According to Martha Nussbaum, objectification is essentially a form of instrumentalization or use. I argue that this instrumentalization account fails to capture the distinctive harms and wrongs of sexual objectification, because it does not explain the relationship between instrumentalization and the processes of social stereotyping that make it possible. I develop an imposition account of sexual objectification that provides such an explanation and, therefore, should be preferred over the instrumentalization account. It draws on a contrast between imposition (...) and self-presentation and explains why sexual objectification, understood as the imposition of sex object status on women, is harmful and wrong. (shrink)

Sexual objectification, in the broadest terms, involves treating people as things. Philosophers have offered different accounts of what, more precisely, this involves. According to the conjoint view of Catherine Mackinnon and Sally Haslanger, sexual objectification is necessarily morally objectionable. According to Martha Nussbaum, it is not: there can be benign instances of it, in the course of a healthy sexual relationship, for instance. This is taken to be a serious disagreement, both by Nussbaum and by recent commentators such (...) as Lina Papadaki. However it isn't a serious disagreement, for the two theories have different aims and methodology, and are not rivals. They both could be apt, simultaneously. (shrink)

Objectification is a foundational concept in feminist theory, used to analyze such disparate social phenomena as sex work, representation of women's bodies, and sexual harassment. However, there has been an increasing trend among scholars of rejecting and re-evaluating the philosophical assumptions which underpin it. In this work, Cahill suggests an abandonment of the notion of objectification, on the basis of its dependence on a Kantian ideal of personhood. Such an ideal fails to recognize sufficiently the role the body (...) plays in personhood, and thus results in an implicit vilification of the body and sexuality. The problem with the phenomena associated with objectification is not that they render women objects, and therefore not-persons, but rather that they construct feminine subjectivity and sexuality as wholly derivative of masculine subjectivity and sexuality. Women, in other words, are not objectified as much as they are derivatized, turned into a mere reflection or projection of the other. Cahill argues for an ethics of materiality based upon a recognition of difference, thus working toward an ethics of sexuality that is decidedly ­and simultaneously ­incarnate and intersubjective. (shrink)

Objectification involves treating someone as a thing. The role of images in perpetuating objectification has been discussed by feminist philosophers. However, the precise effect that images have on an individual's visual system is seldom explored. Kathleen Stock’s work is an exception—she describes certain images of women as causing viewers to develop an objectifying ‘gestalt’ which is then projected onto real-life women. However, she doesn’t specify the level of visual processing at which objectification occurs. In this paper, I (...) propose that images can affect a viewer's early visual system. I will argue that if a viewer is exposed to a lot of images that depict women as sexual objects, this will bias their early visual selection mechanisms in a way that can result in an objectifying way of seeing. This is an important contribution to work on objectification as it incorporates empirical studies on vision and findings from philosophy of mind. It also examines some of the epistemic and moral consequences of objectification occurring at this early visual stage. (shrink)

This chapter defends a theory of objectification, conceiving of it as a species of what aestheticians have called ‘seeing‐as’, and more specifically, a kind of seeing‐as which to some degree is insensitive to the mind or mental aspects. An advantage of this view is that it covers both sexual and racial objectification, and can also explain how photographic images can objectify their subjects: namely, by encouraging the viewer to view in a way insensitive to the mind or mental (...) aspects of the subject. It also explains in what context objectification to can be harmless. This view is discussed in relation to several others. (shrink)

Sexual objectification is a common theme in contemporary feminist theory. It has been associated with the work of the anti-pornography feminists Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, and, more recently, with the work of Martha Nussbaum. Interestingly, these feminists' views on objectification have their foundations in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Fully comprehending contemporary discussions of sexuality and objectification, therefore, requires a close and careful analysis of Kant's own theory of objectification. In this paper, I provide such (...) an analysis. I explain what is involved, for Kant, in the process of objectification, what it really means for a person to be an object (what Kant calls an `object of appetite'), and finally deal with his reasons for thinking that marriage can provide the solution to the problem of sexual objectification. I then proceed to some contemporary feminist discussions on sexual objectification, showing how influential Kant's ideas have been for contemporary feminist thinkers MacKinnon, Dworkin, and Nussbaum. My analysis of these feminists' work focuses on the striking similarities, as well as the important differences, that exist between their views and Kant's views on what objectification is, how it is caused, and how it can be eliminated. (shrink)

