Ambivalence is often presented through cases of defeated ambivalence and multivalence, in which opposed attitudes suggest mutual isolation and defeat each other. Properly understood, however, ambivalence implies the existence of poles that are conflictually yet rationally interlinked and are open to non-defeated joint conduct. This paper considers cases that range from indecisiveness and easy adoption of conflicting attitudes, to tragically conflicted deliberation and to cases of shifting between self-deceptively serious attitudes. Analyzing such cases as variants of defeated ambivalence, I (...) argue that the phenomena of defeated ambivalence are marginal to ambivalence even though they are by the same token exemplary of it. The poles in such cases are connected as opposing attitudes in such a way that the attitudes and the opposition are both undermined. The article focuses on two forms of vague multivalence, one of which is taken from Heidegger’s analysis of curiosity. (shrink)

Ambivalence (as in practical conflicts, moral dilemmas, conflicting beliefs, and mixed feelings) is a central phenomenon of human life. Yet ambivalence is incompatible with entrenched philosophical conceptions of personhood, judgement, and action, and is denied or marginalised by thinkers of diverse concerns. This book takes a radical new stance, bringing the study of core philosophical issues together with that of ambivalence. The book proposes new accounts in several areas – including subjectivity, consciousness, rationality, and value – while (...) elucidating a wide range of phenomena expressive of ambivalence, from emotional ambivalence to self-deception. The book rejects the view that ambivalence makes a person divided, showing that our tension-fraught attitudes are profoundly unitary. Ambivalence is not tantamount to confusion or to paralysis: it is always basically rational, and often creative, active, and perceptive as well. The book develops themes from Wittgenstein, Davidson, Sartre, and Freud. It engages with contemporary debates in Analytic Philosophy in addition to work ranging from Aristotle to Cultural Studies and Empirical Psychology, and considers a rich set of examples from daily life and literature. (shrink)

In these essays Stephen White examines the forms of psychological integration that give rise to self-knowable and self-conscious individuals who are responsible, concerned for the future, and capable of moral commitment. The essays cover a wide range of basic issues in philosophy of mind, metaphysics, moral psychology, and political philosophy, providing a coherent, sophisticated, and forcefully argued view of the nature of the self. Beginning with mental content and ending with Rawls and utilitarianism, each essay argues a (...) distinctive line. Together they are a unified and powerful philosophical position of considerable scope, one that provides a unique vision of the mind, consciousness, personhood, and morality. White argues that the unity of the self revealed in personal identity and moral responsibility is best understood in normative terms. Basic to such features of the self are the patterns of self-concern in which they are characteristically displayed and the internal justification that supports such concern. The treatment of intentionality and consciousness that grounds this account emphasizes privileged selfknowledge and practical rationality and their corresponding contributions to the unity of the self. A final source of unity emerges from the analysis of our fundamental commitments, an analysis that ensures a central place in moral theory for the notion of the self. (shrink)

In this paper, I reconstruct Immanuel Kant's theory of theoretical and practical error, and I situate it within the broader context of his transcendental philosophy. I thereby refer to his conception of dialectic as the logic of illusion (CpR, B 86) and to his concept of rationalizing. By referring to Donald Davidson's conception of irrationality, I argue that Kant's theory of error allows us to keep the erring person responsible both in theoretical and practical regards.

This volume publishes the papers which were offered and discussed by a group of philosophers and psychologists during a conference "designed to explore the interrelations between philosophical analyses of the family of concepts relating to the self... and empirical studies in psychology of the development and manifestations of self-control, self-knowledge, and the like," held in Chicago in 1975. The late editor arranged the papers "in terms of four topics" indicating the major themes they address. After his introduction, (...) "Conceptual Issues in the Psychology of the Self", written after the conference and intended as an harmonization of opposing views expressed in the discussions, he presents three papers concerned with psychological and philosophical aspects of "Self-Control and the Concept of Agency." In "Self-Control and the Self," Walter and Harriet N. Mischel start with "an overview of some of the main types of self-control that psychologists have researched". Such psychological studies reveal the human being as "an active, self-aware problem-solver, capable of changing himself and achieving substantial self-control through the application of rational principles to a much greater degree than has usually been supposed in psychology". William P. Alston intends to determine in what ways the self has to be taken into account in the psychology of motivation in "Self-Intervention and the Structure of Motivation". That "there is an agent that does the integrating... and so on," is to be recognized as a fact. The understanding of this self-intervention, however, demands the admission of at least two motivational systems of higher-level-wants and of lower-level-wants, differing in structure and in the mode of acquisition. Charles Taylor explores "what is involved in the notion of self, of a responsible human agent" in his paper, "What is Human Agency". A person is found to be essentially characterized by the capacity for reflective self-evaluation. "Self-Knowledge" is discussed in the following two articles. Kenneth J. Gergen defends "The Social Construction of Self-Knowledge" in line with ideas of George Herbert Mead. Self-knowledge is "primarily a socially mediated and essentially arbitrary construction of experience". In its case "there is virtually nothing to know". This socio-cognitive conception of the self is emphatically rejected by David W. Hamlyn in his "Self-Knowledge". Knowledge about oneself as studied in psychology and sociology is essentially different from self-knowledge in the full sense, "connected with some kind of commitment to oneself". Different scientific views of certain aspects of human existence are presented in "Self-Development and Its Failures". Freud’s conception of the human person finds a realistic correction in the theoretical and practical work of contemporary psychoanalysts insisting upon the need of the concept of a "cohesive self," as described in Ernest S. Wolf’s "'Irrationality’ in a Psychoanalytic Psychology of the Self". This need is denied in behavioristic psychology, as Willard F. Day, Jr. shows in "On the Behavioral Analysis of Self-Deception and Self-Development". "To a behaviorist, there is no such thing" as the self. Consequently, there cannot be a genuine self-development as distinguished from a progress toward creating a desirable environment. Self-deception means fighting the environment. "A Critique of the Behavioral Paradigm and an Alternative Conceptualization" is offered by Paul F. Secord in an analysis of "Making Oneself Behave". Meaning and deficiencies of the understanding of the self in sociological social psychology are outlined by George J. McCall in "The Social Looking-Glass: A Sociological Perspective on Self-Development". The self is seen as essentially a social self or looking-glass self. Problems with regard to an explanation of the personal choice of behavior of a determined social role, however, seem to demand impulses as well as institutions as a locus of self-appraisal. "The Meaning of ’self’ and the Multiplicity of Selves" is the title of the last section of the book. Various uses of the term ’self’ are distinguished by Stephen E. Toulmin in "Self-Knowledge of the Self". The author is primarily concerned with establishing the relations of even the sophisticated psychological and psychiatric uses of the term to the everyday experience and language of reflective conduct. Rom Harré finally hopes to interpret "the syntax of much of the talk of ‘I’ and ‘me', ‘thou’ and ‘we'... as monodramatic performances" in "The Self in Monodrama". (shrink)

This thesis concerns the relation between aesthetically valuable objects and the agents that aesthetically value them. An investigation is undertaken into the psychology and rationality of such agents. I argue that self-related elements such as emotions and standing value commitments play an irreducible role in successful aesthetic engagement. I further demonstrate that these psychological elements of aesthetic engagement are both self-related and subject to rational constraints. In this connection, I propose a revisionary account according to which valuing (...) agents are subject to a coherence requirement pertaining to their aesthetic judgments and aesthetic likings. The first essay, “Aesthetic Autonomy: Acquaintance, Competence and Authenticity”, addresses the nature of aesthetic autonomy. What it means to be autonomous and its normative significance is generally considered to be ambiguous in the aesthetic domain. In this essay, I propose a way to disambiguate this elusive concept by distinguishing three varieties of autonomy: experiential autonomy, competency-based autonomy, and personal autonomy. Some important issues concerning the nature of aesthetic agency and appreciation are discussed in the course of this critical discussion. The second essay, “Non-Standard Emotions and Aesthetic Understanding”, discusses the role of our emotional responses in the context of aesthetic appreciation. My main argument will reveal that the non-standard or ‘intellectual’ emotions, the emotions which are in fact most important to appreciation, can play a significant epistemic role in our reason-giving aesthetic practices. The third essay, “The Aesthetic Enkratic Principe”, examines what it means to be aesthetically rational. Although some philosophers claim that aesthetics falls within the scope of rationality, a non-akrasia constraint prohibiting certain akratic combinations of attitudes is yet to be developed in this domain. This essay is concerned with the question of whether or not such a requirement is plausible and, if so, whether it is a true requirement of aesthetic rationality. The fourth essay, “Aesthetic Self-Transformation: A Guide for Aesthetic Aspirants”, investigates the nature of aesthetic self-transformation. Two problems arise in this context. First, aesthetic transformative experiences can lead to cases of local irrationality in the form of a mismatch between what is aesthetically judged and what is aesthetically liked. Second, in attempting to resolve this conflict, we encounter two opposing principles that appear to guide aesthetic appreciation with equal force: self-cultivation and aesthetic improvement. I explain the first issue by invoking a coherence requirement (as defended in the previous essay) and resolve the second by outlining a hybrid view of what constitutes good aesthetic reasoning. (shrink)

