It is not uncommon for philosophers to name disinterestedness, or some like feature, as an essential characteristic of love. Such theorists claim that in genuine love, one’s concern for her beloved must be non-instrumental, non-egocentric, or even selfless. These views prompt the question, “What, if any, positive role might self-interestedness play in genuine love?” In this paper, I argue that attachment, an attitude marked primarily by self-focused emotions and emotional predispositions, helps constitute the meaning and import of at least some (...) kinds of adult reciprocal love. In this way, attachment represents a type of self-interestedness that not only contributes positively to such relationships but is also essential to them. (shrink)

We often use the term “attachment” to describe our emotional connectedness to objects in the world. We become attached to our careers, to our homes, to certain ideas, and perhaps most importantly, to other people. Interestingly, despite its import and ubiquity in our everyday lives, the topic of attachment per se has been largely ignored in the philosophy literature. I address this lacuna by identifying attachment as a rich “mode of mattering” that can help to inform certain aspects of agency (...) and emotion. First, drawing on insights from Ancient stoicism and developmental and clinical psychology, I suggest that the relevant form of attachment involves a felt need for its object and a particular relationship between the object and the attached agent’s sense of security. I then argue that these features serve to distinguish the attitude from the more philosophically familiar notion of caring. Finally, I show that recognizing this form of attachment as a distinct mode of mattering has important implications for understanding grief. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Volume 104, Issue 2, Page 474-488, March 2022.

Despite the recent explosion of philosophical literature on forgiveness, relatively few theorists have addressed the possibility of un-forgiving someone for a moral violation. And among those who have addressed the question, “Can we un-forgive?” we find little consensus. In this paper, I consider whether and in what sense forgiveness is rescindable, retractable, or otherwise reversible. In other words, I consider what it might mean to say that a victim who forgave her offender for a particular act of wrongdoing later un-forgave (...) that individual for the very same act. Examining the possibility of un-forgiving positions us to gain richer understandings of both forgiveness and the complexity of navigating moral relationships more broadly. (shrink)

Historically, video games featuring content perceived as excessively violent have drawn moral criticism from an indignant (and sometimes, morally outraged) public. Defenders of violent video games have insisted that such criticisms are unwarranted, as committing acts of virtual violence against computer-controlled characters – no matter how heinous or cruel those actions would be if performed in real life – harm no actual people. In this paper, I present and critically analyze key aspects of this debate. I argue that while many (...) ethical objections to playing violent video games seem to miss their marks, there is sufficient reason to take modest steps in order to address the concerns that theorists have raised. (shrink)

Although the word empathy only recently came into existence, eighteenth century philosopher, David Hume, significantly contributed to our current understanding of the term. Hume was among the first to suggest that an empathic mechanism is the central means by which we make ethical judgments and glean moral knowledge. In this paper, I explore Hume's moral sentimentalism, and I argue that his conception of empathy provides a surprisingly apposite framework for interpreting and addressing a current issue in practical ethics: the moral (...) significance of ultra-violent video games. Ultimately, I attempt to show that a Humean account of morality uniquely explains the dangers of ultra-violent video gaming by elucidating a direct connection between playing such games and moral harm. (shrink)

Felt necessity, or the phenomenon of experiencing some person or object as a felt need, plays important roles in structuring human agency. Philosophical treatments of the relationship between agency and felt necessity have tended to focus on appetitive needs and necessities arising from a particular type of care. I argue that we have much to gain by considering a third underexplored variety of felt necessity that I call “attachment necessity.” Attachment necessity has its own distinct parts to play in structuring (...) agency, and like its more familiar relatives, it can also illuminate important aspects of addiction and love. (shrink)

Psychologists often characterize the infant’s attachment to her primary caregiver as love. Philosophical accounts of love, however, tend to speak against this possibility. Love is typically thought to require sophisticated cognitive capacities that infants do not possess. Nevertheless, there are important similarities between the infant-primary caregiver bond and mature love, and the former is commonly thought to play an important role in one’s capacity for the latter. In this work, I examine the relationship between the infant-primary caregiver bond and love. (...) I argue that while these very early attachments do not represent genuine love, a fuller understanding of them can inform extant philosophical views of love. (shrink)

Philosophy &Public Affairs, Volume 51, Issue 3, Page 265-293, Summer 2023.

