Recently T. M. Scanlon and others have advanced an ostensibly comprehensive theory of moral responsibility—a theory of both being responsible and being held responsible—that best accounts for our moral practices. I argue that both aspects of the Scanlonian theory fail this test. A truly comprehensive theory must incorporate and explain three distinct conceptions of responsibility—attributability, answerability, and accountability—and the Scanlonian view conflates the first two and ignores the importance of the third. To illustrate what a truly comprehensive theory might look (...) like, I investigate what it would say about the difficult case of the psychopath. (shrink)

Theories of individual well‐being fall into three main categories: hedonism, the desire‐fulfilment theory, and the list theory (which maintains that there are some things that can benefit a person without increasing the person's pleasure or desire‐fulfilment). The paper briefly explains the answers that hedonism and the desire‐fulfilment theory give to the question of whether being virtuous constitutes a benefit to the agent. Most of the paper is about the list theory's answer.

Philosophical discussion of emotional responses to fiction has been dominated by work on the paradox of fiction, which is often construed as asking whether and how we can experience genuine emotions in reaction to fiction. One may also ask more generally how we ought to respond to fictional works, a question that has to do both with what we should do when reacting to fiction and with what we should and should not let happen to us. It is possible to (...) delineate any principles regarding the rationality, and more generally, the appropriateness of emotional responses to fiction? (shrink)

The new art of videogames -- What are videogames anyway? -- On definition -- Theories of gaming -- A definition of videogames -- Videogames and fiction -- From tennis for two to worlds of warcraft -- Imaginary worlds and works of fiction -- Fictional or virtual? -- Interactive fiction -- Stepping into fictional worlds -- Welcome to rapture -- Meet niko bellic -- Experiencing game worlds -- Acting in game worlds -- Games through fiction -- The nature of gaming -- (...) What are the rules of this game? -- Playing, cheating, fragging, and griefing -- Videogames and narrative -- The stories games tell -- Would you kindly put down that wrench? -- Reconciling games and narratives -- Emotion in videogaming -- How can we be moved by the fate of Niko Bellic? -- My fear of mutants -- The role of the emotions in gaming -- The morality of videogames -- The problem with crime simulators -- Are games bad for you? -- On being offensive -- Sticking up for videogames -- Videogames as art -- Are videogames art? -- A cluster theory of art -- The art in videogames -- New art from old bottles. (shrink)

In contrast to film, theater, and literature, audiences typically sing along with popular songs. This can encourage a first-person mode of engagement with the narrative content. Unlike mere spectators, listeners sometimes imagine acting out the content when it is recited in the first-person. This is a common mode of engaging with popular music. And it can be uniquely morally problematic. It is problematic when it involves the enjoyment of imaginatively doing evil. I defend a Moorean view on the issue: It (...) is wrong to enjoy evil whether real or merely fiction. I develop my position through an examination of the controversially song "Mind of a Lunatic" (1990) by the Houston based rap group Geto Boys. (shrink)

This paper articulates and defends a noncognitive, care-based view of identification, of what privileged psychic subset provides the source of self-determination in actions and attitudes. The author provides an extended analysis of "caring," and then applies it to debates between Frankfurtians, on the one hand, and Watsonians, on the other, about the nature of identification, then defends the view against objections.

It is often said that one cannot be held responsible for something one cannot help. Indeed, Ted Honderich, Paul Edwards, and C. A. Campbell have suggested that it is obtuse, barbaric, or a solecism to think otherwise 1. Thus, if (contra Sartre and others) one cannot help feeling one's emotions, one is not responsible for one's emotions. In this paper I will argue otherwise; one is responsible for one's emotions, even if one cannot help feeling them. 2 In particular, I (...) will define a rather special sense of the word 'responsible', one that is closely tied to our ordinary notion of moral worth. We are, in that special sense of the word, 'responsible' for our emotions. I will then argue that my limited sense of 'responsibility' is sufficient to warrant morale valuation of individuals, and can be used as the basis for a theory of punishment. (shrink)

Introduction In recent years there has been a welcome reawakening of philosophical interest in the emotions. A significant number of contemporary ...

