Search

This article proposes distinctions between guilt and two forms of shame: Guilt arises from a violated norm and is characterized by a focus on specific behavior; shame can be characterized by a threatened social image (Image Shame) or a threatened moral essence (Moral Shame). Applying this analysis to group-based emotions, three correlational studies are reported, set in the context of atrocities committed by (British) ingroup members during the Iraq war ( Ns = 147, 256, 399). Results showed that the two forms of shame could be distinguished. Moreover, once the other form of shame was controlled for, they were differentially related to orientations toward the outgroup: Image Shame was associated with negative orientations, whereas Moral Shame had associations with positive outgroup orientations. These associations were distinct from the associations of guilt and rejection. Study 3 used a longitudinal design and provided evidence suggestive of a causal direction from emotions to outgroup orientation.

In his editorial, Nir Eyal argues that a nudge can exploit our propensity to feel shame in order to steer us toward certain choices. We object that shame is a cost and therefore cannot figure in the apparatus of a nudge.

International audience; Ted Sider argues that nihilism about objects is incompatible with the metaphysical possibility of gunk and takes this point to show that nihilism is flawed. I shall describe one kind of nihilism able to answer this objection. I believe that most of the things we usually encounter do not exist. That is, I take talk of macroscopic objects and macroscopic properties to refer to sets of fundamental properties, which are invoked as a matter of linguistic convention. This view is a kind of nihilism: it rules out the existence of objects; that is, from an ontological point of view, there are no objects. But unlike the moderate nihilism of Mark Heller, Peter van Inwagen and Trenton Merricks that claims that most objects do not exist, I endorse a radical nihilism according to which there are no objects in the world, but only properties instantiated in spacetime. As I will show, radical nihilism is perfectly compatible with the metaphysical possibility of gunk. It is also compatible with the epistemic possibility that we actually live in a gunk world. The objection raised by Ted Sider only applies to moderate nihilism that admits some objects in its ontology.

The Swamping Problem shows that two claims are incompatible: (a) the claim that knowledge has more epistemic value than mere true belief and (b) a strict variant of the claim that all epistemic value is truth or instrumental on truth. Most current solutions reject (b). Carter and Jarvis (2012) and Carter, Jarvis and Rubin (2013) object instead to a principle that underlies the problem. This paper argues that their objections fail and the problem stands. It also outlines a novel solution which rejects (a). By carefully distinguishing value from expected value, one can argue that the greater value of knowledge is merely apparent (Dutant 2012; Petersen 2013).

The main purpose of this dissertation is to clarify the meaning of the notion of "practice" in contemporary sociology and philosophy, and to identify the issues related to its theorization.Why is this a problem? Because practice analysts tend to consider that (abstract) theories are unable to account for the concret domain of pratical reality. With their stabilized and finalized idealizations, theories might alter practices, changing and dynamic by nature.We will claim that this position, relatively common in the philosophy of practice,(i) is mistaken about the role and the functions it ascribes to scientific theories, and (ii) is based on a realistic assumption about the nature of practices assuming that they are some kinds of concrete entities existing in the world ; a presupposition that cannot be taken for granted and that, in many cases, might prove problematic.On the contrary, we will argue that practices have to be understood as \textit{concepts} that are derived from particular observational frames, and that allow us to account for different aspects of the social world., Le principal objectif de cette thèse est d'éclaircir le sens attribué à la notion de « pratique » dans la sociologie et la philosophie contemporaine et d'identifier les problèmes liés à sa théorisation. Pourquoi la théorisation de la pratique pose-t-elle problème? Car les analystes de la pratique ont tendance à considérer que les théories (abstraites) ne sont pas adéquates pour rendre compte du domaine (concret) de la pratique. Par leurs idéalisations stables et finies, les théories risqueraient, selon eux, de dénaturer les pratiques, par essence dynamiques et changeantes. Nous avancerons que cette position, au demeurant commune dans la philosophie des pratiques, (i) se méprend sur le rôle et les fonctions qu'elle attribue aux théories scientifiques, et (ii) repose sur un présupposé réaliste quant à la nature des pratiques, considérant celles-ci comme des sortes d'entités concrètes présentes dans le monde ; un présupposé qui ne va pas de soi et qui peut, dans bien des cas, s'avérer problématique. Nous défendrons à l'inverse que les pratiques doivent être comprises comme des concepts, issus de cadres d'observation particuliers, qui nous permettent de rendre compte de différents aspects du monde social.

