Drawing on 10 sets of data gathered in the General Social Survey between 2000 and 2018, this study examined whether confidence in the press mediated political party affiliation as a determinant of attitudes toward the scientific community. The study observed full mediation effects in three of five instances in which Republicans occupied the White House, with partial or no mediation observed at other points. Overall findings showed that males, White respondents, and those who had completed more years of school, as (...) well as Democrats and those who indicated higher levels of confidence in the press, tended to report greater levels of confidence in the scientific community. The study discusses quantitative results in light of increased partisanship and derisive attacks on news media. (shrink)

In this research, we surveyed 214 college journalists to assess their attitudes toward a series of ethical dilemmas. Significant predictors of a nine-item index included years enrolled in college,...

The nature and consequences of readers’ affective engagement with literature has, in recent years, captured the attention of experimental psychologists and philosophers alike. Psychological studies have focused principally on the causal mechanisms explaining our affective interactions with fictions, prescinding from questions concerning their rational justifiability. Transportation Theory, for instance, has sought to map out the mechanisms the reader tracks the narrative experientially, mirroring its descriptions through first-personal perceptual imaginings, affective and motor responses and even evaluative beliefs. Analytical philosophers, by contrast, (...) have largely focussed on the problems fiction poses for traditional theories of rationality (as in the ‘Paradox of Fiction), challenging fiction’s wider epistemic value. The result has been a theoretical impasse in which the power of fiction to affectively ‘transport’ a reader is at once often lauded (by psychologists) as a privileged route to interpersonal understanding, and condemned (by philosophers) as an abdication of the authority of reason. This chapter surveys some of the central claims on both sides, tracing the source of the debate to competing conceptions of rationality. (shrink)

The thought that empathy plays an important role in moral motivation is almost a platitude of contemporary folk psychology. Parallel themes were mooted in German moral philosophy and aesthetics in the 1700s, and versions of the empathy construct remained prominent in continental accounts of moral motivation through the nineteenth century and early twentieth centuries. This chapter elucidates the Empathic Motivation Hypothesis (EMH) and sets out some of the conceptual and empirical challenges it faces. It distinguishes empathic concern from other dimensions (...) of empathy (e.g., resonance, attunement, distress, and non-empathic concern) and examines the merits of EMH as a developmental thesis, focusing on evidence from psychopathology and attachment theory. (shrink)

There is a long tradition in philosophy and literary theory defending the view that engagement with literature promotes readers’ empathy. Until the last century, few of the empirical claims adduced in that tradition were investigated experimentally. Recent work in psychology and neuropsychology has now shed new light on the interplay of empathy and literature. This article surveys the experimental findings, addressing three central questions: What is it to read empathically? Does reading make us more empathic? What characteristics of literature, if (...) any, affect readers’ empathy? While experimental studies have delivered no conclusive answers to these questions, it has exposed their psychological complexity and constructed a more nuanced picture of the diverse ways in which literature interacts with our empathic capacities. (shrink)

If the value of intrinsic value accounts lies in the establishment of an impetus to accept duties with respect to nature and to make sense of specific feelings of attachment and affection toward nature, then these goals can be met equally well through the virtue of compassion. Compassion is an other-directed emotion, and is thus not anthropocentric when directed toward nature. It requires us to be capable of relating to and identifying suffering in another. However, basing an ethic on compassion (...) requires a hermeneutic shift in how we think about nature and particular places such that we consider more closely how time is related to suffering. Since suffering is inevitable, there are several ways that compassion might be embodied in our actions, all of which share the feature of promoting the wildness of a place. (shrink)

In this paper I attempt to develop several ways Merleau-Ponty's ontology might contribute to an environmental ethic through a redefinition of his concept of flesh in terms of a general theory of affectivity. Currently accepted interpretations of the concept such as those in Abram, Toadvine, Barbaras, and Dastur rely upon conceiving flesh as a perceptual experience. I contest this interpretation and argue that a more productive conception of flesh emerges when understood in terms of Heidegger's philosophy. The paper concludes with (...) a consideration of the normative significance of flesh by examining the role of “wildness“ within a place-based ethic. (shrink)

_From Mastery to Mystery_ is an original and provocative contribution to the burgeoning field of ecophenomenology. Informed by current debates in environmental philosophy, Bannon critiques the conception of nature as?“substance” that he finds tacitly assumed by the major environmental theorists. Instead, this book reconsiders the basic goals of an environmental ethic by questioning the most basic presupposition that most environmentalists accept: that nature is in need of preservation. Beginning with Bruno Latour’s idea that continuing to speak of nature in the (...) way we popularly conceive of it is ethically and politically disastrous, this book describes a way in which the concept of nature can retain its importance in our discussion of the contemporary state of the environment. Based upon insights from the phenomenological tradition, specifically the work of Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the concept of nature developed in the book preserves the best antihumanistic intuitions of environmentalists without relying on either a reductionistic understanding of nature and the sciences or dualistic metaphysical constructions. (shrink)