According to outcome welfarism, roughly, the value of an outcome is fundamentally a matterof the individual welfare it contains. I assess various suggestions as to how to spell out this idea more fully on the basis of some basic intuitions about the content and implications of welfarism. I point out that what are in fact different suggestions are often conflated and argue that none fully captures the basic intuitions. I then suggest that what this means is that different doctrines of (...) welfarism may be appropriate in different contexts and that when deciding on a particular doctrine, we need to consider which intuitions it does accommodate. Finally, I consider the issue of just how a benefit must be related to an outcome in order to contribute to its value. (shrink)

What is often called Descartes' dream problem should perhaps be called Plato's dream problem instead. Certainly it can be found in Plato's Theaetetus at 158b–c. It can also be found in Cicero and, through Cicero's influence, in much of the work of St Augustine.

Violation pornography is pornography where the depicted behavior includes unjust sexual acts, e.g., rape. In this paper I argue that it is unclear whether the enjoyment of violation pornography is bad for the viewer. My essay has three parts. First, I set out an account of flourishing. I adopt a composite account, whereby flourishing is a function of the degree to which an individual has pleasure and various objective-list elements. Objective-list elements are things (e.g., knowledge and meaningful relationships) that make (...) my life go better independently of their effects on pleasure and desire-fulfillment. In the next two parts, I relate violation pornography to each component of flourishing. Thus, in the second part, I explore whether violation pornography promotes or hinders pleasure. In the third part I explore whether pornography is compatible with these objective-list elements, particularly virtue. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that many violent sexual fantasies are not vicious. In the first part of this article, I sketch out the nature of violent sexual fantasies and note that many people regularly have them. I then argue many violent sexual fantasies are not vicious. My argument strategy is to explore what makes an attitude vicious and then to note that the vice-making feature need not be present in such fantasies and is in fact probably not present in (...) many of them. I then explore some of the implications of this finding for the nature of virtue and pornography policy. (shrink)

Philosophical and popular ethics tend to focus on the question "What ought I to do?" Is there, in addition to the ethics of action, an ethics of fantasy? Are there fantasies one ought not to have? Of course there are fantasies with horrific content. Does it follow that there is something wrong with a person who has such fantasies or that they ought to make efforts to suppress them or to otherwise change themselves? Do the problems such fantasies raise depend (...) on their links to desire and action? Masturbation fantasies are considered as well as fantasies that may emerge during sex with others, fantasies that include actual others, and fantasies that get embodied in pornography. Psychoanalytic and legal aspects of the issues are emphasized. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

In a chapter of The Methods of Ethics entitled “Ultimate Good”, Henry Sidgwick defends hedonism, the theory that pleasure and only pleasure is intrinsically good, that is, good in itself and apart from its consequences. First, however, he argues against the theory that virtue is intrinsically good. Sidgwick considers both a strong version of this theory — that virtue is the only intrinsic good — and a weaker version — that it is one intrinsic good among others. He tries to (...) show that neither version is or can be true. Against the strong version of the theory, Sidgwick argues as follows. Virtue is a disposition to act rightly, and right action is identified by the good it promotes. But this means that treating virtue as the only intrinsic good involves a “logical circle”: virtue is a disposition to promote what is good, where what is good is itself just a disposition to promote what is good. Virtue turns out to be a disposition to promote virtue. As Hastings Rashdall notes in a commentary on Sidgwick, one can accept many of this argument's premises yet reject its conclusion. One can agree that right action is identified by its consequences but still hold that virtue is the only intrinsic good. One can do this if one denies that the relevant consequences are good. This is the Stoic view: certain states are “preferred”, and thus supply the criterion of right action, but are not themselves intrinsically good. (shrink)

Here I defend response moralism, the view that some emotional responses to fi ctions are morally right, and others morally wrong, from the objection that responses to merely fi ctional characters and events cannot be morally evaluated. I defend the view that emotional responses to fi ctions can be morally evaluated only to the extent that said responses are responses to real people and events.

