Ambivalence (as in practical conflicts, moral dilemmas, conflicting beliefs, and mixed feelings) is a central phenomenon of human life. Yet ambivalence is incompatible with entrenched philosophical conceptions of personhood, judgement, and action, and is denied or marginalised by thinkers of diverse concerns. This book takes a radical new stance, bringing the study of core philosophical issues together with that of ambivalence. The book proposes new accounts in several areas – including subjectivity, consciousness, rationality, and value – (...) while elucidating a wide range of phenomena expressive of ambivalence, from emotional ambivalence to self-deception. The book rejects the view that ambivalence makes a person divided, showing that our tension-fraught attitudes are profoundly unitary. Ambivalence is not tantamount to confusion or to paralysis: it is always basically rational, and often creative, active, and perceptive as well. The book develops themes from Wittgenstein, Davidson, Sartre, and Freud. It engages with contemporary debates in Analytic Philosophy in addition to work ranging from Aristotle to Cultural Studies and Empirical Psychology, and considers a rich set of examples from daily life and literature. (shrink)

Aristotelian virtue ethics invests emotions and feelings with much moral significance. However, the moral and other conflicts that inevitably beset human life often give rise to states of emotional division and ambivalence with problematic implications for any understanding of virtue as complete psychic unity of character and conduct. For one thing, any admission that the virtuous are prey to conflicting passions and desires may seem to threaten the crucial virtue ethical distinction between the virtuous and the continent. One (...) recent attempt to sustain this distinction -- considered in this paper -- maintains that the contrary-to-virtue emotions and desires of the virtuous (by contrast with those of the continent) must relinquish their motive power as reasons for action. Following some attention to the psychological status of feelings and emotions -- in particular their complex relations with cognition and reason -- this paper rejects this solution in favour of a more constructive view of emotional conflict. (shrink)

This book opens up a new area of research by not only considering the rationality of such diverse phenomena as ordinary emotions, generalized anxiety disorder, social phobia, psychotic depression, major depressive disorder, and bipolar disorder, but also by evaluating the question whether the vagueness of these diverse disorders and emotions poses an obstacle to the rationality of these phenomena. As these emotional phenomena turn out to be vague on many different levels, an explanation is found for the millennia long (...) dispute of which kind of phenomena fall under the emotions and whether such diverse phenomena as hope and alexithymia fall under the emotions. Since vagueness can be most easily identified in mixed feelings, the rationality of mixed feelings will also be dealt with. (shrink)

Hili Razinsky, free downlad at link. ABSTRACT: Emotional perceptions are objectivist (objectivity-directed or cognitive) and conscious, both attributes suggesting they cannot be ambivalent. Yet perceptions, including emotional perceptions of value, allow for strictly objectivist ambivalence in which a person unitarily perceives the object in mutually undermining ways. Emotional perceptions became an explicandum of emotion for philosophers who are sensitive to the unique conscious character of emotion, impressed by the objectivist character of perceptions, and believe that (...) the perceptual account solves a worry about the possibility of a conflict between an emotion and a judgement. Back into the 1980s Greenspan has argued that emotional ambivalence is possible, her reasons implying that objectivist accounts of emotion are inconsistent with ambivalence. Tappolet has more recently replied that perceptual accounts allow for emotional ambivalence since the opposed values seen in ambivalence are good or bad in different senses. The present paper identifies strict objectivist ambivalence between judgements and between emotional perceptions by contrasting them with such ambivalence of separate values such as evoked by Tappolet. (shrink)

Integrating norms of reciprocity, affect theory of social exchange, and ambivalence literature, we investigated how leader-member exchange (LMX) ambivalence influences employees’ interpersonal behaviors toward supervisors. Study 1, with a time-lagged field method, revealed that LMX ambivalence was positively related to _both_ employee-rated supervisor-directed helping and deviant behaviors and that such relationships were mediated by emotional ambivalence toward supervisors. We also confirmed the amplification effects of workplace gossip about supervisors (WGS). Specifically, while receiving more positive WGS (...) (PWGS) or less negative WGS (NWGS) could strengthen the positive relationship between emotional ambivalence and supervisor-directed helping behaviors, receiving less PWGS or more NWGS would accentuate the positive effect of emotional ambivalence on supervisor-directed deviant behaviors. Study 2 replicated our results with a scenario-based method and offered evidence for the mediating effect of emotional ambivalence toward supervisors. Study 3 included supervisor-rated helping and deviant behavior and a subjective measure of emotional ambivalence and again confirmed the mediating role of emotional ambivalence. Our findings extend knowledge of the interpersonal consequences of LMX ambivalence. (shrink)

While many theorists have argued that dissociative identity disorder is a case of multiple selves or persons in a single body, I maintain that DID instead should be understood as involving a single self who suffers from significant disruptions to self-consciousness. Evidence of overlapping abilities and memories, as well as the very logic of dissociation, supports the claim that DID results from internal conflict endured by a single self. Along these lines, I will maintain that alter-formation should be understood as (...) the result of extreme emotional ambivalence. While it is true that subjects with DID exhibit volitional conflict, as Frankfurt [1988. The Importance of What We Care About. New York: Cambridge University Press; 1999. Necessity, Volition, and Love. New York: Cambridge University Press] maintains, I argue that these incompatible volitions have a deeper source: conflicting desires and affective stances concerning basic emotional needs that are not easily abandoned. A single subject turns to... (shrink)

We sometimes experience pleasures and displeasures simultaneously: whenever we eat sfogliatelle while having a headache, whenever we feel pain fading away, whenever we feel guilty pleasure while enjoying listening to Barbara Streisand, whenever we are savouring a particularly hot curry, whenever we enjoy physical endurance in sport, whenever we are touched upon receiving a hideous gift, whenever we are proud of withstanding acute pain, etc. These are examples of what we call " mixed feelings ". Mixed feelings are (...) cases in which one and the same person experiences pleasure and displeasure at the same time. Mixed feelings raise two questions: (1) If pleasure and displeasure are contraries, how can mixed feelings be possible? (2) Does the excess of pleasure (or displeasure) that we feel when experiencing mixed feelings itself constitute a new feeling, that results from the co-occurrence of the first two? I will argue (1) that mixed feelings are possible and that their existence does not threaten the contrariety of pleasure and displeasure, and (2) that there are no resultant feelings: having a lot of pleasure and a little displeasure does not result in having additional mild pleasure. Finally, I will suggest (3) that although both false, scepticism towards the existence of mixed feelings, as well as the idea according to which resultant feelings exist, are inspired from a single and correct idea: that pleasure and displeasure do fuse in some cases. (shrink)

This study attempts to situate Carl Stumpf's theory of emotions with regard to that of his teacher, Franz Brentano, and to the sensualist theory of William James. We will argue that Stumpf's theory can be considered an attempt to reconcile James's sensualism, which emphasizes the role of bodily feelings, with what we will call, for the purposes of this study, Brentano's intentionalism, which conceives of emotions as intentional states. Stumpf claims that James's sensory feelings and Brentano's affective intentional states are (...) two sides of the same coin in that they constitute two essential ingredients of a full-fledged theory of emotions. The question is whether Stumpf's ecumenism avoids the objections that he himself raises against James's and Brentano's theories. The paper is divided into four parts: the first part presents Stumpf's classification of psychical functions; the second part presents his criticism of James's theory of emotions; the third part is a summary of Stumpf's complex debate with Brentano on emotions and sensory feelings; the last part examines Stumpf's attempt to incorporate into his theory of affects the phenomenological and intentional aspects of emotions. I conclude with a note on the unity of consciousness. (shrink)

Feeling bad is one thing, judging something to be bad another. This hot/cold distinction helps resolve the debate between bipolar and bivariate accounts of affect. A typical affective reaction includes both core affect (feeling good or bad) and judgments of the affective qualities of various aspects of the stimulus situation (which can have both good and bad aspects). Core affect is described by a bipolar valence dimension in which feeling good precludes simultaneously feeling bad and vice versa. Judgments of affective (...) quality of opposite valence can occur simultaneously because the stimulus situation has many aspects. Affective reaction can also include an emotional meta-experience, which can, but rarely does, embrace simultaneous emotion categories of opposite valence. (shrink)

