This paper examines some aspects of Mitchell Green’s account of self-expression. I argue that Green fails to address the distinction between success and evidential notions of expression properly, which prevents him from adequately discussing the relation between these notions. I then consider Green’s explanation of how a speech act shows what is within, i.e., because of the liabilities one incurs and argue that this is false. Rather, the norms governing speech acts and liabilities incurred give us reason (...) to think that the speaker is in a particular state of mind. It thus supports an evidential rather than success notion. Finally, I suggest that it is because of the sincerity of what is said, rather than the liabilities incurred, that you show what is within. (shrink)

Human beings have the unique ability to consciously reflect on the nature of the self. But reflection has its costs. We can ask what the self is, but as David Hume pointed out, the self, once reflected upon, may be nowhere to be found. The favored view is that we are material beings living in the material world. But if so, a host of destabilizing questions surface. If persons are just a sophisticated sort of animal, then what (...) sense is there to the idea that we are free agents who control our own destinies? What makes the life of any animal, even one as sophisticated as Homo sapiens, worth anything? What place is there in a material world for God? And if there is no place for a God, then what hold can morality possibly have on us--why isn't everything allowed? Flanagan's collection of essays takes on these questions and more. He continues the old philosophical project of reconciling a scientific view of ourselves with a view of ourselves as agents of free will and meaning-makers. But to this project he brings the latest insights of neuroscience, cognitive science, and psychiatry, exploring topics such as whether the conscious mind can be explained scientifically, whether dreams are self-expressive or just noise, the moral socialization of children, and the nature of psychological phenomena such as multiple personality disorder and false memory syndrome. What emerges from these explorations is a liberating vision which can make sense of the self, agency, character transformation, and the value and worth of human life. Flanagan concludes that nothing about a scientific view of persons must lead to nihilism. (shrink)

Mitchell S. Green presents a systematic philosophical study of self-expression - a pervasive phenomenon of the everyday life of humans and other species, which has received scant attention in its own right. He explores the ways in which self-expression reveals our states of thought, feeling, and experience, and he defends striking new theses concerning a wide range of fascinating topics: our ability to perceive emotion in others, artistic expression, empathy, expressive language, meaning, facial expression, (...) and speech acts. He draws on insights from evolutionary game theory, ethology, the philosophy of language, social psychology, pragmatics, aesthetics, and neuroscience to present a stimulating and accessible interdisciplinary work. (shrink)

According to Dewey, we are responsible for our conduct because it is “ourselves objectified in action”. This idea lies at the heart of an increasingly influential deep self approach to moral responsibility. Existing formulations of deep self views have two major problems: They are often underspecified, and they tend to understand the nature of the deep self in excessively rationalistic terms. Here I propose a new deep self theory of moral responsibility called the Self-Expression (...) account that addresses these issues. The account is composed of two parts. The first part answers the question, What is a deep self? Theorists have tended to favor cognitive views that understand the deep self in terms of rationally formed evaluative judgment. I propose instead a conative view that says one’s deep self consists of a distinctive kind of pro-attitude, cares, and I provide an account of cares in terms of their distinctive psychological functional role. The second part answers the question, When does an action express one’s deep self? I criticize the agentially demanding conditions set out in existing views and propose a more minimalist alternative. I show that the Self-Expression account handles issues that bedeviled traditional deep self views, including how to explain moral responsibility for spontaneous, out of character, and weak-willed actions. (shrink)

I present two different models of moral responsibility -- two different accounts of what we value in behavior for which the agent can legitimately be held morally responsible. On the first model, what we value is making a certain sort of difference to the world. On the second model, which I favor, we value a certain kind of self-expression. I argue that if one adopts the self-expression view, then one will be inclined to accept that moral (...) responsibility need not require alternative possibilities. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to examine Mitchell S. Green’s notion of self-expression and the role it plays in his model of illocutionary communication. The paper is organized into three parts. In Section 2, after discussing Green’s notions of illocutionary speaker meaning and self-expression, I consider the contribution that self-expression makes to the mechanisms of intentional communication; in particular, I introduce the notion of proto-illocutionary speaker meaning and argue that it is necessary to (...) account for acts overtly showing general commitments that are not ‘marked’ as being specific to one or another illocutionary force. In Section 3, I focus on Green’s account of expressive norms and argue that their function is to stabilize rather than constitute the structure of illocutionary signaling systems; moreover, I examine critically Green’s idea according to which expressive norms enable us to indicate the force of our speech acts and suggest that they play a key role in the mechanisms for epistemic vigilance. Finally, in Section 4, I elaborate on the idea of discourse-constituted thoughts—or, in other words, thoughts that ex- ist in virtue of being expressed in making certain conversation-bound speech acts—and use it to develop a more comprehensive model of the expressive dimension of speech acts. (shrink)