Noel Carroll, film scholar and philosopher, offers the first serious look at the aesthetics of horror. In this book he discusses the nature and narrative structures of the genre, dealing with horror as a "transmedia" phenomenon. A fan and serious student of the horror genre, Carroll brings to bear his comprehensive knowledge of obscure and forgotten works, as well as of the horror masterpieces. Working from a philosophical perspective, he tries to account for how people can find pleasure in having (...) their wits scared out of them. What, after all, are those "paradoxes of the heart" that make us want to be horrified? (shrink)

Noel Carroll, film scholar and philosopher, offers the first serious look at the aesthetics of horror. In this book he discusses the nature and narrative structures of the genre, dealing with horror as a "transmedia" phenomenon. A fan and serious student of the horror genre, Carroll brings to bear his comprehensive knowledge of obscure and forgotten works, as well as of the horror masterpieces. Working from a philosophical perspective, he tries to account for how people can find pleasure in having (...) their wits scared out of them. What, after all, are those "paradoxes of the heart" that make us want to be horrified? (shrink)

Written with clarity, wit, and rigor, _The Philosophy of Art_ provides an incisive account of the core topics in the field. The first volume in the new _Foundations of the Philosophy of the Arts_ series, designed to provide crisp introductions to the fundamental general questions about art, as well as to questions about the several arts. Presents a clear and insightful introduction to central topics and on-going debates in the philosophy of art. Eight sections cover a wide spectrum of topics (...) such as the interpretation of art, the relation between art and moral values, and the expression and arousal of emotion through art. Pedagogical features include full-color illustrations, vibrant examples, thought-provoking discussion questions and helpful suggested readings. (shrink)

Sexual fantasy is a non-perceptual thought that is sexually arousing. It has several paradigmatic features. The structure of a fantasy involves an agent taking pleasure in an object that is often a visual depiction of an event. The fantasy is under the agent’s control and has a semantic content. Since mere sexual fantasizing about someone respects the individual who are depicted in the fantasy, the rightness of a sexual fantasy depends on whether consequentialism is true and, if so, whether the (...) particular fantasy brings about better results an alternative activities. Sexual fantasies can be intrinsically good or bad depending on whether the pleasure is malicious and whether the fantasy contains a false statement. The vast majority are not intrinsically bad since they neither involve an unfitting attitude toward something that is itself bad nor commit the subject to a falsity. Hence, if one rejects consequentialism, then most sexual fantasies, including many of the most violent ones, are neither wrong nor intrinsically bad. (shrink)

“The Matrix is a computer-generated dreamworld built to keep us under control” Morpheus, early in The Matrix. “ In dreaming, you are not only out of control, you don’t even know it…I was completely duped again and again the minute my pons, my amygdala, my perihippocampal cortex, my anterior cingulate, my visual association and parietal opercular cortices were revved up and my dorsolateral prefrontal cortex was muffled” ” J. Allan Hobson, The Dream Drugstore, p.64 The Matrix is an exercise in (...) ambivalence, and at the very heart of that ambivalence lies the Dream. In our dreams, we are not in control. Real dreaming, unlike many popular philosophers’ fictions, is an altered state, closely related to the states induced by chemical manipulations such as the use of (certain) medical or recreational drugs. The dreaming brain is not like the wakeful brain. Normal sensory input is blocked, attentional capacities are impaired or lost, memory is distorted, reasoning and logic are weakened, narratives run wild, self-reflection is dampened or destroyed, emotion and instinct are hyperstimulated, and forms of ‘top-down’ willed control and decision-making diluted and easily overwhelmed. (shrink)