Patridge, Stephanie. Exclusivism and Evaluation: Art, Erotica and Pornography
2013, in Pornographic Art and the Aesthetics of Pornography, ed. by Hans Maes (London: Palgrave Macmillan).
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Added by: Simon FoktContent: Patridge discusses and rejects some of the main arguments for the exclusivist thesis that no pornography can be art: Levinson’s, Mag Uidhir’s, and one based on Rea’s definition of pornography. In doing so, she offers a useful overview of some other arguments already used against those authors. This leads her to conclude that at least some pornography can be art. A normative question follows: should we treat pornography as art? Given the high cultural status of art, and the often unethical nature of pornography, doing so might lead us to promoting unethical attitudes. She finds such treatment too unselective: at least some pornography isn’t morally problematic (and some of it can actually be morally laudable), while much of art, including erotic art, definitely is. But consumption of pornography cannot be taken out of our paternalistic and sexist cultural context. As most pornography is inegalitarian and expresses (and possibly promotes) harmful attitudes towards women, enjoying it constitutes a moral flaw. This is true even if the consumer is never inspired to actually harm women – in those cases enjoyment of pornography constitutes moral obliviousness, a ‘failure of sensitivity and solidarity with the victims of such imagery’ (54) similar to taking enjoyment in racist jokes.Comment: This text offers a good and brief overview of the main points in the art and pornography debate. This makes it a good ‘one-stop-shop’ for classes which do not wish to look at it more closely. Alternatively, it can be used as an introduction to the topic and followed by some more specific papers. It also engages the normative question and offers a discussion of moral issues related to pornography. This will likely prove to be a very interesting point for class discussions.Patterson, Sarah. The explanatory role of belief ascriptions1990, Philosophical Studies 59 (3):313-32.
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Simon FoktAbstract: The aim of this paper is to argue that belief ascription in common- sense discourse is not uniformly non-individualistic, as Burge's conclusion suggests. (In concentrating on belief ascriptions I follow the usual practice of treating belief as the paradigm propositional attitude.) I shall present some examples which suggest that when giving common-sense explanations of action we do not individuate thoughts with reference to agents' linguistic environment in the manner indicated by Burge's thought-experiment. The challenge supposedly presented to the Continuity Thesis by Burge's thought-experiment is thus removed. I then discuss whether the mode of individuation characteristic of our explanatory practice deserves to be called individualistic, and conclude with some remarks on the expressibility of thought contents.Comment:Paul, L. A. Temporal Experience2010, The Journal of Philosophy 107(7): 333-359.
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Added by: Emily PaulIntroduction: The question I want to explore is whether experience supports an antireductionist ontology of time, that is, whether we should take it to support an ontology that includes a primitive, monadic property of nowness responsible for the special feel of events in the present, and a relation of passage that events instantiate in virtue of literally passing from the future, to the present, and then into the past.Comment: For an intermediate/advanced philosophy of time course, this paper would be brillliant for a unit on psychological arguments in philosophy of time - which of course is a growing research area within philosophy of time. In a standard metaphysics course, this would make for a good further reading in philosophy of time. Students tend to favour the A-theory, and this is a very powerful argument for the B-theory that also lays out the different views in a crystal clear way.Paul, L. A.. What You Can’t Expect When You’re Expecting2015, Res Philosophica 92 (2):1-23 (2015)
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Added by: Andrea BlomqvistAbstract: It seems natural to choose whether to have a child by reflecting on what it would be like to actually have a child. I argue that this natural approach fails. If you choose to become a parent, and your choice is based on projections about what you think it would be like for you to have a child, your choice is not rational. If you choose to remain childless, and your choice is based upon projections about what you think it would be like for you to have a child, your choice is not rational. This suggests we should reject our ordinary conception of how to make this life-changing decision, and raises general questions about how to rationally approach important life choices.Comment: Good to use as a shorter introductory reading to L.A. Paul's work and how to make decisions about life choices. It could be used in a module on decision making, or imagination.Paul, L. A., Hall, Edward J. (Hall, Ned). Causation: A User’s Guide2013, Oxford University Press UK.