ExtractThe central question of ethics is ‘How should I live?’. It covers not only actions, but more broadly, our reactions and our characters, questions of what we should feel and how we should be as people. This has been the central concern of theories of virtue. Aristotle claimed that a virtue is a character trait that enables us to ‘stand well’ in relation to our desires and emotions. To be virtuous with regard to a type of emotion – anger, sadness, (...) joy, fear, etc. – is to feel that type of emotion ‘at the right times, with reference to the right objects, towards the right people, with the right motive, and in the right way’.Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.PSYCHOANALYSIS, EMOTIONS AND LIVING A GOOD LIFEVolume 12, Issue 33Michael LacewingDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1477175612000346Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle email.@free[email protected] Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. PSYCHOANALYSIS, EMOTIONS AND LIVING A GOOD LIFEVolume 12, Issue 33Michael LacewingDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1477175612000346Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. PSYCHOANALYSIS, EMOTIONS AND LIVING A GOOD LIFEVolume 12, Issue 33Michael LacewingDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1477175612000346Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation. (shrink)

Background and aim Healthcare professionals are regularly exposed to moral challenges in patient care potentially compromising quality of care and safety of patients. Preventive clinical ethics support aims to identify and address moral problems in patient care at an early stage of their development. This study investigates the occurrence, risk factors, early indicators, decision parameters, consequences and preventive measures of moral problems. Method Semi-structured expert interviews were conducted with 20 interprofessional healthcare professionals from 2 university hospitals in Basel, Switzerland. A (...) Likert scale questionnaire was completed by the interviewees and analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Results Healthcare professionals are frequently exposed to a variety of moral problems, such as end-of-life decisions, resource allocation and assessing the patient's will or decisional capacity. Thirty-four different risk factors for moral problems are identified, e.g. patient vulnerability, divergent values or world views, inadequate resources or poor ethical climate. Twenty-one early indicators are recognised such as disagreement between healthcare professionals, patients and relatives, emotional disturbances, gut feeling or conflict of conscience. A variety of preventive measures are suggested and presented in a preventive clinical ethics support process model. The most helpful measures are early ethical conversations with colleagues, early team-internal ethical case discussions and an ethics-trained contact person on the ward. Ethics training, kerbside consultations, proactive ethics consultations, ethics screening and rounds are also considered helpful. Conclusions Clinical ethics support services should not only offer reactive and complex, but also proactive and low-threshold support for healthcare professionals, patients and relatives. (shrink)

Some films scare us; some make us cry; some thrill us. Some of the most interesting films, however, leave us suspended between feelings – both joyous and sad, or angry and serene. This paper attempts to explain how this can happen and why it is important. I look closely at one film that creates and exploits these conflicted responses. I argue that cases of conflict in film illuminate a pair of vexing questions about emotion in film: (1) To what extent (...) are emotional responses rational, or in need of rationalization?; and (2) What relationship is there between emotional response and value (moral, filmic, or otherwise)? Conflict, I argue, can be revealing, and can help us better understand emotional responses to narrative film1 in general. The paper is divided into four sections. First, I sketch a theory of emotional engagement that makes sense of the notion of a “conflicted emotional response” to a film. Second, I turn to a particular case of a film that produces this sort of conflict, Fritz Lang’s M (1931), and show that the conflict engendered by that film is both more significant and less unusual than it may appear. In the final two sections, I argue that there is no need to rationalize or make consistent such mixed emotional responses, and that there is real moral, aesthetic, and cognitive value to be had from such conflict. (shrink)

It is often suggested that social media is a hostile environment for critical thinking and that a major source for epistemic problems concerning social media is that it facilitates emotions. We argue that emotions per se are not the source of the epistemic problems concerning social media. We propose that instead of focusing on emotions, we should focus on the affective scaffolding of social media. We will show that some affective scaffolds enable desirable epistemic practices, while others obstruct beneficial epistemic (...) practices, or enable hostile epistemic practices. Particularly, we will show that emotions play a crucial role in the epistemic practice of critical thinking and that the affective scaffolding of social media can support, or hinder, online critical thinking. The upshot of our argument is that affective scaffoldings of social media can harness emotions to support beneficial epistemic practices, like online critical thinking. (shrink)

Volition and Valuation is a typology of valuations, and conflicts between values, using a phenomenological approach that treats the difference between cognitive-thinking and value-thinking as a difference in the mode of intentionality towards the objects. It also suggests a method for axiology to bracket the validity of the values described, acknowledge that the observation of phenomena of consciousness goes beyond empirical observation, and has a character of pure intuition or an intuition of essences which are a source of metavaluative knowledge. (...) Michael Strauss explores the origins and nature of values, focusing on the norms and rules of valuations, called valuative values. He argues that valuative values cannot be reduced to a single value-type, nor do they always arise from a sensation or feeling, but can be created, chosen, and established. Strauss also refutes the method for measuring values devised by Plato in his Protagoras dialogue, and suggests middle ground between relativism and absolutism and between subjectivism and objectivism. (shrink)

Theories of the structure of affect make competing predictions about whether people can feel happy and sad at the same time. Considerable evidence that happiness and sadness can co-occur has accumulated in the past 15 years, but holes in the case remain. I describe those holes and suggest strategies for testing them in future research. I also explore the possibility that the case may never be closed, in part because the competing hypotheses may not be entirely falsifiable. Fortunately, hypotheses need (...) not be falsifiable to be useful. Research on mixed emotions has been generative and the body of research will continue to shed light on the structure of affect. (shrink)

The emotions are at the centre of our lives and, for better or worse, imbue them with much of their significance. The philosophical problems stirred up by the existence of the emotions, over which many great philosophers of the past have laboured, revolve around attempts to understand what this significance amounts to. Are emotions feelings, thoughts, or experiences? If they are experiences, what are they experiences of? Are emotions rational? In what sense do emotions give meaning to what surrounds us? (...) -/- The Emotions: A Philosophical Introduction introduces and explores these questions in a clear and accessible way. The authors discuss the following key topics: -/- the diversity and unity of the emotions the relations between emotion, belief and desire the nature of values the relations between emotions and perceptions emotions viewed as evaluative attitudes the link between emotions and evaluative knowledge the nature of moods, sentiments, and character traits. -/- Including chapter summaries and guides to further reading, The Emotions: A Philosophical Introduction is an ideal starting point for any philosopher or student studying the emotions. It will also be of interest to those in related disciplines such as psychology and the social sciences. (shrink)

Theories of the structure of affect make competing predictions about whether people can feel happy and sad at the same time. Considerable evidence that happiness and sadness can co-occur has accumulated in the past 15 years, but holes in the case remain. I describe those holes and suggest strategies for testing them in future research. I also explore the possibility that the case may never be closed, in part because the competing hypotheses may not be entirely falsifiable. Fortunately, hypotheses need (...) not be falsifiable to be useful. Research on mixed emotions has been generative and the body of research will continue to shed light on the structure of affect. (shrink)