Objectification is a notion central to contemporary feminist theory. It has famously been associated with the work of anti-pornography feminists Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, and more recently with the work of Martha Nussbaum. However, objectification is a notion that has not yet been adequately defined. It has been used rather vaguely to refer to a broad range of cases involving, in some way or another, the treatment of a person as an object. My purpose in this paper (...) is to offer a plausible understanding of objectification. I do that by focusing on the work of four prominent thinkers: Immanuel Kant, and contemporary feminists Catharine MacKinnon, Andrea Dworkin and Martha Nussbaum. Through drawing on these thinkers' conceptions of objectification, I am finally led to a more complete and coherent understanding of this notion. (shrink)

The central argument of Ann Cahill’s Overcoming Objectification is that the concept of sexual objectification should be replaced by Cahill’s concept of derivatization in order to better capture the wrongness of degrading images and practices without depending on an objectionably narrow and disembodied conception of self. To derivatize someone is not to treat her as a non-person, but rather to treat her as a derivative person, reducing her to an aspect of another’s being. Although not perfect, Cahill’s approach (...) advances the conversation about what we should find objectionable in certain types of sexual representations and interactions by helping us to talk about sex in a way that does not start from the presupposition that physical expressions of sexuality are inherently debasing. I describe the thesis of the book, how I used it in my Philosophy and Women course, and some criticisms that I have and that arose from class discussion. (shrink)

Martha Nussbaum attempts to improve the clarity of the obscure talk of feminists and conservatives about objectification in connection with sexual matters. Her discussion is a substantial improvement. However, it is inconsistent and opaque, and she continues to apply the pejorative term ‘objectification’ to activities which she herself admits are morally unproblematic and which may even be a joyous part of life. I explain the deficiencies in Nussbaum’s discussion, including the fact that she does not notice the one (...) way of objectification that seems inherently problematic, and I show that casual sex, prostitution and pornography are normally not morally problematic even while they exhibit some of Nussbaum’s ways of objectification. The term ‘objectification’ should be eschewed because it is a barrier to clear thinking. (shrink)

The paper is about objectification in and of social work. Drawing on a decade-long cooperation with a Copenhagen social workers network focused in the organization Wild Learning, and starting from an Internet essay this organization has provided, the problems with objectifying social work are discussed. Viewed as basically a wholistic subjectification, social work cannot easily be endowed with objectivity in the form of scientific standards, and the objects representing it are often like novels, uniqueness mass-produced; they can be said (...) to ideologically confirm rather than scientifically model its activities and communities. The approach to objectification must dig a level deeper. It is considered how objectifications in social work – and the Internet essay is taken as example – can be approached critically as ideological objectifications and at the same time, in the cultural-historical tradition, as prototypes with some scope of relevance. (shrink)