PHOTO ID 121339257© Designer491| Dreamstime.com ABSTRACT When physicians use their clinical knowledge and skills to advance the well-being of their patients, there may be apparent conflict between patient autonomy and physician beneficence. We are skeptical that today’s medical ethics education adequately fosters future physicians’ commitment to beneficence, which is both rationally defensible and fundamentally consistent with patient autonomy. We use an ethical dilemma that was presented to a group of third-year medical students to examine how ethics education might be causing (...) them to give undue deference to autonomy, thereby undermining their commitment to beneficence. INTRODUCTION The right of patients to choose which treatments they prefer is rooted in today’s social mores and taught as a principle of medical ethics as respect for autonomy. Yet, when physicians use their clinical knowledge and skills to advance the well-being of their patients, there may be a conflict between patient autonomy and physician beneficence. We are skeptical that today’s medical ethics education adequately fosters a commitment to beneficence, which is both rationally defensible and fundamentally consistent with patient autonomy. I. An Ethical Dilemma The impetus for this paper arose when students who were completing their third clinical year discussed a real-life ethical dilemma. A middle-aged man developed a pulmonary hemorrhage while on blood thinners for a recently placed coronary stent. The bleeding was felt to be reversible, but the patient needed immediate intubation or he would die. The cardiologist was told that the patient previously expressed to other physicians that he never wanted to be intubated. However, the cardiologist made the decision to intubate the patient anyway, and the patient eventually recovered.[1] Students were asked if they believed that the cardiologist had acted ethically. Their overwhelming response was, “No, the patient should have been allowed to die.” We looked into how students applied ethical reasoning to conclude that this outcome was ethically preferred. To explore how the third-year clinical experience might have formed the students’ judgment, we presented the same case to students who were just beginning their third year. Their responses were essentially uniform in recommending intubation. While there is likely more than one reasonable view in this case, we agree with the physician and the younger medical students that intubation was the ethically appropriate decision and will present an argument for it. But first, we explain the reasoning behind the more advanced medical students’ decision to choose patient autonomy at the expense of beneficence. II. Medical Ethics Education and the Priority of Autonomy Beauchamp and Childress’s Principles of Biomedical Ethics, first published in 1979 and now in its 8th edition, is a significant part of the formal ethics education in medical school.[2] Students learn an ethical decision-making approach based on respect for four ethical principles: autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice. While Beauchamp and Childress officially afford no prima facie superiority to any principle, the importance of respect for patient autonomy has increased through the editions of their book. For example, early editions of their book opposed the legalization of physician-assisted death compared to recent editions that defended it.[3] As another example, Beauchamp and Childress make paternalism harder to justify by adding an autonomy-protecting condition to the list of conditions for acceptable paternalism.[4] Authority, they contend, need not conflict with autonomy—provided the authority is autonomously chosen.[5] “The main requirement,” they write, “is to respect a particular patient’s or subject’s autonomous choices, whatever they may be.[6] In the principlism of Beauchamp and Childress, autonomy now seems to have a kind of default priority.[7] However, the bioethics discourse has strong counternarratives, noting some movement to elevate the role of beneficence and to respect the input of stakeholders, including the family and the healthcare team. Ethics education achieves particular relevance in the third clinical year when students become embedded in the care of patients and learn from what has been called the informal curriculum. They observe how attending physicians approach day-to-day ethical problems at the patient’s bedside. In this context, students observe the importance of informed consent for serious treatments or invasive procedures, a practice that highlights the principle of patient autonomy. In both the formal and informal curriculum, medical students observe how, in the words of Paul Wolpe, “patient autonomy has become the central and most powerful principle in ethical decision-making in American medicine.”[8] In short, students appear to learn a deference for patient autonomy. This curricular shift in favor of autonomy coincides with legal developments that protect patients’ rights and decision-making with respect to their healthcare choices. The priority of autonomy in medicine benefits patients by reflecting their choices and, in some cases, their fundamental liberty. III. The Practice of Medicine and the Commitment to Beneficence There are many critiques of the dominant place that autonomy has in biomedical ethics,[9] especially considering that autonomy seems to be biased toward individualistic, Western, and somewhat American culture-driven values.[10] In addition, many bioethical dilemmas are cast as a conflict between autonomy and beneficence. Our point is that medical students bring to their study of medicine a commitment to beneficence that seems to be suppressed by practical ethics education. We think this commitment is rationally defensible and should be nurtured. It is striking that young medical students have a pre-reflective commitment to beneficence at all. For, as we mentioned, it is not just medicine but Western culture generally that prioritizes autonomy in settling ethical dilemmas. In wanting to act for the good of others (rather than simply agreeing to what others want), physicians are already swimming somewhat against the cultural tide.[11] However, doing so makes sense, given the nature of medicine and the profession of healing. When prospective medical students are asked why they wish to become physicians, the usual answer is some variation on caring for the sick and preventing disease. It is unlikely that a reason to become a physician is to respect a patient’s autonomy. It would be easy to dismiss medical students’ commitment to beneficence as a mere intuition and contrary to a more reasoned and deliberative approach. Beauchamp and Childress seem to minimize the value of physician intuition, stating that justifications for certain procedures are “…supported by good reasons. They need not rest merely in intuition or feeling.”[12] Henry Richardson writes that “situational or perceptive intuition…leaves the reasons for decision unarticulated.”[13] We think this is a crude and rather thin way of understanding intuition. Some bioethicists have defended intuition as essential to the practice of medicine and not something opposed to reason.[14] In the case we describe, we believe the ethical justifications s for the patient’s intubation are fundamentally sound: the patient did not have a “do not intubate” order written in the chart, the emergency intubation had not been foreseen, so the patient did not have the opportunity to consent to or reject intubation; the patient had consented to the treatment for his cardiac disease so his consent for intubation could have been assumed;[15] and the consequences of respecting his autonomy did not justify allowing him to die.[16] While it is possible to have more than one reasonable view on this case, we think the case for beneficence is strong and certainly should not be dismissed out of hand. We do not deny that if a patient makes a clearly documented, well-informed decision to forgo intubation that this decision ought to be respected by the physician (even if the physician disagrees with the patient’s decision). But, in this situation, as in many others in the practice of medicine, the patient’s real wishes and preferences are not well-articulated in advance. There are many cases where a physician acts based on what she believes the patient, or the surrogate, would want, sometimes in situations that do not allow much time for reflection. An example might be resuscitation of a newborn at the borderline of viability. In their ethics education, beneficence would mean acting first to save a life. If the patient or surrogate makes an informed decision to the contrary, a beneficent physician respects that autonomous decision. In the case presented, the patient expressed gratitude to the cardiologist when extubated. But what if he had expressed anger at the physician for violating his autonomy? There are those who could argue that not only was intubation ethically wrong but that the cardiologist put himself in legal jeopardy by his actions (especially if there had been a written refusal applicable to the specific situation). In the example we use, we point out that the cardiologist may not have escaped a lawsuit if the patient had died without intubation. His family, when hearing the circumstances, may have sued for failure to act and dereliction of the cardiologist’s duty to save him. Beyond a potential legal challenge for either action or inaction, there is an overriding ethical question the cardiologist had to address: what course would be most satisfying to his conscience? Would he rather allow a patient to die for fear of recrimination, or act to save his life, regardless of the personal consequences? In the absence of real knowledge about the patient’s considered wishes, it is most reasonable to err on the side of promoting patient well-being. A physician’s commitment to beneficence is not necessarily a way of undermining a patient’s autonomy. In acting for the patient's good, physicians are also acting on what it is reasonable to believe a patient (or most patients, perhaps) would want, which is obviously connected to what a patient does want. Pellegrino and Thomasma argue that beneficence includes respect for a patient’s autonomy since “the best interests of the patient are intimately linked with their preferences.”[17] Instead of conceptualizing ethical dilemmas in medicine as conflicts between autonomy and beneficence, it is possible that medical schools could teach students that truly practicing beneficence is a way of valuing patient autonomy, especially when the patient’s wishes are not specific to the situation and are not clearly expressed. CONCLUSION It is important for students and practicing physicians to understand the principle of respect for patient autonomy in a pluralistic society that demands personal self-determination. However, the role of the physician as a beneficent healer should not be diminished by this respect for autonomy. Respecting a patient’s autonomy is grounded in and manifested by physician beneficence.[18] That is, seeking what is good for the patient can only be good if it respects their personhood and dignity. We propose that a commitment to beneficence, incipient in young medical students, should be developed over time with their other clinical reasoning skills. Such a commitment need not be sacrificed on the altar of patient autonomy. Beneficence needs greater relative moral weight with students as they proceed in their ethics education. - [1] S. Jauhar, “When Doctors Need to Lie,” New York Times, February 22, 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/opinion/sunday/when-doctors-need-to-lie.html. [2] T. L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics, 8th ed. (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2019). [3] Louise A. Mitchell, “Major Changes in Principles of Biomedical Ethics,” The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 14, no. 3 (2014): 459–75, https://doi.org/10.5840/ncbq20141438. [4] Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics, 8th ed. (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2019), 238. [5] Beauchamp and Childress, 103. [6] Beauchamp and Childress, p. 108. [7] For other accounts that prioritize autonomy, see e.g. Allen E. Buchanan and Dan W. Brock, Deciding for Others: The Ethics of Surrogate Decision Making (Cambridge University Press, 1989), 38–39; R Gillon, “Ethics Needs Principles—Four Can Encompass the Rest—and Respect for Autonomy Should Be ‘First among Equals,’” Journal of Medical Ethics 29, no. 5 (October 2003): 307–12, https://doi.org/10.1136/jme.29.5.307. For examples of critiques of these accounts, see footnote 9. [8] P. R. Wolpe, “The Triumph of Autonomy in American Bioethics: A Sociological View,” in Bioethics and Society: Constructing the Ethical Enterprise, p. 43. [9] V. A. Entwistle et al., “Supporting Patient Autonomy: The Importance of Clinician-Patient Relationships,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 25, no. 7 (July 2010): 741–45; C. Foster, Choosing Life, Choosing Death: The Tyranny of Autonomy in Medical Ethics and Law, 1st ed. (Oxford ; Hart Publishing, 2009); O. O’Neill, Autonomy and Trust in Bioethics, The Gifford Lectures, University of Edinburgh 2001 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002). [10] P. Marshall and B. Koenig, “Accounting for Culture in a Globalized Bioethics,” The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics: A Journal of the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics 32, no. 2 (2004): 252–66; R. Fan, “Self-Determination vs. Family-Determination: Two Incommensurable Principles of Autonomy,” Bioethics 11, no. 3–4 (1997): 309–22. [11] Arguments stressing the importance of beneficence, as ours does here, certainly approach paternalistic arguments. We set aside the complex issue of paternalism for purposes of this paper and simply note that the principle of beneficence as such does not say anything specifically about acting against the patient’s will. In the case study that focuses this paper, we do not believe the patient’s will or wishes were clearly indicated. [12] Beauchamp and Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics, p. 20, see note 2 above. [13] H. S. Richardson, “Specifying, Balancing, and Interpreting Bioethical Principles,” The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy: A Forum for Bioethics and Philosophy of Medicine 25, no. 3 (January 1, 2000): 285–307, p. 287. [14] H. D. Braude, Intuition in Medicine a Philosophical Defense of Clinical Reasoning (Chicago ; University of Chicago Press, 2012). [15] R. Kukla, “Conscientious Autonomy: Displacing Decisions in Health Care,” The Hastings Center Report 35, no. 2 (2005): 34–44. [16] M. Schermer, The Different Faces of Autonomy: Patient Autonomy in Ethical Theory and Hospital Practice, vol. 13, Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2002). [17] E. D. Pellegrino and D. C. Thomasma, For the Patient’s Good - the Restoration of Beneficence in Health Care (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 29. [18] Pellegrino and Thomasma, For the Patient’s Good. (shrink)

