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Osborne, Catherine. Eros Unveiled: Plato and the God of Love
1994, Oxford University Press.
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Added by: Laura Jimenez
Publisher's note: This unique book challenges the traditional distinction between eros, the love found in Greek thought, and agape, the love characteristic of Christianity. Focusing on a number of classic texts, including Plato's Symposium and Lysis, Aristotle's Ethics and Metaphysics, and famous passages in Gregory of Nyssa, Origen, Dionysius the Areopagite, Plotinus, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas, the author shows that Plato's account of eros is not founded on self-interest. In this way, she restores the place of erotic love as a Christian motif, and unravels some longstanding confusions in philosophical discussions of love.
Comment: The author’s view represents a new approach to ancient views on eros and its place in the Christian tradition. It is suitable for undergraduate or postgraduate courses on Ethics and Ancient Philosophy. Perfect as a secondary reading for students working on Plato's Symposium and Lysis, or Aristotle's Ethics and Metaphysics.
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Pacherie, Elisabeth. Qualia and representations
1999, In Denis Fisette (ed.), Consciousness and Intentionality: Models and Modalities of Attribution. Springer. pp. 119--144.
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Simon Fokt
Abstract: Dretske has recently offered a representational theory of perceptual experience - considered as paradigmatic of the qualitative and phenomenal aspects of our mental life. This theory belongs, as do his previous works, to a naturalistic approach to mental representation
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Patridge, Stephanie. Exclusivism and Evaluation: Art, Erotica and Pornography
2013, in Pornographic Art and the Aesthetics of Pornography, ed. by Hans Maes (London: Palgrave Macmillan).
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Added by: Simon Fokt
Content: Patridge discusses and rejects some of the main arguments for the exclusivist thesis that no pornography can be art: Levinson’s, Mag Uidhir’s, and one based on Rea’s definition of pornography. In doing so, she offers a useful overview of some other arguments already used against those authors. This leads her to conclude that at least some pornography can be art. A normative question follows: should we treat pornography as art? Given the high cultural status of art, and the often unethical nature of pornography, doing so might lead us to promoting unethical attitudes. She finds such treatment too unselective: at least some pornography isn’t morally problematic (and some of it can actually be morally laudable), while much of art, including erotic art, definitely is. But consumption of pornography cannot be taken out of our paternalistic and sexist cultural context. As most pornography is inegalitarian and expresses (and possibly promotes) harmful attitudes towards women, enjoying it constitutes a moral flaw. This is true even if the consumer is never inspired to actually harm women – in those cases enjoyment of pornography constitutes moral obliviousness, a ‘failure of sensitivity and solidarity with the victims of such imagery’ (54) similar to taking enjoyment in racist jokes.
Comment: This text offers a good and brief overview of the main points in the art and pornography debate. This makes it a good ‘one-stop-shop’ for classes which do not wish to look at it more closely. Alternatively, it can be used as an introduction to the topic and followed by some more specific papers. It also engages the normative question and offers a discussion of moral issues related to pornography. This will likely prove to be a very interesting point for class discussions.
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Patterson, Sarah. The explanatory role of belief ascriptions
1990, Philosophical Studies 59 (3):313-32.
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Simon Fokt
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to argue that belief ascription in common- sense discourse is not uniformly non-individualistic, as Burge's conclusion suggests. (In concentrating on belief ascriptions I follow the usual practice of treating belief as the paradigm propositional attitude.) I shall present some examples which suggest that when giving common-sense explanations of action we do not individuate thoughts with reference to agents' linguistic environment in the manner indicated by Burge's thought-experiment. The challenge supposedly presented to the Continuity Thesis by Burge's thought-experiment is thus removed. I then discuss whether the mode of individuation characteristic of our explanatory practice deserves to be called individualistic, and conclude with some remarks on the expressibility of thought contents.
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Paul, L. A. Temporal Experience
2010, The Journal of Philosophy 107(7): 333-359.
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Added by: Emily Paul
Introduction: The question I want to explore is whether experience supports an antireductionist ontology of time, that is, whether we should take it to support an ontology that includes a primitive, monadic property of nowness responsible for the special feel of events in the present, and a relation of passage that events instantiate in virtue of literally passing from the future, to the present, and then into the past.
Comment: For an intermediate/advanced philosophy of time course, this paper would be brillliant for a unit on psychological arguments in philosophy of time - which of course is a growing research area within philosophy of time. In a standard metaphysics course, this would make for a good further reading in philosophy of time. Students tend to favour the A-theory, and this is a very powerful argument for the B-theory that also lays out the different views in a crystal clear way.