Since the advent of behaviorism the question of volition or "will" has been largely neglected. We consider evidence indicating that two identical behaviors may be quite distinct with respect to volition: For instance, with practice the details of predictable actions become less and less voluntary, even if the behavior itself does not visibly change. Likewise, people can voluntarily imitate involuntary slips they have just made. Such examples suggest that the concept of volition applies not to visible behavior per se, but (...) to the control system that guides behavior. Involuntary events include both automatisms and counter voluntary actions such as slips . An adequate theory of voluntary control must account for the entire set of such pairs of voluntary/involuntary contrasts. The problem of volition highlights core psychological issues. Voluntary acts are consistent with one′s current dominant goals. Volition and consciousness are intimately related. Consciousness of an action seems to recruit unconscious resources that help in planning, executing, and monitoring a voluntary act. Conversely, losing conscious access to an action seems to produce a loss of voluntary control. However, voluntary actions are not wholly conscious. It appears that we only need conscious access to nonroutine choice-points in the flow of control; routine aspects are handled unconsciously. The goals that guide voluntary acts often encounter conflict, either from reality or from other goals, and emotions are widely believed to result from appraisals of such conflicts . Finally, there is a close connection between countervoluntary slips and the symptoms of clinical pathology, which involve a loss of voluntary control over speech, action, feeling, imagery, or thought. A modern version of William James′ ideomotor theory is proposed, based on Global Workspace theory . The theory shows how a conscious goal image could activate unconscious plans and automatisms that shape a voluntary act. Conscious feedback from the act serves to communicate success or failure to many unconscious routines, which may then adapt cooperatively to shape future actions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:One Body: An Essay in Christian Sexual Ethics by Alexander R. PrussBenedict M. Guevin O.S.B.One Body: An Essay in Christian Sexual Ethics. By Alexander R. Pruss. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013. Pp. ix + 465. $45.00 (paper). ISBN: 978-0-268-03897-7.As a professor of moral theology in general and of sexual ethics in particular, I found Alexander Pruss’s largely philosophical account of sexual ethics to be (...) refreshing. As much as I try to dissuade my students from using religious legalism to justify the rightness or wrongness of certain sexual practices, I find it almost impossible to break them of the bad habit of using such phrases as “Because the Church teaches...” or “Because the Bible says...”. Even when I counter by saying, “The Church teaches that something is good because it is good and not because the Church says it is good, and such goodness is grounded in the natural law and a sound anthropology,” such legalism still persists. And so, to read Pruss’s extensive analysis of sexual ethics using both personalist and Thomistic principles as well as what we have received from divine revelation is a much-needed tonic not only for students of theology and philosophy but for all those interested in discovering the role of human reason and biology in crafting a sexual ethic.After an introduction, the proper beginning of Pruss’s analysis is found in chapter 2. Here, the author discusses love and its forms with a particular focus on the meaning of agapē in the New Testament. Pruss argues that, philosophically speaking, we should love everyone. But love should not be understood as monolithic. There are various kinds of love: agapē, philia, and erōs. The New Testament understanding of agapē contains the other two, for it is love itself. This kind of love is a love that loves the other as the other is, for the other’s sake, and in a way that is appropriate to that person in the light of objective facts. Moreover, this kind of love is not simply a feeling or an emotion but is concentrated in an action that is an expression of one’s will.In chapter 3, Pruss takes up the issue of desire. He evaluates desire in two ways: (1) desire and libido, and (2) sexual desire, need, and pleasure. He [End Page 485] concludes that sexual desire is not a need in the same way that we desire food, drink, communication, love, and to be loved. Without these latter, human life would be seriously lacking or, in the case of food and drink, quickly cut short. Second, he observes that circumstances may not be appropriate for fulfilling one’s sexual desire. Finally, while human life would be seriously compromised by the lack of food, drink, communication, love, and the need to be loved, abstaining from the fulfillment of sexual desire even over a long period of time would not be detrimental to human well-being in the same way.Pruss does not imply by the preceding that sexuality does not matter. Chapter 4, in fact, deals with the meaningfulness of sexuality. There are two sets of rules regarding sexuality and its expression. Some rules are moral in nature, like the prohibition against rape. Other rules are customs, for example, the exchanging of rings after the exchange of marital vows. With respect to the moral rules regarding sexuality, Pruss highlights casual sex, sexual assault, gay rights, and romantic love. Apart from sexual assault and rape—both of which lack consent—casual sex, homosexual sex, and romantic love have the following in common, namely, that sex is indeed innately important to human beings and that sex aspires to be romantic in nature. While, as in the case of casual sex, romantic love does not necessarily give rise to true love, romantic love is often the prelude to a deep and unique form of love. Why this is so has to do with the meaning of sexual union.Sexual union is the topic of chapter 5, presented under the title “One Flesh, One Body.” Scripture, Pruss affirms, describes the person as... (shrink)

Volition and Allied Causal Concepts is a work of aetiology and metapsychology. Aetiology is the branch of philosophy and logic devoted to the study of causality (the cause-effect relation) in all its forms; and metapsychology is the study of the basic concepts common to all psychological discourse, most of which are causal. Volition (or free will) is to be distinguished from causation and natural spontaneity. The latter categories, i.e. deterministic causality and its negation, have been treated in a separate (...) work, The Logic of Causation. Volition may be characterized as personal causality, a relation between an agent (the self or soul) and his actions (acts of will). Unlike causation, this relation cannot be entirely defined using conditional (if–then) propositions. Although we can say that the agent is a sine qua non of his actions, we cannot say that the agent is invariably (in all or specific circumstances) followed by his actions. It appears that both an act of will and its negation remain possible to a soul in any given set of circumstances. This defines freedom of the will, and implies the responsibility of the agent for his actions. Introspection provides knowledge of particular acts of will. The existence of freewill implies a distinction between necessary causation (determinism independent of volition) and inertial causation (determinism, except when some contrary will interferes). An act of will occurs on a spiritual plane. It may have natural (mental or physical) consequences; those that inevitably follow it may be regarded as directly willed, whereas those that vary according to circumstances must be considered indirectly willed. Volition presupposes some degree of consciousness. So-called involuntary acts of will involve a minimum of attention, whereas mindful acts are fully conscious. Even pure whim involves intention. Most volitions moreover involve valuation, some sort of projection of goals, deliberation on means, choice and decision. To judge responsibility, various distinctions are called for, like that between intentional, incidental and accidental consequences. Volitional action can be affected through the terms and conditions of the world surrounding its agent, but also more intimately through the influence of concrete or abstract aspects of that world that the subject has cognized. The causal concept of influence, and its implication of cognition (of inner or outer information, including emotions), are crucial to measuring the effort involved in volition. Influences make willing easier or harder, yet do not curtail its essential freedom. All the causal concepts used in psychological explanation – affections, appetites, instincts, habits, obsessions, compulsions, urges and impulses – can be elucidated thanks to this important finding. Much of human (and animal) behavior can thus be both acknowledged as volitional and as variously influenced. Volition and Allied Causal Concepts is a work of ambitious scope, intent on finally resolving philosophical and logical issues that have always impeded progress in psychology. It clarifies the structure and workings of the psyche, facilitating hygienic and therapeutic endeavors. The relation between volition and physical laws is discussed, as is the place of volition in biology. Concepts used in biology, analogous to that of purpose, are incidentally analyzed. Theological issues are also dealt with, as are some topics in ethics and law. (shrink)

The word "truth" retains, in common use, traces of origins that link it to trust, truth, and truce, connoting ideas of fidelity, loyalty, and authenticity. The word has become, in contemporary philosophy, encased in a web of technicalities, but we know that a true image is a faithful portrait; a true friend a loyal one. In a novel or a poem, too, we have a feel for what is emotionally true, though we are not concerned with the actuality of events (...) and characters depicted. To have emotions is to care about certain things: we can wonder whether those things are really worth caring about. We can wonder whether our passions reflect who we are, and whether they constitute fitting responses to the vicissitudes of life. So there are two aspects to emotional truth: how well an emotion reflects the threats and promises of the world, and how well it reflects our own individual nature. That is the starting point of this book, which looks first at the analogies and disanalogies between strict propositional truth and a looser, "generic" sense of truth. As applied to emotions, generic truth is closer to those original meanings: as in a portrait's fidelity or friend's loyalty. Taken in this sense, the notion of emotional truth opens up large vistas on areas of life essential to our existence as social beings, and to our concerns with beauty, morality, love, death, sex, knowledge, desire, coherence, and happiness. Each of those topics illustrates some facet of the dominant theme of the book: the crucial but often ambivalent role of our emotions in grounding and yet also sometimes undermining our values. Emotions act, in holistic perspective, as ultimate arbiters of values where different and independently justified standards of value compete. (shrink)

