novel, largely overlooked example of non-causal explanation in physics. (shrink)

Higher courts sometimes assess the constitutionality of law by working through a concrete case, other times by reasoning about the underlying question in a more abstract way. Prior research has found that the degree of concreteness or abstraction with which an issue is formulated can influence people's prescriptive views: For instance, people often endorse punishment for concrete misdeeds that they would oppose if the circumstances were described abstractly. We sought to understand whether the so-called ‘abstract/concrete paradox’ also jeopardizes the consistency (...) of judicial reasoning. In a series of experiments, both lay and professional judges sometimes reached opposite conclusions when reasoning about concrete cases versus the underlying issues formulated in abstract terms. This effect emerged whether participants reasoned with broad principles, such as human dignity, or narrow rules, and was largest among individuals high in trait empathy. Finally, to understand whether people reflectively endorse the discrepancy between abstract and concrete resolutions, we examined their reactions when evaluating both, either simultaneously or sequentially. These approaches revealed no single pattern across lay and expert populations, or exploratory and confirmatory studies. Taken together, our studies suggest that empathic concern plays a greater role in guiding the judicial resolution of concrete cases than in illuminating judges' professed standards—which may result in concrete decisions in violation of their own abstract principles. (shrink)

Acclaimed writer and historian Noel Malcolm presents his sensational discovery of a new work by Thomas Hobbes : a propaganda pamphlet on behalf of the Habsburg side in the Thirty Years' War, translated by Hobbes from a Latin original. Malcolm's book explores a fascinating episode in seventeenth-century history, illuminating both the practice of early modern propaganda and the theory of "reason of state".

In this article, “Narrative Closure,” a theory of the nature of narrative closure is developed. Narrative closure is identified as the phenomenological feeling of finality that is generated when all the questions saliently posed by the narrative are answered. The article also includes a discussion of the intelligibility of attributing questions to narratives as well as a discussion of the mechanisms that achieve this. The article concludes by addressing certain recent criticisms of the view of narrative expounded by this article.

In this article I divide theories of aesthetic experience into three sorts: the affectoriented approach, the axiologically oriented approach, and the content-oriented approach. I then go on to defend a version of the content-oriented approach.

This article is prompted by some ideas from Robert S. Brumbaugh and Alfred North Whitehead, in particular. Four different views of experienced time are considered as well as four different conceptions of the practice of life that are the implications of these views of time. Further, four different famous works of literature are considered in the effort to understand these views of time and their implications for the practice of life.

“Forget Taste” rejects the classical notion of taste as a viable concept for the exercise of critical evaluation and proposes an alternative approach to critical evaluation based crucially on the idea of the constitutive purpose of the artwork. The goal of this paper is to advance an approach—which I call the purpose-driven approach—to the critical evaluation of artworks that develops from and refines the views of art evaluation presented in my previous work. This approach, in virtue of its focus on (...) the constitutive purposes of artworks, regards the artwork as typically singular. For that reason, it follows that this approach is pluralistic in contrast to the hedonic conception of the taste model popularized in the eighteenth century and which still recurs today, if sometimes only subconsciously, and that reduces critical evaluation to feelings of pleasure. I argue that the hedonic taste model, which is noncognitive and reductive, should be abandoned in favor of one that is cognitivist and pluralistic, namely, the purpose-driven approach. (shrink)

This handbook brings together essays in the philosophy of film and motion pictures from authorities across the spectrum. It boasts contributions from philosophers and film theorists alike, with many essays employing pluralist approaches to this interdisciplinary subject. Core areas treated include film ontology, film structure, psychology, authorship, narrative, and viewer emotion. Emerging areas of interest, including virtual reality, video games, and nonfictional and autobiographical film also have dedicated chapters. Other areas of focus include the film medium’s intersection with contemporary social (...) issues, film’s kinship to other art forms, and the influence of historically seminal schools of thought in the philosophy of film. Of emphasis in many of the essays is the relationship and overlap of analytic and continental perspectives in this subject. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Noël Carroll THE PARADOX OFJUNK FICTION Perhaps on your way to some academic conference, if you had no papers to grade, you stopped in die airport gift shop for something to read on the plane. You saw racks of novels authored by die likes of Mary Higgins Clark, Michael Crichton, John Grisham, Danielle Steele, Sidney Sheldon, Stephen King, Sue Grafton, Elmore Leonard, Sara Paretsky, Tom Clancy, and so (...) on. These are the kinds of novels that, when you lend them to friends, you don't care, unless you live in Bowling Green, Ohio, whether you ever get them back. They are mass, popular fictions. In another era, they would have been called pulp fictions. Following Thomas Roberts,1 I will call diem junk fictions, under which rubric I will also include things like Harlequin romances; sci-fi, horror, and mystery magazines; comic books; and broadcast narratives on either the radio or TV, as well as commercial movies. There are a number of interesting philosophical questions diat we may ask aboutjunk fiction. We could, for example, attempt to characterize its essential features. However, for the present, I will assume that the preceding examples are enough to provide you with a rough-andready notion of what I am calling junk fiction, and I will attempt to explore anotiier feature of the phenomenon, viz., what I call the paradox ofjunk fiction. Thejunk fictions that I have in mind are all narratives. Indeed, dieir story dimension is die most important thing about diem. Stephen King, for instance, makes diis point by saying that he is primarily a story teller rather than a writer. Junk fictions aspire to be page-turners—the blurb on the cover of Stillwatch by Mary Higgins Clark says that it is "designed to be read at breatiitaking speed"—and what motivates turning die page so quickly is our interest in what happens next. We do not dawdle Philosophy and Literature, © 1994, 18: 225-241 226Philosophy and Literature over Clark's diction as we might over Updike's nor do we savor die complexity of her sentence structure, as we do widi Virginia Woolfs. Radier, we read for story. Moreover, junk fictions are die sort of narratives that commentators are wont to call formulaic. That is, junk fictions generally belong to well-entrenched genres, which diemselves are typified by tiieir possession of an extremely limited repertoire of story-types. For example, as John Cawelti has pointed out, one such recurring Western narrative is diat of the recendy pacifist gunfighter, like Shane, who is forced by circumstances to take up his pistols again, widi altogedier devastating effect.2 Junk fictions tell diese generic stories again and again with minor variations. Sometimes diese variations may be quite clever and unexpected. Agatiia Christie was the master of this; she was able to use the conventions of the mystery genre in order to "hide" her murderers. In TheMurderofRogerAckroyd, she "secrets" the murderer in the personage of the narrator; in Ten Little Indians, die murderer is a "dead man"; while in Murder on the Orient Express, all the suspects did it. In each of these cases, Christie's brilliance hinges upon her playing (and preying) upon conventional expectations. Neverdieless, even diese surprising variations require a well-established background of narrative forms. That is, in order to appreciate diese variations, die reader must in some sense know die standard story already. And with junk fiction, it is generally fair to say that in some sense, the reader—or, at least, the reader who has read around in die genre before—knows in rough oudine how die story is likely to go. Readers and/or viewers of Jurassic Park surmised, once die dinosaur enclosures were described, diat in fairly short order die dinosaurs would trample them down and go on the rampage—after all we had already seen or read The Lost World, King Kong, and their progeny. So, junk fictions are formulaic. They rehearse certain narrative formats again and again. And, furthermore, in some very general sense, the audience already knows die story in question. But this knowledge on die part of die audience provokes a question, specifically, why if the reader, viewer or listener already... (shrink)