bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Perfectionism
Authors: Hurka Thomas
Published: September 2018

Perfectionism is a moral theory according to which certain states or activities of human beings, such as knowledge, achievement and artistic creation, are good apart from any pleasure or happiness they bring, and what is morally right is what most promotes these human ‘excellences’ or ‘perfections’. Some versions of perfectionism hold that the good consists, at bottom, in the development of properties central to human nature, so that if knowledge and achievement are good, it is because they realize aspects of human nature. With or without this view, perfectionisms can differ about what in particular is good, for example, about the relative merits of knowing and doing. The most plausible versions of perfectionism affirm both self-regarding duties to seek the excellences in one’s own life and other-regarding duties to promote them in other people. Some critics argue that the latter duties, when applied to political questions, are hostile to liberty and equality, but certain versions of perfectionism endorse liberty and equality. Perfectionist ideas can also figure in a pluralist morality where they are weighed against other, competing moral ideas.
Prescriptivism
Authors: Hare R.M.
Published: September 2018

Prescriptivism is a theory about moral statements. It claims that such statements contain an element of meaning which serves to prescribe or direct actions. The history of prescriptivism includes Socrates, Aristotle, Hume, Kant and Mill, and it has been influential also in recent times.

Moral statements also contain a factual or descriptive element. The descriptive element of morality differs between persons and cultures, but the prescriptive element remains constant.

Prescriptivism can allow for moral disagreement, and explain moral weakness. It can also explain better than other theories the rationality and objectivity of moral thinking.
Prudence
Authors: Hughes Gerard J.
Published: September 2018

The word ‘prudence’ is used in several ways in contemporary English, and its different philosophical senses to some extent reflect that variety. Traditionally, prudence is the ability to make morally discerning choices in general; but the term is also used to denote a habit of cautiousness in practical affairs; most recently, attempts have also been made to identify prudence with practical rationality, perhaps even with the pursuit of the agent’s own interests, without any specifically moral implications.
Reproduction and ethics
Authors: Hursthouse Rosalind
Published: September 2018

The first reproductive issue debated extensively by philosophers was abortion. Debates about its morality were, and still are, dominated by the issue of the moral status of the foetus, on which a wide variety of views has been defended. The most ‘conservative’ view is usually associated with very restrictive abortion policies, inconsistent with ‘a woman’s right to choose’ (though the connection has been challenged by Judith Jarvis Thomson). However, all but the most conservative find it hard to ground prevailing moral intuitions concerning the newer issue of using human embryos for research purposes. Embryos, and even gametes, also assume importance in the context of methods for overcoming infertility (artificial insemination by donor (AID), egg and embryo donation involving in vitro fertilization (IVF), surrogacy) where issues about rights and ownership may arise. Considerations of ‘the welfare of the child’, often used to settle surrogacy disputes, also bear on questions of what should, or may, be done to avoid bringing a child with a genetic abnormality into the world. Current philosophical literature on reproductive issues is largely limited to a vocabulary of rights and little attention is paid to the social and familial contexts in which reproductive decisions are usually made
Responsibility
Authors: Duff R.A.
Published: September 2018

To be responsible for something is to be answerable for it. We have prospective responsibilities, things it is up to us to attend to: these may attach to particular roles (the responsibilities of, for instance, parents or doctors), or be responsibilities we have as moral agents, or as human beings. We have retrospective responsibilities, for what we have done or failed to do, for the effects of our actions or omissions. Such responsibilities are often (but not always) moral or legal responsibilities.

The scope of our retrospective moral responsibilities is controversial. We are responsible for the intended results of our actions, but how far we are responsible for their foreseen effects, or for harms that we do not prevent when we could, depends on how we should define our prospective responsibilities, that is, on how far we should regard such foreseen effects, or such preventable harms, as our business. To say that I am responsible for some foreseen effect, or for a harm which I did not prevent, is to say that I should have attended to that effect or to that harm in deciding how to act; our retrospective responsibilities are partly determined by our prospective responsibilities.

I am responsible for something only if it is within my control. It is sometimes argued that I am therefore not responsible for that whose occurrence is a matter of luck; but it is not clear that we can or should try to make responsibility wholly independent of matters of luck.