Celebrated as the equal to the great philosophers of old, namely Plato and Aristotle, whom – as Cassiodorus put it – he taught to speak Latin better than they spoke Greek, Boethius aspired to fully emancipate Roman culture from its Greek models through translations and exegesis so faithful they would leave nothing more to be desired from the original. The essay focuses on Boethius philhellenism, without complexes insofar as it had little to do either with the mixed feelings of (...) his Roman predecessors or with the plundering agenda of his Christian contemporaries. Special attention is paid to the close relationship Boethius established between word for word translations and multi-layered commentaries which he thought of and – albeit partially – carried out as part of the same scholarly endeavour. Devoid of literary pretentions as well as free from aspirations to autonomy, Boethius literal rendering and scrupulous interpretation were meant to be completely self-sufficient. Together they stand out as both the most innovative and the most conservative features of his ambitious cultural project. -/- Célébré comme l’égal des grands philosophes du passé, auxquels il aurait appris à parler Latin mieux qu’ils ne parlaient Grec, Boèce a caressé le rêve d’une émancipation radicale de la culture romaine vis-à-vis des modèles grecs qu’il se proposait de traduire et interpréter assez fidèlement pour que la comparaison avec les sources ne soit plus nécessaire. De son effort de livrer un Aristote et un Platon latins à la hauteur des originaux grecs, nous étudions l’étroite solidarité qui relie la traduction mot-à-mot des textes grecs et la restitution scrupuleuse de leur sens. Cette double tâche, que Boèce a conçue et menée d’un seul tenant, nous est dès lors apparue comme le reflet d’un philhellénisme sans complexes, tout aussi éloigné des sentiments ambivalents que nourrissaient vis-à-vis des hellènes ses devanciers romains que des efforts visant à domestiquer l’héritage classique auxquels se livraient certains de ses contemporains de même confession que lui. Affranchis de tout rêve d’autonomie, les traductions et les commentaires de Boèce se conçoivent comme parfaitement autosuffisants. Ensemble ils constituent ce qu’il y a à la fois de franchement novateur et de profondément conservateur dans son projet de faire parler Latin les sources grecques. (shrink)