Escapism is defined as the attempt to avoid awareness of aversive beliefs. Strategies, and a few examples, of escapism are discussed. It is argued that self-deception is one species of escapism and that entrenched escapism, escapism pursued with the intention of permanently avoiding any awareness of one's belief, no matter what happens, is theoretically irrational, except in the special case where it compensates for irrationality elsewhere, by guarding one from the formation of further irrational beliefs of more serious (...) import than the belief one wishes to avoid. The model of rationality employed in this argument is then extended to practical rationality, and it is argued that entrenched escapism is pragmatically irrational as well, unless it compensates for other irrationalities elsewhere in a person, as, for instance, when a person must avoid certain facts to avoid succumbing irrationally to despair, or unless it compensates for the effects of an environment in which it is otherwise impossible for an optimally functioning person to survive emotionally. The results for entrenched escapism would apply to self-deception as well, since it aims (in all but very odd cases) at the permanent removal of the offending belief. The function of escapism, then, is to compensate for irrational patterns of belief formation, and to maintain effectiveness (for the sake of continuance of the species), insofar as that is possible, in situation in which a rational person would succumb to despair and suicide. (shrink)

Theories of personal identity in the tradition of John Locke and Derek Parfit emphasize the importance of psychological continuity and the abilities to think, to remember and to make rational choices as a basic criterion for personhood. As a consequence, persons with severe dementia are threatened to lose the status of persons. Such concepts, however, are situated within a dualistic framework, in which the body is regarded as a mere vehicle of the person, or a carrier of the (...) brain as the organ of mental faculties. Based on the phenomenology of embodiment, this paper elaborates a different approach to personal identity in dementia. In this perspective, selfhood is primarily constituted by pre-reflective self-awareness and the body memory of an individual, which consists in the embodiment and enactment of familiar habits, practices and preferences. After describing the different types of body memory, the paper develops a phenomenology of dementia as a loss of reflexivity and meta-perspective. This is contrasted with the preservation of individual forms of body memory even in the later stages of the illness. The ethical consequences of an embodied approach to dementia are outlined. A final look is given to narrativistic and constructionist concepts of the self in dementia. (shrink)

The author believes that large‐scale rationality on the part of the interpretant is essential to his interpretability, and therefore, in his view, to her having a mind. How, then are cases of irrationality, such as akrasia or self‐deception, judged by the interpretant's own standards, possible? He proposes that, in order to resolve the apparent paradoxes, one must distinguish between accepting a contradictory proposition and accepting separately each of two contradictory propositions, which are held apart, which in turn (...) requires to conceive of the mind as containing a number of semi‐independent structures of interlocking beliefs, desires, emotions, memories, and other mental states. (shrink)

Self-consciousness, first-person reference, and personal identity are linked fields of research. The book contains contributions from international researchers about topics like pre-reflective and reflexive consciousness, embodiment, temporality, self-location, and the practical implications of personal identity. Among the contributors are Amit Anurag, Irene Breuer, Tony Cheng, Heidi Haanila, Markus Herrmann, Muriel Leuenberger, Maik Niemeck and Jorg Noller.

This book provides a philosophical assessment of the idea of personhood advanced in popular self-help literature. It also traces, within academic philosophy and philosophical scholarship, a self-help culture where the self is brought forth as an object of improvement and a key to meaning, progress and profundity. Unlike other academic treatments of the topic of self-help, this book is not primarily concerned with providing a critique of popular self-help and self-transformative practices. Rather, it (...) is concerned with how they work to shape contemporary forms and ideals of moral personhood and are conductive to moral renegotiation and change. The book consists of two parts with somewhat different argumentative strategies. Part 1 consists of an overview and reassessment of popular self-help literature and its sociological and journalistic critics, written from a moral philosophical perspective. Part 2 opens with discussion of the current attraction, among a range of philosophers, to self-transformative themes. The chapters assess the strand of self-transformative philosophy found in the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Michel Foucault, Pierre Hadot, Stanley Cavell and Iris Murdoch. Finally, the book concludes with a discussion of the theme of social change and moral renegotiation in contemporary societies, which is a central but underestimated undercurrent in discussions on contemporary self-transformative practices. The book's dual perspective-on both popular self-help and self-transformative currents in philosophy-enables a cultural and moral philosophical analysis of contemporary ethical ideals of personhood, as well as reflection on the literatures available for its development. The Making of the Good Person will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in moral philosophy, history of philosophy, psychology, sociology and literary studies. (shrink)

Inquiry into the history of practices in the manner of Foucault's philosophical genealogy requires that we distinguish between practical action, on the one hand, and mere behavior, on the other. The need for this distinction may help explicate an aspect of Foucault's philosophical genealogy that might otherwise appear misplaced, namely his attention to rationalities and its attendant conceptual material. This article shows how a genealogical attention to practice goes hand in hand with an attention to the role of the (...) conceptual within our practices. This is done by first drawing on considerations furnished by a Wittgensteinean branch in analytic philosophy recently developed by Robert Brandom. With an account of conceptual normativity and reflexivity in hand, the article turns second to a crucial site of conceptual self-transformation by drawing on work from a particular Foucauldian lineage developed in the work of Arnold Davidson. Davidson's work helps us understand the crucial status of concepts of persons for any historical inquiry into practices. (shrink)

The subject of my dissertation is "rationality". In this book I undertake a comprehensive, systematic and independent treatment of the problem of rationality. This furthers progress toward a general theory of rationality, one that represents and defends a uniform conception of reason. The structure and general outline are as follows: Part I: General Definition of the Concept; Part II: Rationality in the Theoretical Realm; Part III: Rationality in the Practical Realm (parts II and III (...) are divided respectively into A. Relative Reasons and B. Absolute Reasons); Part IV: Grounds for the Principle of Reason. My aim in this work is to prove that a conception of rationality as justification of our usage of language is more significant than has been classically recognized, without, however, reducing the concept of rationality. After a definition of the term is provided in the first chapter by means of language analysis, the following three questions are dealt with in the subsequent chapters: a) Exhaustion of rationality in relative reasons—i.e., is reasoning exhausted by reference to existing views and goals, or does rationality also exist in a strong sense? The latter would be the case if the views and goals referred to the relative conception must themselves be justified de novo. I argue that such an absolute justification of views and goals cannot be provided. To this end, in the theoretical domain, I discuss a question prominent in the debate over the rationality of worldviews, namely the question of whether the standards of theoretical rationality are merely culturally relative (chapter V.). Here I arrive at the position that standards of theoretical rationality are only transcultural insofar as there are goals which are not themselves culturally-dependent. With regard to practically fundamental goals, the core standards of modern science can be justified. This justification strategy therefore requires that such goals be established. In practical terms, first I address (in Chapter VII) the so-called "final justification" of norms problem. Here I discuss above all the transcendental-pragmatic proposal and the contractualist conception. According to my view, neither succeed in providing a final rational grounding for norms. That grounding pertains instead to the rationale for objectives, and Chapter VIII demonstrates that even a final justification of objectives is impossible. This does not mean, however, that a person's goals cannot be criticized as irrational. But the warrant in this case depends on the rules that govern the genesis of desires being accepted by the subject. b) If substantive rationality does not exist because no absolute grounding for opinions and goals can obtain, then the question of how strong or weak the concept of rationality is acquires further weight. On that basis, relative theoretical and practical rationality is examined in detail. I aim with this analysis of (relative) rationality to apprehend the structural parallelism between rationality in both the practical and the theoretical domain, and therefore to defend a uniform conception of reason or rationality. This is accomplished by identifying a concept that exhibits the same structure in both theoretical and practical domains: the term "rational" is applied to actions and opinions in order to claim, first of all, that they are "well-founded." For example, one must inquire into the precise rational justification for opinions or actions. To determine the individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions required for an opinion or action to be rational, one must first provide a formal characterization of the rationality of those opinions or actions. What is to count as a rational ground can only be explained by formal procedures and results achievable via those procedures. To be more specific, I claim that the process of opinion formation and practical reflection is subject to rational justification based on internalist rules. The rules governing theoretical rationality can have their content transformed in a further move, if one takes the result of the process of rational opinion-formation as the product of an epistemological determination, that is, as a decision about which opinion to hold that is made on the basis of epistemological or prudential goals. Implicit in this position is the controversial idea that one can actually decide to believe something. The rules of practical reason are the rules that guide the rational selection of objectives and actions. The structural parallelism of theoretical and practical rationality consists, therefore, in the fact that both refer to mental processes that are controlled by rules which one freely accepts and follows. In both cases, these rules are to be understood as governing the rational choice of a mental or physical action. c) Therefore, the question of whether rationality—being rational—can in turn be grounded by reasons can be answered in the following way: The rules of rationality can only be justified with reference to a person’s goals, as the best strategy for achieving those goals. If someone does not desire the optimal realization of his goals, there is no other way of arguing directly for rationality. One can only attempt to demonstrate—if the person is open to argument—that it is typically in the person's own best interest to adhere to the rules of rationality. (shrink)

