According to Slote's ``agent-based'' virtue ethics, the rightness orwrongness of an act is determined by the motive it expresses. Thistheory has a problem with cases where an agent can do her duty onlyby expressing some vicious motive and thereby acting wrongly. In sucha situation, an agent can only act wrongly; hence, the theory seemsincompatible with the maxim that `ought' implies `can'. I argue thatSlote's attempt to circumvent this problem by appealing to compatibilism is inadequate. In a wide range of psychologically (...) realistic cases, an agent's effective choice will be between failingto do her duty and doing it from inferior motives. Then anythingshe can do will be wrong, according to the agent-based theory,contrary to the maxim Slote wishes to preserve. (shrink)

Philosophers often call emotions appropriate or inappropriate. What is meant by such talk? In one sense, explicated in this paper, to call an emotion appropriate is to say that the emotion is fitting: it accurately presents its object as having certain evaluative features. For instance, envy might be thought appropriate when one’s rival has something good which one lacks. But someone might grant that a circumstance has these features, yet deny that envy is appropriate, on the grounds that it is (...) wrong to be envious. These two senses of ‘appropriate’ have much less in common than philosophers have supposed. Indeed, the distinction between propriety and correctness is crucial to understanding the distinctive role of the emotions in ethics. We argue here that an emotion can be fitting despite being wrong to feel, and that various philosophical arguments are guilty of a systematic error which we term the moralistic fallacy. (shrink)

Champions of virtue ethics frequently appeal to moral perception: the notion that virtuous people can “see” what to do. According to a traditional account of virtue, the cultivation of proper feeling through imitation and habituation issues in a sensitivity to reasons to act. Thus, we learn to see what to do by coming to feel the demands of courage, kindness, and the like. But virtue ethics also claims superiority over other theories that adopt a perceptual moral epistemology, such as intuitionism (...) – which John McDowell criticizes for illicitly “borrow[ing] the epistemological credentials” of perception. In this paper, I suggest that the most promising way for virtue ethics to use perceptual metaphors innocuously is by adopting a skill model of virtue, on which the virtues are modeled on forms of practical know-how. Yet I contend that this model is double-edged for virtue ethics. The skill model belies some central ambitions and dogmas of the traditional view, especially its most idealized claims about virtue and the virtuous. While this may be a cost that its champions are unprepared to pay, I suggest that virtue ethics would do well to embrace a more realistic moral psychology and a correspondingly less sublime conception of virtue. (shrink)

Philosophers often call emotions appropriate or inappropriate. What is meant by such talk? In one sense, explicated in this paper, to call an emotion appropriate is to say that the emotion is fitting: it accurately presents its object as having certain evaluative features. For instance, envy might be thought appropriate when one's rival has something good which one lacks. But someone might grant that a circumstance has these features, yet deny that envy is appropriate, on the grounds that it is (...) wrong to be envious. These two senses of `appropriate' have much less in common than philosophers have supposed. Indeed, the distinction between propriety and correctness is crucial to understanding the distinctive role of the emotions in ethics. We argue here that an emotion can be fitting despite being wrong to feel, and that various philosophical arguments are guilty of a systematic error which we term the moralistic fallacy. (shrink)

According to Cicero, “all emotions spring from the roots of error: they should not be pruned or clipped here and there, but yanked out” (Cicero 2002: 60). The Stoic enthusiasm for the extirpation of emotion is radical in two respects, both of which can be expressed with the claim that emotional responses are never appropriate. First, the Stoics held that emotions are incompatible with virtue , since the virtuous man will retain his equanimity whatever his fate. Grief is always vicious, (...) both bad and bad for you, even when directed at events commonly considered tragic, such as the loss of one’s child. (shrink)

This essay argues, flouting paradox, that Mill was a utilitarian but not a consequentialist. First, it contends that there is logical space for a view that deserves to be called utilitarian despite its rejection of consequentialism; second, that this logical space is, in fact, occupied by John Stuart Mill. The key to understanding Mill's unorthodox utilitarianism and the role it plays in his moral philosophy is to appreciate his sentimentalist metaethics—especially his account of wrongness in terms of fitting guilt and (...) resentment. Mill recognizes a fundamental moral asymmetry between the agent and others, which conflicts intractably with a presupposition of consequentialism. This allows him to differentiate three potentially conflicting evaluative spheres: morality, prudence, and aesthetics. This essay's account of Mill's utilitarianism coheres with his defense of individual liberty and his embrace of supererogation, both of which elude traditional interpretations. (shrink)