We have responsibilities not merely as individuals, but also as members of organizations (organizations themselves have responsibilities in so far as they can be seen as agents). This raises the question of how far we are responsible for the actions of groups or organizations to which we belong.
Responsibilities of scientists and intellectuals
Authors: Montefiore Alan
Published: September 2018

Do scientists and intellectuals bear responsibilities peculiar to them? If an ‘intellectual’ is whoever has a committed interest in the truth or validity of ideas for their own sake and a ‘scientist’ anyone possessing a special competence in the natural or social sciences, they may indeed be more likely to find themselves in certain characteristic positions of responsibility. In the case of intellectuals, the importance of providing checkable justification of claims made in their pursuit of truth brings certain responsibilities. Scientists may be said to have responsibilities for pursuing truth in their own areas of competence, for wielding their social power appropriately, for making their results generally accessible and for using resources properly. But these apparently special responsibilities are nevertheless to be understood as rooted ultimately in those which any human being may, in the relevant circumstances, be thought to bear to their fellows.
Self-realization
Authors: Evans Mark
Published: September 2018

‘Self-realization’ is the development and expression of characteristic attributes and potentials in a fashion which comprehensively discloses their subject’s real nature. Usually, the ‘self’ in question is the individual person, but the concept has also been applied to corporate bodies held to possess a unitary identity.

What constitutes the self’s ‘real nature’ is the key variable generating the many conceptions of self-realization. These can be grouped broadly into two types: (1) the ‘collectivist’, in which the self-realizing lifestyle, being either the same for all or specific to a person or subgroup of people, is ultimately definable only in the context, and perhaps with reference to the common purposes, of a collective social body; (2) the ‘individualist’, in which a person’s self-realization has no necessary connection with the ends of a particular community.

As an ethic, self-realization can be proposed as the means to achieve a life identified as good by some criterion independent of the self-realizing process, or held to be that which actually defines the good. Its critics typically argue that human nature is such that any equation of ‘self-realization’ and ‘goodness’ is implausible or undesirable.
Moral relativism
Authors: Kölbel Max
Published: September 2018

In philosophical discussions, the term 'moral relativism' is primarily used to denote the metaethical thesis that the correctness of moral judgments is relative to some interesting factor, for example, relative to an individual’s or group’s moral norms.

Outside philosophy, for example in anthropology, sociology or ethnology, 'moral relativism' can also denote the thesis that there is significant cross-cultural or inter-personal diversity as to the moral values that are accepted or adhered to – following Brandt (1967), this is often called 'descriptive moral relativism'. Also following Brandt, a further sense of 'moral relativism' is often distinguished and labelled 'normative moral relativism'. Unlike metaethical moral relativism, normative moral relativism is supposed to involve ethical and not just metaethical claims, such as, for example, that what an individual (or a group) considers morally right or wrong to do, is in fact right or wrong for them to do. Given the general implausibility of such claims, this sense of the term seems to be linked to the frequent polemical or derogatory use of the term, in which it is taken for granted that moral relativism is a position that ought to be avoided.

Serious philosophical discussion of moral relativism has no need for the derogatory notion, and it is only indirectly concerned with empirical descriptive theses of cross-cultural or interpersonal divergence of moral views, namely in so far as they are sometimes adduced as evidence for metaethical moral relativism. Hence this article focuses on the metaethical thesis that the correctness of moral judgments is relative to, for example, individuals or groups, or their systems of value.
Truthfulness
Authors: Bok Sissela
Published: September 2018

Humans are the only species capable of speech and thus of lies. Choices regarding truthfulness and deceit are woven into all that they say and do. From childhood on, everyone knows the experience of being deceived and of deceiving others, of doubting someone’s word and of being thought a liar. Throughout life, no moral choice is more common than that of whether to speak truthfully, equivocate, or lie – whether to flatter, get out of trouble, retaliate, or gain some advantage.

All societies, as well as all major moral, religious and legal traditions have condemned forms of deceit such as bearing false witness; but many have also held that deceit can be excusable or even mandated under certain circumstances, as, for instance, to deflect enemies in war or criminals bent on doing violence to innocent victims. Opinions diverge about such cases, however, as well as about many common choices about truthfulness and deceit. How open should spouses be to one another about adultery, for example, or physicians to dying patients? These are quandaries familiar since antiquity. Others, such as those involving the backdating of computerized documents, false claims on résumés in applying for work, or misrepresenting one’s HIV-positive status to sexual partners, present themselves in new garb.