In this chapter, I attempt to provide a richer account of reflective agency than standard theorists do, by focusing on the deep connection between the role of empathic receptivity and that of reflection. In From Enlightenment to Receptivity, Michael Slote innovatively introduces the idea of receptivity as a virtue into the domains of epistemology and ethics, and argues that the virtue of receptivity plays a crucial role in the realization of a good life (2013). In contrast, I incorporate receptivity as (...) a virtue into the domain of philosophy of action, particularly the philosophical analysis of reflective agency, an aspect on which Slote does not place much emphasis. To date, standard theories of reflective agency have concentrated on analyzing its self-governing aspect (e.g., Bratman 2007; Frankfurt 1999; Korsgaard 1996). Such an analysis is undoubtedly important because autonomous agency is a central value in the modern world. However, standard theorists’ strong commitment to individualistic, self-determining agency appears to have hindered them from appreciating the fundamental significance of empathic receptivity toward others’ perspectives in our rational, reflective lives. To remedy this tendency, I demonstrate how empathic receptivity significantly contributes to the development of our reflective activity. In our temporally extended lives, empathic receptivity is not only associated with an event at a single moment but also with a dynamic process unfolding over time. In my view, such diachronic receptivity helps us to deepen our understanding of others’ perspectives, and in so doing, to reflectively examine our own ways of thinking and acting from different angles that we have not previously recognized. Given that our agency unfolds temporally, practical rationality appears to be partly a matter of how we can develop our reflective capacity conducive to continuous learning from others. My receptivity-based account aims to capture such interpersonal and learning aspects of reflection and thus overcome the individualistic, introspective model of reflection that has long dominated the mainstream philosophy of action. The discussion proceeds as follows. In Section 1, I begin by arguing for receptivity’s centrality in empathy and then briefly sketch how the virtue of empathic receptivity functions in our temporally unfolding lives. In Section 2, I attempt to offer a realistic, dynamic account of the relationship between empathic receptivity and reflection. Particularly, I discuss how a receptively virtuous person can appropriately confront anxiety caused by encountering another’s serious challenge. In the last section, I clarify the strength of my receptivity-based model of reflection by comparing it with Michael Bratman’s policy-based model of reflection. (shrink)

The modern doctor-patient relationship displays a patient-centred, mutual-participation characteristic rather than the former active-passive or guidance-cooperation models in terms of medical decision making. Respecting the wishes of patients, amounting to more than mere concern for their welfare, has become the feature central to certain modern bioethics theories. A group of ethical principles such as respect for autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice has been proposed by bioethicists and widely adopted by many medical societies as an ethical guide to how doctors, in (...) their daily practice, should treat their patients. However, seeing patients as persons who are rational, self-conscious beings capable of valuing their own lives, and who are consequently entitled to the liberty and rights to choose for themselves, is in general the backbone of Western bioethical principles.Since Confucian philosophy has long been a representative of the East-Asia cultural tradition and Confucian bioethics has recently been developed as a theory of applied ethics, examining Confucius's idea of “persons” may shed some light on the current bioethical debates. Confucius's concept of persons, which is best interpreted via his theories of “chun-tze”, (the morally ideal person) encapsulating a two-dimensional approach, (the “autonomous person” and the “relational person”), provides a more comprehensive model regarding what a person is and how he/she should be treated. This two-dimensional approach sees a person not only as a rational, autonomous agent but also as a relational, altruistic identity whose self actualisation involves incessant participating in and promoting of the welfare of his fellow persons. Hence this may balance the current bioethical trend whereby “respect for autonomy” often triumphs. (shrink)

Threats to the self and personhood of people with ADRD include the disturbing images of Alzheimer’s disease as the death before death, culturally based assumption that status as a full human being is dependent upon cognition and memory, and a decrease in personal possessions with a move to a 24-h care setting. This paper presents the findings of an ethnographic study of self and personhood in Alzheimer’s disease in an American long-term care facility. It argues that (...) the lifeworld in which the self and personhood of individuals with ADRD is actualized is mediated and negotiated through engagement with everyday objects. Using a framework that integrates Material Engagement Theory with Bourdieu’s Practice Theory, it is argued that the study of the material engagement of individuals with ADRD can lead to a better understanding of the lives of individuals with ADRD by focusing on the material and non-discursive aspects of objects. Findings contribute to the understanding of current practice issues in dementia care while shifting the focus away from exclusively biomedical understanding. Paradoxically, people with ADRD, due to their cognitive impairment, may provide us with a more fundamental way to understand the importance of objects in the lives of humans in general. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Math Anxiety:Making Room to BreatheValerie Allen (bio) and Todd Stambaugh (bio)"Don't do that to me, Professor," the student said, and everybody laughed, for by this late in the semester, the atmosphere was relaxed. The instructor in question had just reached the point in a worked problem when they could move from reasoning about specific numbers to stating a general principle: x≤y≤z, meaning that y—the value we sought—was always (...) going to be greater than or equal to one value (x) and less than or equal to the other (z). The student who had spoken had earned everyone's affection over the weeks, open about their difficulties with math, ready to risk being wrong, and to ask obvious questions that others may have been reluctant to owning. They had hung in there, despite presenting a classic case of math anxiety, a syndrome long recognized in the scholarship of teaching and learning.Among math anxiety's many symptoms, breathing disruption ranks high: hyperventilation (rapid breathing) and hypoventilation (barely or not breathing). When the energy-conserving parasympathetic nervous system is overtaken by the energy-expending sympathetic nervous system, the long exhalations that decelerate the heart rate are replaced by short, panting puffs from the upper lungs. The timed test provides the perfect environment for math anxiety to flourish. Stress diverts cognitive resources needed for procedural execution, so working memory consequently shrinks.Self-rated metrics for math anxiety have been in place for decades (Richardson and Suinn). Relatively trivial interventions can yield nontrivial results: deep breathing exercises and positive affirmations have a beneficial impact, as does writing about one's nerves immediately prior to an exam (Brunyé et al.). More systemic changes require a reorientation in teaching whereby conceptual mistakes are positively rewarded as opportunities for learning; students compose questions instead of answers; students solve problems together rather than perform solo (Boaler).Return now to that opening scenario to watch it become stereotype incarnate: the student was mature, Black, and female; the teacher, younger, white, and male; her comment was triggered by his shift from a specific [End Page 217] set of numbers into symbolic notation. There is robust evidence to demonstrate that certain demographics are consistently underrepresented in the U.S. math community: women and "African-Americans, Hispanics, American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Pacific Islanders," according to the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) ("Resources for Minority"). Routinely feeling that they do not belong, such groups are particularly vulnerable to math anxiety.Several remedies for such disparity suggest themselves: appointing more women and people of color in the profession; one-on-one tutorial assistance; research projects about the students' personal environment; privileging pre-test, low-stakes work over timed tests; assigning group rather than individual work. When all is said and done, however, such strategies "have little to do with mathematics content" (Martin 304). Mathematicians still need to be able to conceptualize, describe, and manipulate abstract objects, and there seems to be a suspicion that, at heart, abstraction is gendered masculine and colored white.It is possible that the rhetorical immediacy and context-dependence of Black English has misguidedly reinforced such a perception. For poet June Jordan, Black English "devolves from a culture that abhors all abstraction" (Jordan 367). Psychiatrist Alvin Poussaint asks, "Is there a way to say metamorphosis in Ebonics?" (O'Malley). Yet, despite Black English's avoidance of nominalization and similar verbosities that afflict academic prose, abstract logical reasoning flourishes in vernacular idiom, as linguist William Labov demonstrated half a century ago. Our aim is not to explain the asymptote in Black English but rather to consider a feature characteristic of those very minority cultures historically underrepresented in math—storytelling—and to ask how it may be foregrounded in mathematics, where it is decisively sidelined. Storytelling has been claimed by every culture and ethnic group at some point as the repository of wisdom, practical skills, religious beliefs, and shared identity and values; but when it gets corralled into the category of "fiction," and when it gets opposed to "fact," a narrowed concept of truth dispatches storytelling to kindergarten and recreational math. Word problems may supply scenarios but offer none of a plot's satisfactions... (shrink)

According to the principle of patient autonomy, patients have the right to be self-determining in decisions about their own medical care, which includes the right to refuse treatment. However, a treatment refusal may legitimately be overridden in cases where the decision is judged to be incompetent. It has recently been proposed that in assessments of competence, attention should be paid to the evaluative judgments that guide patients' treatment decisions.In this paper I examine this claim in light of theories of (...) practical rationality, focusing on the difficult case of an anorexic person who is judged to be competent and refuses treatment, thereby putting themselves at risk of serious harm. I argue that the standard criteria for competence assess whether a treatment decision satisfies the goals of practical decision-making, and that this same criterion can be applied to a patient's decision-guiding commitments. As a consequence I propose that a particular understanding of practical rationality offers a theoretical framework for justifying involuntary treatment in the anorexia case. (shrink)

The practice of personal autonomy is a dynamic event that consists of a vital interplay between the self, socio-cultural reality, meaning, and being epistemically responsible. Autonomy is not static, something that we simply possess by virtue of a status as 'rational beings'. Therefore, in this dissertation, I examine the traditional notion of autonomy as it has been developed by Kant and subsequently influenced the current debate between 'liberals' and 'communitarians'. Primarily from the standpoint of the critiques developed by Charles (...) Taylor, I argue that the fundamental disagreement between these two camps is over the concept of the self. While this landscape stands divided, some middle ground can be found in the work of Joseph Raz, who postulated the need for a combination of individual abilities and an autonomy-supporting environment as necessary conditions for practicing personal autonomy. His characterization of 'personal autonomy', distinct from Kantian autonomy, forms the underlying paradigm for this work. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: 1. Introducing persons and the psychology of personhood Jack Martin and Mark H. Bickhard; Part I. Philosophical, Conceptual Perspectives: 2. The person concept and the ontology of persons Michael A. Tissaw; 3. Achieving personhood: the perspective of hermeneutic phenomenology Charles Guignon; Part II. Historical Perspectives: 4. Historical psychology of persons: categories and practice Kurt Danziger; 5. Persons and historical ontology Jeff Sugarman; 6. Critical personalism: on its tenets, its historical obscurity, and its future (...) prospects James T. Lamiell; Part III. Social-Developmental Perspectives: 7. Conceiving of self and others as persons: evolution and development John Barresi, Chris Moore and Raymond Martin; 8. Position exchange theory and personhood: moving between positions and perspectives within physical, sociocultural and psychological space and time Jack Martin and Alex Gillespie; 9. The emergent ontology of persons Mark H. Bickhard; 10. Theorising personhood for the world in transition and change: reflections from a transformative activist stance on human development Anna Stetsenko; Part IV. Narrative Perspectives: 11. Identity and narrative as root metaphors of personhood Amia Lieblich and Ruthellen Josselson; 12. Storied persons: the double triad of narrative identity Mark Freeman. (shrink)

