Tradition contrasts “cold,” motivationally-inert, “standard” perception with “hot,” motivationally-potent, emotion and affect. Against this backdrop, it has recently been argued that perceptual experiences have another fundamental phenomenal aspect, beyond their sensory aspects–perception in all sense-modalities is (at least often) Intrinsically valenced. Roughly, its phenomenal character is inherently pleasant or unpleasant, feeling good or bad to some degree. Yet, the revolutionary notion of Intrinsically Valenced Perception (IVP) requires elucidation and is fraught with theoretical difficulties. The paper aims to explicate and address (...) some foundational questions regarding the very notion of IVP: What is required for perception to be intrinsically valenced? Specifically, if perception itself is valenced, what should be the relations between its valenced aspects and sensory aspects? The paper identifies the relevant notion of IVP by uncovering various principles that express constraints and desiderata that IVP must meet. It further offers a Determination-Dimension Model of the relations between sensory and valenced aspects that aims to resolve the previously identified theoretical difficulties. (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)

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)

According to the thesis of transparency, subjects can attend only to the representational content of perceptual experience, never to the intrinsic properties of experience that carry this representational content, i.e., to “mental paint.” So far, arguments for and against transparency were conducted from the armchair, relying mainly on introspective observations. In this paper, we argue in favor of transparency, relying on the cognitive neuroscience of attention. We present a trilemma to those who hold that attention can be directed to mental (...) paint. Such attention is either first-order sensory, higher-order cognitive, or higher-order sensory attention. We argue that the notion of first-order sensory attention to mental paint is incompatible with the neuroscience of sensory attention; that higher-order cognitive attention to mental paint is irrelevant to transparency; and that the notion of higher-order sensory attention to mental paint has an apparently incoherent prediction. Via elimination, these considerations support the thesis of transparency. (shrink)

This book is the first collection of feminist essays on one of the central figures in the history of English-speaking philosophy.

Michael Williams and Keith DeRose defend their different versions of contextualism on the grounds that contextualism gives a better account of the ordinary use of epistemic terms than invariantist competitors. One aim of this paper is to explain why their arguments do not succeed. A further aim is to show that the dispute between contextualists and invariantists portrayed by Williams and DeRose is a narrow interpretation of the dispute: there are important contextualist and invariantist positions which fall outside the scope (...) of their arguments and which a full defense of contextualism should consider. (shrink)

This study investigates the role of “moral” emotional traits—guilt proneness, shame proneness, empathic concern, and perspective taking—as predictors of workplace bullying perpetration. We also test and find support for a model derived from moral emotions literature and the sociometer theory of self-esteem in which the tendency to take reparative action following interpersonal transgressions mediates the buffering effect of guilt proneness on bullying. Data were obtained from working MBA students and advanced undergraduates during 2 survey sessions, 4 to 6 weeks apart. (...) Findings indicate that moral emotional traits may be useful to consider in personnel selection as a means to reduce workplace bullying. (shrink)

In this paper, we revisit the debate surrounding the Unfolding Argument (UA) against causal structure theories of consciousness (as well as the hard-criteria research program it prescribes), using it as a platform for discussing theoretical and methodological issues in consciousness research. Causal structure theories assert that consciousness depends on a particular causal structure of the brain. Our claim is that some of the assumptions fueling the UA are not warranted, and therefore we should reject the methodology for consciousness science that (...) the UA prescribes. First, we briefly survey the most popular philosophical positions in consciousness science, namely physicalism and functionalism. We discuss the relations between these positions and the behaviorist methodology that the UA assumptions express, despite the contrary claim of its proponents. Second, we argue that the same reasoning that the UA applies against causal structure theories can be applied to functionalist approaches, thus proving too much and deeming as unscientific a whole range of (non-causal structure) theories. Since this is overly restrictive and fits poorly with common practice in cognitive neuroscience, we suggest that the reasoning of the UA must be flawed. Third, we assess its philosophical assumptions, which express a restrictive methodology, and conclude that there are reasons to reject them. Finally, we propose a more inclusive methodology for consciousness science, that includes neural, behavioral, and phenomenological evidence (provided by the first-person perspective) without which consciousness science could not even start. Then, we extend this discussion to the scope of consciousness science, and conclude that theories of consciousness should be tested and evaluated on humans, and not on systems considerably different from us. Rather than restricting the methodology of consciousness science, we should, at this point, restrict the range of systems upon which it is supposed to be built. (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)