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Paul, L. A.. What You Can’t Expect When You’re Expecting
2015, Res Philosophica 92 (2):1-23 (2015)
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Added by: Andrea Blomqvist
Abstract: It seems natural to choose whether to have a child by reflecting on what it would be like to actually have a child. I argue that this natural approach fails. If you choose to become a parent, and your choice is based on projections about what you think it would be like for you to have a child, your choice is not rational. If you choose to remain childless, and your choice is based upon projections about what you think it would be like for you to have a child, your choice is not rational. This suggests we should reject our ordinary conception of how to make this life-changing decision, and raises general questions about how to rationally approach important life choices.
Comment: Good to use as a shorter introductory reading to L.A. Paul's work and how to make decisions about life choices. It could be used in a module on decision making, or imagination.
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Pérez, Diana. Why should our mind-reading abilities be involved in the explanation of phenomenal consciousness?
2008, Análisis filosófico 28(1)
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Added by: Simon Fokt, Contributed by: Juan R. Loaiza
Abstract: In this paper I consider recent discussions within the representationalist theories of phenomenal consciousness, in particular, the discussions between first order representationalism (FOR) and higher order representationalism (HOR). I aim to show that either there is only a terminological dispute between them or, if the discussion is not simply terminological, then HOR is based on a misunderstanding of the phenomena that a theory of phenomenal consciousness should explain. First, I argue that we can defend first order representationalism from Carruthers' attacks and ignore higher order thoughts in our account of phenomenal consciousness. Then I offer a diagnostic of Carruthers' misunderstanding. In the last section I consider further reasons to include mindreading abilities in an explanation of phenomenal consciousness.
Comment: This text connects three topics in philosophy of mind in a clear way: representationalism (especially Fodor's LOT), consciousness, and mind-reading. It serves as an example of how to integrate different problems while proposing a provocative claim about them.
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Priest, Maura. Transgender Children and the Right to Transition: Medical Ethics When Parents Mean Well but Cause Harm
2019, The American Journal of Bioethics. 19 (2): 45-59.
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Added by: Chris Blake-Turner
Abstract: In this article, I argue that (1) transgender adolescents should have the legal right to access puberty-blocking treatment (PBT) without parental approval, and (2) the state has a role to play in publicizing information about gender dysphoria. Not only are transgender children harmed psychologically and physically via lack of access to PBT, but PBT is the established standard of care. Given that we generally think that parental authority should not go so far as to (1) severally and permanently harm a child and (2) prevent a child from access to standard physical care, then it follows that parental authority should not encompass denying gender-dysphoric children access to PBT. Moreover, transgender children without supportive parents cannot be helped without access to health care clinics and counseling to facilitate the transition. Hence there is an additional duty of the state to help facilitate sharing this information with vulnerable teens.
Comment (from this Blueprint): Priest argues that the state should provide puberty-blocking treatment (PBT) for trans youth, even if their parents are not supportive. Priest’s argument is important partly because it avoids the issue of whether adolescents and children can give properly informed consent. This is a point that some of Priest’s critics seem to have missed (see, for example, Laidlaw et al. 2019. “The Right to Best Care for Children Does Not Include the Right to Medical Transition”, and Harris et al. 2019. “Decision Making and the Long-Term Impact of Puberty Blockade in Transgender Children”). Priest’s conclusion is founded instead on a principle of harm avoidance.
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Radden, Jennifer. Symptoms in particular: feminism and the disordered mind
2022, In McWeeny, J. and Maitra, K. (eds) Feminist Philosophy of Mind. New York: Oxford University Press, pp.121-138
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Added by: Adriana Alcaraz Sanchez and Jodie Russell
Abstract: Contrary to influential medical and cognitivist models governing how mental disorder is usually understood today, the socially embedded, disordered "mind," or subject, of feminist theory leaves little room for idiopathic causal analyses, with their narrow focus on the brain and its functioning, and reluctant acknowledgment of symptoms. Mental disorder must originate well beyond the particular brain of the person with whom it is associated, feminist analyses imply. Because the voiced distress of the sufferer cannot be reduced to the downstream, "symptomatic" effects of brain dysfunction, symptoms can be seen differently, as central to the diagnostic identity, and constitutive of (at least some) disorders. And new attention is required for the testimony of women diagnosed with mental disorder, vulnerable as it is to epistemic injustices. Corrected explanations of women's mental disorder leave remaining concerns, both epistemological and ethical, over the madwoman narrating her symptoms.