Hard choices involving truthfulness and lying inevitably raise certain underlying questions. How should truthfulness be defined? Is lying ever morally justified, and if so under what conditions? How should one deal with borderline cases between truthfulness and clear-cut falsehood, and between more and less egregious forms of deceit? And how do attitudes towards truthfulness relate to personal integrity and character? The rich philosophical debate of these issues has focused on issues of definition, justification, and line-drawing, and on their relevance to practical moral choice.
Virtue ethics
Authors: Crisp Roger
Published: September 2018

Virtue ethics has its origin in the ancient world, particularly in the writings of Plato and Aristotle. It has been revived following an article by G.E.M. Anscombe critical of modern ethics and advocating a return to the virtues.

Some have argued that virtue ethics constitutes a third option in moral theory additional to utilitarianism and Kantianism. Utilitarians and Kantians have responded vigorously, plausibly claiming that their views already incorporate many of the theses allegedly peculiar to virtue ethics.

Virtue theory, the study of notions, such as character, related to the virtues, has led to the recultivation of barren areas. These include: What is the good life, and what part does virtue play in it? How stringent are the demands of morality? Are moral reasons independent of agents’ particular concerns? Is moral rationality universal? Is morality to be captured in a set of rules, or is the sensitivity of a virtuous person central in ethics?

From virtue ethics, and the virtue theory of which it is a part, have emerged answers to these questions at once rooted in ancient views and yet distinctively modern.
Vulnerability and finitude
Authors: O'Neill Onora
Published: September 2018

Power has always been a central category of political thought and theory; its counterparts, powerlessness or vulnerability, and more generally finitude, have seemingly been much less discussed. Yet finitude has been a theme for many writers, particularly on metaphysical and epistemological topics, who emphasize that claims about human knowledge cannot presuppose that we command a God’s-eye view of ourselves or the world; while vulnerability has been a theme in ethical and political philosophy, challenging idealized ‘models of man’ that take exaggerated views of human capacities and autonomy, and which overlook the mundane realities of dependence, poverty and frailty.
Wittgensteinian ethics
Authors: Lovibond Sabina
Published: September 2018

Although the strict ‘fact-value distinction’ of Wittgenstein’s early period has shaped much subsequent work on ethics, his most profound influence on the subject stems from the later Philosophical Investigations and associated writings. Of particular significance have been, first, the concept of a ‘language game’, and second, the discussion of following a rule. The vision of morality itself as a language game – a complex of speech and action ordered in a way that makes sense to the participants – has seemed to diminish the urgency of traditional questions about the ‘foundations’ of ethics, and has promoted acceptance of moral experience and consciousness as natural (human) phenomena. More recently there has been a growing interest in how Wittgenstein’s general reflections on rule-governed practices might apply to the specific case of moral understanding.
Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759–1797)
Authors: Berges Sandrine
Published: September 2018

Wollstonecraft was a republican thinker who produced influential texts on education, women’s rights, and the French revolution. Her writings were informed by Rousseau’s political and educational writings, and the thought of the radical dissenters. Her philosophy is perfectionist – she believed that human nature is first and foremost rational and can acquire virtue through education. Her political views are republican: independence from domination is of first importance, whether the dominating entity is a king, a master, or a husband; and citizens should depend on laws for their protection, not arbitrary or hereditary power. Wollstonecraft wrote two novels, several books on education, a history of the French Revolution, travel correspondence and two philosophical vindications, the second of which, the Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), is now regarded as her most important work.
Pornography
Authors: Dodsworth Ashley , Mendus Susan
Published: September 2018

There are three main questions about pornography. (1) How is pornography to be defined? Some definitions include the contention that it is morally wrong, while others define it neutrally in terms of its content and function. (2) Why is it wrong? Some think that it is wrong because it has a corrupting or morally damaging effect on those who consume it and on society in general, while others claim that it is wrong only because and in so far as it causes offence to unwilling observers, or physical harm to those involved in its production, or increases the incidence of violence, particularly sexual violence, in society as a whole. (3) Should pornography be restricted by law? Some think that, in a liberal society, the values of individual freedom and autonomy speak against legal restriction, and they argue that those who favour legal restriction are supporting nonliberal or even illiberal values. Recently, however, feminist theorists have argued that liberal values themselves may require the legal restriction of pornography.
Murdoch, Iris (1919–99)
Authors: Norgaard Thomas
Published: September 2018