In the contemporary philosophical literature, the topic of security has been largely neglected, and this is especially true of the affect of security. In what follows, I aim to nudge the affect of security toward the philosophical foreground by offering a basic analysis of this attitude. Specifically, I sketch an account on which the affect of security is helpfully construed as a feeling of confidence in one’s ability to competently and effectively exercise one’s agency. Security, so construed, is an affective (...) attitude toward one’s agency that both admits of affect regulation and plays a crucial meta-affective regulatory role in facilitating and modulating other affective dispositions and occurrent emotions. Examining this attitude can help to illuminate both the phenomenology and motivational structure of agency and the nature of certain emotions. (shrink)

Philosophers have urged that considerations about the psychopath’s capacity for practical rationality can help to advance metaethical debates. These debates include the role of rational faculties in moral judgment and action, the relationship between moral judgment and moral motivation, and the capacities required for morally responsible agency. I discuss how the psychopath’s capacity for practical reason features in these debates, and I identify several takeaway lessons from the relevant literature. Specifically, I show how the insights contained therein can illuminate the (...) complex structure of practical rationality, inform our standards for an adequate theory of practical reason, and frame our thinking about the significance of rational capacities in moral theory and social practice. (shrink)

Addiction and certain varieties of interpersonal attachment share strikingly similar psycho-behavioral structures. Neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers have often adduced such similarities between addiction and attachment to argue that many typical cases of romantic love represent addictions to one’s partner and thus might be appropriate candidates for medical treatment. In this paper, I argue for the relatively neglected thesis that some paradigmatic cases of addiction are aptly characterized as emotional attachments to their objects. This has implications for how we should understand (...) the nature of addiction and for the ethics of attachment more broadly. (shrink)

The idea that we need our beloveds has a rich and longstanding history in classic literature, pop culture, social sciences, and of course, philosophical treatments of love. Yet on little reflection, the idea that one needs one’s beloved is as puzzling as it is familiar. In what, if any sense, do we really need our beloveds? And insofar as we do need them, is this feature of love something to be celebrated or lamented? In the relevant philosophical literature, there are (...) various ways of understanding the type(s) of psychological need internal to love and whether and how the necessity in question contributes to love’s value. In this chapter, I survey and critically analyze several accounts of felt necessity in love and advocate for a philosophically neglected perspective on the nature and value of needing our beloveds. (shrink)

Dietmar Hübner and Lucie White question the ethical justification of employing risky neurosurgical interventions to treat imprisoned psychopaths. They argue that (1) such interventions would confer no medical benefit on the psychopath as there is no “subjective suffering” involved in psychopathy and (2) psychopaths could not voluntarily consent to such procedures because they could have no “internal motivation” for doing so. In the course of their discussion, the authors insightfully show that certain aspects of the psychopath’s personality structure are especially (...) relevant to assessing the ethics of risky treatment options. As I argue, however, the particular conclusions that the authors draw are too strong. A deeper look at the psychopathic profile casts doubt on (1) and (2). In some cases, psychopaths can be plausibly construed as experiencing subjective suffering on account of their disorder and as appropriately motivated to voluntarily consent to neurosurgical treatment. After arguing for this view, I suggest that the psychopath’s consent to neurosurgical intervention might nonetheless be problematic, as their emotional incapacities might preclude their abilities to adequately appreciate the relevant risks. (shrink)

It is largely uncontroversial that to love some person or object is (among other things) to care about that person or object. Love and caring, however, are importantly different attitudes. We do not love every person or object about which we care. In this work, we critically analyze extant accounts of how love differs from mere caring, and we propose an alternate view in order to better capture this distinction.

