David Ekdahl (2023), in a constructive and thoughtful commentary, outlines both points of agreement with and suggestions for further research arising from our paper ‘Crossing the Fictional Line: Moral Graveness, the Gamer’s Dilemma, and the Paradox of Fictionally Going Too Far’ (Montefiore & Formosa, 2023).

The Gamer’s Dilemma is based on the intuitions that in single-player video games fictional acts of murder are seen as morally acceptable whereas fictional acts of sexual assault are seen as morally unacceptable. Recently, it has been suggested that these intuitions may apply across different forms of media as part of a broader Paradox of Fictionally Going Too Far. This study aims to empirically explore this issue by determining whether fictional murder is seen as more morally acceptable than fictional sexual (...) assault across different media types, and whether audio-visuality and the degree of agency afforded by the medium influences these judgments. An experimental survey study was developed where participants responded to imaginary fictional scenarios as part of a 2 (engages with fictional murder or fictional sexual assault) X 2 (in a high or low agency) X 2 (audio-visual or non-audio-visual medium) factorial design. It was found that fictional murder was seen to be more morally acceptable than fictional sexual assault across all media types, providing empirical support for the Paradox of Fictionally Going Too Far. It was also found that the audio-visuality and degree of agency influenced judgments of moral acceptability. (shrink)

A Rabbinic anthology is a compendium of all those passages in the Talmudic and Midrashic literature that bear on the nature of God, the Law, virtue, prayer, faith, sin, charity, the Messiah, the Last Judgment. It also illuminates rabbinic attitudes toward family, asceticism, hospitality, courtesy, and peace. In short, it is an invaluable and nearly inexhaustible collection containing thousands of stories, parables, and statements of the rabbis. In addition, the editors offer incisive interpretations of the material, and the appendices on (...) rabbinic texts , the glossary, and the detailed indexes contribute to make this the indispensable book of rabbinic source materials for the student. (Back cover). (shrink)

The eighth Congrès des Sociétés de Philosophic de Langue Française at Toulouse, which, I should perhaps explain, was the first gathering of its sort to which I have been, was just about as unlike a Joint Session as an English philosopher might well have imagined it to be. Many of the differences arose naturally from the simple facts that French philosophy is very unlike British and that philosophers in France are greeted with banquets, civic receptions, concerts and other hospitable entertainments (...) when they meet together in congress. But there are other differences too. For one thing, the contributions are not only as a rule very different in content; they are also different in form. A general theme is set with a certain number of sub–headings. Then anybody who wishes may submit a “communication,” having if possible at least some appearance of relevance to the titular theme–though if this is not possible, it doesn't seem to matter very much as it may be included all the same. Obviously enough, if some share of the available space and time is to be given to every philosopher who wants it, , nobody is going to get very much. The result of all this is to be seen for this year in the Acts of the Congress L'Homme et son prochain , where hardly any of the no less than 76 contributors has more than four pages to himself. In the circumstances it would have been wholly surprising if such Acts had turned out to be anything other than a mainly tedious assortment of mostly undistinguished fragments, which is not, I fear, likely to prove of much interest to any reader of this Survey; which is a pity, as it is not only the receptions and the outings that make this Congress worth attending. (shrink)

The Gamer’s Dilemma challenges us to justify the moral difference between enacting virtual murder and virtual child molestation in video games. The Dilemma relies for its argumentative force on the claim that there is an intuitive moral difference between these acts, with the former intuited as morally acceptable and the latter as morally unacceptable. However, there has been no empirical investigation of these claims. To explore these issues, we developed an experimental survey study in which participants were asked to reflect (...) on imaginary video game scenarios as part of a 2 (undertake virtual murder or molestation) X 2 (against an adult or child) X 2 (in a high or low realism virtual environment) factorial design. We found that there was a significant difference between people’s views about virtual murder and virtual molestation. Whether the virtual act was performed against an adult or child was non-significant in most conditions, whereas whether it was performed in a high or low realism virtual environment was significant in most conditions. Gender did not impact these results, whereas perceived gaming experience, hours of video game play per week, and integrity did. These results provide an empirical grounding for future discussions of the Gamer's Dilemma. (shrink)

v. 1. From the Upanishads to the British empiricists.--v. 2. From Kant to the situation in 1963.--v. 3. Related readings.

The basic principles of scientific research from the great French physiologist whose contributions in the 19th century included the discovery of vasomotor nerves; nature of curare and other poisons in human body; more.