Comment (from this Blueprint): Radden's paper introduces the reader to broad concerns with the dominant medical model of disorder from a feminist perspective, highlighting the tension with a naturalistic, reductionist approach with the situated and ecological approach of Radden's feminism. This article touches on topics mentioned in other readings (such as enactive concpetions of mind and epistemic injustice) but contextualises them within the field of philosophy of psychiatry. As such, this article is a fruitful springboard for critically considering the nature of medicine and psychiatry from multiple angles. This chapter would be complimented by the further reading of Russell's (2023) paper on Enactive Psychiatry.
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Raffman, Diana. From the Looks of Things: The Explanatory Failure of Representationalism
2008, In Edmond L. Wright (ed.), The Case for Qualia. MIT Press. pp. 325.
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Simon Fokt
Abstract: Representationalist solutions to the qualia problem are motivated by two fundamental ideas: first, that having an experience consists in tokening a mental representation; second, that all one is aware of in having an experience is the intentional content of that representation. In particular, one is not aware of any intrinsic features of the representational vehicle itself. For example, when you visually experience a red object, you are aware only of the redness of the object, not any redness or red quale of your experience. You are aware of outer red without being aware of inner red. According to the representationalist, the phenomenal character of your experience is just (an element of) the intentional content of your representation. In effect, inner red just is outer red. For her part, the defender of qualia, or anyway the defender of qualia who will figure in the present discussion, grants that experiencing a red object involves mentally representing it, and that when you have such an experience you are aware of its intentional content. But she denies that that intentional content exhausts your awareness. The defender of qualia (call her 'Quale') contends that your mental vehicle is itself mentally or phenomenally red, and that in addition to the outer redness of the object, you are aware of this inner redness, the intrinsic phenomenal character of your representational vehicle. Thus, contra the representationalist (call him 'Rep'), you are not aware of the content of your representation without being aware of its intrinsic features
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Ray, Keisha. It’s Time for a Black Bioethics
2021, The American Journal of Bioethics. 21(2): 38–40.
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Added by: Chris Blake-Turner
Abstract: There are some long-standing social issues that imperil Black Americans' relationship with health and healthcare. These issues include racial disparities in health outcomes (Barr 2014), provider bias and racism lessening their access to quality care (Sabin et al. 2009), disproportionate police killings (DeGue, Fowler, and Calkins 2016), and white supremacy and racism which encourage poor health (Williams and Mohammed 2013). Bioethics, comprised of humanities, legal, science, and medical scholars committed to ethical reasoning is prima facie well suited to address these problems and influence solutions in the form of policy and education. Bioethics, however, so far has shown only a minimal commitment to Black racial justice.
Comment (from this Blueprint): In this short, seminal piece, Keisha Ray argues that bioethics needs to address issues of health and well-being of Black individuals. She applies Beauchamp and Childress’s famous four principles of bioethics to a particular issue: the disproportionate maternal mortality rate of Black women in the United States. Ray argues bioethics must incorporate the lens of Black bioethics, if the discipline is to remain relevant.
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Rees, Clea F.. Better lie!
2014, Analysis 74(1): 59-64.
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Added by: Simon Fokt
Abstract: I argue that lying is generally morally better than mere deliberate misleading because the latter involves the exploitation of a greater trust and more seriously abuses our willingness to fulfil epistemic and moral obligations to others. Whereas the liar relies on our figuring out and accepting only what is asserted, the mere deliberate misleader depends on our actively inferring meaning beyond what is said in the form of conversational implicatures as well. When others’ epistemic and moral obligations are determined by standard assumptions of communicative cooperation and no compelling moral reason justifies mere deliberate misleading instead, one had better lie.
Comment: This text works particularly well when used together with Jennifer Saul's "Just go ahead and lie" (2012).
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Ren, Songyao. The Zhuangist views on emotions
2018, Asian Philosophy 28 (1):55-67
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Added by: Xintong Wei
Abstract: In this article, I will look into the Zhuangist views on emotions. I will argue that the psychological state of the Zhuangist wise person is characterized by emotional equanimity accompanied by a general sense of calmness, ease, and joy. This psychological state is constitutive of and instrumental to leading a good life, one in which one wanders the world and explores the plurality of daos. To do so, I will first provide an overview of the scholarly debate on this issue and unveil the disconcerting disagreement that underlies it. Then, I will survey some passages in the Zhuangzi and sketch my interpretation of the Zhuangist views on emotions. Next, I will examine the theoretical foundation for this interpretation by referencing the Zhuangist pluralism and their conception of the good life. Finally, I will look into some potential objections to the Zhuangist views on emotions and attempt responses to them.
Comment: available in this Blueprint
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Ribeiro, Anna Christina. Aesthetic Attributions: The Case of Poetry
2012, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 70 (3):293-302.
