Browsing by Author "Flanagan, Owen"
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Item Open Access A Naturalistic Philosophy of Play(2015) Gindele, Nathaniel CrossThis is a philosophical work on the subject of play. Organized around a handful of questions, the thesis approaches inquiry by first integrating empirical lines of research and then applying the methods of philosophy. The first chapter is an introductory one that serves to motivate the project and outline its central features. Chapter 2 concerns the question of why humans play from an evolutionary and psychological perspective. The conclusions reached in this chapter form the basis of chapter 3's ethical discussion of why and how we ought to play. Chapter 4 uses an interpretation of Jean Piaget's The Moral Judgment of the Child as a stepping stone to an investigation of how play and moral development are related. Chapter 5 addresses the metaphysics of play by critiquing extant philosophical and biological accounts of what play is before advancing a novel theory based on active engagement and frivolousness. To conclude the dissertation, chapter 6 ties together themes from various chapters.
Item Open Access A New Perspective on Sympathy and Its Cultivation, with Insights from the Confucian Tradition(2017) Hu, JingMy dissertation aims to show that sympathy, when well-cultivated, is adequate to motivate and produce altruistic behavior in a consistent and reliable manner. I do so by creating a dialogue between the Chinese and Western philosophical traditions. I define sympathy as a four-dimensional emotion—including perceptive, visceral, motivational and cognitive aspects. I argue that sympathy in its mature stage is capable of motivating people in a consistent manner, and its role in morality cannot be replaced by other emotions. In addition, I argue that the leap from an unstable reaction to a mature, consistent and reliable emotion is made through proper cultivation. Cultivational methods such as ritual practice, rational persuasion, self-cultivation, etc. are discussed and evaluated. I also discuss the limitations of sympathy and its cultivation towards the end of the dissertation.
Item Open Access A Study of Aristotelian Demands for Some Psychological Views of the Emotions(2009) Santiago, Ana CristinaThis dissertation identifies 5 mayor demands regarding the role of the emotions in Aristotelian virtue theories and examines how well some contemporary psychological views of the emotions deal with these issues. The discussion of the role of emotion in Aristotelian virtue theory draws on Aristotle's texts and the works of Terence Irwin, Nancy Sherman, Martha Nussbaum, John Cooper, Rosalind Hursthouse and Arash Abizadeh. The discussion of the contemporary psychological views of the emotions is based on the work of Paul Griffiths in What Emotions Really Are, and focuses on his division of the study of emotion into affect programs and higher cognitive emotions.
The dissertation is divided in three chapters. The first chapter discusses Aristotelian definitions of emotion and outlines the following demands that psychological theories of emotion should be able to explain: (1) plausibility, (2) psychological harmony, (3) motivational support, (4) perception of moral salience and (5) training. The second chapter explains the psychological views that Griffiths focuses on, the affect program theory and the higher cognitive view, and highlights the areas relevant to the Aristotelian demands. The third chapter compares the contemporary theories of emotion discussed with Aristotelian views of emotion by taking the Aristotelian demands outlined in the first chapter and examining how the contemporary theories handle these issues. I conclude that the contemporary views do not adequately meet the Aristotelian demands and need to pay more attention to the Aristotelian view of emotion to achieve a more complete view. I argue that how a theory distinguishes between basic and higher cognitive emotions impacts the compatibility with Aristotelian notions of emotion and how it can meet its demands.
Item Open Access After Confucius: Psychology and Moral Power(2008-08-22) Sarkissian, HagopAccording to everyday folk psychology, our deliberate goals and intentions, together with our character traits, explain much of our overt behavior. These ways of explaining behavior are pervasive. According to many social psychologists, they are also typically false. Instead, much human behavior is controlled by psychological processes prompted through external triggers that we do not recognize and over which we have little control. Once triggered, these processes shape our behavior in profound ways. Experiments demonstrating these effects are legion, suggesting that any number of elements can have determining sway on our behavior, whether it's a simple smile (which can make cooperation among players in strategic games more likely), or the chance finding of a dime in a payphone (which can temporarily increase the probability of the finder acting altruistically), or the presence of unappealing, half-eaten foodstuffs in an experimenter's room (which makes subjects behave moralistically when responding to unrelated experimental questions). Minor details can have major impact on our behavior, and our ignorance of this phenomenon should be of moral concern. This is the focus of my dissertation.