Independent on Sunday October 2nd One of the country's lead­ing philosophical counsellers, and chairman of the Society for Philosophy in Practice (SPP), Tim LeBon, said it typically took around six 50 ­minute sessions for a client to move from confusion to resolution. Mr LeBon, who has 'published a book on the subject, Wise Therapy, said philoso­phy was perfectly suited to this type of therapy, dealing as it does with timeless human issues such as love, purpose, happiness and emo­tional challenges. `Wise (...) Therapy, is part of a series aimed at promoting an integrative attitude as its ethos. Among all the many perspectives of psychotherapists and counselors, philosophy needs to take its place and needs to find its voice. Tim LeBon has provided an effective means by which counselors can bring philosophy into their work with clients' - APPA journal `Tim Le Bon's Wise Therapy is a comprehensible and well argued book dealing with the practical therapeutic applications of philosophical research that may well be of interest to philosophers but -- as the author himself intends -- will be of most obvious benefit to therapists and counselors, both by informing their dialogue with clients in new ways and by helping them become more informed about ways to resolve the ethical dilemmas arising within the context of their own work' - Metapsychology `A fascinating workshop for therapists and clients, backed up a thorough degree if philosophical acuity' - Journal of the Society for Existential Analysis `I strongly recommend the book for philosophers as well as practitioners, teachers, students and supervisors in counselling and psychotherapy' - Self and Society `Provides some additional and valuable arrows for the therapist's quiver' - Irvin Yalom, author of Love's Executioner `Like Aristotle, Tim LeBon examines what is said and extracts what is best from it…. There are many fascinating exercises designed to bring out and enlighten the client's values, conception of the good life, well-being, happiness, pleasure, and the proper place of reason in life…. Wise Therapy is well written and engaging. The case histories are illuminating examples of therapeutic techniques at work, the thought experiments are well designed, and the philosophical position adapted from the internal debates of the philosophers is level headed…. I recommend it highly to philosophers with an interest in counselling, and psychological counsellors with an interest in philosophy' - Jeff Mason, The Philosophers' Magazine `Tim LeBon has… authored a text which should become a staple on the philosophical counsellor's bookshelf…. Wise Therapy is a concise, well-written book…. His ability to relate philosophical concepts to counselling concerns is admirable and attests to the skill and knowledge he possesses as a working counsellor. But, by far the most important part of Tim LeBon's book to PC is the last chapter, "The Counsellor's Philosophical Toolbox"' - Craig Munns in The Examined Life ` Tim LeBon has done a good job of offering practical approaches to some of the most important and vexing issues that arise in counselling…. Tim LeBon's book contains helpful suggestions, practical information, and useful examples, and would make a good addition to the library of any counsellors willing to allow philosophy to turn mere client sessions into wise therapy' - Peter Raabe, Practical Philosophy Wise Therapy is an original and practical guide to how philosophy can benefit counselling and psychotherapy. Tim LeBon argues that therapy, informed by philosophy, can help clients make better decision and achieve emotional wisdom. He uses philosophical approaches to explore issues of right and wrong, the emotions and reasons, well-being and the meaning of life, and develops a 'counsellor's toolbox' of techniques that can help practitioners apply the wisdom of philosophy to good therapeutic practice. For counsellors who may find philosophical approaches to therapy useful, this work addresses key philosophical topics - the emotions, free will, the meaning of life and ethics. It is jargon-free where possible and assumes no previous philosophical training. From The Independent, 16th November 2004 Plato is my agony aunt It was the end of a love affair that broke her heart. Could the wisdom of the great philosophers show her how to be happy again? Claire Smith tries a novel form of therapy "The unexamined life is not worth living," Socrates said. Nor is the life you're left with after your boyfriend has left you for another woman - at least, that's how it felt in October last year when mine broke rank and went off with an art student from Cleveland, Ohio. We were over there for the opening of his new art exhibition. He'd flown over four days before me and had met her at a party. Supposedly, they "connected". The five months that followed were a roller-coaster of confusion, vitriol and despair. I knew there'd been problems in our relationship. We saw the world very differently; he delighted in the charm of the ordinary, I wanted maximum divinity. He walked; I galloped. He drank tea; I loathed the stuff. But, along the banks of the Thames, we'd made a promise to always stick together. Our love was something unique: "transcendental", I called it. And besides, we recycled. Surely a commitment to save the world would save our relationship? Alas, no. So there I was, a woman scorned. Hell truly hath no greater fury. And what made it worse was that I still believed in our transcendental love. If I wanted to change the way I was feeling, I needed to alter the way I was thinking. But how? A few bottles of wine and a sharp blow to the head might have done the trick. Fortunately, there's an older, more trusted way of turning your head on its head that counsellors are starting to use: philosophy. The idea of employing Plato as an agony aunt was begun in 1981 by the German philosopher Gerd Achenbach. Although philosophy spends a lot of its time asking real-life questions that affect real-life people - What is happiness? And is it always wrong to lie? - most of the debate goes on in ivory towers. What Achenbach and subsequent philosophers including Tim LeBon, the chairman of the UK's Society for Philosophy in Practice, wanted to do was "give practical application" to this gigantic library of great thoughts. So how does it work? Like most types of therapy, you sign up for a set of sessions. "Two would give you a new perspective on one issue; six would help you to make a major life-decision, like a career change; with 12 you can start to rethink your entire life philosophy," explains LeBon. Each session lasts 50 minutes and costs £50 - and, no, you don't have to have any previous knowledge of philosophy. "If you think of Friends, it would suit Ross and Chandler more than Joey," LeBon says. "It's for anyone who wants to make their emotions more intelligent. Or for those who have tried other kinds of therapy, and want something more cerebral." The first session begins with the patient venting off about whatever's troubling them. The rant over, the counsellor then picks out some key concepts that are crucial to the problem - in the case of heartbreak, it is love and happiness that come hurtling to the fore - and then gets the patient to define what they mean. So, what is love? What is happiness? To kick-start the patient's thinking, LeBon describes what a great philosopher had to say about it. In my case, he tells me what Plato wrote about love in his Symposium: that to stop man fighting the gods, Zeus decided to cut each human in two, so they would lose their strength. "This, then, is the source of our desire to love each other," Plato said. "Each of us is a 'matching half' of a human whole, because each was sliced like a flatfish, two out of one, and each of us is always seeking the half that matches him." This method of probing what we might think are "obvious" ideas, such as love and happiness, was devised by Socrates in the squares of Athens. "The only I thing I know is that I know nothing at all," he boasted. What Socrates showed was that although many of the thinkers of his time thought they knew what justice, happiness and goodness meant, their understanding was tied in to their personal agenda and world view, and, what's more, when pushed, their ideas often contradicted themselves. A bit like me on love. Whereas part of my understanding of love was something that gave life meaning, made it worth living and bound us together, I also believed that true love was "transcendental": that it was out of this world, and it didn't matter if the two people who loved each other couldn't get along in the day-to-day. Love was bigger than the mundane. But when it came to the next stage of the therapy, critical thinking - "to check out whether your assumptions stand up to examination" - I walked head first into a contradiction. If I think love's purpose is to make life worth living, but then say it's irrelevant to daily life, surely my two ideas of love are not compatible? As the cogs in my brain start to creak into motion, I feel myself taking a step back from my predicament: thinking about how I've been thinking. This idea I had of transcendental love might have started off as a romantic dream. But when the relationship stopped working, and I found myself feeling trapped and frustrated, I used it to justify the mechanics of a relationship that just didn't work in the daily grind. I used it to lie to myself. In the final stage, LeBon gets me to start thinking about how to go forward. "You can't change what has happened," he says. "You can't change that he's left you, or how you behaved in the relationship. So, as the Stoics did, let's work on controlling the controllables: the things that you can change." To work out what can be changed, he gets me to try out a thought experiment, a method often used in philosophy to imagine other worlds where people can have different codes of behaviour. Thought experiments shatter your preconceived ideas of how the world should be and let your imagination run wild to how the world could be. "I find Viktor Frankl very useful here, the Austrian psychiatrist and concentration-camp survivor who actually believed that everything in life happens for a purpose," LeBon says. "Suppose this break-up did happen for a reason that will work to your benefit," he suggests. "What might that be? The answer might be that you can now focus on something important that was denied in the relationship. Or - the Hollywood version - so you'll meet someone who is really right for you." Temporarily freed of any sense of responsibility for the relationship that was, and its sorry demise, the list came fast. I could now travel more; he didn't like me travelling on my own, but too often he didn't want to go anywhere, preferring to stay in his studio and make art. I'd love to meet someone with a similar sense of adventure to mine. For the first time in two years, I was being honest with myself about what I really wanted - listening to those voices that we all have inside our heads, and too often try to muzzle. So did philosophy save me? Well, I'm now dating a travel writer I have to run to keep up with. I still haven't got over the fact that my replacement came from Cleveland, Ohio. But I guess I never will. Tim LeBon can be reached by e-mail at [email protected] A FEW WORDS FROM THE WISE Compiled by Ed Caesar · "At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet" - Plato · "There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness" - Friedrich Nietzsche · "That man shall live as his own master and in happiness who can say each day 'I have lived'" - Horace · "The good of man is the active exercise of his soul's faculties in conformity with excellence or virtue... Moreover this activity must occupy a complete lifetime; for one swallow does not make spring, nor does one fine day; and similarly one day or a brief period of happiness does not make a man supremely blessed and happy" - Aristotle · "There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than friendship" - Thomas Aquinas · "Whatever you do... love those who love you" - Voltaire · "Happiness is not an ideal of reason but of imagination" - Immanuel Kant · "Happiness is a state of which you are unconscious. The moment you are aware that you are happy, you cease to be happy" - Jiddu Krishnamurti · "Love is an ideal thing. Marriage is a real thing" - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe I shrink, therefore I am Therapy has many answers, but some questions require the help of a philosopher, says Clint Witchalls Sunday November 21, 2004 The Observer Danny had worked in the City of London for 10 years. As a research analyst, stockbroker and fund manager, he'd made a lot of valuable contacts, earnt a lot of cash, and learnt some important business skills. However, as he approached his mid-thirties, he no longer felt good about himself or what he did for a living, and he found his colleagues cold and unfriendly. A chronic illness made him realise his mortality, and he began to reassess his priorities. Danny had been struggling with his career conundrum for nearly five years when he met David Arnaud, a philosophical counsellor. After a few soul-searching sessions, Danny arrived at a decision. Today, he teaches economics to sixth-formers, and he loves it. 'It's a much better lifestyle,' he says. Many people are turning to philosophical counsellors to get answers to questions such as: 'How do I make sense of myself?' 'What is important to me?' 'Where am I going?' These are perhaps not the sort of questions that require psychiatric intervention, but Arnaud, who recently completed the first empirical study of philosophical counselling in the UK, has found that within just five sessions the majority of clients, with important decisions to make, tend to move from a state of concern and confusion to a resolution. Modern philosophical counselling can be traced back to 1981, when the philosopher Gerd Achenbach opened the first practice near Cologne. Achenbach referred to the new discipline as 'therapy for the sane.' Today, there are hundreds of philosophical counsellors around the world, with the movement particularly strong in the US, Britain and the Netherlands. 'The dilemmas people face aren't always primarily psychological,' says Alex Howard, a philosophical counsellor from Newcastle. 'If people face problems that are social or economic, it doesn't make sense to define their problems in purely psychological terms.' Tim LeBon, a founder member of the Society for Philosophy in Practice (SPP) and author of Wise Therapy, adds: 'We are faced with far more life choices than our grandparents, yet have far fewer resources to deal with them. Our grandparents may have gone to a priest or to other family members for advice; most people don't trust these solutions any more and so want to make their own well-informed, well thought-out choices. Philosophical counselling can help these people - people in mid-life crises who are wondering how to make the most of the rest of their life. People who want to take stock of their values.' Where stressed executives might once have been prescribed a course of tranquillisers or antidepressants, they can now get a dose of Bertrand Russell instead: 'Success is too dearly purchased if all the other ingredients have been sacrificed to obtain it.' While some philosophical counsellors do recommend books for their clients to read, most sessions are about helping the client identify faulty thoughts. For example, a briefing in Aristotelian logic might show a client why their beliefs are erroneous. The person might infer that they're a screw-up because they've screwed up. The counsellor could point out that they're making an error called 'fallacy of composition' - that is, what's true of the part isn't necessarily true of the whole. In philosophical counselling, problems aren't pathologised as they are by the psychiatric profession, and the dialogue between client and counsellor is more like a meeting of equals, compared to many therapies where the client is treated like a patient and seen as someone who is, in some way, inadequate. 'Anybody can benefit from philosophical counselling,' says Howard. 'But it does require someone who is willing to take stock.' Lou Marinoff, author of international bestseller Plato Not Prozac! has done much to promote philosophical counselling. 'Some people who have stabilised their neurochemistry and validated their emotions now wish to examine or re-examine the criteria of their beliefs, the principles of their conduct, or the meaning of their lives,' he says. 'With whom shall they do this? Psychologists and psychiatrists can shed light on such issues - as can rabbis, priests, imams and gurus. Philosophers are now rejoining the ranks of helpers.' LeBon believes certain therapies (such as cognitive behavioural therapy) don't go far enough in helping their clients. 'For instance, if you are anxious about your relationship, a cognitive therapist would try to dispute your catastrophising and jump to conclusions to make you feel less anxious,' says LeBon. 'A philosophical counsellor would do this, but would also look for existential meaning in your anxiety - perhaps you really don't want to be in the relationship and that is what your anxiety is telling you.' LeBon also gives short shrift to psychoanalysts. 'There's very little evidence for the Freudian unconscious, and it's time to move on to more intellectually satisfying and helpful therapies,' he says. However, Alain de Botton, the man who popularised philosophy as self-help, isn't ready to bury psychologists and their ilk just yet. 'The truth is that psychoanalysis grew out of philosophy - it's not some completely new idea, and in fact, done properly, psychoanalysis is philosophical anyway. It may even be dangerous to the mental health of some people to suggest a philosopher rather than a properly trained analyst. The knowledge of analysts when it comes to many emotional problems is now much greater than that of most philosophers.' Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004. (shrink)

This article focuses on justified responses to “immoral” behavior and crimes committed by patients undergoing neuromodulation therapies. Such patients could be held morally responsible in the basic desert sense—the one that serves as a justification of severe practices such as backward‐looking moral outrage, condemnation, and legal punishment—as long as they possess certain compatibilist capabilities that have traditionally served as the quintessence of free will, that is, reasons‐responsiveness; attributability; answerability; the abilities to act in accordance with moral reasons, second‐order volitions, (...) or Deep Self. Recently leading compatibilist neuroethicists added the condition of not feeling alienated from desires motivating a person's action. This article argues against such attempts to determine conditions under which patients undergoing neuromodulation should be subject to negative reactive attitudes and legal punishment. Compatibilism should not be used to justify basic desert moral responsibility and legal punishment. Instead, a new way of thinking about the function of moral responsibility attribution is proposed for patients with neuromodulation. Their compatibilist capabilities should serve as important indicators for determining appropriate, forward‐looking courses of action, such as quarantining and restorative treatment, to ensure the public safety and well‐being of the patients. (shrink)

A stunning compilation of the strongest pro-choice and pro-life arguments brought together for the first time in a single work that allows for meaningful comparisons and intelligent dialogue. This gives the discerning reader an opportunity to see both sides comprehensively; and move beyond emotionally charged mixed feelings to rational thought.