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Added by: Chris Blake-Turner, Contributed by: Christy Mag Uidhir
Abstract: Some claims about poems are uncontroversial: that a poem is composed in dactylic hexameter, as in Homer's epics, or in iambic pentameter, as in Shakespeare's sonnets, or in no particular traditional meter, as in most of e. e. cummings's work; that it rhymes following an abab pattern or that it does not; that it is very long, very short, or any length in between; that it employs sophisticated diction, archaic language, or common everyday words; that its similes and metaphors are novelor clich ?e. Such claims may easily be ascertained by those able to count syllables, those able to distinguish the stressed syllables from the unstressed dones, and those familiar with the varieties of poetic meter; by those able to tell whether two or more words sound alike; by those able to distinguish different text lengths; by those able to recognize when words are of the garden-variety kind. Except for familiarity with the kinds of poetic meter, 'those' are most of us. We may call these 'base,' 'lower level,' or 'structural' properties. At another level of description, poems may be tightly knit, unified, balanced, heavy and somber, light and jolly, and so on. The attributions in this case are still descriptive, but an evaluative judgment may be embedded in them, or it may be typically taken to be embedded, or intended to be embedded, in them. That is, a positive or negative valence may sometimes accompany the judgment that a poem is unified and balanced: one may find it good or bad in virtue of those characteristics (though one may also find it good or bad regardless of those characteristics). Further, justifications of why a poem is unified, balanced, and so on are made by reference to the qualities specified at the first level of description: it is unified because all the parts fit well together in some manner. We may call these 'aesthetic attributions'; as Jerrold Levinson puts it, here we have 'an overall impression afforded, an impression that cannot simply be identified with the structural properties that underpin it.' At a third level still, and in part in virtue of facts at the previous two levels, poems may be beautiful, terrific, or horrendously bad: here we have wholly evaluative attributions, or aesthetic judgments properly so-called. Note how there isan inverse proportion in informative value be-tween base properties and aesthetic judgments: base properties are informative about a work ('is in iambic pentameter') but not aesthetically evaluative and thus not aesthetically informative; aesthetic evaluations ('is beautiful') are aesthetically informative, but tell us nothing about the specific characteristics of a work. Aesthetic attributions fall in the middle also in that they may retain some of the informative value of either extreme: they may be somewhat structurally informative and some what aesthetically informative ('unified'). If it is true that these three levels are at once distinguishable and intrinsically related, some questions one may ask are: How are they related? How is our perception of a set of words arranged in a certain cadence and with breaks visually or aurally marked related to our perceiving in the mor attributing to them a certain set of aestheticqualities? How do we go from characteristics such as 'has lines of eighteen syllables, where a marked syllable is followed by two unmarked ones throughout' to 'is tightly knit' to 'is beautiful'? In other words, how do we move from purely descriptive attributes to aesthetic and evaluative ones? Anyone may count syllables, and most of us can more or less tell when a syllable is stressed relative to another that precedes or follows it. We may likewise be able to judge whether a metaphor is unusual or not simply by recalling whether we have heard anything like it in the past, or how unlike each other the terms of comparison are. That assessment may be accompanied by approval or disapproval; in itself it need not express either ('That's a novel metaphor: it is awful' is a perfectly sensible statement). Finally, when we move to 'beautiful' and 'moving,' we are making a judgment of taste: our approval is embedded in those terms. My concern in what follows is with the move from lower-level perceptual qualities to the attribution of aesthetic qualities. I am not concerned with how we go from there to an overall aesthetic evaluation. In my proposal, I question the much discussed wisdom handed down to us by Frank Sibley. I am referring to Sibley's famous claim, defended in 'Aesthetic Concepts' and related articles, that we are never, in any art form, warranted in making the (logical) jump from the description of non aesthetic properties to the ascription of aesthetic ones. In his words, Sibley claimed that 'there are no non aesthetic features which serve in any circumstances as logically sufficient conditions for applying aesthetic terms.' We cannot, for instance, go from 'employ[s] bright colors' to 'is lively and vigorous,' the way we can go from 'unmarried male' to 'bachelor' or from 'enclosed figure with four equal sides and four right angles' to 'square.' Surely we cannot, but why should anyone have thought otherwise? Aesthetic qualities are qualities, not concepts. As an attribute, 'graceful' more closely resembles 'hot' than it does 'square.' There is no reason to expect a one-to-one relationship between base properties and aesthetic attributions, but there is good reason to expect that a range of properties is clearly associated with a range of attributions, just as a range of temperatures is associated with feeling cold. Sibley also claimed that no particular base property or set thereof is necessary for any given aesthetic concept to apply. This is because things may have the same aesthetic quality for different reasons: 'one thing is graceful because of these features, another because of those, and so on almost endlessly.' I do not question whether Sibley's claims are defensible when it comes to vases, paintings, sculptures, or sonatas; indeed, his view is compelling as a general rule. However, it seems to me that some varieties of poetry provide, not an exception to Sibley's rule - I am not claiming logical entailments here, nor do I think any- one could - but evidence for what may be called a 'defeasible guarantee.' In at least some kinds of formal poetry, there is a sense in which a description in nonaesthetic terms sometimes ought to suffice, in virtue of what we may call 'psychoaesthetic' associations between the perception of formal features and felt aesthetic qualities, for the attribution of an aesthetic quality. Accordingly, my first goal in what follows is to show in what way I think it is sufficient and to provide some examples in support of that connection. I hope that from this it emerges that Sibley was wrong to hold that unless their relationship is a logicoconceptual one, no base properties ever suffice to warrant the ascription of an aesthetic quality.