This chapter argues against a new and perhaps more benign way of classifying Nietzsche as a political conservative. It also adds to the argument that even though Nietzsche is seen as more leftist than he appears, he is not an egalitarian. It does so by making an extended and detailed case against Julian Young’s claim that the flourishing of the community is Nietzsche’s highest value. The final section suggests that Nietzsche’s view might nevertheless be able to accommodate richer notions of (...) community value than is commonly supposed—one that, in important respects, is similar to the value that he attributes to the exceptional individual. (shrink)

Concepts for sustainable bioeconomy systems are gradually replacing the ones on linear product chains. The reason is that continuously expanding linear chain activities are considered to contribute to climate change, reduced biodiversity, over-exploitation of resources, food insecurity, and the double burden of disease. Are sustainable bioeconomy systems a guarantee for a healthy planet? If yes, why, when, and how? In literature, different sustainability indicators have been presented to shed light on this complicated question. Due to high degrees of complexity and (...) interactions of actors in bioeconomy systems, trade-offs and non-linear outcomes became apparent. This fueled the debates about the normative dimensions of the bioeconomy. In particular, the behavior of actors and the utilization of products do not seem to be harmonized according to the environmental, social, and economic pillars of sustainability. Potential conflicts require a new conceptual framework that is here introduced. It consists of a ‘sustainability’ cylinder captured between an inner-cylinder, representing order, and an outer-cylinder for chaos, based on the laws of physics and complex adaptive systems. Such a framework permits (bioeconomy) systems to propagate in the sustainability zone only if they follow helical pathways serving as the new norms. Helices are a combination of two sinusoidal patterns. The first represents here the sustainable behavior of interacting actors and the second the balanced usage of resources and products. The latter counteracts current growth discourses. The applicability of the conceptual cylinder framework is positively verified via 9 cases in Europe, which encompass social-organizational and product-technological innovations. –. (shrink)

Increasing privacy concerns are arising from expanding use of aggregated personal information in health practices. Conversely, in light of the promising benefits of data driven healthcare, privacy...

The term “emotional practices” is gaining currency in the historical study of emotions. This essay discusses the theoretical and methodological implications of this concept. A definition of emotion informed by practice theory promises to bridge persistent dichotomies with which historians of emotion grapple, such as body and mind, structure and agency, as well as expression and experience. Practice theory emphasizes the importance of habituation and social context and is thus consistent with, and could enrich, psychological models of situated, distributed, and (...) embodied cognition and their approaches to the study of emotion.It is suggested here that practices not only generate emotions, but that emotions themselves can be viewed as a practical engagement with the world. Conceiving of emotions as practices means understanding them as emerging from bodily dispositions conditioned by a social context, which always has cultural and historical specificity. Emotion-as-practice is bound up with and dependent on “emotional practices,” defined here as practices involving the self , language, material artifacts, the environment, and other people. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's concept of habitus, the essay emphasizes that the body is not a static, timeless, universal foundation that produces ahistorical emotional arousal, but is itself socially situated, adaptive, trained, plastic, and thus historical. Four kinds of emotional practices that make use of the capacities of a body trained by specific social settings and power relations are sketched out—mobilizing, naming, communicating, and regulating emotion—as are consequences for method in historical research. (shrink)

Xenotransplantation pits clinical research ethics against public health needs because recipients must undergo long-term, perhaps life-long, surveillance for infectious diseases. This surveillance requirement is effectively an abrogation of the right to withdraw from a clinical trial. Ulysses contracts, which are advance directives for future care, may be an ethical mechanism by which to balance public health needs against limitation of individual rights.