And this paper is an attempt to say precisely how, thus addressing a philosophical problem which is commonly taken to be a serious one. It does so, however, in quite an idiosyncratic way. It is based on the account of inductive schemes I have given in (1988) and (1990a) and on the conception of causation I have presented in (1980), (1983), and (1990b), and it intends to fill one of many gaps which have been left by these papers. Still, I (...) have tried to make this paper self-contained. Section 1 explains the philosophical question this paper is about; in more general terms it asks what might be meant by objectifying epistemic states or features of them and to which extent epistemic states can be objectified. The next sections introduce the basis I rely on with formal precision and some explanation; section 2 deals with induction and section 3 with causation. Within these confines, section 4 attempts to give an explication of the relevant sense of objectification and section 5 investigates the extent to which various features of epistemic states are objectifiable. The two most salient results are roughly that the relation "A is a reason for B" cannot be objectified at all and that the relation "A is a cause of B" can be objectified only under substantial, though reasonable restrictions. What has all of this to do with probability? A lot. The paper trades on a pervasive duality between probabilistic and deterministic epistemology, between a probabilistic representation of epistemic states together with a theory of probabilistic causation and another representation of epistemic states which I call deterministic because it lends itself, in a perfectly parallel fashion, to a theory of deterministic causation. Here I explicitly deal only with the deterministic side, but the duality should pave the way for further conclusions concerning objective probabilities and statistical laws. This outlook is briefly expanded in the final section 6. (shrink)

This thesis defends the diagnostic accuracy and political usefulness of the claim that women are complicit in their sexual objectification. Feminists have long struggled to demarcate the appropriate limits of feminist critiques of sexual objectification, particularly when it comes to objectifying practices which women both consent to and experience as empowering. These struggles, I argue, are the result of a fundamental misdiagnosis of what happens when women are sexually objectified, whereby the abstract notion of 'treating as an object' (...) is called upon to explicate the kind of phenomena which can only be properly understood in light of a more general set of social norms of masculinity and femininity. A more accurate diagnosis of sexual objectification, I argue, is provided by Catharine MacKinnon's radical feminist theory, according to which sexually objectifying acts are manifestations of the social process through which women are made into objects of male sexual gratification. One important implication of this account is that women themselves play a role in perpetuating the norms through which sexually objectifying treatment of women is enabled: insofar as they participate in the re-constitution of the social context which facilitates their sexual objectification, they are complicit in it. Although this idea lacks intuitive appeal from a feminist perspective, I argue that understanding the nature of the contribution women make to perpetuating their objectification enables a better understanding of what practices of resistance are necessary for effectively combatting the sexual objectification of women. I defend the explanatory power of the complicity account of objectification in light of two pressing debates in contemporary feminist philosophy: the question of how women can disidentify from femininity given the strong attachments they develop to it, and the question of how feminism can continue to appeal to the motif of solidarity considering the anti-essentialist commitments of recent feminist theory. (shrink)

The problem of philosophical introductions - or, rather, introductions to the works of philosophers - is notorious. Generally, they fall into three categories. The first type are those which are no introduction at all in any but the most attenuated sense … Hegel’s introduction to The Phenomenology, Merleau-Ponty’s introduction to his Phenomenology of Perception, Husserl’s introduction to his Logical Investigations, or even Ideas, which is subtitled “Introduction to Pure Phenomenology.” Introductions of this sort have often attained the status of philosophic (...) texts in their own right as is the case with the now often discussed first introduction to Kant’s Critique of Judgment. (shrink)

This article centres around objectification. It offers an analysis of the notions that are involved in this phenomenon, their moral wrongness, as well as the connections that exist between them. Martha Nussbaum has suggested that seven notions are involved in objectification: instrumentality, denial of autonomy, inertness, fungibility, violability, ownership, and denial of subjectivity. She espouses the view that the instrumentalisation of human beings is especially problematic as compared to the other ways in which we can treat human beings (...) as objects . In this paper, I argue against the view that instrumentalisation should be thought of as more suspicious from a moral point of view than the rest of the ways in which people can be treated as objects. Singling out extreme instrumentality for being especially problematic might lead us to underestimate the wrongness involved in the other ways of treating human beings as objects, and can therefore potentially distort our understanding of what, more generally, is wrong with objectifying human beings. (shrink)