Iris Murdoch was an Oxford moral philosopher and a prolific novelist. Her philosophy was marked by a strong sense of the moral significance of our inner lives: the quality of our seeing, feeling and imagining is significant, both in itself and as a background for our active lives. Moral effort, Murdoch believed, consists mainly in the struggle against our natural egoism. She thought ethics should discuss the techniques of this struggle and took a particular interest in the role art might play in such a context. Insisting on the irreducible plurality of the moral ‘field of force’, Murdoch did not develop a moral theory; yet she also believed that moral experience is haunted by a sense of unity. Her thought revolved around this tension. Inspired by Plato, she referred to this unity as ‘Good’ and understood it as a distant perfect reality present in imperfect human lives as a baffling but magnetic force. The phenomena and problems that had Murdoch’s philosophical interest were also explored in her fiction, despite her insistence that she was not a philosophical novelist.
Ethics and psychology
Authors: Doris John M. , Stich Stephen P.
Published: September 2018

Psychological research promises substantive contributions to philosophical ethics. Arguments purporting to show that empirical considerations are of sharply limited relevance to ethical reflection, such as those commonly associated with Hume and Moore (although in the former case strangely, since this can hardly be thought to have been Hume’s view), have proved indecisive. Arguments in philosophical ethics very often presuppose empirical claims that are appropriately evaluated by reference to the behavioural and social sciences. Four points of contact between philosophical and psychological research substantiate this contention and suggest a general methodological standard: philosophical ethics can, and indeed must, interface with the human sciences.

Contemporary virtue ethics typically understands character traits as involving reliable tendencies to trait-appropriate behaviour. However, much research in psychology indicates that this conception of character traits is inadequate; behaviour varies enormously with the situation, and people very often do not consistently behave in ways that accord with a given trait. To address this difficulty, virtue ethics must either be recast in a way that does not involve commitments in empirical psychology, or take better account of the empirical evidence than existing articulations of the position have done.

In philosophical ethics, motivational internalism is the view that a rational agent will be reliably moved to act in ways that comport with their moral judgments. Recent clinical studies of psychopaths, individuals who suffer no generalized cognitive deficiencies but seem to be quite unmoved by their moral judgments, appear to undermine internalism. To address this argument, the motivational internalist must engage with the clinical literature

It is often argued that the existence of widespread and persistent moral disagreement makes claims for the ‘objectivity of morality’ problematic: If there were really a ‘fact of the matter’ for moral issues, we would expect more convergence on answers in moral debate than we in fact observe. In response, those defending the objectivity of morality argue that convergence can be expected to obtain only in ideal circumstances, when participants in moral discussion are impartial, rational, aware of the non-moral facts, and so on. A preliminary assessment of the record in anthropology and cultural psychology does not justify confidence in this conjecture. If such confidence is to be vindicated, it must be based on a serious investigation of the empirical literature.

A standard method in philosophical writing is to present readers with a hypothetical example designed to tap some intuition. The resulting intuitions are often treated as ‘data’ for ethical theory; competing theories, it is widely believed, must account for people’s responses to cases. For this method to be credible, what people’s responses actually are, and what factors influence these responses, must be subject to systematic empirical investigation.
Metaethics
Authors: Finlay Stephen
Published: September 2018

A tripartite distinction is often drawn in moral philosophy between (i) applied ethics, (ii) normative ethical theory, and (iii) metaethics. Applied ethics seeks answers to moral questions about specific practices like abortion, euthanasia and business, while normative ethics seeks abstract moral principles that apply generally. We can loosely define metaethics as seeking answers to questions about normative ethics. It does not, at least directly, seek answers to moral or normative questions about (e.g.) which acts are right, what things are good, or how we ought to live our lives; instead it asks a variety of nonmoral questions about morality. While it is sometimes claimed that metaethics is morally neutral in the sense that it leaves normative questions open, metaethical theories can have normative implications, and it is sometimes argued that they all do.

Since there is in principle no limit to the kinds of nonmoral questions one might ask about morality, there is no limit to the possible kinds of metaethical questions other than their relation to the subject of morality. One central kind of question is semantic, concerning the meaning of moral language. For example, what do we mean by saying that something is ‘right’ or ‘good’? Another central kind of question is metaphysical. For example, what kind of property is moral goodness, and does such a thing exist? A third central kind of question is epistemological, concerning how we might come to know moral truths. Some of the many other kinds of metaethical questions are psychological (concerned with the mental attitudes we call ‘moral judgments’ and how they motivate us to action), logical (concerning the inferences we can legitimately draw between different moral claims), sociobiological (concerning how humans may have evolved as beings with a moral sense), and – although it may blur the distinction between metaethics and normative ethics – normative (concerning the rational justification for acting morally). The boundaries of metaethics are vague. For example, just as normative ethics on a broader conception concerns itself not merely with morality narrowly construed but with all practical or normative questions about how to act, choose and live, so too metaethics on a broader conception asks nonnormative questions about normativity more generally.
Moral psychology, empirical work in
Authors: May Joshua
Published: September 2018