Compromise on moral matters attracts ambivalent reactions, since it seems at once laudable and deplorable. When a hotly-contested phenomenon like assisted dying is debated, all-or-nothing positions tend to be advanced, with little thought given to the desirability of, or prospects for, compromise. In response to recent articles by Søren Holm and Alex Mullock, in this article I argue that principled compromise can be encouraged even in relation to this phenomenon, provided that certain conditions are present . In order to qualify (...) as appropriately principled, the ensuing negotiations require disputants to observe three constraints: they should be suitably reflective, reliable and respectful in their dealings with one another. The product that will result from such a process will also need to split the difference between the warring parties. In assisted dying, I argue that a reduced offence of ‘compassionate killing’ can achieve this. I acknowledge, however, that splitting the difference can induce splitting headaches, as there remain certain questions to be answered. Hopefully, however, sufficient work is done here to defend attempts to occupy the middle ground, whether these relate to assisted dying specifically or to other disputed moral matters. (shrink)

I provide an account of feeling revengeful and I do so while rejecting the view that anger is ‘the emotion’ of revenge and that to be angry, conceptually, is to have a desire for vengeance. My aim is to challenge us to see the complex dimensions of revenge as feeling(s), which will also disprove the above views. I also make a case for precision in the ways we describe our affective states and trouble the tendency to necessarily link anger (...) to revenge, anger’s action tendency to vengeance, and view angry people as ‘the avengers.’ -/- . (shrink)

In this study, I will first introduce Husserl’s analysis in Studien zur Struktur des Bewußtseins by emphasizing the reasons that motivate these analyses on descriptive psychology and their status in Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology in the late Freiburg period. I will then focus on the structure of acts, with particular emphasis on three aspects stressed by Husserl in Studien: intentionality, the taxonomy of acts, and Brentano’s principle of the Vorstellungsgrundlage. The last three parts of this study outline the characteristic features of (...) three fundamental aspects of affective life in Husserl’s phenomenology: emotions, sense feelings, and moods. I will conclude with some general remarks on the status of affects and values in Husserl’s phenomenology. (shrink)

In §18 of Principles of Nature and Grace, Based on Reason, Leibniz says: ”Thus our happiness will never consist, and must never consist, in complete joy, in which nothing is left to desire, and which would dull our mind, but must consist in a perpetual progress to new pleasures and new perfections.” -/- This passage is typical in Leibniz’s Nachlass. Universal perfection creates in us joy or pleasure of the mind and its source is our creator, God. When this (...) joy is constant, we reach happiness and wisdom which is a kind of standing state of virtue, readiness to practice charity in the best of all possible worlds. However, it also indicates that our knowledge is never perfect. Perfecting our knowledge is a never-ending process which gives us joy in itself and motivates us to act in imitation of God. In this way some passions advance our knowledge and we can create ourselves a passionate habit of knowing more about the world and its perfection. In this paper I try to see this process of self-perfection from a cognitive rather than ethical point of view. While it is clear that in the final stage of wisdom we act mostly on our volitions which are founded on clear and distinct perceptions, it is less clear what cognitive status is to be attributed to our initial perceptions of perfection, our emotions and finally, the intellectual emotions which lead us to perfection and God. I will also reflect the role of the minute perceptions in our struggle for happiness. My argument is that a central cognitive role in Leibniz’s views on self-perfection is held by clear, but confused perfections which are subjective, undemonstrable impressions, shades, feelings. Therefore our ethical action is largely founded on passing, minute feelings rather than on deliberated conscious volitions, although the goal in Leibniz’s moral theory is to change this fact. -/- My discussion is founded on several texts from Leibniz’s later philosophy, such as the discussion following from New System of the Nature and the Communication of Substances of 1695, Leibniz’s letter to Queen Sophie Charlotte of 1702 (also known as On What is Independent in Sense and Matter), New Essays on Human Understanding (1704), Theodicy (1710) and naturally Leibniz’s most important epistemological text, Meditations of Truth, Knowledge and Ideas (1684). (shrink)

Both libertarian and compatibilist approaches have been unsuccessful in providing an acceptable account of free will. Recent developments in cognitive neuroscience, including the connectionist theory of mind and empirical findings regarding modularity and integration of brain functions, provide the basis for a new approach: neural holism. This approach locates free will in fully integrated behavior in which all of a person's beliefs and desires, implicitly represented in the brain, automatically contribute to an act. Deliberation, the experience of volition, (...) and cognitive and behavioral shortcomings are easily understood under this model. Assigning moral praise and blame, often seen as grounded in the notion that a person has the ability to have done otherwise, will be shown to reflect instead important aspects of signaling in social interactions. Thus, important aspects of the traditional notion of free will can be accounted for within the proposed model, which has interesting implications for lifelong cognitive development. (shrink)

In my dissertation, I explore how emotions operate under conditions of injustice. Specifically, my interest is in how one should deploy their emotions in order to combat patriarchally informed, affective ways of making sense of and responding to the social world. My dissertation consists of the following three papers. In the first paper, “Vindictive Anger,” I argue for two claims. First, that anger is not necessarily made morally worse whenever and to the extent that it involves a desire for (...) payback. Second, that in certain cases, anger’s retributive component is precisely what moralizes the emotion. Victims of sexual violence, I argue, paradigmatically deploy their anger as a way of getting their transgressor or, in some cases, the broader moral community, to more fully understand, through affect, the wrongness of their action. One can see this occur in the anger expressed by Chanel Miller in her victim’s impact statement, read aloud during the case of People v. Turner. When anger functions in this way, I propose, it serves to moralize the emotion. In the second paper, titled “Feminism and Suspect Femininity,” I ask how feminists should feel towards women who conform to suspect norms of appearance, and of hyper-femininity in particular. I present a novel type of empathy – proleptic empathy – which avoids treating women as either pitiful victims or as accomplices deserving of harsh moral criticism. Proleptic empathy requires switching back and forth between two types of imaginings: on the one hand, simulating what it is like to be in the woman’s shoes on the assumption that her suspect behavior stems from her will. On the other, simulating what it is like to be in the woman’s shoes on the assumption that her suspect behavior stems from external cultural influences. In the third paper, “Transitional Moral Contexts,” I address how one should feel towards the perpetrators who figure in the cases that have gone by the language of ‘grey rape’ or ‘bad sex’. These cases are ones that are rife with disagreement, especially amongst members of the moral community, who even disagree over whether they ought to count as cases of ‘sexual assault’ or ‘rape’. My suggestion is that the reason we have such difficulty adjudicating individuals’ responsibility for cases of bad sex is because these are instances of transitional moral contexts where what it is to act morally is in the process of being actively negotiated by the moral community. With this analysis in place, I present reasons for and against deploying shame against those who falter in these cases. (shrink)

Affection in triune consciousness -- Ricoeur in search of a philosophy of the "heart" -- Cognition and volition, or reason and will -- Faculties or powers of the mind -- Affectivity and values: two modern views -- Reason and desire from Socrates to the Stoics -- Augustine: "love transformed into will" -- Thomas Aquinas: the primacy of intellectual love -- The unravelling of Triune consciousness.