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Tyron GoldschmidtPublisher's Note: Causation is at once familiar and mysterious. Neither common sense nor extensive philosophical debate has led us to anything like agreement on the correct analysis of the concept of causation, or an account of the metaphysical nature of the causal relation. Causation: A User's Guide cuts a clear path through this confusing but vital landscape. L. A. Paul and Ned Hall guide the reader through the most important philosophical treatments of causation, negotiating the terrain by taking a set of examples as landmarks. They clarify the central themes of the debate about causation, and cover questions about causation involving omissions or absences, preemption and other species of redundant causation, and the possibility that causation is not transitive. Along the way, Paul and Hall examine several contemporary proposals for analyzing the nature of causation and assess their merits and overall methodological cogency.The book is designed to be of value both to trained specialists and those coming to the problem of causation for the first time. It provides the reader with a broad and sophisticated view of the metaphysics of the causal relation.Comment: An excellent overview of the debate on causation which would work well in any undergraduate or postgraduate metaphysics course which covered causation.Paul, L. A.. Metaphysics as modeling: the handmaiden’s tale2012, Paul, L. A. (2012). Metaphysics as modeling: the handmaiden’s tale. Philosophical Studies 160 (1):1-29.
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Added by: ChristopherAbstract:
Critics of contemporary metaphysics argue that it attempts to do the hard work of science from the ease of the armchair. Physics, not metaphysics, tells us about the fundamental facts of the world, and empirical psychology is best placed to reveal the content of our concepts about the world. Exploring and understanding the world through metaphysical reflection is obsolete. In this paper, I will show why this critique of metaphysics fails, arguing that metaphysical methods used to make claims about the world are similar to scientific methods used to make claims about the world, but that the subjects of metaphysics are not the subjects of science. Those who argue that metaphysics uses a problematic methodology to make claims about subjects better covered by natural science get the situation exactly the wrong way around: metaphysics has a distinctive subject matter, not a distinctive methodology. The questions metaphysicians address are different from those of scientists, but the methods employed to develop and select theories are similar. In the first section of the paper, I will describe the sort of subject matter that metaphysics tends to engage with. In the second section of the paper, I will show how metaphysical theories are classes of models and discuss the roles of experience, common sense and thought experiments in the construction and evaluation of such models. Finally, in the last section I will discuss the way these methodological points help us to understand the metaphysical project. Getting the right account of the metaphysical method allows us to better understand the relationship between science and metaphysics, to explain why doing metaphysics successfully involves having a range of different theories, to understand the role of thought experiments involving fictional worlds, and to situate metaphysical realism in a scientifically realist context.
Comment: This would be useful in any advanced course (advanced undergraduate or masters) on the nature of metaphysics or metametaphysics.Paul, L.A.. Transformative Experience2014, Oxford University Press-
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Added by: Andrea BlomqvistAbstract: How should we make choices when we know so little about our futures? L. A. Paul argues that we must view life decisions as choices to make discoveries about the nature of experience. Her account of transformative experience holds that part of the value of living authentically is to experience our lives and preferences in whatever ways they evolve.Comment: This book raises interesting issues regarding imagination and how far we can imagine experiences, as well as ethics and decision making. It could be the basis for a whole module on the topic, or particular chapters could be discussed e.g. in relation to decision-making.Peetush, Ashwani Kumar, Drydyk, Jay. Human Rights: India and the West2015, Oxford University Press.