How do we form our moral judgments, and how do they influence behaviour? What ultimately motivates kind versus malicious action? Moral psychology is the interdisciplinary study of such questions about the mental lives of moral agents, including moral thought, feeling, reasoning and motivation. While these questions can be studied solely from the armchair or using only empirical tools, researchers in various disciplines, from biology to neuroscience to philosophy, can address them in tandem. Some key topics in this respect revolve around moral cognition and motivation, such as moral responsibility, altruism, the structure of moral motivation, weakness of will, and moral intuitions. Of course there are other important topics as well, including emotions, character, moral development, self-deception, addiction, well-being, and the evolution of moral capacities.

Some of the primary objects of study in moral psychology are the processes driving moral action. For example, we think of ourselves as possessing free will, as being responsible for what we do; as capable of self-control; and as capable of genuine concern for the welfare of others. Such claims can be tested by empirical methods to some extent in at least two ways. First, we can determine what in fact our ordinary thinking is. While many philosophers investigate this through rigorous reflection on concepts, we can also use the empirical methods of the social sciences. Second, we can investigate empirically whether our ordinary thinking is correct or illusory. For example, we can check the empirical adequacy of philosophical theories, assessing directly any claims made about how we think, feel, and behave

Understanding the psychology of moral individuals is certainly interesting in its own right, but it also often has direct implications for other areas of ethics, such as metaethics and normative ethics. For instance, determining the role of reason versus sentiment in moral judgment and motivation can shed light on whether moral judgments are cognitive, and perhaps whether morality itself is in some sense objective. Similarly, evaluating moral theories, such as deontology and utilitarianism, often relies on intuitive judgments about what one ought to do in various hypothetical cases. Empirical research can again serve as an additional tool to determine what exactly our intuitions are and which psychological processes generate them, contributing to a rigorous evaluation of the warrant of moral intuitions.
Expressivism
Authors: van Roojen Mark
Published: September 2018

Expressivism is a kind of noncognitivism, usually about morality. And noncognitivism is a metaethical theory, that is a theory about the subject matter of morality, about the nature of moral thought and about the meaning of moral language. Noncognitivist theories of ethics and morality contrast with cognitivist theories of ethics, according to which moral language and thought is continuous with other descriptive language and thought, which represents the world to be a certain way. Insofar as the idea is to contrast moral language with ordinary descriptive language, noncognitivists must give us an account of how moral thought and language do function. That account must make sense of moral thought and talk and be consistent with how people in fact think and talk about moral matters. Expressivism is perhaps the dominant contemporary strategy for providing that story.

Expressivism suggests that the function of moral language is to express desire like attitudes. The fact that moral language does so is supposed to explain the intuitively tight connection between moral opinion and action – that people’s actions provide good evidence about the morality they accept. And it is supposed also to explain why moral terms cannot be translated into nonmoral language, as G.E. Moore alleged in his influential Principia Ethica The general expressivist strategy is to explain these and other features of moral language by correlating moral sentences with the attitudes they are apt to express. The thought is that we can use these states of mind to explain what these sentences mean.

Expressivism thus extends the project of the early emotivists, who along with prescriptivists developed the two main early varieties of noncognitivism. Expressivists and emotivists agree that simple indicative moral sentences are conventional devices for the expression of pro and con attitudes as opposed to cognitive attitudes such as belief. Contemporary expressivists have not repudiated emotivism; rather, they have developed it. Most are quasi-realist insofar as they have aimed to generate a systematic account of moral language that vindicates everyday moral practice. They have thus gone some way beyond their emotivist predecessors in generating accounts of more complex sentences that contain moral terms. And they have often been more specific about the attitudes expressed and about the sense in which attitude expression can be used to explain the meanings of moral terms.
Moral dilemmas
Authors: Nair Shyam
Published: September 2018

A moral dilemma is a situation where an agent’s obligations conflict. Debate in this area focuses on the question of whether genuine moral dilemmas exist. This question involves considering not only the nature and significance of dilemmas, but also the connections between dilemmas, the logic of obligation and moral emotions.

Certain cases involving difficult choices suggest that moral dilemmas exist. These cases also suggest that dilemmas are significant because they show that moral theory cannot help with these choices. If this is right, morality may be unimportant because it may be a system of inconsistent rules that cannot be used as a guide that tells us what to do. But this understanding of the cases is disputable. Perhaps the cases show that agents can be ignorant about what they ought to do. Or perhaps dilemmas are not significant because moral theory tells agents to do the most important of their obligations.