Donald Davidson has prepared a new edition of his classic 1980 collection of Essays on Actions and Events, including two additional essays. In this seminal investigation of the nature of human action, Davidson argues for an ontology which includes events along with persons and other objects. Certain events are identified and explained as actions when they are viewed as caused and rationalized by reasons; these same events, when described in physical, biological, or physiological terms, may be explained by (...) appeal to natural laws. The mental and the physical thus constitute irreducibly discrete ways of explaining and understanding events and their causal relations. -/- Among the topics discussed are: freedom to act; weakness of the will; the logical form of talk about actions, intentions, and causality; the logic of practical reasoning; Hume's theory of the indirect passions; and the nature and limits of decision theory. The introduction, cross-references, and appendices emphasize the relations between the essays and explain how Davidson's views have developed. -/- . (shrink)

The article focuses on the impact of the concept of self-care on persons who are understood as incapable of self-care due to their physical and/or mental ‘incapacity’. The article challenges the idea of this health care concept as empowerment and highlights the difficulties for persons who do not fit into this concept. To exemplify this, the self-care concept is discussed with regard to persons with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). In the case of persons with AD, self-care is (...) interpreted in many different ways—depending on the point of view, for instance as an affected person or a carer. To prevent a marginalisation of the growing group of elderly persons with dementia, the article argues that concepts such as those of personhood, wellbeing, autonomy, rationality and normality have to be re-thought with regard to an increasingly ageing population. Taking into account that AD as a socio-medical construct has to be understood in the context of power relations, the article focuses on the mutual influence between the concepts of self-care and of AD and its possible impact on governing dementia and AD in particular. Michel Foucault’s considerations on ‘technologies of the self’ provide the basis for the discussion of the self-care concept within existing societal power relations. (shrink)

The separation view of the mind, advanced by Davidson in order to face the problem of irrationality, is criticized. Against it, I argue that it is not consistent with Davidson's holism.

The topic of the self has long been salient in feminist philosophy, for it is pivotal to questions about personhood, identity, the body, and agency that feminism must address. In some respects, Simone de Beauvoir's trenchant observation, "He is the Subject, he is the Absolute — she is the Other," sums up why the self is such an important issue for feminism. To be the Other is to be the non-subject, the non-person, the non-agent — in (...) short, the mere body. In law, in customary practice, and in cultural stereotypes, women's selfhood has been systematically subordinated, diminished, and belittled, when it has not been outright denied. Since women have been cast as lesser forms of the masculine individual, the paradigm of the self that has gained ascendancy in U.S. popular culture and in Western philosophy is derived from the experience of the predominantly white and heterosexual, mostly economically advantaged men who have wielded social, economic, and political power and who have dominated the arts, literature, the media, and scholarship. Responding to this state of affairs, feminist philosophical work on the self has taken three main tacks: (1) critique of established views of the self, (2) reclamation of women's selfhood, and (3) reconceptualization of the self to incorporate women's experience. This entry will survey feminist perspectives on the self from all three of these angles. (shrink)

The struggle over legal abortion access in the United States is a religious controversy, not a scientific debate. Religious activists who believe that meaningful individual life (i.e., “personhood”) begins at a specific “moment-of-conception” are attempting to pass laws that force this view upon all pregnant persons, irrespective of their medical circumstances, individual preferences, or personal religious beliefs. This paper argues that such actions promote a constitutionally prohibited “establishment of religion.” Abortion policy in a secular state must be based upon (...) scientifically accurate biology, not unprovable theological presuppositions. The scientific facts regarding human pregnancy do not support the position that personhood begins with fertilization—at which point a pregnancy does not yet even exist. Abortion policy should regard the embryo/fetus as part of the pregnant individual’s body until delivery. We argue that individual “personhood” only begins when the _latent_ potentialities of the fetal nervous system are _actualized_ in the newborn after delivery. The paper argues that instantiating non-scientific beliefs concerning embryonic/fetal “personhood” into the law as the basis for abortion policy establishes a state-sponsored religion. The protection of religious liberty requires that abortion be decriminalized. Abortion should be treated like any other medical procedure and regulated similarly. To protect both religious freedom and sound medical practice, individual legal personhood should be recognized as beginning only at birth. (shrink)

Continues the theme of the preceding chapters, examining further the possibility of irrational thought and action, judged against a background that stipulates large‐scale rationality as a necessary condition for both interpretability and possession of a mind. Concentrates on the phenomenon of self‐deception, which the author holds to include ‘weakness of the warrant’, a phenomenon that violates what Hempel and Carnap have called ‘the requirement of total evidence for inductive reasoning’. The main tool to remove the paradox of (...) class='Hi'>self‐deception, according to the author, is the recognition of the idea that there can be boundaries between parts of the mind. Such boundaries, however, are not discovered by introspection, but are conceptual aids to the coherent description of genuine irrationalities. (shrink)

The practice of psychotherapy, or any form of counseling, inevitably requires an anthropological foundation from which to work. Defining the nature of personhood is a task which necessitates an explanation of the various aspects of the self, and the relationships between those aspects. In particular, it is crucial to delineate how the person is both an individual being and a relational being, for we intuitively experience life in both dimensions. These are two characteristics which have often been (...) presented in opposition to each other, however. What is needed is a theory which balances the individual character of personhood with the social character of personhood. The task at hand is to develop such a balance which can serve as a foundation for a Christian psychology. ;C. Stephen Evans, a philosopher and post-empirical critic of modern psychology, has emphasized the individual aspects of personhood. Soren Kierkegaard has influenced Evans' view of the self. Thus, Evans conceives of the person as fundamentally an agent, who chooses freely, acts purposefully and reasonably, and is responsible for the consequences of those choices and actions. ;Ray S. Anderson has developed a theological anthropology and on that basis has articulated a theoretical view of Christian counseling. His theory of the nature of personhood, influenced by the theologies of Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, is a thoroughly social perspective. The person is essentially relational, such that one is social before one is psychological. ;The present work constructs an integrative theory which balances the individual and social insights from Evans' and Anderson's views, respectively. It is accomplished through an analysis of the self across two ontological statuses and three orientations . A biblical paradigm is developed to illustrate the grounding of that theory in a Christian framework. Implications for therapeutic interventions are provided. (shrink)

The article examines the challenge of achieving sustainable mediational equilibrium within the Self–Other relationship. It argues that the mere pursuit of mutual understanding among dialogue participants is insufficient to guarantee productive communication, particularly in contexts where interactions are driven by competition for scarce resources and opportunities. Under such conditions, subjects risk becoming dependent on instrumental reason – the logic of control and suppression – which transforms both the Self and the Other from fully-fledged personalities into functions of reified (...) rationality. The analysis introduces a distinction between two roles of the individual: the person as a bearer of unique values and meanings, and the individual as a subject of social relations, an actor immersed in practical interactions. It is demonstrated that the capacity of the former to exert control over the latter is limited, and that interactions are shaped not only by the personal qualities of the participants but also by the impersonal logic of instrumental reason. This logic is conceptualized as a kind of third subjectivity that mediates the dialogue between the Self and the Other. Achieving mediational equilibrium becomes possible through the development of autonomy among the parties, through their transformation, mutual recognition, and the search for a measure of compatibility. This approach is traced through examples from A.S. Akhiezer’s theory of sociocultural mediation, A.P. Davydov’s concept of inter-subjective dialogue, and R. Bush and J. Folger’s theory of transformative mediation. Key concepts in the latter include empowerment (strengthening participants’ ability to clearly recognize their goals and make responsible decisions) and recognition (willingness to hear and understand the Other’s perspective). The essence of transformative mediation lies in the transition from imposing one party’s position to a collaborative search for new possibilities, allowing the realization of both Self and Other’s interests through dialogue. In conclusion, the article asserts the importance of overcoming the logic of mutual accusations by shifting the focus from the opponent’s personality to the impersonal structures limiting the self-determination of all parties. (shrink)

This chapter considers the wider significance of torture, addressing the manner in which it represents a touchstone for any universalistic morality, and arguing that it offers a means of refuting any moral relativism, something that ties in closely with my long-term theoretical work in metaethics (eg Getting What You Want? A Critique of Liberal Morality (Routledge: London and New York, 1998; and ongoing work around the ultimate justification of morality). Since torture consists in the erasure of a person on (...) the basis of their being an embodied rational agent, that is to say, of their being a person, it requires that the torturer at once recognise and negate the personhood of the person being tortured. The contradiction involved is immediate and integral: torture, one might say, is practical self-contradiction par excellence. For it is embodied rational agents who constitute the subject of any form, and thus of any theory, of morality -- and thus of global social and thus to torture a person is to both accept and deny our identity as embodied rational agents. This work also led to the opportunity for further collaboration with one of the editors, Heather Widdows, this time as part of a larger project on which I have been working for some time – both academically and as an activist -- namely to rescue work from the 1970s and 1980s for the Left. I have so far made two academic contributions: Andrea Dworkin’s Pornography: Men Possessing Women – a Reassessment’, in eds H Marway and H Widdows, Women and Violence: the Agency of Victims and Perpetrators. Palgrave Macmillan: London, forthcoming 2013 and ‘The family and neo-liberalism: time to revive a critique’, Ethics and Social Welfare, forthcoming 2012. (shrink)