Intuitively, many people seem to hold that engaging in acts of virtual murder in videogames is morally permissible, whereas engaging in acts of virtual child molestation is morally impermissible. The Gamer’s Dilemma (Luck in Ethics Inf Technol 11:31–36, 2009) challenges these intuitions by arguing that it is unclear whether there is a morally relevant difference between these two types of virtual actions. There are two main responses in the literature to this dilemma. First, attempts to resolve the dilemma by defending (...) an account of the relevant moral differences between virtual murder and virtual child molestation. Second, attempts to dissolve the dilemma by undermining the intuitions that ground it. In this paper, we argue that a narrow version of the Gamer’s Dilemma seems to survive attempts to resolve or dissolve it away entirely, since neither approach seems to be able to solve the dilemma for all cases. We thus provide a contextually sensitive version of the dilemma that more accurately tracks onto the intuitions of gamers. However, we also argue that the intuitions that ground the narrow version of the Dilemma may not have a moral foundation, and we put forward alternative non-moral normative foundations that seem to better account for the remaining intuitive difference between the two types of virtual actions. We also respond to proposed solutions to the Gamer’s Dilemma in novel ways and set out areas for future empirical work in this area. (shrink)

In the latest years of the 6th/12th century, two chains of affiliation of a distinctive kind make their appearance in the Muslim world, in the East on one hand, and in the West on the other: the first is referred to in the sources as silsilat al-muṣāfaḥa, the second as silsilat al-mushābaka. These ‘chains’, mentioned mostly in works pertaining to the genre of prosopographic literature in the largest sense, experienced a broad and rapid expansion throughout the dār al-islām. They are (...) linked to a specific ritual aimed at perpetuating, across generations, a physical contact with the Prophet. Widespread among the ʿulamāʾ, they become conflated with the musalsalāt ḥadīths, or ‘chained traditions’, during the Ottoman era. (shrink)

The Gamer’s Dilemma refers to the philosophical challenge of justifying the intuitive difference people seem to see between the moral permissibility of enacting virtual murder and the moral impermissibility of enacting virtual child molestation in video games (Luck Ethics and Information Technology, 1:31, 2009). Recently, Luck in Philosophia, 50:1287–1308, 2022 has argued that the Gamer’s Dilemma is actually an instance of a more general “paradox”, which he calls the “paradox of treating wrongdoing lightly”, and he proposes a graveness resolution to (...) this paradox. In response, we argue for four key claims. First, we accept Luck’s expansion of the Gamer’s Dilemma to be applicable to a wider set of media, but give a novel recasting of this in terms of the Paradox of Fictionally Going Too Far. Second, we develop a novel criticism of Luck in Philosophia, 50:1287–1308, 2022 graveness resolution to this broader paradox. Third, we argue that the Paradox of Fictionally Going Too Far helps to expose an implicit moralism in the Gamer’s Dilemma literature when compared to relevant nearby literatures about other forms of media. Fourth, we consider a range of non-moral, cultural and media conventions that plausibly help to dissolve the intuitive moral gap between non-sexual and sexual violence that is central to this paradox. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2017 Heft: 214 Seiten: 249-257.

Claude Lefort is one of the leading social and political theorists in France today. This anthology of his most important work published over the last four decades makes his writing widely accessible to an English-speaking audience for the first time. With exceptional skill Lefort combines the analysis of contemporary political events with a sensitivity to the history of political thought. His critical account of the development of bureaucracy and totalitarianism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe is a timely (...) contribution to current debates about the nature and shortcomings of these societies. His incisive analyses of Marx's theory of history and concept of ideology provide the backdrop for a highly original account of the role of symbolism in modern societies. While critical of many traditional assumptions and doctrines, Lefort develops a political position based on a reappraisal of the idea of human rights and a reconsideration of what "democracy" means today. The Political Forms of Modern Society is a major contribution to contemporary social and political theory. The volume includes a substantial introduction that describes the context of Lefort's writings and highlights the central themes of his work. (shrink)

The Political Responsibility of Intellectuals addresses the many problems in defining the relationship of intellectuals to the society in which they live. In what respects are they responsible for, and to, that society? Should they seek to act as independent arbiters of the values explicitly or implicity espoused by those around them? Should they seek to advise those in public life about the way in which they should act, or should they withdraw from any form of political involvement? And how (...) should their preoccupations with truth and language find practical expression? The contributors to this volume seek to provide tentative answers to these questions. They come from a wide variety of disciplines, ranging from economics to linguistics and sociology to philosophy, and are drawn from both America and Eastern and Western Europe. The volume is given a particular interest by recent political upheavals in Eastern Europe, where many intellectuals have been confronted with sharply practical, sometimes dramatic, choices about their role in the political arena. (shrink)

L’accompagnement, le traitement, la prévention de la souffrance psychique, individuelle ou conjugale, nécessitent qu’un travail patient-thérapeute soit possible. Pour cela, s’appuyant sur la théorie analytique, l’auteur propose un « penser ensemble » qui nécessite un décalage entre la psyché du thérapeute, qui doit entendre le contenu latent de ce qui se dit, et la psyché du patient réexperimentant son passé à partir du récit qu’il en fait et des interprétations et constructions proposées. Trois cas cliniques étayent ce travail analytique commun.

Considérant le travail psychique auquel nous sommes contraints – depuis l’excitation à la satisfaction pulsionnelle, mise en mouvement sublimée, inhibée « ou non » quant au but, avec ou sans abandon à la jouissance –, l’auteur tente d’approcher des mouvements d’installation identitaire (fonction, rôle, sexe, génération) à l’aide d’appuis théoriques et cliniques à travers deux cas d’analyse.