On the other hand, principles from the logic of obligation or deontic logic can be used to argue against the existence of moral dilemmas. Principles of deontic logic such as the ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ principle and the agglomeration principle, which says that if you ought to do a and ought to do b, then you ought to do a and b, taken together with the assumption that moral dilemmas exist, turn out to entail a contradiction. This means that one of these principles must be given up, or else it must be the case that moral dilemmas do not exist.

Careful consideration of the moral emotions has suggested that dilemmas do exist. It is appropriate for agents to feel guilt only if they ought to have done otherwise. In cases involving difficult choices, it is appropriate to feel guilt no matter what course of action is taken. This suggests that such cases involve genuine dilemmas.
Moral sentimentalism
Authors: Gert Joshua
Published: September 2018

‘Sentimentalism’ is a name for a wide class of views in value theory. Sentimentalist views are unified by their commitment to the idea that normative or evaluative properties or concepts are best explained in a way that relies, in some fundamental way, on an appeal to the emotional and affective nature of human beings. ‘Moral sentimentalism’ is simply sentimentalism that restricts its focus to moral properties or concepts. Moral sentimentalism contrasts importantly with moral rationalism, according to which the foundation of morality is to be found in the human capacity for reason. Often this capacity is taken to be of the same sort that yields knowledge of the truths of logic, mathematics or physics. Hume can be taken as an arch sentimentalist, and Kant as an arch rationalist.

Sentimentalism takes six primary forms: expressivism, quasi-realism, dispositionalism, fitting-attitude views, reference-fixing views and rational sentimentalism. Expressivism holds that normative judgements are expressions of attitudes such as approval and disapproval. Quasi-realism can be seen as a sophisticated version of expressivism that attempts to vindicate our thinking and talking as if moral judgements were truth-apt. Dispositionalism, on the other hand, straightforwardly makes moral talk truth-apt by understanding it as factual talk about our emotional dispositions. Fitting-attitude views are similar to dispositional views, but they replace talk of causing certain attitudes with talk of meriting them or making them fitting. Reference-fixing views use our sentiments just as an account of heat might use our capacity to feel heat: as detectors of objective and external properties, the essences of which we can then discover. Finally, rational sentimentalism holds that concepts such as the pitiful or the admirable are ones we use to help regulate, by reflection and argument, motivational attitudes such as pity and admiration.
Reasons for action
Authors: Wiland Eric
Published: September 2018

There are many reasons for wanting to understand what reasons for action are. Moral philosophers, for instance, consider the question of whether everyone has a reason to comply with morality. This debate produces further questions, such as: are evildoers by their actions shown to be unreasonable? Understanding what reasons for action are should shed light on how to resolve this. Other moral philosophers inquire not only whether moral values are objective, but also whether the normativity of reasons is likewise objective. Many philosophers specialize in the theory of action. Some argue that there is an internal connection between reasons for action and the nature of action itself, namely that intentional action can seem to be simply action performed for a reason. More generally, it is commonly held that we are rational animals, and so self-understanding requires us to grasp what it is to act for a reason.

Contemporary work on practical reasons tends to explore various ways in which reasons for action are connected to the first person. Many philosophers think that there is some sort of important and nonaccidental connection between a reason for action and the person whose reason it is. That is, your reasons for action have something special to do with you.

But different philosophers specify this abstract thought in very different ways, ways that need to be carefully distinguished. Some argue that agential elements constrain the content of the practical reason. For example, egoists think that you have reason to do only what is good for you. Subjectivists instead think that you have reason to do only what you want. Internal reasons theorists think that you have reason to do only those acts the thought of which can motivate you. Although these views seem to resemble each other, there are important differences between an agent’s wellbeing, desires and motives.

Other philosophers are impressed by the distinctive epistemic relation that one bears to one’s own practical reasons. When you act for a reason, you typically know that reason in a distinctively first-personal way. And some philosophers think that reasons for action are themselves psychological parts of the agents whose reasons they are. If they are correct, there is an internal metaphysical relation between agents and their practical reasons.
Art criticism
Authors: Lyas Colin
Published: September 2018