While “dignity” plays an increasingly important role in contemporary moral and political debates, there is profound dispute over its definition, meaning, and normative function. Instead of concluding that dignity’s elusiveness renders it useless, or that it signals its fundamental character, this paper focuses on illuminating one particular strand of meritocratic dignity. It introduces a number of examples and conceptual distinctions and argues that there is a specific strand of “expressive” meritocratic dignity that is not connected to holding a special office (...) or rank, but that is ascribed to individuals who are able to engage in autonomous self-expression. (shrink)

Philosophers ask just whose expression, if anyone’s, we hear in lyric poetry. Walton provides a novel possibility: it’s the reader who “uses” the poem (just as a speech giver uses a speech) who makes the language expressive. But worries arise once we consider poems in particular social or political settings, those which require a strong self-other distinction, or those with expressions that should not be disassociated from the subjects whose experience they draw from. One way to meet this (...) challenge is to consider the poem expressive of a plural subject, which frees us from looking for a particular individual whose voice we hear in the work, whether she be fictional or actual. Some lyrics give voice to a group whose experience is attended to in the work. This may be done through a posited fictional speaker, but the ontology of the speaker is shown to be less important. Attending to a group whose concerns are voiced allows us to explain how poems can manage to address our-worldly concerns even when lacking actual persons whose expressions we encounter in the poems. (shrink)

Jimmy Santiago Baca, one of the foremost poets in America today, collaborates with two literacy professionals to present a teaching tool that includes curricular activities and probing questions crafted to help students heal through writing. Each exercise reinforces the theme that self-esteem borne from unique expression will improve student enjoyment and academic achievement.

I give a brief overview of the major contentions and methodologies of my book, Self-Expression.

If preference-based freedom rankings are based on all-things-considered preferences, they risk judging phenomena of adaptive preferences as freedom enhancing. As a remedy, it has been suggested to base preference-based freedom rankings on reasonable preferences. But this approach is also problematic. This article argues that the quest for a remedy is unnecessary. All-things-considered preferences retain information on whether the availability of an option contributes to the value that freedom has for a person’s self-expression. If preference-based freedom rankings use all-things-considered (...) preferences to evaluate whether an option contributes to a person’s self-expression, they are immune to the problem posed by adaptive preferences. (shrink)

Theistic cosmologies have inspired many religious communities to alienate transgender individuals. While the growth in tolerance among congregations and institutions is important, there remains a pressing need to address the cosmologies at the root of intolerance. A re-examination of theological conceptions of God and the human person reveal not only acceptability, but significance, in the trans experience itself. Synthesizing gender studies with theology, this interdisciplinary article argues that God’s nature as deeply personal Love implies a sacredness in gender authenticity. The (...) human person is part of an evolution toward deeply personalized consciousness. Gender, when freed from rigid constraints, is a social expression of this personalized self in a common cultural language. As infinite Love, God actualizes in the universe in deeply personal love. Therefore, by personalizing knowledge of one another and enabling deeper love between human persons, gender authenticity, in its fluidity, ambiguity, and continuous newness, deepens God’s existence. Ultimately, I argue, expressing one’s authentic gender is a sacred act. (shrink)

(No abstract is available for this citation).

It is often said that people are ‘not themselves’ when they are in situations which rob them of their self‐control. Strangely, these are also circumstances in which people are often said to be most fully themselves. This paper investigates the pictures of the self behind these two truisms, and the relation between them. Harry Frankfurt’s work represents the first truism, and standard objections to his work the second. Each of these approaches is found to capture one independent and (...) widely employed picture of the self. The connection each draws between being oneself and flourishing, however, suggests a point of contact between them. This point of contact is used to develop a third view of being oneself which integrates the insights of the other two. (shrink)

In this paper, I first outline a brief dialectic on free will and meaning in life. I then argue that meaning-compatibilism gives us reason to reject meaning-incompatibilism as it is currently understood. However, I critique meaning-compatibilism to the extent that it is silent with regard to freedom’s role in generating meaning in life. Because of these observations, I reconceptualize meaning-incompatibilism and urge us to adopt an alternative version of the position I call, “narrow meaning-incompatibilism.” Following my formulation of this position, (...) I construct a preliminary narrow meaning-incompatibilist framework. Here, I maintain that “self-expression” is what, in part, makes life meaningful. However, I argue that there are at least two different _kinds_ of self-expression, which I call personal self-expression and metaphysical self-expression. I argue that libertarian free will (but more specifically agent-causal libertarianism) enhances meaning in life because it secures metaphysical self-expression. On my account, if determinism is true, then agents will fail to obtain metaphysical self-expression. The result is a reality wherein agents hold a strangely alien relationship with their actions, and life is thus less meaningful because of this fact. Ultimately, then, I argue that agent-causal libertarianism enhances meaning in life because it safeguards metaphysical self-expression, which in turn alleviates this problem of alienation found at the level of action. (shrink)

Owen Flanagan is a highly prolific writer and speaker whose work brings together results of research in several empirical disciplines overlapping with philosophy, particularly neuroscience and other areas of psychology. This book of thirteen essays, most of them revisions of work published elsewhere, exhibits both his intellectual and his stylistic range. Many of the essays are light and chatty, others analytical and slower-going.

