Since its beginnings, modern bodybuilding has been accompanied by the background issue of whether it should be considered a sport. The problem, culminating in its provisional acceptance as a sport by the International Olympic Committee, was later retracted. The uncertainty of whether bodybuilding is a sport or not seems to linger. Addressing this issue, Aranyosi (2018) provided an account to determine the status of bodybuilding as a sport that arrives at the negative answer: bodybuilding is not a sport but rather (...) a form of artistic presentation. In this paper, we disagree with Aranyosi. We argue that by the standards he presents in his first argument, bodybuilding should be considered a sport. Further, we argue that his alternative approach on how to evaluate a discipline as more sport- or art-like on a spectrum, is not a valid basis to make such a judgment regarding bodybuilding. Further, even if his spectrum was modified to enable such a judgment, again it would result in bodybuilding being evaluated as a sport. Therefore, we conclude that everyone who accepts Aranyosi´s (or any less restrictive) requirements to decide whether bodybuilding is a sport, has to consider bodybuilding as a sport or refrain from making claims about its status. (shrink)

What cognitive process allows a spectator to experience shock and surprise at a character’s actions, yet, a moment later, to decide that the actions presented onstage are coherent and understandable? Drawing upon theories of mindreading and conceptual blending, I offer a dynamic model of character that accounts for surprise, ambiguity, and dramatic shifts of understanding. Subtle changes to one’s perceptions, empathic imagination, and social knowledge—the sort of changes that accumulate throughout the viewing of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night —can alter one’s understanding (...) of a character in unexpected ways. (shrink)

Divine temporality is all the rage in certain theological circles today. Some even suggesting that the doctrine of the Trinity entails divine temporality. While I find this claim a bit strong, I do think that divine temporality can be quite useful for developing a robust model of the Trinity. However, not everyone agrees with this. Paul Helm has offered an objection to the so-called Oxford school of divine temporality based on the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. He has argued that (...) this form of divine temporality entails Arianism. In other words, divine temporality suffers from an inadequate doctrine of the Trinity. In this paper I shall first articulate the so-called Oxford school of divine temporality. From there I shall develop some of the Oxford school’s theological benefits that help flesh out the doctrine of the Trinity, and assuage the charge of Arianism. Then I shall offer an examination and refutation of the Arian charge to divine temporality in order to show that the divine temporalist can maintain a robust Trinitarian theology. (shrink)

Recently there has been a resurgence of philosophical interest in love, resulting in a wide variety of accounts. Central to most accounts of love is the notion of caring about your beloved for his sake. Yet such a notion needs to be carefully articulated in the context of providing an account of love, for it is clear that the kind of caring involved in love must be carefully distinguished from impersonal modes of concern for particular others for their sakes, such (...) as moral concern or concern grounded in compassion. That is, we might say, the kind of caring that is central to love must be somehow distinctly intimate. The trouble is to cash out these firm intuitions in a satisfactory way. (shrink)

The wide reflective equilibrium (WRE) is considered the most important method of ethical justification and is intensively discussed in the scientific community. However, it is unclear to what extent it is actually applied in the ethical literature. The objective of this paper is to fill this gap by providing a critical overview of its explicit applications. Explicit application refers to studies that, following Daniels’ definition, contain three levels, name their elements, and provide a connection between the levels. Philosophers Index, ProQuest, (...) PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus were searched for studies that explicitly used the WRE method and were written in German or English. All topics, disciplines, and publication forms were considered. Nineteen studies were found in which the WRE was applied 23 times. In the 23 applications, 50 equilibria were discussed, and 19 times it was reported that an equilibrium state was reached. The authors applied the WRE in various disciplines, for different purposes, and to diverse topics. The applications themselves differed considerably regarding the application procedure and the scope. Differences can be seen in particular with regard to the presentation of the adjustment process and the WRE criteria used. The results indicate that the WRE can be successfully applied, but the number of explicit applications is still very low. Further research is needed to develop the WRE into an established method of justification. In particular, standards are needed for adjustment and for WRE criteria. (shrink)

Love, Friendship, and the Self presents a reexamination of our common understanding of ourselves as persons in light of the phenomena of love and friendship. It argues that the individualism that is implicit in that understanding cannot be sustained if we are to understand the kind of distinctively personal intimacy that love and friendship essentially involve. For love is a matter of identifying with someone: sharing for his sake the concerns and values that make up his identity as the person (...) he is. Moreover, in friendship the friends share not only a concern for each other but also their activity, their lives, and even potentially their selves. By providing a detailed analysis of these notions, Bennett Helm argues for an understanding of persons as essentially social. (shrink)

Authenticity, it is plausible to suppose, is a feature of one's identity as a person---of one's sense of the kind of life worth living. Most attempts to explicate this notion of a person's identity do so in terms of an antecedent understanding of what it is for a person to value something. This is, I argue, a mistake: a concern is not intelligible as a value apart from the place it has within a larger identity that the value serves in (...) turn to constitute; to assume otherwise is to risk leaving out the very person whose identity these values allegedly constitute. By contrast, I offer an account of values as always already a part of one's identity. I do so by providing an analysis of values in terms of what I call 'person-focused emotions,' emotions like pride and shame. Such emotions, I argue, involve a commitment to the import of a person primarily and, only secondarily, to things valued, and in this way enable us to understand what it is to value these things *for the sake of* the person. The upshot is a more satisfying account of a person's identity and values, an account that can provide the necessary background for a more thorough investigation of authenticity. (shrink)