To criticize a work of art is to make a judgment of its overall merit or demerit and to support that judgment by reference to features it possesses. This activity is of great antiquity; we find Aristotle, for example, relating the excellence of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex to the excellence of its plot construction. Criticism became a topic in philosophy because reflection on the kinds of things said by critics generated various perplexities and in some cases encouraged a general scepticism about the possibility of criticism. Two general and related problems in particular have taxed philosophers. The first is the question of whether criticism is a rational activity, that is to say, whether critics can give reasons for their judgments that would persuade potential dissenters of the rightness of those judgments. The second, a matter to which Kant and Hume made notable contributions, is the problem of the objectivity of critical judgments, it being widely believed that critical appraisals are wholly subjective or just ‘a matter of taste’. Arguments that use deductive or inductive reasoning to demonstrate the possibility of proofs of critical judgments are generally agreed to have failed. Another approach redescribes the critic altogether, not as someone who uses argument to prove their judgments to an audience, but as someone who aims to help the audience perceive features of the work of art and understand their role in the work. This entry will concentrate on the issues of the rationality and objectivity of art criticism.
Art works, ontology of
Authors: Currie Gregory
Published: September 2018

In trying to decide what kinds of thing art works are, a natural starting point is the hypothesis that they are physical objects. This is plausible for certain works, such as paintings and sculptures; it is not plausible for music and literature. But if paintings and sculptures are physical objects, familiar arguments suggest that we cannot identify them with the material that constitutes them; we have to say that the statue and the material of the statue are co-located but distinct physical objects. A challenge to the physical object hypothesis for painting and sculpture arises when we question the widely held view that the authentic object made by the artist possesses relevant features which no copy could possibly exemplify. If it is acknowledged that paintings and sculptures are, in principle, reproducible in ways that fully preserve their appearances, the motivation for thinking of the painted or sculptural work itself as a physical particular is in doubt. But a defence of the physical object hypothesis is available if we accept a certain view about how reference is secured for kind terms.

For literary and musical works, the standard view is not that they are physical objects; rather, they are said to be abstract structures: structures of word-types in the literary case and of sound-types in the musical case. But arguments concerning the dependence of informed appreciation on a work’s historical context have made these relatively coarse-grained structuralist proposals seem inadequate; these arguments purport to show that works with the same structure might have different contextually determined features and ought, therefore, to count as distinct works. More fine-grained structuralist proposals have been developed.

As well as asking about the identity conditions for works, we can ask about the conditions for identity within a work: under what conditions is an object an instance of this work? Goodman has proposed that we divide works into autographic and allographic kinds: for autographic works, such as paintings, identity within a work is determined by history of production; for allographic works, such as novels, it is determined in some other way. But arguments can be given for the conclusion that even for novels and musical works, identity within the work is subject to historical constraints, though less onerous ones than Goodman claims to find for the autographic arts.

Consideration of the arts raises ontological questions of various kinds: about the status of fictional characters, about such problematic qualities as ‘depth’ in a painting, about the imaginary personas we may associate with the work’s expressive qualities. This entry ignores these issues and focuses exclusively on the nature of works of art themselves.
Depiction
Authors: Hopkins Robert
Published: September 2018

How do pictures work? How are they able to represent what they do? A picture of a goat, for example, is a flat surface covered with marks, depicting a goat chewing straw while standing on a hillock. The puzzle of depiction is to understand how the flat marks can do this.

Language poses a similar problem. A written description of a goat will also be a collection of marks on a flat surface, which nonetheless represent that animal. In the case of language the solution clearly has something to do with the arbitrary way we use those marks. The word ‘leg’, for example, is applied to leg’s, but any other mark would do as well, providing we all use it in the same way. In the case of pictures, however, something different seems to be going on. There is not the same freedom in producing a picture of a goat on a hillock chewing straw - the surface must be marked in the rightway, a way we are not free to choose. So what is the right way?

A helpful thought is that the surface must be marked so as to let us experience it in a special way. With the description, we merely need to know what the words it contains are used to stand for. With the picture, we must instead be able to seea goat init. However, although this does seem right, it is difficult to make clear. After all, we do not see a goat in the same way that we see a horse in a view from a window. For one thing, there is no goat there to be seen. For another, it is not even true that looking at the picture is like looking at a goat. It is partly because of the differences that, as we look at the picture, we are always aware that it is merely a collection of marks on a flat surface. So what is this special experience, seeing a goat in the picture? Answering this question is not the only way to offer a philosophical account of depiction, but it is perhaps the most promising.
Artistic expression
Authors: Davies Stephen
Published: September 2018

Many kinds of psychological state can be expressed in or by works of art. But it is the artistic expression of emotion that has figured most prominently in philosophical discussions of art. Emotion is expressed in pictorial, literary and other representational works of art by the characters who are depicted or in other ways presented in the works. We often identify the emotions of such characters in much the same way as we ordinarily identify the emotions of others, but we might also have special knowledge of a character’s emotional state, through direct access to their thoughts, for instance.