Although the concept of the consumer–brand relationship has undergone rapid change over the past two decades, the issue of brand addiction is still generally neglected in the literature. Based on social identity theory, the research develops a conceptual model of the influence of self-expressive brands and susceptibility to interpersonal influence on brand addiction. The results of this research demonstrate both separate and joint effects of SEBs and SUSCEP on brand addiction. In addition, harmonious brand passion and obsessive brand passion (...) positively mediate the relationships among SEB, SUSCEP, and brand addiction. The research explores the formation mechanism of brand addiction from a new perspective and has important practical implications for brand marketers concerned with finding the most effective means to enhance the consumer–brand relationship. (shrink)

For Nietzsche, the creation of value is of such great importance because it is the only means by which value can come to exist in the world. In this paper, I examine Nietzsche’s views about how value is created. For Nietzsche, value is created through valuing, and in section ‘Valuing’, I provide a Nietzschean account of valuing. Specifically, I argue that those who share Nietzsche’s view that there are no objective values can value things by representing them to have relative (...) value. In section ‘Self-expression and individuality’, I explore Nietzsche’s view that the creation of value occurs through the self-expression of unique individuals. In section ‘Strength’, I discuss the reasons why, according to Nietzsche, strength is required for value creation. In brief, strength is energy, and I explain the various reasons why energy is required to create new values. (shrink)

The Essay In This Book Deal With Such Topics As Silence As A Constituent Of Language, Justification Of Kant`S Antological Principles, Hegel`S Concept Of Reason, Total Man And The Role Of Revolution, A Meta-Physical Analysis Of Freedom, Dimensions Of Self-Expression, Love As A Form Of Authentic Expression, Radical Education In Institutionalized Surroundings Etc. In Honour Of S.N. Ganguly.

AimsIn this pilot mixed-methods study, we examined the participants experiences of engaging in virtual drawing tasks and the impact of an olfactory stimulus on outcomes of affect, stress, self-efficacy, anxiety, creative agency, and well-being.MethodsThis study used a parallel mixed-methods, simple block randomization design. The study participants included 24 healthy adults aged 18 to 54 years, including 18 women and six men. The participants completed two 1-h immersive virtual art making sessions and were randomly assigned to receive either a fragrance (...) or a non-fragrance condition for the first session. Quantitative and qualitative datasets were collected concurrently and integrated during data analysis.ResultsThe quantitative results indicated that the fragrance condition demonstrated a significant reduction in negative affect, namely, reduced feelings of negativity when compared to the non-fragrance condition. A trend toward improvement in self-efficacy was also seen in the fragrance condition. No significant changes were found for fragrance or non-fragrance conditions for positive affect, anxiety, and creative agency. The qualitative findings included five themes related to art making experiences in virtual reality in both conditions: fun and joy; novelty of virtual media, experimentation, and play; relaxation and calm; learning curve; and physical discomfort and disorientation. Four themes were identified for virtual art content and visual qualities: nature imagery, references to memories and personal symbols, fantasy and play within imagery, and depiction of everyday objects.ConclusionsOverall, the participants reported positive responses to the novel virtual art making experiences which were further heightened by the inclusion of the fragrance stimulus for negative affect. These preliminary findings need to be replicated with larger sample sizes to confirm the outcomes and the trends that were seen in this pilot study. Further research is recommended to examine the differences between experiences of virtual and traditional art media and to examine different olfactory stimuli promoting focus and concentration. (shrink)

(No abstract is available for this citation).

A study of clinical medical ethicists was conducted to determine the various philosophical positions they hold with respect to ethical decision making in medicine and their various positions' relationship to the subjective-objective controversy in value theory. The study consisted of analyzing and interpreting data gathered from questionnaires from 52 clinical medical ethicists at 28 major health care centers in the United States. The study revealed that most clinical medical ethicists tend to be objectivists in value theory, i.e., believe that value (...) judgments are knowledge claims capable of being true or false and therefore expressions of moral requirements and normative imperatives emanating from an external value structure or moral order in the world. In addition, the study revealed that most clinical medical ethicists are consistent in the philosophical foundations of their ethical decision making, i.e., in decision making regarding values they tend not to hold beliefs which are incompatible with other beliefs they hold about values. (shrink)