This book will please different people for different reasons. Those who have felt the lack of an adequate analysis of the emotions will be gratified by the author’s clarity and comprehension of view in distinguishing among feelings, desires, and pleasures. Ethical theorists may benefit from his analysis of the difference between motives and intentions. Philosophers who have been puzzled by Wittgenstein’s remarks on sensation in Parts I and II of Philosophical Investigations may expect to find some relief in the author’s (...) straightforward discussion of feelings under Wittgenstein’s inspiration. And philosophers who, for whatever reason, have regretted the lack of communication between the Scholastic tradition and the tradition of Modern Empiricism will be heartened by the lively way in which insights of St Thomas Aquinas and of Aristotle himself are brought to bear in relevant terms upon problems of human action and emotion inherited from Descartes and Hume. The author is partisan in this book. He sides generally with Aristotle, Aquinas, Wittgenstein, Anscombe and Geach, and generally against Descartes, Hume, Russell, Ryle and various contemporary logicians. But the price of this alignment does not include befuddlement about what his antagonists have to say, nor blindness to some of the virtues of their positions. In this respect alone, if not only in this respect, the author’s discussion is both refreshing and worthy of a student with teachers such as his. (shrink)

The philosophy of mind is intimately connected with the philosophy of action. Therefore, concepts like free will, motivation, emotions (especially positive emotions), and also the ethical issues related to these concepts are of abiding interest. However, the concepts of consciousness and free will are usually discussed solely in linguistic, ideational and cognitive (i.e. "left brain") terms. Admittedly, consciousness requires language and the left-brain, but the aphasic right brain is equally conscious; however, what it "hears" are more likely to (...) be music and emotions. Joy can be as conscious as the conscious motivation produced by the left-brain reading a sign that says, "Danger mines!!" However, look in the index of a Western textbook of psychology, psychiatry or philosophy for positive emotions located in the limbic system. Notice how discussion of positive spiritual/emotional issues in consciousness and motivation are scrupulously ignored. For example, the popular notions of "love" being either Eros (raw, amoral instinct) or agape (noble, non-specific valuing of all other people) miss the motivational forest for the trees. Neither Eros (hypothalamic) nor agape (cortical) has a fraction of the power to relieve stress as attachment (limbic love), yet until the 1950s attachment was neither appreciated nor discussed by academic minds. This paper will point out that the prosocial, "spiritual" positive emotions like hope, faith, forgiveness, joy, compassion and gratitude are extremely important in the relief of stress and in regulation of the neuroendocrine system, protecting us against stress. The experimental work reviewed by Antonio Damasio and Barbara Fredrickson, and the clinical example of Alcoholics Anonymous, will be used to illustrate these points. (shrink)

This paper addresses two questions: first, when making decisions about what to do, does the mere fact that we will feel regretful or guilty or proud afterward give us reason to act? I argue that these emotions of self-assessment give us little or no reason to act. The second question concerns emotional valence--how desirable or undesirable our emotions are. What is it that determines the valence of an emotion like regret? I argue that the valence of emotions, and indeed (...) of feelings like pain more broadly, is a function of the sensations they involve. As I suggest, understanding the point about emotional valence helps us answer the first question about anticipated emotions. The paper concludes with a discussion of death-bed regrets, and of whether teenagers should listen to their annoying parents. (shrink)

Many think that love would be a casualty of free will skepticism. I disagree. I argue that love would be largely unaffected if we came to deny free will, not simply because we cannot shake the attitude, but because love is not chosen, nor do we want it to be. Here, I am not alone; others have reached similar conclusions. But a few important distinctions have been overlooked. Even if hard incompatibilism is true, not all love is equal. (...) Although we have only minimal control over love, it can be more or less authentic. I develop my position by considering the fictional trope of love potions and the implications of a futuristic psychotropic, Lovezac—Viagra for the heart. But I am not as optimistic as some. Even though free will skepticism would not jeopardize love-the-feeling, there are reasons to think that loving relationships might not be immune. (shrink)

Ambivalence is often presented through cases of defeated ambivalence and multivalence, in which opposed attitudes suggest mutual isolation and defeat each other. Properly understood, however, ambivalence implies the existence of poles that are conflictually yet rationally interlinked and are open to non-defeated joint conduct. This paper considers cases that range from indecisiveness and easy adoption of conflicting attitudes, to tragically conflicted deliberation and to cases of shifting between self-deceptively serious attitudes. Analyzing such cases as variants of defeated (...) ambivalence, I argue that the phenomena of defeated ambivalence are marginal to ambivalence even though they are by the same token exemplary of it. The poles in such cases are connected as opposing attitudes in such a way that the attitudes and the opposition are both undermined. The article focuses on two forms of vague multivalence, one of which is taken from Heidegger’s analysis of curiosity. (shrink)

The idea of treating robots as free agents seems only to have existed in the realm of science fiction. In our current world, however, children are interacting with robotic technologies that look, talk, and act like agents. Are children willing to treat such technologies as agents with thoughts, feelings, experiences, and even free will? In this paper, we explore whether children’s developing concepts of agency and free will apply to robots. We first review the literature on children’s (...) agency and free-will beliefs, particularly looking at their beliefs about volition, responding to constraints, and deliberation about different options for action. We then review an emerging body of research that investigates children’s beliefs about agency and free will in robots. We end by discussing the implications for developing beliefs about agency and free will in an increasingly technological world. (shrink)

This work gives a fresh approach to the discussion of psychological phenomena in philosophical terms. Beginning with a discussion of the emotions and feelings, it works back to a theory of willing and judging. The method is analytic, and the influence of Wittgenstein and Ryle is everywhere in evidence, though in different ways: the author usually improves on what Ryle, but simply approves of what Wittgenstein, says. In the final two chapters, the theory of judgment put forward by Geach in (...) Mental Acts is modified and extended to apply to acts of will, in the light of what has been said in the earlier chapters about emotions, feelings and desires.--R. H. K. (shrink)

When considering whether to enact or not to enact a tempting option, people often anticipate how their choices will make them feel, typically resulting in a “mixed bag” of conflicting emotions. Building on earlier work, we propose an integrative theoretical model of this judgment process and empirically test its main propositions using a novel procedure to capture and integrate both the intensity and duration of anticipated emotions. We identify and theoretically integrate four highly relevant key emotions, pleasure, frustration, guilt, (...) and pride. Whereas the former two (basic hedonic) emotions are anticipated to dissipate relatively quickly, the latter two (self-conscious) emotions are anticipated to be more long-lived. Regarding the relative weighting of emotions, we obtained evidence for a relative guilt bias and pride neglect under default conditions. Furthermore, we identify situational influences on this judgment process and find that rendering self-conscious emotions more situationally salient positively impacts self-control decision-making. We discuss how these findings build on an integrative theory of self-control and how they are useful for the design of choice environments and interventions. (shrink)

I make a case for the thesis that no one can refrain from trying to attain the object of his or her currently strongest desire. I arrive there by defending an argument by Peter van Inwagen for a relatively mild conclusion about the way desires limit our abilities, and by arguing that if van Inwagen’s conclusion is correct, and correct for his reasons, so is my bolder thesis. I close with replies to objections, such as the objection that it (...) is better to take my argument as a reductio ad absurdum of van Inwagen’s than to take my conclusion seriously. (shrink)

This article explores the notion that human behaviors and desires can be attributed to someone called the “Other.” Throughout history, since Aristotle, it has been suggested that humans are imitative beings. Along with further developed versions of Aristotle’s concept of mimesis, the idea emerged that man actually imitates the desire of the “Other”. That is manifested not only in personal life, but also in all aspects of social life. In this article, the focus is specifically on love and how (...) it can be understood through this theory. Contrary to contemporary interpretations of love, the argument is made that it is, in fact, a destructive (murderous) emotion. To support this claim, references to literature, psychoanalysis, literary criticism, and philosophy are made. It is claimed that love is not a feeling of happiness, but of crisis, hysterical fits and pain. Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina serves as an example of love’s tumultuous nature. The fact that people give different shades to this ancient feeling in the modern world parallels the change of the world and human understanding. In the modern world, people attempt to live a life free of pain, sterilized and unwounded which causes a change in the essence of love. The article emphasizes these features and describes the ancient essence of love. (shrink)