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Ribeiro, Anna Christina. Intending to repeat: A definition of poetry
2007, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 65 (2):189-201.
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Added by: Chris Blake-Turner, Contributed by: Christy Mag Uidhir
Abstract: In light of the enormous variety of poetic traditions we find around the world and across the ages, any attempt at finding a defining feature of poetry that would encompass all and only poems would seem to be in vain. What can Stabat Mater, Beat poetry, Shakespeare's sonnets, Goethe's Faust, and Japanese haiku possibly have in common? At-tempts to provide positive accounts, with necessary or sufficient reasons for what counts as a poem, often meet with the counterexamples that human creativity is wont to produce. Consider these excerpts from two twentieth-century poems. Are there any commonalities between the Georgian poet Galaktion Tabidze's 'Without Love' and the Mexican Octavio Paz's 'The Poet'? [transliterated:]usi Kvarulodmze ar sufevs ts-is kamaraze,sio ar dahqris, T-Ke ar krtebasasixarulod...El hombre es el alimento del hombre. El saber no es dis-tinto del so ?nar, el so ?nar del hacer. La poes ??a ha puestofuego a todos los poemas. Se acabaron las palabras, seacabaron las im ?agenes. Abolida la distancia entre el nom-bre y la cosa, nombrar es crear, e imaginar, hacer.1Aside from being literary texts, at first glance the similarities are hard to find. Even line breaks, a feature we typically associate with poetry, are ab-sent in Paz's prose poem. Neither is there a rhyme scheme in it as we find in the Georgian example(abca), which also combines the rhymes with specific line lengths. The passage from Paz's poem is filled with metaphors ('Man is the food of man,' 'to name is to create'), whereas Tabidze's has no metaphors (though there is imagery in it: 'the sun does not shine in the heavenly spheres'). In view of such dissimilarities, even those who are most familiar with the art form have shied away from drawing strict boundaries between poetry and other types of verbal art. Thus Robert Pinsky, a former laureate poet, says he 'will be content...to accept a social, cultural definition of poetry: poetry is what a bookstore puts in the section of that name.'2It barely needs remarking that such a definition is inappropriate on many levels; I will note only that it leads to a regress that, while not infinite, would likely land us back precisely at the doors of people like Pinsky himself, that is, poets, inasmuch as bookstores follow rather than create the categories under which they sort their books. In a recent article, Robert Pierce examined six contenders for a defining criterion of poetry: rhythm, imagery, beauty, unity, strangeness or playfulness, and ineffability of meaning.3None of these, he argues, does the job of separating poetry from other literary arts: there is no 'essential core of meaning' of the word 'poetry,' nor a 'clearly delimited entity that is poetry' according to Pierce.4While rhythm, imagery, and so forth may be typical features found in poems, none of them is necessary or sufficient for a text to count as one. Rather, he says: 'What the term 'poetry' refers to is a group of publicly visible things in the social world that we call 'poems.''5Hence all we can do is see what these things are and learn to use the term on the basis of how newly encountered texts resemble them. I will not review Pierce's arguments for a family-resemblance approach to poetry here. I agree with him that none of the features he considers passes muster as a characteristic all and only poems must have. Nevertheless, even if we fail to find a feature intrinsic to poems that will set them apart from other forms of literature, we may still be able to accomplish our definitional goal on the basis of a relational feature. I will rather argue for a historically-grounded poetic intention, one that I believe will provide us with the necessary and sufficient conditions for a satisfactory definition of poetry. If my definition is right, it will in addition provide a partial explanation for what is the ubiquitous characteristic of all poetries of the world - the use of repetition devices.
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