By integrating Bernard Williams’s internalism about reasons with his later thought, this article casts fresh light on internalism and reveals what wider concerns it speaks to. To be consistent with Williams’s later work, I argue, internalism must align with his deference to the phenomenology of moral deliberation and with his critique of ‘moral self-indulgence’. Key to this alignment is the idea that deliberation can express the agent’s motivations without referring to them; and that internalism is not a normative claim, (...) but an example of sense-making from ‘the ethnographic stance’. This leaves a worry over whether moral conviction can coexist with an internalist understanding of reasons. Here too, however, Williams’s later thought provides an answer. Differentiating corrosive from corroborative sense-making, it elucidates how internalism, though not normative, can nonetheless affect our confidence in reason statements, thereby informing how we deliberate and how we address those whose motivations differ from our own. (shrink)

In this article I consider what the implications of ubuntu, interpreted as an African moral philosophy, are for self-expression as a value that the media could help to promote. In contrast to the natural hunches that self-expression is merely a kind of narcissism or makes sense for only individualist cultures to prize, I argue that an attractive construal of ubuntu entails that self-expression can play an important communitarian role. The mass media can be obligated (...) to enable people to express themselves since doing so can be one way for people to share with and care for others. (shrink)

Evidence from industry reports, labor union data, and interviews with producers and union officials indicates that while the demand for media products and the number of productions continues to rise, much of the increase in demand is in low-budget features and extremely low-budget production for cable networks. In this production environment, the conglomerates are pressuring producers to reduce labor costs and produce a larger number of low-cost products. Producers are using various strategies to reduce costs, including requiring more flexibility from (...) the production workforce with respect to the length of workdays and working conditions. This article examines how production trends, influenced by conglomerate domination of production and distribution, are affecting the media workforce. In particular I look at three tendencies. The first is a widening split between core workers and peripheral workers employed in industry projects. The second is a change in professional and craft identities as a result of technological specialization by freelancers and the loss of union control over production projects, especially at the low end of the budget spectrum. Finally, there is the persistence of `hard-wired' social and economic networks to reduce worker and employer risk. These networks foster and reinforce labor segmentation among women and men, and among ethnic groups, restricting access to job opportunities and careers. (shrink)

I examine an argument proposed by Tye and Wright, inspired by Geach, which holds that a correct understanding of how conceptual thought occurs in time demands we expel it from experience. This would imply—pace William James— that the “stream of consciousness” is not, even in part, a “stream of thought.” I argue that if we closely examine what seems to support crucial premises of their argument, we will find this undermines its other assumptions, and points us to a way of (...) placing thought in time that they neglect. Ultimately, attention to the phenomenology of language comprehension and production not only undercuts their “temporality argument” against including thought in experience; it prepares the ground for a case in favor of inclusion. In critiquing their argument I hope not just to disarm an objection to a view I espouse, nor even just to discover new support for it, but also to shed some light on the temporality of thought and its relation to self-expression. (shrink)

This article turns to early modern and Enlightenment advocates of tolerance in order to discover and lay bare the line of argument that informed their commitment to free speech. This line of argument will subsequently be used to assess the shift from free speech to the contemporary ideal of free self-expression. In order to take this assessment one step further, this article will finally turn to Immanuel Kant’s famous defense of the public use of reason. In the wake (...) of Katerina Deligiorgi’s readings of Kant, it will show that the idea of free speech requires a specific disposition on behalf of speakers and writers that is in danger of being neglected in the contemporary prevailing conception of free speech as freedom of self-expression. (shrink)

This paper is a critical review of Mitchell Green’s Self-Expression . The principal focus is on Green’s contention that all expression is at route, a form of signalling by an agent or by some mechanism of the organism which has been evolutionary selected for signalling. Starting from the idea that in some but not all expression an agent seeks to express his or her self, I question the centrality of communication to the idea of (...) class='Hi'>expression. (shrink)

Pro-social basic human values and civic involvement. The moderating role of survival vs self-expression cultural context The present study investigated a hypothesis that the pro-social values differentiated by S. Schwartz's model of basic human values - universalism and benevolence - would positively predict civic involvement. Most importantly, authors expected that the type of pro-social value that would play a dominant motivational role would depend on moderating role of the level of self-expression and benevolence - cultural value (...) dimension developed by R. Inglehart. Based on discriminant function analyses performed on the data gathered in 17 European countries through the European Social Survey conducted in 2002, authors found that universalism predicts civic involvement only in self-expression countries, whereas the role of benevolence is rather neglectable and independent of the cultural context. The results are discussed with reference to cross-cultural differences in Europe. (shrink)

The authors consider the important problem of creative expression of a musician-teacher for modern musical pedagogy. Based on the analysis of research literature, the content and functions of creative expression in musical and performing activities are revealed. It is characterized by the aesthetic nature of creative self-expression, internal harmony of will, emotional and intellectual intents of self-expression.