Friendship, as understood here, is a distinctively personal relationship that is grounded in a concern on the part of each friend for the welfare of the other, for the other's sake, and that involves some degree of intimacy. As such, friendship is undoubtedly central to our lives, in part because the special concern we have for our friends must have a place within a broader set of concerns, including moral concerns, and in part because our friends can help shape who (...) we are as persons. Given this centrality, important questions arise concerning the justification of friendship and, in this context, whether it is permissible to “trade up” when someone new comes along, as well as concerning the possibility of reconciling the demands of friendship with the demands of morality in cases in which the two seem to conflict. (shrink)

Philosophical accounts of freedom typically fail to capture an important kind of freedom—freedom to change what one cares about—that is central to our understanding of what it is to be a person. This paper articulates this kind of freedom more clearly, distinguishing it from freedom of action and freedom of the will, and gives an account of how it is possible. Central to this account is an understanding of the role of emotions in determining what we value, thus motivating a (...) rethinking of the importance of emotions in the mental lives of persons. (shrink)

Reason and Value collects 15 new papers by leading contemporary philosophers on themes from the work of Joseph Raz. Raz has made major contributions in a wide range of areas, including jurisprudence, political philosophy, and the theory of practical reason; but all of his work displays a deep engagement with central themes in moral philosophy. The subtlety and power of Raz's reflections on ethical topics make his writings a fertile source for anyone working in this area. Especially significant are his (...) explorations of the connections between practical reason and the theory of value, which constitute a sustained and penetrating treatment of a set of issues at the very center of moral philosophy as it is practiced today. The contributors to the volume acknowledge the importance of Raz's contributions by engaging critically with his positions and offering independent perspectives on the topics that he has addressed. The volume aims both to honour Raz's accomplishments in the area of ethical theorizing, and to contribute to an enhanced appreciation of the significance of his work for the subject. (shrink)

My aim is to understand at least some of the non-instrumental reasons we can have for action in a way that can provide a satisfying non-egoist account of 'social actions' - actions undertaken for the sake of others. I do this in part by presenting, in terms of a discussion of the rationality of emotions, an account of what it is for something to have import to an agent . I then extend this account to include our caring about others (...) as agents, in part by revealing the way in which one's emotional and desiderative responsiveness to another agent one cares about must be sensitive to her cares, so that one comes to share her cares. The upshot is substantial revision in our understanding of agency, both in terms of our understanding of the role emotions play in our agency and in terms of a careful extension of the scope of practical rationality to include what I call a 'rationality of import'. (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Rationality is the constitutive ideal of the mental. Therefore it is important to understand the sort of rationality at issue here. It is often assumed that rationality just is instrumental rationality, but this leaves us with too thin a notion of desire: Desires centrally involve the notion of things mattering or being significant, for their objects must normally be worth pursuing to the subject. Such significance is simply unintelligible in terms of instrumental rationality. Consequently, understanding significance and its rational connections (...) to desire and action is essential to understanding rationality as a constitutive ideal. In particular, it is a crucial step in vindicating the idea of animal thought. ;I argue that significance, as well as desire, must be understood in part in terms of the emotions. Many prominent theories of emotions illegitimately conceive of significance as conceptually prior to the capacity for having emotions, in that things can be significant to a creature that does not have any emotions at all. In contrast, I argue first that a creature must have the capacity for emotions in order to be a subject of significance because to be significant is in part to be a suitable object of emotions generally. Second, emotions are essentially feelings not because they "involve" bodily sensations but because they are a distinctive kind of awareness of the significance of the world to the subject; particular occurrent emotions therefore presuppose that things are already significant to the subject. Consequently, emotions and significance form a conceptual package, with neither being prior to the other: Significance and the emotions emerge together in a pattern of instrumental and non-instrumental rationality that can be articulated in terms of their interconnected explanatory roles. ;Being a subject of beliefs and desires therefore requires more than simply rationally mediated goal-directedness, as Dennett believes. Rather, it requires being open, through the emotions, to the significance of the world and to the reasons that significance provides for action. This conclusion is shown to have important ramifications for our understanding both of a minimal sense of agency and of what it is to be a person. (shrink)

It is widely held that Locke propounded a theory of personal identity in terms of consciousness and memory. By ‘theory’ here is meant a set of necessary and sufficient conditions indicating what personal identity consists in. It is also held that this theory is open to obvious and damaging objections, so much so that it has to be supplemented in terms of bodily continuity, either because memory alone is not sufficient, or because the concept of memory is itself dependent upon (...) considerations of bodily continuity. Alternatively it has been suggested that Locke's theory could be modified by allowing that for the purposes of personal identity ‘remember’ should be regarded as a transitive relation. So if A remembers the experiences of B but not those of C, and B remembers the experiences of C, then A, B and C can be regarded as belonging to the same unit of consciousness. (shrink)

To identify oneself with something is for it to be a source of meaning and worth in one's life. Normally such identification is constituted by a certain holistic rational pattern both in one's judgments and will and in one's emotions and desires. However, one's identity can be fragmented into conflicting sources of meaning when the pattern in one's judgments becomes disconnected from that in one's emotions. By analyzing these kinds of fragmentation, I articulate some of the rational connections there are (...) between emotional attitudes and evaluative judgments and so ultimately the kinds of accord or integrity that are possible for persons. (shrink)

‘Actions are by their very nature temporary and perishing; and where they proceed not from some cause in the characters and disposition of the person, who perform'd them, they infix not themselves upon him, and can neither redound to his honour, if good, nor infamy, if evil. The action itself may be blameable; it may be contrary to all the rules of morality and religion: But the person is not responsible for it; and as it proceeded from nothing in him, (...) that is durable or constant, and leaves nothing of that nature behind it, 'tis impossible he can, upon its account, become the object of punishment or vengeance.'. (shrink)