In particular, I argue that individuals can often agree or disagree on moral issues not because of the content of their respective beliefs, but rather because of their unawareness of (and thus inattentiveness to) the subtle impact of their immediate environments--and their own mannerisms--on moral reasoning and conduct. The effects can be considerable: How long we are willing to engage in dialogue; the degree to which we find accommodation to others acceptable; the creativity we deploy in finding mutually agreeable outcomes to problems; the significance we attach to any problems we may have--each of these crucial factors in moral deliberation can be affected profoundly by minor variations in our conduct and our situations. Take any social encounter: Even before we share our opinions and engage in serious discussion, we are already signaling various attitudes and even content-rich information about ourselves through cues arising from our facial expressions, posture, tone of voice, forms of address, and other seemingly minor details of our comportment. These cues automatically bias how others interpret our subsequent behavior, and thereby influence how our interactions with others enfold. Attending to such minor details may seem antiquated--even priggish--from a modern perspective. Yet the influence they exert should caution us against discounting their importance.
So I throw my hat in with a philosopher who did not overlook the impact of these variables, and who viewed minding them as a vital source of moral power: Confucius (fl. ca. 6th century BCE). In the Analects, we find Confucius preoccupied by very minor details of one's mannerisms and their impact on others. This led Confucius to motivate norms of conduct aimed at structuring social exchanges in ways conducive to achieving interpersonal agreement or accommodation. I argue that, for our purposes today, we can reduce his various norms to just two. The first is to 'mind manners'--in other words, to be attentive to details of one's own behavior out of consideration of its impact on others; the second is to 'give the benefit of a doubt'--to discount the impact of negative first impressions in order to allow for healthy moral relationships to develop.
Abiding by these norms can foster a form of ethical bootstrapping--that is, lifting or prompting one another towards our joint moral ends. If the social psychological literature is true, then whether or not any individual will be able to meet her ethical aims on any particular occasion will hinge on the actions and manners of her immediate interlocutors, which in turn will hinge on her own. In being mindful of the interconnectedness of our behavior, we not only affect how others react to us, but we also thereby affect the kinds of reactions we face in turn. The bootstrapping is mutual.
The deep interconnectedness of our behavior as reflected in experimental social psychology should lead us away from thinking of individuals as trapped by aspects of their psychology and determined to act in fixed ways, come what may. Instead, individuals' behavior is highly malleable; with the right prompts, even the most recalcitrant individuals can be moved in new directions. After all, people can have flourishing or accommodating moral relationships in spite of real differences in their avowed moral commitments, and deleterious or rancorous moral relationships in spite of substantive agreement on big ticket moral items. In pluralistic societies where we expect clashes of norms to occur, it is vital to uncover the conditions propitious to agreement or accommodation not just at a theoretical level but a practical level as well. This begins with what we have most control over: our manners.
Item Open Access Anger Eliminativism: Stoic and Buddhist Perspectives(2022) Bingle, Bobby CMany psychologists and philosophers hold that anger is a completely normal and often healthy human emotion. This position perhaps traces back to Aristotle, who argued that anger is morally good when it is moderated, such as towards the right people, to the right degree, and for the right reasons. Even though Aristotle’s position has widespread acceptance, this view of anger is challenged by the philosophical traditions of Stoicism and Buddhism. Despite starting from disparate premises, both conclude that anger is impermissible and ought to be eliminated, a position called anger eliminativism. Even so, there has been little critical engagement with their respective arguments as bona fide philosophical positions, worthy of consideration in their own right. This dissertation hopes to help remedy that lack. To do so, it offers a philosophical exploration of Stoic and Buddhist arguments. It contrasts and critically evaluates the views of Stoicism and Buddhism, evaluates the Buddhist metaphysical reasoning about anger, responds to existing interpretations of Stoic anger eliminativism, and presents Stoic objections to arguments from the Confucian tradition that anger is at least sometimes the morally virtuous response to perceived wrongdoing.
Item Open Access Desire and the Rationality of Virtue(2009) Luco, Andres CarlosA classic question in moral philosophy asks "Why be moral?" In other words, what reason or motive do people have to act in accordance with the requirements of morality? In the tradition of Thomas Hobbes and David Hume, this project defends the thesis that nearly all people have reason to be moral nearly all of the time, because moral conduct generally serves individuals' desires and needs. It's argued, first, that a reason for action must be capable of motivating an agent to act, and second, that reasons for action motivate through the desires of the agent. This view is defended against the objection that reasons for action are not contingent on any particular agent's desires. Turning to morality, the case is made that the desires of an individual can be consonant with the demands of morality in any of three possible ways: (1) moral action serves one's other-regarding desires to help others; (2) moral action serves one's moral desires, which are formed when one internalizes the moral norms of his or her community; and (3) moral action serves one's self-regarding desires to avoid punishments that one incurs by violating moral norms. In the final chapter, it is acknowledged that the moral norms which happen to prevail in a society sometimes conflict with the moral convictions of individuals. Under certain conditions, however, it can be rational for nearly all members of a society to collectively change existing moral norms. Furthermore, it is within the power of individuals to foment the conditions for collective transitions to alternative moral norms.