Xenotransplantation is defined as “any procedure that involves the transplantation, implantation, or infusion into a human recipient of either live cells, tissues, or organs from a nonhuman animal source, or human body fluids, cells, tissues or organs that have had ex vivo contact with live nonhuman animal cells, tissues, or organs.” Xenotransplantation has been viewed by desperate patients and their surgeons as a solution to the problem of the paucity of human organs available for transplantation. Foes of xenotransplantation argue that (...) the use of animal organs degrades the human race and should be avoided.In this paper, we briefly review the cultural context of xenotransplantation and explore the infectious disease risk of xenotransplantation. The United States Code of Federal Regulations requires life-long surveillance of a xenotransplantation recipient due to the largely unknown risk of novel infectious disease transmitted across species, known as xenogeneic infectious disease. We argue that despite being in the interest of protecting the public health, the imposition of lifelong surveillance requirements on xenotransplant recipients effectively abrogates the right to withdraw from a clinical trial after the transplantation has taken place. Moreover, we argue that a waiver of the right to withdraw should be made explicit in the interest of full disclosure, out of respect for the research subject’s right of self-determination. (shrink)

In the present research we investigated gender-specific beliefs about emotional behaviour. In Study 1, 180 respondents rated the extent to which they agreed with different types of beliefs (prescriptive, descriptive, stereotypical, and contra-stereotypical) regarding the emotional behaviour of men and women. As anticipated, respondents agreed more with descriptive than with prescriptive beliefs, and more with stereotypical than with contra-stereotypical beliefs. However, respondents agreed more with stereotypical beliefs about the emotional behaviour of women than with those about men. These results were (...) replicated in Study 2 with a sample of 75 students and 80 nonstudents. In Study 3, a sample of 279 respondents rated the extent of agreement with the same items, this time with respect to then own emotional behaviour. A similar pattern of results was obtained, although agreement rates were higher than in Study 1 and 2. (shrink)

Surrealism in North Africa and Western Asia : crossings and encounters -- Multiple surrealisms -- Surrealist encounters.

Et si l'on osait reparler d'espoir? Et pas seulement en parler, mais le vivre à nouveau. Dorénavant, l'avenir fait peur au lieu de faire envie. Chacun nourrit toujours des espoirs intimes, mais les grands espoirs collectifs sont en panne. Comment redonner un avenir à l'espoir? Voilà ce que nous cherchons. En explorant d'abord ses sources grecques, juives et chrétiennes. En suivant ses tribulations occidentales, du mythe de Pandore au siècle des révolutions, qui le révèlent tour à tour ambigu, religieux, politique, (...) continûment orienté par un désir de futur. Pourtant, dans notre monde obsédé par l'immédiat et le seul présent, l'espoir en vient à manquer d'horizon, de temps, d'action, de pensée vivifiante. Nous proposons de reprendre l'espoir au sérieux, de lui redonner sa place et ses chances, d'en refaire l'apprentissage. Contre tous les philosophes qui s'en sont méfiés ou l'ont rejeté, nous jugeons vitale cette singulière émotion pensante. Sans un espoir lucide et bien tempéré, l'humanité perdrait sa dignité. (shrink)

La question du Philèbe, ce dialogue mal aimé des platonisants, est finalement la plus simple et la plus énigmatique de toutes : celle du rapport entre la vie et la pensée. La vie a l'illusion de se suffire quand elle se fait plaisir, mais cette illusion, c'est la pensée qui la dénonce et non la vie ; la pensée est certaine de se suffire quand elle pense, mais elle ne se suffit que parce qu'il y a un plaisir de pensée, (...) et la vie reprend son bien. Si la question est là, il n'y a pas à la résoudre : dans le mélange nous sommes. Mais comment le composer? Il faut alors différencier les plaisirs, les hiérarchiser, en rejeter certains et en retenir d'autres. Mais il reste que le plaisir est, de la vie, une profondeur, un éclat, que la pensée est impuissante à récupérer. L'illimitation de la vie, quand la vie fait miroiter cette promesse infinie de délices, se moque de toute dialectique. Elle est ce que la pensée ne peut que laisser échapper, en le sachant. Ce que la pensée laisse ainsi filer n'a rien de consistant, ni même d'existant, mais c'est cela aussi vivre : être séduit par le mirage de la vie. Que le mirage soit décevant ne suffit pas à le réfuter. Le plaisir est le bien tel que le désire la vie : qu'arrive-t-il à la pensée quand elle s'y confronte? Elle n'a pas le beau rôle. Elle peut au moins tenter de ne pas être morose, ou morale, de ne pas « chagriner le plaisir ». Mais elle ne peut pas parler au nom de sa vérité propre : elle ne peut que revendiquer le fait d'être au principe d'une meilleure vie. Et montrer que prendre parti pour l'illimité de la vie, c'est prendre parti pour son contraire, qui n'est même pas une mort mais une défaite et une décomposition : telle est la fêlure du plaisir. (shrink)