Rational Sentimentalism develops a novel theory of the sentimental values. These values, which include the funny, the disgusting, and the shameful, are profoundly important because they set standards for emotional responses that are part of our shared human nature. Yet moral philosophers have neglected them relative to their prominence in human mental life. The theory is sentimentalist because it holds that these values are emotion-dependent—contrary to some prominent accounts of the funny and the disgusting. Its rational aspect arises from its (...) insistence that the shameful (e.g.) is not whatever elicits shame but what makes shame fitting. Shameful traits provide reasons to be ashamed that do not depend on whether one is disposed to be ashamed of them. Furthermore, these reasons to be ashamed issue in reasons to act as shame dictates: to conceal. Sentimentalism requires a compatible theory of emotion and emotional fittingness. The book explicates a motivational theory of emotion that explains the peculiarities of emotional motivation, as other theories cannot. It argues that a class of emotions are psychological kinds with the same goal across cultures, despite differences in their elicitors. It then develops an account of fittingness that helps to differentiate reasons of fit, which bear on the sentimental values, from other considerations for or against having an emotion. Some significant and controversial conclusions emerge from rational sentimentalism. The sentimental values conflict with one another, and with morality, but nevertheless provide practical reasons that apply to humans—though not to all rational agents. (shrink)

Philosophers often call emotions appropriate or inappropriate. What is meant by such talk? In one sense, explicated in this paper, to call an emotion appropriate is to say that the emotion is fitting: it accurately presents its object as having certain evaluative features. For instance, envy might be thought appropriate when one’s rival has something good which one lacks. But someone might grant that a circumstance has these features, yet deny that envy is appropriate, on the grounds that it is (...) wrong to be envious. These two senses of ‘appropriate’ have much less in common than philosophers have supposed. Indeed, the distinction between propriety and correctness is crucial to understanding the distinctive role of the emotions in ethics. We argue here that an emotion can be fitting despite being wrong to feel, and that various philosophical arguments are guilty of a systematic error which we term the moralistic fallacy. (shrink)

Mill's famous proportionality statement of the Greatest Happiness Principle (GHP) is commonly taken to specify his own moral theory. And the discussion in which GHP is embedded -- Chapter 2 of Utilitarianism -- predominates the interpretation of Mill's normative philosophy. Largely because of these suppositions, Mill is traditionally read as a particular kind of utilitarian: a maximizing act-consequentialist. This paper argues that the canonical status accorded to Utilitarianism is belied by the text itself, as well as by its historical context, (...) and that this point largely undermines the orthodox interpretation of Mill. In fact, GHP was intended as the statement of a common creed, acceptable to the diverse class of philosophers Mill counted as utilitarian. Moreover, the discussion of substantive moral theory in Utilitarianism in several respects does not reflect his own view, and the work itself is much less important than it is almost universally taken to be -- though not, it turns out, by Mill himself. (shrink)

The fundamental tenet of the liberal conception of free speech is the principle of content neutrality, which Mill espoused in claiming that 1 On this view, the immorality, the falsity, and even the harmfulness of an opinion are not good reasons to censor it. s persuasion may be, not only of the falsity but of the pernicious consequenceslose their immunitys justification can be doubted. But I will not discuss these issues, on which there is already an immense literature, any further (...) here. (shrink)

In the contemporary flurry of hostile corporate takeover activity, the ethics of the practice of greenmail have been called into question. The authors provide an account of greenmail in parallel with Daniel Ellsberg's conception of blackmail, as consisting of two conditions: a threat condition and a compliance condition.The analysis then proceeds to consider two questions: Is all greenmail morally wrong? Are all hostile takeovers morally wrong? The authors conclude that there is no basis for answering either question in the (...) affirmative. While there is no cause for moral concern per se, the practices of both greenmail and hostile takeovers yield deeper and more interesting questions for the theory of corporate governance. (shrink)

The literature on the wrong kind of reason problem largely assumes that such reasons pose only a theoretical problem for certain theories of value rather than a practical problem. Since the normative force of the canonical examples is obvious, the only difficulty is to identify what reasons of the right and wrong kind have in common without circularity. This chapter argues that in addition to the obvious WKRs on which the literature focuses, there are also more interesting WKRs that do (...) not overtly refer to the advantages of having some evaluative attitude. Instead they refer to features of the object that bear on the propriety of having certain attitudes toward it. What is interesting about these cases is that their normative force is opaque. It can be clear that some consideration bears on whether or not to feel shame, pity, or amusement, for example, but unclear just how it does so—specifically, whether the consideration helps make the object of the attitude shameful, pitiable, or funny. The problems caused by WKRs are ubiquitous, and they outstrip the wrong kind of reason problem as it has ordinarily been conceived, since extant solutions to the technical problem offer no help resolving the opacity of normative force. (shrink)

Mill advocated an unqualified defense of the liberty of conscience in the most comprehensive sense, which he understood to include not just the freedom to hold but also to express any opinion or sentiment. Yet considerable dispute persists about the nature of Mill's argument for freedom of expression and whether his premises can support so strong a conclusion. Two versions of a prominent interpretation of Mill that threatens to undermine his uncompromising defense of free speech are considered and refuted. It (...) is shown how Mill's classically liberal commitments in moral psychology, ethology, and epistemology make the empirical grounds of his defense considerably more plausible than is commonly understood. This argument is especially vital because it highlights the divide between (classical) liberalism and progressivism that has become a flashpoint in the current political debate over freedom of speech. (shrink)