Item Open Access Irresistible Reasons, Immovable Minds, and the Miracle of Rational Persuasion(2014) Martin, StephenMy dissertation is about good arguments and why they fail to persuade. Besides being a common experience of everyday life, this is an old worry of Plato's that continues to motivate two contemporary lines of research. The first concerns what makes something a good argument, and the second concerns what a mind must be like to be moved by one. Together, these lines guide my project and divide it into two parts. Part I is about good reasons, specifically epistemic reasons. In my first chapter, I defend epistemic instrumentalism, the position that epistemic reasons are good reasons only relative to one's epistemic preferences. I acknowledge that epistemic instrumentalism opens the door to a terrible proliferation of incompatible preferences, but claim that this is merely a potential problem, and not an actual problem to be solved. In my second chapter, I discuss the nature of reasonhood, and argue, contrary to orthodoxy, that there is no compelling reason to accept the skeptic's claim that, because of the inconsistency of three very basic epistemic preferences, it is impossible for any position to be conclusively safe to hold. Part II is about immovable minds. Immovable minds are minds that are unpersuaded by good reasons. In my third chapter, I argue that for good reasons to be persuasive, the properties that make them good reasons must be identified, through habituation, with other desirable qualities like pleasure or success. Identifying the merits of good reasons with other rewards cultivates intellectual character, and intellectual character, as I argue in my final chapter, remains worth cultivating, notwithstanding situationist doubts about the existence of character and intuitionist concerns about human rationality.
Item Open Access Peircean Naturalism(2013) Williams, Robert ANaturalism faces problems caused by a lack of agreement about whether there is or can be a meaningful and useful conception of naturalism as a general research position. Without a widely agreed upon account of what naturalism in general amounts to there is no clear and definitive way to adjudicate disputes as to what is consistent with naturalism; the absence of such an account also makes it impossible for specific projects in naturalistic inquiry to take guidance from naturalism in general. In the following, I develop a determinate account of naturalism in general, which I think could find acceptance among naturalists because it accounts for many of the features commonly associated with naturalism. To do this, I first lay out the problem to be solved, express its importance, and explain what a solution to the problem would involve. I then make appeal to an account of naturalism developed by Penelope Maddy and use this account to show that the published and unpublished work of Charles Sanders Peirce offers, prima facie, a more determinate account of naturalism than is commonly recognized and that goes beyond the account given by Maddy. With this Peircean account developed, I then measure it against the criteria I develop and conclude that a Pericean account of naturalism does promise to adjudicate various disputes in the naturalism literature and to offer guidance to the development and application of specific projects in naturalistic inquiry.
Item Open Access The Other's Freedom: Existential Vulnerability in the Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir(2020) Wallace, HeatherIn this project, I define existential vulnerability as the idea that the meaning and value of our actions depends on other people’s responses to us. We depend upon others to make our lives meaningful. Others do this by taking our actions as points of departure for their own projects and goals. I argue that existential vulnerability is a foundational concept for understanding Simone de Beauvoir’s philosophy. I show that Beauvoir discovers the idea in Pyrrhus and Cineas, her first philosophical essay, further uses and refines it in her short book, The Ethics of Ambiguity, and finally puts it to work in her most famous text, The Second Sex.
Across her oeuvre, Simone de Beauvoir develops an ethics that integrates freedom and vulnerability. In Pyrrhus and Cineas, Beauvoir teaches us that our existential vulnerability originates not in our own freedom, but in the freedom of others. This vulnerability is painful for us and we desperately try to avoid it, often by minimizing or denying the freedom of others. It is also the basis of a responsibility we have towards others. Our actions create their situations—the background against which they exercise their freedom. In The Ethics of Ambiguity, Beauvoir shows us how we are all both free and vulnerable. Her concept of subject/object ambiguity defines our relationship with others; each of us is both a transcendently free subject and an object of judgment to others. Her ethics demand that we face up to and accept both our own and others’ ambiguity. To value the other’s freedom requires us to accept and choose our own vulnerability. Finally, in The Second Sex, Beauvoir shows us that under patriarchy, woman is the Absolute Other to man. This famous analysis depends on her existential ethics of vulnerability. Women are existentially vulnerable to men because men’s judgments create their situation; but men are also still existentially vulnerable to women, a fact they try to avoid. Beauvoir’s philosophy criticizes those who try to avoid their vulnerability. These critiques are directed at the people in power—at the people who seem at first glance to be the least vulnerable.
Item Open Access The Virtues of Intimate Relationships(2019) Um, SungwooMy dissertation aims to shed light on the importance and distinctive nature of intimate relationships such as parent-child relationship and friendship by developing my own version of a virtue-ethical approach.