This entry considers the question “What is objectification?” After preliminary remarks about different methodological approaches, several possible answers, or groups of answers, are introduced, separated out in terms of broad themes. Each is situated in relation to historical and more contemporary authors. These themes are: objectification as instrumentalization; objectification as reduction to the body; objectification as negation of subjectivity or agency; objectification as naturalization. Objectification is considered in relation to both sexual and racial contexts. (...) Finally, these themes are discussed in relation to the wider category of “mind suppression,” and its relation to objectification in the familiar context of imagery. (shrink)

It is now a platitude that sexual objectification is wrong. As is often pointed out, however, some objectification seems morally permissible and even quite appealing—as when lovers are so inflamed by passion that they temporarily fail to attend to the complexity and humanity of their partners. Some, such as Nussbaum, have argued that what renders objectification benign is the right sort of relationship between the participants; symmetry, mutuality, and intimacy render objectification less troubling. On this line (...) of thought, pornography, prostitution, and some kinds of casual sex are inherently morally suspect. I argue against this view: what matters is simply respect for autonomy, and whether the objectification is consensual. Intimacy, I explain, can make objectification more morally worrisome rather than less, and symmetry and mutuality are not relevant. The proper political and social context, however, is crucial, since only in its presence can consent be genuine. I defend the consent account against the objection that there is something paradoxical in consenting to objectification, and I conclude that given the right background conditions, there is nothing wrong with anonymous, one-sided, or just-for-pleasure kinds of sexual objectification. (shrink)

Aims and Objectives. This article uses the concept of embodiment to demonstrate a conceptual approach to applied phenomenology. -/- Background. Traditionally, qualitative researchers and healthcare professionals have been taught phenomenological methods, such as the epoché, reduction, or bracketing. These methods are typically construed as a way of avoiding biases so that one may attend to the phenomena in an open and unprejudiced way. However, it has also been argued that qualitative researchers and healthcare professionals can benefit from phenomenology’s well-articulated theoretical (...) framework, which consists of core concepts, such as selfhood, empathy, temporality, spatiality, affectivity, and embodiment. -/- Design. This is a discursive article that demonstrates a conceptual approach to applied phenomenology. -/- Method. To outline and explain this approach to applied phenomenology, the Discussion section walks the reader through four stages of phenomenology, which progress incrementally from the most theoretical to the most practical. -/- Discussion. Part one introduces the philosophical concept of embodiment, which can be applied broadly to any human subject. Part two shows how philosophically trained phenomenologists use the concept of embodiment to describe general features of illness and disability. Part three illustrates how the phenomenological concept of embodiment can inform empirical qualitative studies and reflects on the challenges of integrating philosophy and qualitative research. Part four turns to phenomenology’s application in clinical practice and outlines a workshop model that guides clinicians through the process of using phenomenological concepts to better understand patient experience. -/- Conclusion and Relevance to Clinical Practice. A conceptual approach to applied phenomenology provides a valuable alternative to traditional methodological approaches. Phenomenological concepts provide a foundation for better understanding patient experience in both qualitative health research and clinical practice, and therefore provide resources for enhancing patient care. (shrink)

The weak objectification of physical properties is shown to yield the same probabilistic implications as strong objectification and can therefore be refuted on the basis of suitable interference experiments. An alternative test of hypothetical objectification statements, as they occur in the EPR experiment, is based on joint probabilities and the ensuing Bell inequalities. Quantum mechanics turns out to be partially compatible with Bell's inequalities even in cases where weak objectification is excluded by interference.

Shearmur argues for the importance of Popper’s ideas about World 3, and against the idea that they should be re-interpreted in social terms. However, he also argues for the importance of Popper’s ideas about methodological rules—and that these may be given a partially social interpretation. The content of our ideas may in consequence differ from what we take it to be, as a consequence of our institutions and practices operating as methodological rules. He also explores related ideas about the interplay (...) between World 3 and social factors in connection with Darnton’s ideas about the book and work that has built on it, and related issues about the public sphere and the problem of effective deliberative feedback on public policy. (shrink)