How can one knowingly choose against one's best judgment? This is both a traditional philosophical puzzle and a realistic problem in our everyday life. This dissertation is an exposition and examination of a recent work, by George Ainslie, with regard to its innovative explanation as well as rational solution of such a problem. With the help of the new Ainsliean model, I have also sought to offer some analysis of a number of issues that I believe are important to the (...) understanding of the nature of practical rationality. ;The central question for Ainslie's approach to the dynamic problem of preference change is how to justify the "bundling" idea underlying his solution of the problem by adopting a "personal rule." The bundling idea is a belief in the relation between a series of similar choices as each predicting the direction of all the later choices. Being able to think in terms of this bundling idea is a powerful means of abstaining from defection, though it requires considerable cognitive effort. I try to defend the plausibility of such a personal-rule approach. But Ainslie's own account falls short of showing the ultimate necessity of the bundling idea, viz., why the collapse of the whole sequence of choices would necessarily follow from one defection. My argument hinges on demonstrating that neither a causal consideration about the links between similar choices, nor a prudential consideration about the possible risk involved in certain actions is sufficient for understanding the necessity: we need a normative perspective instead. ;This leads to my analysis of the conditions under which a normative solution can be justified. The analysis also delineates the type of dynamic choice situations Ainslie's approach may adequately fit, or have the greatest advantage. Some underlying hypothesis about the status and role of cognition in desire and higher-level motivation is carefully discussed; and the cognitive, deliberative, and affective aspects of the adoption of a rule is explored. During my discussions, I also compare Ainslie's approach with other theories in the domain of practical reasoning, such as that of Donald Davidson's, Jon Elster's, Michael Bratman's, Edward McClennen's, and David Gauthier's, in terms of their explanatory power, or their scope of application, limits, and complementarity. ;Ainslie's motivational model of mind has apparent as well as potential implications for a group of interesting philosophical issues. They include the nature of willpower, the nature of practical rationality as well as moral rules, personal identity, autonomy, and the existentialist theme on self-creation. My conclusion is that the clarification of the metaphysical underpinnings of the Ainsliean model can help to shed some light on these issues. (shrink)

A given statement may be plausible, well founded or true. An individual action may be judged courageous, useful or good. Human beings are judged as well, for statements or actions that invite such evaluations, though the terms used may be different: a person may be described as truthful and virtuous, clever and happy. Epistemology and ethics – the theories that justify theoretical and practical judgements – may address not only the criteria used to assess states of belief, assertions, (...) knowledge and the like, actions, omissions and feelings, but also thepeoplethat give rise to them. Nowadays, the issue of when and how ahuman beingbecomes clever, truthful, good or happy is less a matter of philosophy and more a question for religion, psychology and pedagogy. This has not always been the case. There has been a perceptible shift in moral philosophy: in antiquity, inquiries as to when alifeis to be classified as good or happy were prevalent; in the modern era, the focus is primarily on when anindividual actionis to be regarded as right or good, wrong or bad. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.1 (2001) 153-155 [Access article in PDF] Dieter Sturma. Philosophie der Person. Die Selbstverhältnisse von Subjektivität und Moralität. Paderborn: Schöningh, 1997. Pp. 376. DM 68.00. According to Sturma, it was John Locke who first developed the concept of a person, molding it into an "elaborated theory of personal identity" (27). His approach was continued first by Hume, Rousseau, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, (...) and Hegel, and then in the 20th Century—via Freud, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Sartre—by Anglo-American philosophers such as Strawson, Rawls, Frankfurt, Nagel, Parfit, and Taylor. While these authors provide the main orientation for Sturma, Kant seems to assume a leading position. The aim of the book is to trace out a non-reductionist philosophy of the person. Sturma believes that personhood consists in the fully developed subjectivity together with the moral components included in it" and he intends to uncover the "consequences for practical self-relation arising from it" (38). These relations are, first of all, relations to oneself.The book consists of eleven chapters. The last one is a kind of summary. The other ten can be subdivided into three parts. The first part serves as introduction and propedeutic. In it, Sturma first presents "Subjects and Problems of the Philosophy of the Person" (chapter I), then gives a compendium of "The History of the Philosophy of the Person" (chapter II), and finally presents a "Critique of Reductionism"(chapter III). The last part is the largest. Its main thesis is "that persons are at least in principle subjects who are due freedom, accountability, and self-determination, and who [... ] can initiate reflective and practical self-relations within the social space" (59). After claiming that in practice "every reductionism conceals a kind of determinism" (60), Sturma gives a sketch of his critical approach. Dealing with different forms of determinism, physicalism, logical empiricism, with Wittgenstein's position between reductionism and non-reductionism, and with Thomas Nagel's critique of reductionism, Sturma arrives at a discussion of the difference between (mental) experience (Erlebnis) and events (Ereignis). As a proponent of a "moderate naturalism" (95), he tries in the style of Davidson to take up a middle position, which neither denies events in space and time nor eliminates the personal standpoint of experience.The next two chapters, "Self-Consciousness"(chapter IV) and "Consciousness and [End Page 153] Personal Identity"(chapter V) form the second, more theoretical, part of the book. According to Sturma, Descartes deserves credit for revealing the irreducibility of self-consciousness. This irreducibility is revealed by the fact "that persons become aware of their existence in a way which differs from all other states of consciousness" (103). After discussing mainly analytical objections—above all Wittgenstein's 'private-language' argument and Ayers' critique of the Cogito argument—he summarizes the position of the Heidelberg school (Henrich, et al.). His effort is directed primarily at showing that reflexivity and self-reference are essential to self-consciousness. He tries to develop a concept of self-consciousness that is capable of tying together self-acquaintance and reflection. He believes that only in this way can "the project for a philosophy of the person that is critical of reductionism be transferred to a constructive concept of self-determination"(107). In self-consciousness a person always behaves in relation "to her concrete existence and her concrete behavior in ontological and social space." This explains why the immediate self-relation of self-consciousness is "always an alteration and its subject at once the altering instance and the altered person" (144f). This is followed in the fifth chapter by an examination of the relation between person and identity, where Sturma_starting with the Locke-Leibniz controversy_shows that a person refers to her identity as a given as well as something that needs to be produced (cf.187).The next chapter, "Personal Identity and Practical Self-relations" (chapter VI) is the beginning of the third part of the book, which is essentially practical. In this and the following chapters—"Contexts of Practical Self-relations: The Unconscious and... (shrink)

The Non-Identity Problem is the problem of explaining the apparent wrongness of a decision that does not harm people, especially since some of the people affected by the decision would not exist at all were it not for the decision. One approach to this problem, in the context of reproductive decisions, is to focus on wronging, rather than harming, one's offspring. But a Non-Person Problem emerges for any view that claims (1) that only persons can be wronged and (2) (...) that the person-making properties allow for there to be human non-persons. Consider an individual human organism that is prevented from ever possessing the person-making properties. On person-only accounts of the victims of wronging, this organism cannot be wronged by anyone. Hence even individuals whose decisions prevent it from ever possessing the person-making properties cannot wrong it. But this is counter-intuitive. We can think of examples where a human organism is wronged by precisely those decisions that prevent it from possessing the person-making properties. The best solution to this problem, in the case where the person-making property is rational self-governance in pursuit of a meaningful life, is to adjust the concept of a person so that it refers, not merely to those with the immediate capacity for rational self-governance in pursuit of a meaningful life, but also to those with a higher-order capacity for such self-governance. Any solution to the Non-Identity Problem that focuses on wronging rather than harming should incorporate this sort of solution to the Non-Person Problem. (shrink)

Alphonso Lingis’s singular works of philosophy are not so much written as performed, and in The First Person Singular the performance is characteristically brilliant, a consummate act of philosophical reckoning. Lingis’s subject here, aptly enough, is the subject itself, understood not as consciousness but as embodied, impassioned, active being. His book is, at the same time, an elegant cultural analysis of how subjectivity is differently and collectively understood, invested, and situated. The subject Lingis elaborates in detail is the passionate (...) subject of fantasy, of obsessive commitment, of noble actions, the subject enacting itself through an engagement with others, including animals and natural forces. This is not the linguistic or literary subject posited by structuralism and post-structuralism, nor the rational consciousness posited by post-Enlightenment philosophy. It is rather a being embodied in both a passionate, intensifying activity and a cultural collective made up of embodied others as well as the social rituals and practices that comprise this first person singular. (shrink)