A central case of the expression of emotion by works of art is the expression of emotion by a purely musical work. What is the source of the emotion expressed by a piece of music? While art engages its audience, often calling forth an emotional response, its expressiveness does not consist in this power. It is not because an art work tends to make us feel sad, for instance, that we call it sad; rather, we react as we do because sadness is present in it. And while artists usually contrive the expressiveness of their art works, sometimes expressing their own emotions in doing so, their success in the former activity does not depend on their doing the latter. Moreover, the expressiveness achieved has an immediacy and transparency, like that of genuine tears, apparently at odds with this sophisticated, controlled form of self-expression. It is because art presents emotion with simple directness that it can be a vehicle for self-expression, not vice versa. But if emotions are the experiences of sentient beings, to whom do those expressed in art belong if not to the artist or audience? Perhaps they are those of a fictional persona. We may imagine personae who undergo the emotions expressed in art, but it is not plain that we must do so to become aware of that expressiveness, for it is arguable that art works present appearances of emotions, as do masks, willow trees and the like, rather than outward signs of occurrent feelings. Expressiveness is valuable because it helps us to understand emotions in general while contributing to the formation of an aesthetically satisfying whole.
Fictional entities
Authors: Lamarque Peter
Published: September 2018

By ‘fictional entities’, philosophers principally mean those entities originating in and defined by myths, legends, fairy tales, novels, dramas and other works of fiction. In this sense unicorns, centaurs, Pegasus, the Time Machine and Sherlock Holmes are all fictional entities.

A somewhat different category of fictional entities is associated with empiricist philosophy. It includes entities apparently assumed by common discourse but which admit of no direct empirical experience. Thus Jeremy Bentham classified as ‘fictitious entities’ motion, relation, power and matter, as well as, notoriously, rights, obligations and duties. David Hume called substance, the self, even space and time ‘fictions’ and Bertrand Russell thought ordinary things, such as Piccadilly or Socrates, were fictions, on the grounds that they are ‘constructed’ out of simpler, more immediate objects of acquaintance.

Philosophical interest in fictional entities thus covers a surprisingly wide area of the subject, including ontology and metaphysics, epistemology, logic, philosophy of language, and aesthetics. The first question that arises is how the distinction should be drawn between fictional and nonfictional entities. As the examples from Bentham, Hume and Russell show, this is by no means a straightforward matter. The next question concerns what to do with fictional entities once they have been identified. Here the primary philosophical task has been to try to accommodate two powerful yet apparently conflicting intuitions: on the one hand, the intuition that there are no such things as fictional entities, so that any seeming reference to them must be explained away; on the other hand, the intuition that because ‘things’ like Sherlock Holmes and Anna Karenina are so vividly drawn, so seemingly ‘real’, objects of thoughts and emotions, they must after all have some kind of reality. Broadly speaking, we can discern two kinds of philosophical approach: those which incline towards the latter intuition, being in some way hospitable to fictional entities; and the less hospitable kind, which incline towards the former and seek only to show how fictional entities can be eliminated altogether in the strict regime of rational discourse.
Film, aesthetics of
Authors: Currie Gregory
Published: September 2018

Film aesthetics has been dominated by issues of realism. Three kinds of realism attributable to film may be distinguished: (1) the realism inherent in film because of its use of the photographic method (realism of method); (2) realism as a style which approximates the normal conditions of perception (realism of style); (3) realism as the capacity of film to engender in the viewer an illusion of the reality and presentness of fictional characters and events (realism of effect). Some theorists have argued that realism of method requires us to avoid realist style, others that it requires us to adopt realist style. Most have agreed that realist style makes for realism of effect; they disagree about whether this is a desirable goal. It is argued here that these realisms are independent of one another, that realism of style does not entail any kind of metaphysical realism, and that realism of effect is irrelevant to understanding the normal experience of cinema. Realism of style suggests a way of making precise the claim that cinema is an art of time and of space, because this kind of realism is partially explicated in terms of the representation of time by time and of space by space. Psychological theorizing about the cinema has been strongly connected with realism of effect, and with the idea that an illusion of the film’s reality is created by the identification of the viewer’s position with that of the camera. Another version of illusionism has it that the experience of film-watching is significantly similar to that of dreaming. Such doctrines are undermined when we acknowledge that realism of effect is an insignificant phenomenon.