Stigmatization associated with the coronavirus disease 2019 is expected to be a complex issue and to extend into the later phases of the pandemic, which impairs social cohesion and relevant individuals' well-being. Identifying contributing factors and learning their roles in the stigmatization process may help tackle the problem. This study quantitatively assessed the severity of stigmatization against three different groups of people: people from major COVID-19 outbreak sites, those who had been quarantined, and healthcare workers; explored the factors associated with (...) stigmatization within the frameworks of self-categorization theory and core social motives; and proposed solutions to resolve stigma. The cross-sectional online survey was carried out between April 21 and May 7, 2020, using a convenience sample, which yielded 1,388 valid responses. Employing data analysis methods like multivariate linear regression and moderation analysis, this study yields some main findings: those from major COVID-19 outbreak sites received the highest level of stigma; factors most closely associated with stigmatization, in descending order, are objectification and epidemic proximity in an autonomic aspect and fear of contracting COVID-19 in a controllable aspect; and superordinate categorization is a buffering moderator in objectification–stigmatization relationship. These findings are important for further understanding COVID-19-related stigma, and they can be utilized to develop strategies to fight against relevant discrimination and bias. Specifically, reinforcing superordinate categorization by cultivating common in-group identity, such as volunteering and donating for containment of the pandemic, could reduce objectification and, thus, alleviate stigma. (shrink)

Within The Doctrine of Right in The Metaphysics of Morals Kant deals with the social institution of household, the Domestic Society, next to Property Right and Contract Right as part of the Private Right. The juridical problem to solve is the question to what extent human beings can be entitled to dispose persons as a “belonging” at all. This problem of Reification insistently arises with regard to the relation of partners in a marriage: According to Kant, Sexuality as a consumption (...) by which human beings make use of themselves as of things is reconcilable with the dignity of humanity only under the condition of marriage. By marrying, persons acquire one another reciprocally, so that they aren't in an external relation to one another any more. However, in contrast to this strict juridical reciprocity of the sexes in a marriage there is no corresponding equality concerning the regime of the household. Hence, with his anthropology of the sexes Kant unintentionally implements teleological patterns of argumentation into the Right of pure practical reason. (shrink)

This essay discusses Rae Langton’s recent collection of essays, Sexual Solipsism: Philosophical Essays on Pornography and Objectification. After introducing some of the major themes of the collection, I raise questions about two of the central concepts in the book. The first question has to do with Langton’s notion of subordination. I ask why she takes pornography to be a subordinating speech act, rather than a subordinating practice, and argue that the latter view has several advantages. The remaining questions have (...) to do with Langton’s notion of objectification. Looking first at the moral dimension of objectification, I raise some concerns about Langton’s strategy for distinguishing instances of objectification from non-instances. Then, turning to Langton’s discussion of the epistemic dimension of objectification, I ask under what circumstances certain belief-forming mechanisms, such as desire-driven projection, are objectifying, on her view. (shrink)

John Mackie’s moral error theory is so closely associated in people’s minds with his arguments from relativity and from queerness that one might overlook the fact that there may be numerous other, and possibly better, ways of establishing that metaethical position. Perhaps, indeed, there are even further resources for arguing for a moral error theory to be unearthed in Mackie’s own book. I have in mind Mackie’s thesis of moral objectification: that the “objective prescriptivity” with which our moral judgments (...) are imbued is the result of our “tendency to read our feelings into their objects” (1977: 42). Mackie invokes Hume’s famous projectivist image of the human mind’s “great propensity to spread itself on external objects,” and, indeed, it is in his book-length analysis of Hume’s moral theory (Mackie 1980) that the topic receives a more careful discussion than in Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. In both books he musters some considerations in favor of the thesis, and reveals to us that he thinks that “it is very largely correct” (1980: 72). (shrink)