Mill advocated an unqualified defense of the liberty of conscience in the most comprehensive sense, which he understood to include not just the freedom to hold but also to express any opinion or sentiment. Yet considerable dispute persists about the nature of Mill’s argument for freedom of expression and whether his premises can support so strong a conclusion. Two prominent interpretations of Mill that threaten to undermine his uncompromising defense of free speech are considered and refuted. A better interpretation can (...) be founded on Mill’s claim that the liberties of conscience are inseparable in practice. This claim can be defended with modern psychological insight about the nature of cognitive bias, and epistemological insight about why justification of creedal beliefs requires the universal toleration of opinion, insights which are largely anticipated by Mill. This argument is especially vital because it highlights the divide between classical liberalism and progressivism that has become a flashpoint in the current political debate over free speech. (shrink)

Horace recommended that poets "mingle the useful and the sweet"; but the champions of an ethical function for art have yet to explain how moral and aesthetic values can truly be mingled. Their proposed ethical functions too often seem irrelevant to what we most care about in art. Moreover, we need an explanation of what art has to show us that is of ethical significance, and that we don't already know. ;The answer is to be found in the "thick concepts" (...) , which purport to provide reasons to feel and to act. Thick concepts are response-dependent, in that our application of them is guided by certain quasi-emotional responses, which they purport to warrant. These responses, I argue, are given content by their role in an ethical perspective, a value-laden "way of seeing" the world. Morality's aspirations to objectivity require that we gain imaginative acquaintance with the thick concepts of alien perspectives, without which real normative confrontation would be impossible. Fiction thus serves an ethical function by expanding our capacities of moral perception. ;Narrative art is uniquely well-suited to this task, because to give a reading of a story is to make sense of its characters and events in value-laden, emotional terms. Our engagement with fiction thus involves understanding the ethical perspectives that inform the text. This model of art's ethical function is immune to formalist challenges. Moreover, it answers the formidable hermeneutic and epistemological problems on which traditional theories founder. (shrink)

“ 'Free speech' is just the name we give to verbal behavior that serves the substantive agendas we wish to advance”—or so literary theorist and professor of law Stanley Fish has claimed. This cynical dictum is one of several skeptical challenges to freedom of speech that have been extremely influential in the American academy. I will follow the skeptics' lead by distinguishing between two broad styles of critique: the progressive and the postmodern. Fish's dictum, however, like many of the bluntest (...) charges, belongs to neither class exclusively. As an initial characterization of the distinction between these critiques, progressive skepticism claims that freedom of speech is a bad thing, while postmodernist skepticism claims it to be conceptually impossible. Both forms of skepticism hold the classical liberal endorsement of free speech and condemnation of censorship to be both naive and reactionary. Skepticism about free speech flourishes at universities in the United States and is especially well represented among professors at the country's most prestigious law schools. As legal scholar Robert Post approvingly observes: “Liberated from traditional inhibitions against official suppression of speech, the left has mobilized to pursue a rich variety of political agendas.”. (shrink)

This volume examines the implications of developments in the science of ethics for philosophical theorizing about moral psychology and human agency. These ten new essays in empirically informed philosophy illuminate such topics as responsibility, the self, and the role in morality of mental states such as desire, emotion, and moral judgement.

Alongside the analogy between maximal ideals and complete theories, the Jacobson radical carries over from ideals of commutative rings to theories of propositional calculi. This prompts a variant of Lindenbaum’s Lemma that relates classical validity and intuitionistic provability, and the syntactical counterpart of which is Glivenko’s Theorem. The Jacobson radical in fact turns out to coincide with the classical deductive closure. As a by-product we obtain a possible interpretation in logic of the axioms-as-rules conservation criterion for a multi-conclusion (...) Scott-style entailment relation over a single-conclusion one. (shrink)

Abstract It is widely assumed that the meaning of at least some types of expressions involves more than their reference to objects, and hence that there may be co-referential expressions which differ in meaning. It is also widely assumed that ?syntax does not suffice for semantics?, i.e. that we cannot account for the fact that expressions have semantic properties in purely syntactical or computational terms. The main goal of the paper is to argue against a third related assumption, namely that (...) what is responsible for a difference in meaning between co-referential expressions is the computational difference in the cognitive functioning of the expressions. ?Intentional aspects? of expressions?those features which their meanings involve in addition to reference?cannot be syntacticized, since they are individuated not in terms of any cognitive feature, but rather in terms of those properties of the referents through which the expressions refer to them, and cognitive features cannot determine such properties in exactly the same sense as they cannot determine reference. (shrink)

Drawing on a wide range of resources, including the history of philosophy, her role as director of a cognitive neuroscience group, and her Wittgensteinian training at Oxford, Jacobson provides fresh views on representation, concepts, perception, action, emotion and belief.

This chapter contains sections titled: Against Yoga Theory: A Standard Objection Some Inadequate Responses to the Standard Objection The Standard Objection and Testimony Higher Up the Scale Conclusion.

A pioneering work in the philosophy of mind, Content and Consciousness brings together the approaches of philosophers and scientists to the mind--a connection that must occur if genuine analysis of the mind is to be made. This unified approach permits the most forbiddingly mysterious mental phenomenon--consciousness--to be broken down into several distinct phenomena, and these are each given a foundation in the physical activity of the brain. This paperback edition contains a preface placing the book in the context of recent (...) work in the area. (shrink)