In Chapter 1, I critically examine important contemporary Western theories of filial piety and argue that they do not adequately capture the nature of a desirable parent-child relationship and filial piety.
In Chapter 2, I show why the duty-centered approach to filial piety is inadequate focusing on why it fails to make sense of filial love and argue that filial piety is better understood as a virtue by showing how it can do justice to the normative significance of filial love.
In Chapter 3, I introduce what I call ‘gratitude for being’ to capture the distinctive type of gratitude we owe to people who have consistent and particularized care for us, especially our parents. I argue that the idea of gratitude for being can best make sense of deep gratitude typically found among intimates who care for each other.
In Chapter 4, I introduce what I call ‘relational virtues,’ which are virtues required for the participants of a given type of personal relationship and argue that it offers a valuable resource for answering questions concerning the value of intimate personal relationships. Next, I propose my own relational virtue theory of filial piety.
In Chapter 5, I discuss several aspects of the Confucian conception of filial piety—early filial piety, the close connection between self-cultivation and filial piety, and postmortem filial piety—and show how my relational virtue theory can defend and make sense of them. Lastly, I show how my view of filial piety is different from the Confucian view, or at least a version of it.
In Chapter 6, I discuss the virtue of friendship as a relational virtue and show how it can make sense of the nature and value of friendship. In particular, I show why the virtue of friendship is distinct from general virtues such as benevolence or generosity and why it is morally important to have this virtue.
Finally, in Chapter 7, I propose what I call ‘relational activity view’ on partiality. After critically examining existing views on partiality, I suggest a picture of how special values are transformed, delivered, and created within intimate relationships.
Item Open Access Understanding Cognition(2015) Steenbergen, Gordon J.Cognitive neuroscience is an interdisciplinary enterprise aimed at explaining cognition and behavior. It appears to be succeeding. What accounts for this apparent explanatory success? According to one prominent philosophical thesis, cognitive neuroscience explains by discovering and describing mechanisms. This "mechanist thesis" is open to at least two interpretations: a strong metaphysical thesis that Carl Craver and David Kaplan defend, and a weaker methodological thesis that William Bechtel defends. I argue that the metaphysical thesis is false and that the methodological thesis is too weak to account for the explanatory promise of cognitive neuroscience. My argument draws support from a representative example of research in this field, namely, the neuroscience of decision-making. The example shows that cognitive neuroscience explains in a variety of ways and that the discovery of mechanisms functions primarily as a way of marshaling evidence in support of the models of cognition that are its principle unit of explanatory significance.
The inadequacy of the mechanist program is symptomatic of an implausible but prominent view of scientific understanding. On this view, scientific understanding consists in an accurate and complete description of certain "objective" explanatory relations, that is, relations that hold independently of facts about human psychology. I trace this view to Carl Hempel's logical empiricist reconceptualization of scientific understanding, which then gets extended in Wesley Salmon's causal-mechanistic approach. I argue that the twin objectivist ideals of accuracy and completeness are neither ends we actually value nor ends we ought to value where scientific understanding is concerned.
The case against objectivism motivates psychologism about understanding, the view that understanding depends on human psychology. I propose and defend a normative psychologistic framework for investigating the nature of understanding in the mind sciences along three empirically-informed dimensions: 1) What are the ends of understanding? 2) What is the nature of the cognitive strategy that we deploy to achieve those ends; and 3) Under what conditions is our deployment of this strategy effective toward achieving those ends? To articulate and defend this view, I build on the work of Elliot Sober to develop a taxonomy of psychologisms about understanding. Epistemological psychologism, a species of naturalism, is the view that justifying claims about understanding requires appealing to what scientists actually do when they seek understanding. Metaphysical psychologism is the view that the truth-makers for claims about understanding include facts about human psychology. I defend both views against objections.
Item Open Access What We Owe the Global Poor: In Defense of a Moderate Principle of Sacrifice(2012) Robson, Gregory J.Peter Singer's 1971 essay "Famine, Affluence, and Morality" sparked a surge in interest among philosophers in the beneficent obligations of the global rich to assist the global poor. Richard Miller, a prominent recent critic of Singer, has argued that Singer's position is too demanding and proposed the Principle of Sympathy as an alternative to Singer's Principle of Sacrifice. I argue against Miller's view and highlight problematic features of his "daughter's aesthetic sense" example and his "closeness-to-heart" criterion. After critically examining Miller's and Singer's alternative accounts, I argue for a substantially revised version of Singer's position. The Moderate Principle of Sacrifice (MPS) that I propose includes four revisions to Singer's account. These revisions allow it more plausibly to capture our beneficent obligations to assist the global poor.