Next SectionOne of the major concerns about surrogacy is the potential harm that may be inflicted upon the surrogate mother and the child after relinquishment. Even if one were to take the liberal view that surrogacy should be presumptively allowed on the basis of autonomy and/or compassion, evidence of harm must be taken seriously. In this paper I review the evidence from psychological studies on the effect that relinquishing a child has on the surrogate mother and while it appears that (...) many surrogates are able to cope with relinquishment, I argue that there are good reasons, grounded in empirical evidence, to support the view that the subsequent management of the relinquishment necessarily objectifies the surrogate mother. (shrink)

As the restructuration of municipalities could bring along new local political alliances, one would have thought about the possibility of a relevant modification of the political map of Wallonie after the «elections communales» of October 10th, 1976.Some experts had even conceived that the reorganization of the local authority was a manoeuvre of the central government, made in order to neutralize a region in which the «Parti Socialiste Belge» had the majority. Others thought that the national political strategy would prevail.On the (...) contrary, the results of the election have proved, that the «Parti Socialiste Belge» has kept its predominance in Wallonie. The other political parties have kept their position.The national strategy didn't appear neither in the program, nor in the constitution of the voting lists.The national political «variables», haven't brought modifications to the local objectives for which the main reason remains either to keep the power or to make its conquest. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer one moral reason to eschew antidepressant medication in favor of cognitive therapy, all other things being equal: taking antidepressants can be a form of self-objectification. This means that, by taking antidepressants, one treats oneself, in some sense and some cases, like a mere object. I contend that, morally, this amounts to a specific form of devaluing oneself. I argue this as follows. First, I offer a detailed definition of “objectification” and argue for the (...) possibility of self-objectification on this definition. I then explain why this form of self-objectification is morally problematic. (Morally problematic does not mean morally impermissible. It means, instead, that there is a moral reason opposing the activity in question). After, I describe how taking antidepressants can count as self-objectifying. Finally, I defend my thesis against a key objection offered by Levy. Thus, assuming that antidepressants and cognitive therapy are equally efficacious, and that all other things are equal, the self-objectifying character of antidepressants is a compelling reason to regard cognitive therapy as a first-choice treatment for depression. (shrink)

The hypotheses of weak and strong objectification of quantum mechanical observables, as well as theoretical arguments and experimental evidence against these hypotheses, are systematically reviewed.

With its implicit vilification of materiality, the notion of objectification has failed to produce a coherent and effective ethical analysis of heterosexual sex work. The concept of derivatization, grounded in an Irigarayan model of embodied intersubjectivity, is more effective. However, queer sex work poses new and different ethical challenges. This paper argues that although queer sex work can entail both objectification and derivatization, the former is not ethically objectionable, and the latter, although the cause for some justified ethical (...) concern, must be analyzed within the context of structural sexual injustice. (shrink)

Rae Langton here draws together her ground-breaking and contentious work on pornography and objectification. She shows how women come to be objectified -- made subordinate and treated as things -- and she argues for the controversial feminist conclusions that pornography subordinates and silences women, and women have rights against pornography.

Husserl?s transcendental turn can be best regarded as a turn in his phenomenological models of intentionality. While in the Logical Investigations, he maintains a conception according to which intentionality is a structure of cognitive directedness in which objectification plays a formative role, in his later works the intentional relation is considered as a structure of consciousness founded on a sphere of purely subjective interiority. This paper 42 argues that if Husserl had extended the scope of his early phenomenological research (...) to the problems of object formation in the domain of historical and cultural sciences, the radical subjectively oriented transformation of his theory of intentionality would have been much more difficult, if not impossible. We also argue that in Simmel?s theory of historical cognition and culture one can detect the elements of a theory of intentionality that can account for what is missing in Husserl, namely the attention devoted to the specific constitution of social and cultural objects. It is precisely the objective mediation through exteriorization and symbolization deployed in social and cultural values, and in historical time that constitutes the specificity of these objects which also conditions subjective experiencing, rather than remains dependent on it. nema. (shrink)