Research indicates that emotions are predictive of sports performance. The application of emotion research to practice is that intervention strategies can be used to change emotions to enhance performance. The present study examined emotional profiles associated with successful performance. A review of studies indicate that there are general trends, that is, high activation emotions such as excitement and vigor tend to associate with good performance and low activation unpleasant emotions such as depression and dejection tend to associate with poor (...) performance. Studies show mixed results for high activation unpleasant emotions. Athletes like to feel emotions that can be functional, and so some athletes will seek to increase or sustain relatively high levels of anger or anxiety if they believe they are helpful for performance. It is proposed that practitioners identify individual emotion-performance relationships and examine underlying beliefs associated with each emotion. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Desire is Mimetic: A Clinical Approach Jean-Michel Oughourlian Université de Besançon, American Hospital ofParis What is the clinical expression ofmimetic desire? Rivalry. What I see every day in my practice is not mimicking, nor copying, nor learning; it is rivalry. Rivalry is recurrent, it repeats itself. The repetition syndrome identified by psychoanalysis is mimetic for two reasons: 1) because it is always the clinical expression of a (...) rivalry and that rivalry is always mimetic; 2) because it reproduces itself, duplicates itself, imitating the circumstances of the first rivalry and always looking for an impossible victory. That victory is impossible, since it stems from a situation which mimics the circumstances of defeat. But those circumstances are the only ones of interest, since the only battle worth winning is the one that has every chance to be lost. Mimetic rivalry (as I have tried to show elsewhere1) is always rooted in one ofthe two following claims: the claim ofthe selffor the ownership of its own desire; and the claim of desire for its anteriority, its seniority over the other's desire, the other desire that has generated it, on which it is modeled. Clinically, the self and the desire are going to develop various strategies to ascertain those two claims. The interdividual psychotherapy has to diagnose the nodal points of the mimetic conflict. It has to see ' See Jean-Michel Oughourlian, The Puppet ofDesire: The Psychology ofHysteria, Possession, and Hypnosis, trans. Eugene Webb (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991). Ed. 44Jean-Michel Oughourlian through the clinical variety of strategies and symptoms to the essential unity ofthe two claims underlying it. Let me give a few examples. Vengeance As we know, violence is mimetic. When violence cannot be immediately retaliated, imitated, duplicated, the energy for that retaliation is saved for later use. The more humiliating the violence, the greater the stored-up energy. Humiliation, in turn, stems from weakness: the humiliation of a child raped by an adult, ofa civilian beaten up by soldiers, ofa poor person insulted by a rich one, or, generally speaking, ofthe weak overpowered by the strong. Ifa weak person is the perpetrator ofthe first violence, it does not generate humiliation and, most ofthe time, does not entail vengeance. When an angered child kicks an adult, for example, this usually produces laughter rather than violence precisely because the child is smaller and weaker. As time goes by, the energy of postponed or deferred violence accumulates and increases. Clinically, it manifests itself in two ways: as a feeling ofhatred; and as a strength, a drive, a compulsive desire to destroy which will animate the offended and organize all his efforts in view ofthe vengeance that will set him free. The mimetic retaliation ofviolence will drive him until that retaliation is accomplished. In my experience, all the young girls who were raped by their fathers could not restore their mental health and psychological balance unless they were able, in one way or another, to avenge themselves. In the absence of such revenge, the enormous energy built up throughout their childhood and adolescence produced psychological symptoms which last for a lifetime. One such example is a patient, Miss L., 35 years old, who seeks treatment for alcoholism. It is a strange type ofalcoholism: each time, she must enter a meeting and speak before a group of people—and especially if her boss is in the group—she goes to the bathroom and drinks white rum from a hidden bottle. She has been in psychoanalysis for the past 12 years with no significant results. The history of her malady shows that she has wide mood swings, ups and downs often labeled as manic-depressive. Very quickly I see that she has stored within herself an enormous amount of violence which is fairly well controlled, but which manifests itselfthrough different types of aggressive behavior, especially towards men. A few sessions later, she finally tells me that she had been raped by her father and, as a consequence, that her parents had divorced. She was then obliged to remain with her father and take care ofhim. Psychoanalysis, of course, has Desire is Mimetic: A Clinical Approach45 commented extensively on the actual achievement ofher oedipal... (shrink)

The conscious feeling of exercising ‘free-will’ is fundamental to our sense of self. However, in some psychopathological conditions actions may be experienced as involuntary or unwilled. We have used suggestion in hypnosis to create the experience of involuntariness in normal participants. We compared a voluntary finger movement, a passive movement and a voluntary movement suggested by hypnosis to be ‘involuntary.’ Hypnosis itself had no effect on the subjective experience of voluntariness associated with willed movements and passive movements or on (...) time estimations of their occurrence. However, subjective time estimates of a hypnotically-suggested, ‘involuntary’ finger movement were more similar to those for passive movements than for voluntary movements. The experience of anomalous control is qualitatively and quantitatively different from the normal conscious experience of a similar act produced intentionally. The experience of anomalous control may be produced either by pathology, or, in our case, by suggestion. (shrink)

In his Symphony n. 94 (1792), Haydn has a movement entitled “mit einem Paukenschlag,” which surprises the audience with a fortissimo timpani strike. This symphony, thus nicknamed “Die Überraschung,” offers a nice artistic example of fulguration against the background of imminence. Works of art offer a snapshot that unites beauty and novelty and evoke in us - in the artist as much as in the lover of music - the feeling of losing all control in a fraction of a second: (...) I call it the art of release [_déprise_]. The aim of my paper is to show the complexity of the emotional dynamic while identifying under the expression of “antinomic emotion,” and to dismantle thereby the current and naive understanding of emotions as being merely “uni-valent” (love is positive, hate is negative) or even as being “ambiguous” or “ambivalent” (e.g., the pleasure I have to see somebody suffer). With “antinomic emotions,” of which I will give and describe three main exemplary situations, there remains an open tension between opposed moves, like in the case of a painful joy (Diadochos of Photicea), of a dreadful beauty (Plato) or in the case of a drunken soberness (Gregorius of Nyssa). Such expressions have the particularity not to be immediately and obviously understandable, which is the heart of their interest and complexity and will precisely require the analysis that follows in the article. In order to reach the threshold of experiential emotional complexity, I will benefit from useful philosophical and phenomenological resources in Kant and his binary distinctive analysis of the feelings of beauty and sublime, in Max Scheler in his fine experiential distinctions between positive and negative empathy and his descriptions of pathological ambiguous emotions (e.g., the pleasure to see someone suffer), but also in some less well-known Husserl’s about intense emotional movements combining for example in multifarious microphase-time taste, disgust, and euphoria. We will show how such analyses are at the same time useful as thresholds of understanding and limited in their descriptive potentiality. To open up the discussion, I will state that the structure of open tension inherent in antinomic emotions is complemented by a specific dynamic of reversal of the opposed emotional polarities, which can take the form either of inversion or of annulment. (shrink)

Clarifies the central elements of the "stuckness" feeling in the traditional framework for free will and determinism in psychology, based on the inherent dependence on context and the assumed need of free will to be independent of context. These central elements are examined from the relatively overlooked perspective of time. A large part of the stuckness is revealed to stem from the linear assumption of time, rather than the linear nature of causality, as usually assumed. Suggestions are offered (...) for overcoming this overlooked perspective to overcome the stuckness. Alternative assumptions of time are shown to offer a fresh framework for resolving the free will/determinism problem. It is suggested that nonlinear approaches to time offer several advantages in the framing of the issues, including the integration of possibility and the past, without time and causality being sacrificed in the process. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Interdisciplinary approaches to emotions hold a tension which we know already from other discourses such as the debate about free will or the problem of phenomenal qualities { the tension between the perspective of the observer and the personal point of view . While we know, from our own experience, some portion of the richness which emotional experiences are capable of affording, we can partake in experiences and feelings of others through narratives. By contrast, insights into the neuronal (...) mechanisms forming the basis of emotional processes do not deliver insight into the corresponding feelings. So, one might think: the more accurate neuroscientific descriptions of the basis of emotions are, the more we lose track of what we esteem most in our emotional life { the multi-layered and fine-grained nature of experience itself. But it need not be like this. (shrink)