bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
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 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

Philosophical reflection during the first one hundred years of film has been dominated by theories of the medium, and by the supposed implications of these theories for film style, and for the film’s effect on its audience. Three ideas have dominated: (1) that film is realistic because of its use of the photographic method (realism of the medium); (2) that it is realistic because it allows for the use of a style of narration which approximates the normal conditions of perception (realism of style); (3) that it is realistic because it has the capacity 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 the medium requires us to avoid realist style, others that it requires us to adopt it. 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, and that realism of effect is no part of normal film viewing. 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 exploits 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.
Philosophical interest in film has shifted recently from the nature of the medium to finer grained topics. Philosophers have investigated the nature of documentary cinema, the emotional dimension of film viewing, and the interpretation of particular films; they have also asked whether film might have a distinctive role in the development of philosophical ideas.