Philosophers like Shoemaker and Burge argue that only self-conscious creatures can exercise rational control over their mental lives. In particular they urge that reflective rationality requires possession of the I-concept, the first person concept. These philosophers maintain that rational creatures like ourselves can exercise reflective control over belief as well as action. I agree that we have this sort of control over our actions and that practical freedom presupposes self-consciousness. But I deny that anything like (...) this is true of belief. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Introducing a “Deleuze Effect” into PsychiatryLarry Davidson (bio) and Golan Shahar (bio)Keywordsdesire, intentionality, psychopathology, agency, action theory, desiring-production, active and reactive forcesYou have to keep small rations of subjectivity in sufficient quantity to enable you to respond to the dominant reality.(Deleuze and Guattari 1987160)We are very pleased with the variety of responses our article has generated thus far and hope that it continues to provoke dialogue. That was, (...) we think, our in tent—should we be allowed to hold on to any such “thing” as an intention. We also take the diversity of these responses to reflect one of our key challenges in using Deleuze’s thought to reform (as op posed merely to inform) psychiatric practice: How to make a radical philosophy accessible enough to a broad enough audience for it to bring about substantive, real change in an existing culture in the hic et nunc, the here and now. That is why we chose the quotation above from Mille Plateaux. Even Deleuze (with Guattari) encourages us to keep “small rations” of subjectivity at hand if we are interested in responding to the “dominant reality.” And that has been our main agenda; to engage with the dominant reality of deficit-based psychiatric theory and practice to overturn it, or, in Clegg’s terms, “explode” it from within.In this regard, we certainly agree with Evangelista and Clegg that much more remains to be done, both in developing our position and in exploring its implications for practice. We view our “Deficit to Desire” paper as simply a first step in this direction (e.g., Shahar and Davidson, in press). We thought it necessary first, as we wrote in the original paper, to articulate the theoretical underpinnings of an action model for clinical understanding and practice “at a philosophical level of discourse on the one hand, but also in such a way that they provide a concrete, substantially different point of departure for empirical studies of psychopathology, on the other.” But why is this important, and what implications does it have for our response to these three thoughtful commentaries?A first implication is that our primary aim is not to provide a comprehensive exposition of Deleuze’s thought. In our opinion, even attempting to give a comprehensive exposition of Deleuze’s thought would actually go directly against its main thrust, which we view as to ignite and propagate ever new and creative lines of flight which carry desiring-production into “a small plot of new land at all times” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 161). “Experiment,” entreats Deleuze, “don’t interpret” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 139). We would guess, in fact, that Deleuze no more wanted to [End Page 243] produce Deleuzeans than Kierkegaard wanted disciples going around the Danish countryside after his death spreading the word that Kierkegaard did not want disciples going around the Danish countryside after his death (one of our favorites among his many ironies). So although we agree that there is much more in Deleuze’s thought than what is contained in our paper, we think that to some degree it misses its point. In Deleuzean fashion, we want to use the “Deleuze effect” to bring radical change to psychiatry (and we appreciate the irony of that too). Although both Evangelista and Clegg seem to welcome this effort, despite their misgivings, Weiner clearly is worried. Weiner also seems to have had the most intimate experience of the psychiatric system—that is, is most familiar with the world we are trying to change—so we focus in particular on his very understandable concerns.It also happens to be the case that focusing on Weiner’s concerns brings us immediately back to the nature of the effect we were hoping to have. Weiner explains that people with serious mental illnesses are “oppressed from within” and that their affliction seems to be coming “from a seemingly autonomous place” that is “within us, but not ultimately of us.” We could not agree more, and appreciate the lucidity and eloquence with which he makes this astute and important point. Several years ago, one of us even attempted a Husserlian-inspired analysis of how a person... (shrink)

The article follows the hypothesis that the aesthetic dimension of the standpoint of reason provides the main element for an appropriate perspective on how the interplay between rationality and irrationality is able to contribute to practical self-determination as a person. The starting point is formed by the critical discussion of the position considering that it is possible to derive the normative implications of practical reasonableness and self-determination from an abstract momentum of reflective distance. (...) Whilst taking a look on Christine Korsgaard’s version of this idea it becomes clear that it rests on a conception of the practical standpoint that suffers both from a lack of methodological self-reflection and from neglecting the special features and potentials of irrational actions and experiences. The following text shows how the search for an alternative conception, which takes both aspects into account, benefits from a comparison with psychoanalysis, since this discipline is able to methodologically refer back philosophy to the original potential it unfolds in its aesthetic perspectives on practical standpoints. (shrink)

I examine the self-interest based contractarian's attempt to answer the question, "Why be moral?" In order to defeat the skeptic who accepts reasons of self-interest only, contractarians must show that the best theory of practical reasons includes moral reasons. They must show that it is rational to act morally even when doing so conflicts with self-interest. ;I examine theories offered by Hobbes, Baier, and Grice, and show they fail to defeat skepticism. Hobbes' theory gives no special (...) weight to moral reasons as they can be eliminated in favor of prudential reasons; Baier's theory fails to establish that from the fact that it is rational to adopt the moral points of view, it is rational to act from it; and Grice's theory attempts to link promising, obligations, and reasons, but leaves certain crucial points in the argument undefended. ;In Morals by Agreement, Gauthier offers the best theory of its kind, and treatment of it constitutes the bulk of the thesis. Gauthier tries to refute the skeptic by showing that it is in one's interest to adopt a moral disposition, and that every action expressing the disposition is rational. The dispositional move is one the contractarian must make to avoid the problems facing the other theories examined. But Gautheir's argument for the rationality of the disposition relies on an empirically dubious assumption of translucency, and as such, fails to show that persons in ordinary circumstances are rational to be moral. Moreover, Gauthier fails to show that the rationality of the disposition carries over to the particular actions expressing it. The alternative view, called the "Independency Thesis," is more plausible than Gauthier's, but not available to him. Thus the contractarian fails to defeat skepticism. (shrink)

This thesis presents a communicative account of personhood that argues for the inseparability of the metaphysical and the practical concepts of a person. It connects these two concepts by coupling the question “what is a person” with the question "how does one become a person". It argues that participation in social interactions that are characterized by mutual recognition and giving-and-taking reasons implied by the practical concept of a person is in fact an ecological (...) and developmental condition for an entity to possess the kind of characteristics and capacities such as reflexive self-consciousness addressed by the metaphysical concept. The chief theoretical contribution of the dissertation research lies, accordingly, in demonstrating that an adequate metaphysical concept of a person has to make reference to the kind of social processes that are necessary for the emergence and development of the distinguishing attributes of persons among other moving, perceiving, desiring and cognizing agents. Methodologically, it undertakes an original philosophical analysis that is enriched by an interdisciplinary investigation of several notions and insights from semiotics, comparative and developmental psychology, cognitive science and anthropology. The main argument of the thesis is that one becomes a person through internally recreating a social, communicative process; namely, that of dialogical transformation of habits. We find the paradigmatic case of this social process in mutual persuasion. The internalization of this process in the form of an inner dialogue cultivates a social self that is in ongoing communication with the embodied, organismic self of uncritically habituated attitudes, convictions and desires. This inner dialogue can be conceived as a temporally extended process of self-persuasion, which is characterized by an ongoing strive for attaining higher degrees of self-control; that is, for achieving a more coherent alignment between our habits and the kind of person we would like to be. It starts with self-interpretation and self-evaluation, and culminates in the formation of higher-order desires that facilitate habit-change and novel habit formation in accordance with certain social, moral, aesthetical or intellectual categories and norms one comes to endorse. For this reason, self-induced, deliberate habit-change is also a process of appropriation or self-appropriation, through which we strive to cultivate habits of feeling, thinking, acting that we can deem more truly ours. The thesis demonstrates that the capacity for engaging in this kind of self-persuasion consists chiefly in the capacities for metasemiosis, perspective-taking, and for cultivating habits of reflexivity. It explicates how all these capacities have a social origin and ultimately a social function by showing that they all presuppose certain higher-order communicative patterns that arose through an evolutionary and cultural history, and develop through the internal reconstruction of these patterns as cognitive-semiotic processes. The thesis concludes that becoming a kind of being who can engage in self-persuasion, thus a person, consists ultimately in internalizing the patterns of communicative social interactions in the form of an ongoing auto-communication. (shrink)

The aim of this discussion paper is to explore factors and contexts that influence how nurses might conceptualise and assign personhood for people with altered consciousness, cognition and behaviours. While a biomedical framing is founded upon a dichotomy between the body and self, such that the body can be subjected to a medical and objectifying gaze, relational theories of self, multiculturalism and technological advances for life‐sustaining interventions present new dilemmas which necessitate discussion about what constitutes personhood. (...) The concept of personhood is dynamic and evolving: where historical constructs of rationality, agency, autonomy and a conscious mind once formed the basis for personhood, these ideas have been challenged to encompass embodied, relational, social and cultural paradigms of selfhood. Themes in this discussion include: the right to personhood, mind–body dualism versus the embodied self; personhood as consciousness, rationality and narratives of self; social relational contexts of personhood and cultural contexts of personhood. Patricia Benner's and Christine Tanner's clinical judgement model is then applied to consider the implications for nursing care that seeks to reflexively incorporate personhood. Nurse clinicians are able to move between conceptions of personhood and act to support the body, as well as presumed autonomy and relational, social and cultural personhood. In doing so, they use analytical, intuitive and narrative reasoning which prioritises autonomous constructions of self. They also incorporate relational and social contexts of the person receiving care within the possibilities of technological advances and constraints of contextual resources. (shrink)

Philosophers like Shoemaker and Burge argue that only self-conscious creatures can exercise rational control over their mental lives. In particular they urge that reflective rationality requires possession of the I-concept, the first person concept. These philosophers maintain that rational creatures like ourselves can exercise reflective control over belief as well as action. I agree that we have this sort of control over our actions and that practical freedom presupposes self-consciousness. But I deny that anything like (...) this is true of belief. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to elaborate on how a distinct concept of the person can be implemented within person‐centred care as an ethical configuration of personhood in the tension between the two predominant cultures of knowledge within health care: naturalism and phenomenology. Starting from Paul Ricoeur's ‘personalism of the first, second, and third person’ and his ‘broken’ ontology, open‐ended, incomplete, and imperfect mediations, placed at the precise juncture where reality is divided up into two (...) separate cultures of knowledge, is identified as crucial for what makes us human. Within this context, Ricoeur's distinct ethical configuration of personhood is based on the homology between the linguistic, practical, narrative, and moral determinations of selfhood—articulated as a hermeneutics of the self, without any methodological break. Person‐centred care is thus recognized as an profound ethical approach to health care based on mediations of ‘horizontal’ (teleological) and ‘vertical’ (deontological) readings of an ethical configuration of personhood by the use of practical wisdom. (shrink)

Self-deception is commonly viewed as a condition that bespeaks irrationality. This paper challenges that view. I focus specifically on the connection between self-deception and practical reasoning, an area which, despite its importance for understanding self-deception, has not been systematically explored. I examine both how self-deception influences practical reasoning and how this influence affects the rationality of actions produced by practical reasoning. But what is self-deception? There are many accounts, yet there (...) is probably none sufficiently well known and compelling to serve as an adequate background given my purposes. Hence, I shall briefly present my own account of self-deception and, on that basis, explore its connections with practical reasoning and rational action. (shrink)