This article develops a sociology of worth that blurs the traditional disciplinary divide between economic value and social values. Through ethnographic study of a new media startup in Manhattan's Silicon Alley, we examine how a new firm in an emerging industry negotiates an uncertain environment where metrics gauging performance remain illusive as the industry itself gropes toward a clearer definition of its content and contours. Faced with complex foresight horizons, new media firms must develop an organizational capacity for learning, innovation, (...) and flexible adaptation to constantly changing requirements. We examine how the clash of evaluative criteria guiding the work of cross-disciplinary project teams becomes a source for innovation and a resource for learning when deliberation across evaluative principles is combined with an organizational and administrative structure that relies on lateral accountability. (shrink)

Baselines are commonly used to enable harm identification. The temporal, the counterfactual and the duty-based normative baselines are the most prominent. Each of these captures an aspect of common conceptions of what it is to harm and be harmed. However, each baseline also fails to deliver workable identifications of harm when presented with certain types of case. Problematic cases are found readily in childhood, a venue in which harm identification is often called for. Without a reliable means of identifying harm (...) in childhood, harm cannot properly play a central role in normative assessments of parental practices and state intervention. This paper presents childhood cases in which the prominent baselines fail and offers an alternative: the interest-based normative baseline. Should the interest-based normative baseline replace its rivals and reign supreme? I argue not, presenting a case for maintaining a suite of baselines for use in varying contexts. (shrink)

In 2017 and 2018, the English courts were asked to decide whether continued life‐sustaining treatment was in the best interests of three infants: Charlie Gard, Alfie Evans and Isaiah Haastrup. Each infant had sustained catastrophic, irrecoverable brain damage. Dignity played an important role in the best interests assessments reached by the Family division of the High Court in each case. Multiple conceptions of dignity circulate, with potentially conflicting implications for infants such as Charlie, Alfie and Isaiah. The judgements do not (...) explicate the conceptions of dignity upon which they rely. This article reconstructs the conceptions of dignity invoked in these judgements, finding that a broadly Kantian, agential conception dominates, under which human dignity requires the prospect of agency. This conception is situated within the broader body of thought on dignity, and the potentially adverse implications of applying the reconstructed conception in best interests assessments for infants with severely restricted consciousness are discussed. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 9, Page 14-15, September 2011.

The aim of this paper is to take normative aspects of animal welfare in corporate practice from a blind spot into the spotlight, and thus connect the fields of business ethics and animal ethics. Using insights from business ethics and animal ethics, it argues that companies have a strong responsibility towards animals. Its rationale is that animals have a moral status, that moral actors have the moral obligation to take the interests of animals into account and thus, that as moral (...) actors, companies should take the interests of animals into account, more specifically their current and future welfare. Based on this corporate responsibility, categories of corporate impact on animals in terms of welfare and longevity are offered, including normative implications for each of them. The article concludes with managerial implications for several business sectors, including the most animal-consuming and animal-welfare-threatening industry: the food sector. Welfare issues are discussed, including the issue of killing for food production. (shrink)

O caráter protocolar desempenhado pelas matemáticas na formulação do conceito cartesiano de ciência é amplamente difundido e frequentemente reinvocado na literatura especializada quando se trata de abordar a exigência apodítica inerente a este conceito. No entanto, pouco se explora o que a diversidade das disciplinas matemáticas bem como a relação entretida por elas permite trazer de elucidação à noção cartesiana de ciência. Nosso propósito consiste, aqui, em tomar posição quanto a um debate acerca do estatuto da álgebra e da geometria (...) como disciplinas que fixam os lineamentos da teoria cartesiana do conhecimento ao exibirem o que Descartes reputaria como a aplicação ideal do intelecto. Trata-se de insistir, por vias que assinalam uma decisão teórica em favor de uma concepção mais intelectualista e menos imaginativa da ciência, que não há hesitação quanto ao papel primitivo e fundacional da álgebra se comparada à geometria. (shrink)