The question of whether conscious experience is restricted by cognitive access and exhausted by report, or whether it overflows it—comprising more information than can be reported—is hotly debated. Recently, we provided evidence in favor of Overflow, showing that observers discriminated the color‐diversity (CD) of letters in an array, while their working‐memory and attention were dedicated to encoding and reporting a set of cued letters. An alternative interpretation is that CD‐discriminations do not entail conscious experience of the underlying colors. Here we (...) argue, based on conceptual considerations and consistency with neuroscience and phenomenology, in favor of the Overflow interpretation. (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)

This book examines the hypothesis of "direct compositionality", which requires that semantic interpretation proceed in tandem with syntactic combination. Although associated with the dominant view in formal semantics of the 1970s and 1980s, the feasibility of direct compositionality remained unsettled, and more recently the discussion as to whether or not this view can be maintained has receded. The syntax-semantics interaction is now often seen as a process in which the syntax builds representations which, at the abstract level of logical form, (...) are sent for interpretation to the semantics component of the language faculty. In the first extended discussion of the hypothesis of direct compositionality for twenty years, this book considers whether its abandonment might have been premature and whether in fact direct compositionality is not after all a simpler and more effective conception of the grammar than the conventional account of the syntax-semantics interface in generative grammar. It contains contributions from both sides of the debate, locates the debate in the setting of a variety of formal theories, and draws on examples from a range of languages and a range of empirical phenomena. (shrink)

Going beyond the hype of recent fMRI "findings," this interdisciplinary collection examines such questions as: Do women and men have significantly different brains? Do women empathize, while men systematize? Is there a "feminine" ethics? What does brain research on intersex conditions tell us about sex and gender?

The Montagovian hypothesis of direct model-theoretic interpretation of syntactic surface structures is supported by an account of the semantics of binding that makes no use of variables, syntactic indices, or assignment functions & shows that the interpretation of a large portion of so-called variable-binding phenomena can dispense with the level of logical form without incurring equivalent complexity elsewhere in the system. Variable-free semantics hypothesizes local interpretation of each surface constituent; binding is formalized as a type-shifting operation on expressions that denote (...) functions, & sentences containing a free pronoun are analyzed as a function from individuals to propositions having a meaning of type (e,t). Standard weak crossover effects & binding patterns in sentences with multiple pronouns are shown to submit to straightforward type-theoretic treatments that do not rely on indexation. The variable-free semantics smoothly implements full surface compositionality & requires less machinery than standard accounts to handle functional questions, their answers, sloppy inferences, & across-the-board binding. 73 References. J. Hitchcock. (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)

The At Home/Chez Soi project is a pragmatic trial that is intended to test the effectiveness of providing persons who are homeless and mentally ill with housing and support for their mental illnesses. Research undertaken in academic journals and the gray literature about the ethics of conducting pragmatic housing studies with persons who are mentally ill revealed the lack of published knowledge in this area of research ethics. Thus, the At Home/Chez Soi project had to tailor traditional research ethics thinking (...) and tools to best protect its stakeholders. In this article, we outline two of the modifications we made. First, we evaluate the ethical challenges present when participants want to withdraw from a housing study. And second, we describe how adverse events are addressed in our pragmatic trial, and how a specially convened safety committee protects participants and stakeholders. (shrink)

People are motivated to acquire self-evaluative information that favours themselves or information that confirms their present self-views. We proposed that par...