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Ashwani Kumar PeetushPublisher's Note: The question of how to arrive at a consensus on human rights norm in a diverse, pluralistic, and interconnected global environment is critical. This volume is a contribution to an intercultural understanding of human rights in the context of India and its relationship to the West. The legitimacy of the global legal, economic, and political order is increasingly premised on the discourse of international human rights. Yet the United Nations' Declaration of Human Rights developed with little or no consultation from non-Western nations such as India. In response, there has developed an extensive literature and cross-cultural analysis of human rights in the areas of African, East-Asian, and Islamic studies, yet there is a comparative dearth of conceptual research relating to India. As problematically, there is an lacuna in the previous literature; it simply stops short at analyzing how Western understandings of human rights may be supported from within various non-Western cultural self-understandings; yet, surely, there is more to this issue. The chapters in this collection pioneer a distinct approach that takes such deliberation to a further level by examining what it is that the West itself may have to learn from various Indian articulations of human rights as well.Comment: The subject of human rights in a pluralistic world is critical. Drawing on the vast traditions of India and the West, this volume is unique in providing interdisciplinary essays that range from theoretical, philosophical, normative, social, legal, and olitical issues in the conceptualization and application of a truly global understanding of human rights. While previous literature stops short at asking how Western understandings may be articulated in non-Western cultures, the essays here urthermore examine what the West may have to learn from Indian understandings.Peng Feng. Li Yu’s Theory of Drama: A Moderate Moralism2016, Philosophy East and West 66(1): 73-91.
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Added by: Meilin ChinnAbstract: This essay presents an interpretation of Li Yu’s theory of drama that takes it to be a moderate moralism that is different from Confucian radical moralism, Daoist radical autonomism, and the moderate autonomism of fiction. In addition to practical considerations, Li Yu’s moderate moralism of drama is based on his awareness of the ontological difference between drama and music, poetry, and fiction. Drama was seen by Li Yu as a synthetic art that includes music, poetry, and fiction. If radical autonomism is appropriate for the evaluation of music, radical moralism for poetry and prose, and moderate autonomism for fiction, then moderate moralism would be most appropriate in the evaluation of drama.Comment: Peng gives an account of the development of Chinese drama according to a contrast between Confucian moralism, in which morality controls aesthetics, and Daoist autonomism, in which aesthetics are autonomous from morality. He argues for an understanding of Li Yu’s theory of drama as a moderate moralism that evaluates drama according to a possible, yet contingent and unnecessary relation between moral and aesthetic virtue. This text is appropriate for a course on aesthetics and/or Chinese philosophy. It is particularly useful in discussions of the relationship between ethics and aesthetics.Penner, J. E.. Aristotle, Arendt, and the Gentleman: How the Conception of Remuneration Figures in our Understanding of a Right to Work and Be Paid2015, In Virginia Mantavalou (ed.), The Right to Work: Legal and Philosophical Perspectives. Bloomsbury
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Added by: Deryn Mair ThomasAbstract: This chapter is part of a larger work concerning what I call 'property fetishism', which is, briefly and roughly, a particular phenomenon or outlook in moral and political philosophy under which the "social thesis" is denied, or obscured, or diminished. The "social thesis" is the thesis that the "default" characterisation of human existence for the purposes of exploring interpersonal (including political)morality is not that of a hermit in some state of nature who shares no interests with others, but one in which interpersonal relations of real significance are native or natural to human existence. As such, those normative means, like the power to consent or to make agreements so as to be able to act cooperatively with others, are not some cultural achievement which we could plausibly be without, but are part and parcel of our natural endowments, in the same way as our basic responsiveness to reasons makes us (in part) the kind of creature that we are. Property fetishism works to deny, obscure, or diminish the significance of this human sociability principally by characterising acting in the social and political sphere as the interaction of "self-owners", as individuals principally constituted by the way in which they interact as possessors of property. As a rough picture that will do for the nonce; we shall return to the idea below.Comment (from this Blueprint): This article offers an interesting and accessible argument for a novel conception of remuneration. In doing so, Penner challenges one of the most foundational premises of a modern system of work - the idea that work and employment are synonymous - in a unique and original way. Therefore, this article can be used to prompt students to think about alternate models of remuneration, and to consider whether those models might offer a more humane system of paid work.Can’t find it?Contribute the texts you think should be here and we’ll add them soon!
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