Irrationality remains a central issue in the philosophy of psychoanalysis. While some approaches in the philosophy of mind have argued that irrationality demands no special account, one of the central conceptual planks of psychoanalytic theory is the notion that irrational motivations have their origin in the dynamic unconscious. This article reviews recent attempts to account for the phenomenon of motivated irrationality, and argues that the problem of self-understanding will remain central to the philosophy of mind so (...) long as we accept the notion of rational agency. Any account of the mind which ignores or denies the appeal of first-person mental phenomena risks rendering itself unintelligible as a convincing account of the conscious subject. (shrink)

Philosophers like Shoemaker and Burge argue that only self-conscious creatures can exercise rational control over their mental lives. In particular they urge that reflective rationality requires possession of the I-concept, the first person concept. These philosophers maintain that rational creatures like ourselves can exercise reflective control over belief as well as action. I agree that we have this sort of control over our actions and that practical freedom presupposes self-consciousness. But I deny that anything like (...) this is true of belief. (shrink)

My dissertation, “Love, Self-Constitution, and Practical Necessity,” offers an interpretation of love between people. Love is puzzling because it appears to involve essentially both rational and non-rational phenomena. We are accountable to those we love, so love seems to participate in forms of necessity, commitment, and expectation, which are associated with morality. But non-rational attitudes—forms of desire, attraction, and feeling—are also central to love. Consequently, love is not obviously based in rationality or inclination. In contrast to views (...) that attempt to fit love into existing models of practical reasoning, I argue that love participates in a unique form of practical necessity, different from both moral and psychological necessity, yet bearing resemblances to each. Distinctive to this type of practical necessity is a direct appeal to another particular person that cannot be delivered in third-personal terms—that is, a non-moral yet normative type of expectation on another person. This type of expectation is predominant in loving relationships, but can also make better sense of the experiences of humor and beauty, as well as attitudes like forgiveness, gratitude, and agent-regret. I treat Immanuel Kant’s discussion of the experience of beauty in the Critique of Judgment and Christine Korsgaard’s work on self-constitution as fruitful starting points for this account of love. I conclude that our loving relationships enable us to have distinctive personal selves, and provide support for this account of love by offering a complementary theory of grief. In Part One of the dissertation, I focus on two prominent approaches to love characteristic of the sentimentalist and rationalist traditions. I begin with the work of David Hume, which treats desire (understood as something like a simple impulse or craving) as the paradigmatic mental state, and emphasizes our personal and affective dimensions. Hume has the valuable insight that loving someone affects our sense of ourselves. But Hume’s view becomes unsatisfying when he claims that love is essentially enfeebling, implying that to love is to be passive toward and readily overcome by another person. While this indicates Hume’s awareness that love involves being open and receptive to another person, the problem is that love is also a demanding attitude. Hume lacks the conceptual resources to offer a nuanced view of the self, in which we can—with one attitude—be both demanding of and vulnerable to another person. Hume’s model of a desire-based deliberative process has recently been revived in Harry Frankfurt’s discussions on love and rationality. Frankfurt, however, goes beyond Hume’s picture of the self by introducing a notion of “identification,” which he offers to make sense of our apparent ability to commit ourselves decisively to certain projects or people. I argue that active powers like identification and commitment cannot be accommodated within any basically Humean moral psychology. Such abilities, and with them the possibility of love, depend on something closer to a Kantian conception of rational agency. I next focus on the work of Kant, who provides the substantial counterpart to Humean-inspired moral theories, but is not known for his insight into our emotional lives. In the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant divides love into “practical love”—what we experience when we are morally motivated to help someone—and “pathological love”—what we experience when we feel fond of something. But in reality, we experience love neither as a mere preference for another person, nor as something that generates the kind of demands that would be binding on any rational creature. David Velleman attempts to remedy the deficiency of Kant’s dichotomy. Velleman offers a Kantian theory in which he describes love and respect as two ends of a continuum of attitudes that it is morally appropriate to have toward people. Velleman’s view has the peculiar implication that everyone deserves the love of everyone else, and I argue that this is a fatal flaw. Like Kant and Velleman, Korsgaard characterizes personal love as involving the treatment of other people as Kantian ends-in-themselves to a heightened degree. Korsgaard, though, also contends that our individual identities depend upon our personal relationships, and I take this position seriously for the remainder of the dissertation. Ultimately, however, characterizations of loving relations as subsets of moral relations can account for the authority of the demands of love, but not its particularity. The major conclusion of Part One is that any attempt to understand love primarily on a model of practical reasoning with which we are already familiar is doomed to fail. Our experience of love calls for a theory of a unique type of practical necessity. In Part Two I take seriously the possibility that love is simultaneously inescapable (in something like the way morality is supposed to be), and yet ineluctably personal. In love, we experience an engagement with a person as essentially particular, rather than as an instance of a rational agent in general. To make sense of this direct attachment to an individual, I argue that love involves distinctive forms of expectation and disappointment. When those we love let us down, they hurt our feelings, which is not a response to a failed prediction, but nor is it a reaction to a moral insult or offense. According to Peter Strawson and Stephen Darwall, second-personal moral reactive attitudes (such as resentment) always have third-personal analogues (such as indignation). In contrast, I argue that the type of hurt feelings associated with love is a second-personal reactive attitude that does not have a third-personal corollary. I take this as evidence that the expectations involved in love are not objective in the way that the moral is objective. Nor, however, is love a matter of mere preference. On my interpretation, Kant introduces this different type of expectation in the Critique of Judgment. Whereas he characterizes moral judgments as universally communicable, judgments of beauty implicitly involve only second-personal address: I appeal to your direct experience with a particular object. This provides the conceptual space for an account of love according to which it involves a uniquely second-personal form of practical necessity. I contend that the second-personal addresses we make in love are appeals to strengthen the intimacy implicit in the loving relationship, and I identify three interrelated dimensions of that intimacy. First, those we love have the standing to interpret us in a constitutive manner. We fine-tune and make determinate the character of our concerns and interests in part by accepting the interpretations provided by those we love. In that way, the people we love have the normative power to constitute who we are. Second, we share a perspective with those we love in a way that is not reducible to or derivative of our independent perspectives. Loving someone centrally involves the activity of forming concerns together, and we do this in a mode best understood on the model of playing a spontaneous game or improvising music. Finally, being loved enables us to see ourselves as distinctive and special, because the concern those who love us have for us does not track the objective merit of our characteristics. These dimensions of the intimacy that characterizes a loving relationship reveal what it is that we appeal for in love, and how we are hurt when our appeals are rebuffed. In broad terms, this dissertation advocates the recognition of a non-moral yet normative type of expectation, which is predominant in loving relationships. Humor and beauty, too, make more sense when understood in terms of this non-moral yet normative type of expectation, as they involve appeals to others that are more than mere predictions of, but less than rational demands for, a certain kind of response. Introducing this alternative notion of expectation into the discourse of moral philosophy can shed light on other common attitudes that are clearly normative, but defy translation into objective, third-personal terms. Such attitudes include certain experiences of pride and shame, apology and forgiveness, the bestowing of mercy, gratitude, agent-regret, and perhaps a basic sense of trust we have in others. Ultimately, I situate love in respect to grief, which demonstrates my theory’s ability to make sense of related dimensions of our emotional lives. The people we love and grieve over give us a sense of who we are as distinctive, particular individuals, as the three interrelated dimensions of intimacy in loving relationships reveal. Consequently, grief is best understood as a type of practical disorientation—namely, a disorientation that involves the loss of the personal self. I present my account of grief against the type of account that would draw philosophical conclusions about the nature of love and grief from empirical psychological data alone. In particular, these data indicate that we recover quickly from the deaths of loved ones, and Dan Moller draws the philosophical conclusion that those we love fulfill certain roles in our lives and are replaceable. In contrast, I contend that while we should acknowledge the truth of the objective judgment, made in the third-person, that we will likely recover after the deaths of those we love, it does not follow that we must affirm such a claim from the internal perspective of one person who loves another. As a result, the case of love and grief supports a general claim concerning the proper work of moral philosophy, which is that the understanding of ourselves gained through empirical data is not a substitute for the normative conclusions that are revealed through first-personal reflections on our relationships. (shrink)

The narrative view of personhood suggests that we as persons are constituted by self-narratives. Self-narratives support not only the sense of personal persistence but also agency. However, it is rarely discussed how self-narratives promote or hinder personal well-being. This paper aims to explore what a healthy self-narrative looks like. By reframing a famous debate between Strawson and Schechtman about narrative personhood, I argue that self-narratives can hinder our personal well-being when affective identification leads (...) to inflexible self-images, illustrated with the examples of imposter syndrome and rationalization. Furthermore, I explore how having a healthy self-narrative is not about disengaging from one's personal past and future, but about fostering affective identification in ways that allow flexible self-images. (shrink)

That self-interest is a source of reasons for action has rarely if ever been controversial in philosophy. That the interest of others is such a source for normal persons has often seemed to philosophers to need argument. I refer to non-instrumental normative reasons, and I assume that when one has a reason of this kind to do something, doing it is prima facie rational. If the only source of basic reasons for action—those having non-instrumental normative force, and in a (...) certain sense non-derivative force—is self-interest, then the only way ethics can have a rational grip on us is through our viewing others as in some sense means to our own ends. This does not make ethics impossible, for it might be true and quite credible that in the long run our self-interest is adequately served only by leading a minimally moral life. I have long argued, however, that self-interest is not the only basic source of reasons for action and, more positively, that the basic grounds of practical rationality are in a special way impersonal. In “Audi on the Rationality of Altruism”, Charlott Becker and her colleagues explore my case for this view. (shrink)

Develops the idea that it is in part a social and political task to achieve a measure of fit between the demands of morality and the individual's interests. The psychological bases of moral motivation are, in Scheffler's view, influenced by social institutions and practices. Social institutions and practices can help individuals to develop the psychological structures that will lead them to shape their interests so as to minimize conflicts with morality. Social institutions can also work more directly to reduce the (...) degree of conflict between the demands of morality and individuals’ interests, insofar as a just and well‐ordered society minimizes the occasions on which it would be rational for people to violate moral requirements. These considerations support the conclusion that there are close and complex relations between social integration and personal, psychological integration; the smooth operation of each process conduces to and enhances the smooth operation of the other. (shrink)