This paper argues for the hypothesis of direct compositionality (as in, e.g., Montague 1974), according to which the combinatory syntactic rules specify a set of well-formed expressions while the semantic combinatory rules work in tandem to directly supply a model-theoretic interpretation to each expression as it is "built" in the syntax. (This thus obviates the need for any level like LF and, concomitantly, for any rules mapping surface structures to such a level.) I focus here on one related group of (...) phenomena: the interaction of "paycheck" pronouns with Weak Crossover effects and i-within-i effects. These interactions were studied in Jacobson (1977) as they show up in Back-Peters sentences. There I argued that these interactions show that paycheck pronouns have a complex representation at LF; here I show that all of the observations in this earlier work are compatible with the hypothesis of direct compositionality. The key tool is the adoption of a variation-free semantics (a semantics which makes no use of variables as part of the semantic machinery). In addition to the general consequences for the syntax/semantics interface, there are two other main results. First, I provide new arguments for a variable-free semantics. For example, it will be shown that under this view the paycheck reading of a pronoun comes for free; most other theories posit additional mechanisms and/or an additional lexical meaning for pronouns, and thus paycheck and regular pronouns are only accidentally homophonous. Second, I reiterate one of the central points in Jacobson (1977): this is that the first pronoun in a Bach-Peters sentence is indeed a paycheck pronoun, and hence nothing special needs to be said about these sentences nor does any new machinery need to be invoked for them. (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)

Public engagement in ethically laden pandemic planning decisions may be important for transparency, creating public trust, improving compliance with public health orders, and ultimately, contributing to just outcomes. We conducted focus groups with members of the public to characterize public perceptions about social distancing measures likely to be implemented during a pandemic. Participants expressed concerns about job security and economic strain on families if businesses or school closures are prolonged. They shared opposition to closure of religious organizations, citing the need (...) for shared support and worship during times of crises. Group discussions elicited evidence of community-mindedness, while some also acknowledged strong self-interest. Participants conveyed desire for opportunities for public input and education, and articulated distrust of government. Social distancing measures may be challenging to implement and sustain due to strains on family resources and lack of trust in government. (shrink)

Ferrara, Jacobson, and their colleagues illuminate how community schools become a comprehensive, place-based strategy that both supports high-quality teaching and learning and addresses out-of-school barriers to success.

According to strong representationalism it is in virtue of having a particular representational content that an experience has the specific phenomenal character that it has. This paper argues that representationalism does not have the resources to explain the most salient aspect of the phenomenal character of pain – it is bound to leave out the painfulness of pain or its negative affect. Its central argument proceeds by analysing the rationalising role of pains. According to it, representationalism is committed to a (...) false picture on which a subject who knowingly acts so as to get rid of her pain without thereby getting rid of the bodily condition it represents always behaves irrationally – in so acting she is shooting the messenger. Thus, there can be no viable representationalist account of the phenomenal character of pain. (shrink)

The main goal of this paper is to present a theory of the most salient aspect of the phenomenal character of pain – namely, the painfulness of pain or its negative affective quality. This task involves developing an account of the evaluative structure of pain, according to which painfulness is constituted by a frustrated conative attitude that is directed towards the bodily condition the obtaining of which the pain represents. The argument for the proposed Attitudinal-Representational Theory of Pain proceeds by (...) presenting an explanatory challenge that concerns crucial aspects of the reason-giving force of pain, and showing that, unlike extant theories of pain, it successfully accounts for them. (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)

This paper presents the intelligent virtual animals that inhabit Omosa, a virtual learning environment to help secondary school students learn how to conduct scientific inquiry and gain concepts from biology. Omosa supports multiple agents, including animals, plants, and human hunters, which live in groups of varying sizes and in a predator-prey relationship with other agent types (species). In this paper we present our generic agent architecture and the algorithms that drive all animals. We concentrate on two of our animals to (...) present how different parameter values affect their movements and inter/intra-group interactions. Two evaluations studies are included: one to demonstrate the effect of different components of our architecture; another to provide domain expert validation of the animal behavior. (shrink)

an anarchist critique of Bolshevism, drawing on Walter Benjamin. The translation and commentary published as "Theories of Justice, Profane and Prophetic: Gershom Scholem on the Bolshevik Revolution" in Gershom Scholem: In memoriam, Vol. 2, Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought, 21, 2007.

a short text on the concept of justice by Walter Benjamin. The text was preserved by Gershom Scholem on 8 October 1916, the same method by which most of Benjamin's early writings have reached us. However, this piece somehow remained undetected by the editors of the Gesammelte Schriften. It first appeared in German and English in Metaphysics of the Profane, New York: Columbia University Press, 2003, pp. 166-169, with permission of the German publishers Suhrkamp Verlag. It is presented here with (...) a typographical error corrected. (shrink)