This paper seeks to propose a direction of research based upon the transformation of Merleau-Ponty's thinking with respect to animal life over the course of his writings. In his earlier works, Merleau-Ponty takes up the position that “life” does not mean the same thing when applied to an animal and a human being because of the manner in which the “human dialectic” alters the human being's relation to life. In his later works, particularly in his lectures on nature, this position (...) softens so that the relationship between animals and humans becomes non-hierarchical, but remains essentially the same: there may be no “rupture” between humans and animals, but they are still essentially distinct insofar as all non-humans can be grouped into a single class of “animality.” I attempt to show that Merleau-Ponty fails to follow through with his most radical insights with respect to the relationships between living beings by preserving this distinction and suggest some ways in which we might today confront this problem through the works of Merleau-Ponty in a way that he did not. The proposal, then, is to take seriously “dialectical” biology and develop a Merleau-Pontian conception of species based upon the interrelations of living beings and their environments rather than focusing solely on organisms as discrete units. The conclusion then considers what the consequences of this understanding might be for our understanding of Merleau-Ponty's ontology in general. (shrink)

This essay elaborates the meaning of Merleau-Ponty’s conception of life as “a power to invent the visible” by differentiating it from Heidegger’s claim, in The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, that the essence of humanity is to be world-forming. By considering how history and language influence conceptions of life, the essay argues that the various forms of animal life are structurally similar to human life, while at the same time are different insofar as different species exhibit distinct ways of living their (...) bodies. Thus, one can maintain a metaphysical continuity between different bodies, while ensuring their difference and specificity. (shrink)

This essay uses Foucault’s views on time and ethics in order to reconceptualize the domination of nature in terms of the imposition of an inflexible order upon a place rather than in the more conventional sense in environmental studies of reducing nature to a use object for humanity. I then propose a means of resisting that domination by examining how friendship might be employed as an ethical ideal in our relationship to nature.

The discussion of environmental aesthetics as it relates to ethics has primarily been concerned with how to harmonize aesthetic judgments of nature’s beauty with ecological judgments of nature’s health. This discussion brings to our attention the need for new perceptual norms for the experience of nature. Hence, focusing exclusively on the question of whether a work of “environmental art” is good or bad for the ecological health of a system occludes the important role such works can play in formulating new (...) perceptual norms and metaphors for nature. To illustrate this point, the work of sculptor Andy Goldsworthy presents us with a different perception of time that is ethically useful. (shrink)

Dissatisfied with relatively anemic views that in the last thirty years have come to be known as virtue epistemology, we urge the adoption of a robust form of Aristotelianism about the intellect, which we call virtuoso epistemology. We transform virtue into virtuosity by emphasizing persons over principles, expertise over method, and extraordinary achievement over routine performance. While scattered elements of our view can be found in the current literature, none is quite so radical and transformative as ours. We briefly survey (...) the current work in virtue epistemology, point to the failures of this approach, outline the distinctive characteristics of virtuoso epistemology, craft an epitome of the epistemic virtuoso, and conclude with a gesture at the various research programs our approach entails. (shrink)

While the HVTN 505 trial showed no overall efficacy of the tested vaccine to prevent HIV infection over placebo, markers measuring immune response to vaccination were strongly correlated with infection. This finding generated the hypothesis that some marker-defined vaccinated subgroups were partially protected whereas others had their risk increased. This hypothesis can be assessed using the principal stratification framework (Frangakis and Rubin, 2002) for studying treatment effect modification by an intermediate response variable, using methods in the sub-field of principal surrogate (...) (PS) analysis that studies multiple principal strata. Unfortunately, available methods for PS analysis require an augmented study design not available in HVTN 505, and make untestable structural risk assumptions, motivating a need for more robust PS methods. Fortunately, another sub-field of principal stratification, survivor average causal effect (SACE) analysis (Rubin, 2006) – which studies effects in a single principal stratum – provides many methods not requiring an augmented design and making fewer assumptions. We show how, for a binary intermediate response variable, methods developed for SACE analysis can be adapted to PS analysis, providing new and more robust PS methods. Application to HVTN 505 supports that the vaccine partially protected individuals with vaccine-induced T-cells expressing certain combinations of functions. (shrink)