The concepts “dispositive” and “intermediality” emerged at the same time and are becoming increasingly prominent. In this article, I propose to consider what intermediality brings to the dispositive, based on a case study of the diptych El Otro Lado de la Cama and Los Dos Lados de la Cama, two mainstream films from contemporary Spain in the early twenty-first century. Dispositive theory has been developed in France by academics working in the fields of modern literature and theater at the University (...) of Toulouse, notably Marie-Thérèse Mathet, Stéphane Lojkine, Philippe Ortel and Arnaud Rykner. In the late 1990s, this group adapted Foucault’s concept of the dispositive 2 to the fields of literature and.. (shrink)

This paper brings together a most fascinating and under-examined body of early New World writing that belong to a genre of writing I call “the torture narrative” with the insights of Marshall McLuhan in order to offer a way of thinking about body parts, especially hands, teeth, tongues, and eyeballs, and their extensions through technologies such as alphabets, manuscripts, books, and weapons. At its core are questions about the nature and effects of the changes wrought by the early-Gutenberg era—a period (...) characterized by vast scientific and technical discoveries, rising nationalisms, explorations, and conquests—in the New World. Rather than explore the ways an early New World print culture reflects or distorts discrete historical or ethnographic facts about colonial contact, I want to probe the ways the torture narrative speaks to the conditions of speaking and writing, and therefore to the discursive and textual production of the New World subject and New World space. My inquiry seeks to understand both the violence in, and the violence of, representation at founding historical moments, but its relevance far exceeds Renaissance or American studies. At stake in this discussion is an appreciation of a mode of intellectual inquiry that is attentive to the relationship between media technologies and the social worlds they reflect and transform. (shrink)

This article examines an experimental genre of philosophical writing known as the Denkbild (‘thought-image’) practiced by members of the Frankfurt School to show how it is resurrected in the Augmented Reality installation of the artist-scholar Caitlin Fisher. It argues that Circle (2012) renews the Frankfurt School’s project of reaching to art to find a way for critical theory to bring about ‘a transformation of consciousness that could become a transformation of reality’. However, as a material and virtual artifact that produces (...) a unique circuit of exchange, the digital artwork is able to provide a sharper picture of that reality, positing community as the context and goal of philosophical thinking. Through a complex sculpting of its form, content, and image of its own thoughts, Fisher’s Denkbild strives to create a fluid, ‘disconnected and non-binding’ form capable of building what Adorno described as a ‘shared philosophy from the standpoint of subjective experience’. (shrink)

Emmanuel Lévinas et Henri Meschonnic : tout semble les séparer, et pourtant tous deux parlent de littérature, d'éthique et de Dieu.

Tandis qu'une main de femme en moi écrivait des textes positifs, argumentés, d'ordre métaphysique, historique ou poétique, l'attente des jours se déroulait dans une aridité, une pauvreté qui se répétait elle-même.

Le verbe croire renvoie à des réalités diverses et contradictoires. Croire c'est à la fois être certain, tenir pour vrai, adhérer avec conviction, mais c'est aussi, penser, admettre comme probable, envisager comme possible, et donc ouvrir la voie au doute, à l'opinion, au débat. Le verbe croire possède de multiples usages. Songeons que l'on croit en Dieu alors que l'on croit au diable. On croit à, on croit en, on croit que. Les historiens mobilisés dans cet ouvrage s'interrogent sur ces (...) modalités complexes de la croyance dans tous les domaines du champ social. Privilégier les temps de ruptures, de déconstruction des croyances, les seuils épistémologiques fut le fil conducteur de cette recherche entre "croire" et "ne pas croire". (shrink)