Is the tonal ordering of music, and the order of European triadic tonality in particular, the developed manifestation of an essential musical structure—a structure naturally suited to our human capacity to organize sounds musically? Historically and geographically, triadic tonality is a highly local phenomenon, limited to music beginning in the mid-seventeenth century and, until the nineteenth century, almost wholly confined to the Western European musical tradition. Some theorists accordingly regard tonality as a dispensable aesthetic convention—and one which, moreover, has had (...) its day. For many listeners, however, works within this tradition possess a distinctive ability to embody musical movement and expression. This paper examines Roger Scruton's defense of tonality as developed in the European common practice period. I examine his reasons for supposing that tonality is an ineliminable feature of sounds heard and understood as music. Those reasons, I conclude, are inconclusive; on their own they do not show that tonality either will or should persist as an authoritative musical order. Triadic tonality has, at best, an uncertain future. (shrink)

Progressive family policy regimes typically aim to promote and protect women’s opportunities to participate in the workforce. These policies offer significant benefits to affluent, two-parent households. A disproportionate number of low-income and impoverished families, however, are headed by single mothers. How responsive are such policies to the objectives of these mothers and the needs of their children? This chapter argues that one-size-fits-all family policy regimes often fail the most vulnerable household and contribute to intergenerational poverty in two ways: by denying (...) at-risk children adequate parenting, and by undermining their mothers’ legitimate interest in nurturing and caring for their own children. The capabilities of these mothers and the well-being of their children are better served by policies which recognise maternal caregiving as a productive and valuable occupation meriting equal respect and social support. (shrink)

(No abstract is available for this citation).

Alison Denham examines the ways in which our engagement with literary art, and metaphorical discourse in particular, informs our moral beliefs. She considers to what extent moral and metaphorical discourses are capable of truth or falsehood, warrant or justification, and how it is that we understand these discourses. This vital new study offers a fresh view of the nature of the moral and the metaphorical, and the relations between art and morality.

Abstract This chapter addresses the meta-ethical and psychological implications of Murdoch’s epistemic internalism—her claim that moral responsiveness is a condition of reliable and accurate moral evaluations. Part 1 examines Murdoch’s view that moral judgments feature a quasi-experiential phenomenology analogous to that of certain perceptual ones. Focussing on the phenomenology of our perception-based judgments of certain aspectual properties (e.g., pictorial and musical ones) it argues that such judgments support both Murdoch’s analogy and the internalism she takes it to imply. In Part (...) 2 this chapter considers Murdoch’s internalism as a psychological thesis, assessing it in view of several empirical studies of psychopathic subjects. It argues that the psychopath’s distinctive complex of cognitive and motivational deficits supports Murdoch’s conviction that moral judgment and moral motivation are interdependent. Just as Murdoch believed, many of our ordinary, non-pathological moral beliefs seem to be the natural progeny of our responsiveness to other persons, and so inherit the intrinsic power that others have to move us. (shrink)

This chapter explores the cognitive and moral significance of the kind of imaginative experience poetry offers. It identifies two forms of imaginative experience that are especially important to poetry: ‘experiencing-as’ and ‘experience-taking’. Experiencing-as is ‘inherently first-personal, embodied, and phenomenologically characterized’ while in experience-taking one ‘takes the perspective of another, simulating some aspect or aspects of his psychology as if they were his own’. Through a sensitive and probing reading of Paul Celan’s Psalm, the chapter shows the role these two forms (...) of experience play in producing the unique form of ethical and epistemic value poetry can bear. The chapter’s argument for this has important implications for our understanding of the poetic imagination and nature of our experience of meaning in poetic contexts. (shrink)

Aesthetic transfiguration, as described by Nietzsche, is the capacity of art to alchemize the meaningless sufferings of natural existence into the aesthetically magnificent struggle that is human ‘life’. Like Nietzsche, Schopenhauer assessed ‘art from the perspective of life’. As Schopenhauer is standardly read, however, his conception of aesthetic experience has little in common with that offered by Nietzsche. Against the standard reading, this chapter argues that Nietzsche’s psychology of aesthetic experience—and in particular his idea that aesthetic transfiguration invests human experience (...) with positive value—is essentially an elaboration of insights owed to Schopenhauer. (shrink)

'PERHAPS WHAT is inexpressible (what I find mysterious and am not able to express)', wrote Wittgenstein, 'is the background against which whatever I could express has its meaning'. Wittgenstein's remark is a useful reminder to all who attempt to write about the nature and the value of art, for there our powers of expression often seem inadequate to the phenomena we aim to describe. In such cases it is natural to direct attention to the 'background' of aesthetic experience itself. In (...) consequence, many philosophical elucidations of art works will make good sense only to whose who are already engaged with them on their own terms—engaged with their distinctive character and forms. That this is so is perhaps most evident when the philosopher's target is the art of music. Roger Scruton's latest contribution to philosophical aesthetics, The Aesthetics of MusIc, is guided by a deep appreciation of the background of musical experience and he often allows music to speak for itself, through musical example and illustration. This study is exceptionally, if not uniquely, informed by a wide and thorough acquaintance with its subject matter, and it is commendably replete with references to, andmusic examples illustrating specific compositions. (shrink)