This thesis aims at bringing support to the general thesis of essentialism about modality: all necessity is fully grounded in essence, and possibility is defined accordingly. First, it motivates essentialism about metaphysical necessity (including logical, conceptual and mathematical necessities as special cases of it). Second, and most importantly, it defends an essentialist account of natural modality. On this account, in particular, natural necessity (e.g. causal laws of nature) is homogeneous, absolute, unconditional, and fully grounded in the essences of natural entities (kinds, properties, objects). Third, relying on those bases, it suggests a perfectly homogeneous essentialist account of 'absolute' modality, and then considers how essentialism may be extended to all of modality, including non-abolute kinds of modality.

Il y a bien longtemps vivait un empereur qui aimait par-dessus tout être bien habillé. Ce dernier avait un habit pour chaque heure de la journée. Un jour, deux escrocs arrivèrent dans la grande ville de l'empereur. Ils prétendirent avoir une étoffe possédant un mode d'être que seules les personnes sottes et les sémanticiens californiens ne pouvaient pas concevoir. L'empereur pensa qu'il y avait là de quoi faire un habit exceptionnel et leur demanda aussitôt de se mettre au travail. Quelques jours plus tard, curieux, il vint voir où les deux compères en étaient avec ce fameux tissu. Il ne vit rien car il n'y avait rien. Les charlatans expliquèrent que l'habit était bien là, mais qu'il n'existait pas. L'empereur ne comprit pas. Troublé, il décida de n'en parler à personne, car personne ne voulait d'un empereur sot. Il envoya plusieurs ministres inspecter l'avancement des travaux. Ils ne comprirent pas plus que le souverain, mais n'osèrent pas non plus l'avouer, de peur de passer pour des imbéciles. Certains disaient que l'habit était et n'existait pas. Les plus érudits disaient qu'à ce dernier manquait totalement l'être, mais qu'il était sujet de prédication: il était en effet très joli, léger, élégant etc. Un sage expliqua qu'on ne pouvait pas le voir parce qu'il n'entrait pas dans des relations causales. Tout le royaume parlait de cette étoffe extraordinaire. Le jour où les deux escrocs décidèrent que l'habit était achevé, ils aidèrent l'empereur à l'enfiler. Ainsi «vêtu» et accompagné de ses ministres, le souverain se présenta à son peuple qui, lui aussi, prétendit voir et admirer ses vêtements. Un sujet cria que l'habit lui «obtenait» à merveille. Seul un petit garçon osa dire la vérité: « Mais il n'a pas d'habit du tout ! ». L'empereur comprit qu'il avait raison, mais continua sa marche sans dire un mot.

If feeling a genuine emotion requires believing that its object actually exists, and if this is a belief we are unlikely to have about fictional entities, then how could we feel genuine emotions towards these entities? This question lies at the core of the paradox of fiction. Since its original formulation, this paradox has generated a substantial literature. Until recently, the dominant strategy had consisted in trying to solve it. Yet, it is more and more frequent for scholars to try to dismiss it using data and theories coming from psychology. In opposition to this trend, the present paper argues that the paradox of fiction cannot be dissolved in the ways recommended by the recent literature. We start by showing how contemporary attempts at dissolving the paradox assume that it emerges from theoretical commitments regarding the nature of emotions. Next, we argue that the paradox of fiction rather emerges from everyday observations, the validity of which is independent from any such commitment. This is why we then go on to claim that a mere appeal to psychology in order to discredit these theoretical commitments cannot dissolve the paradox. We bring our discussion to a close on a more positive note, by exploring how the paradox could in fact be solved by an adequate theory of the emotions.

Ma discussion est structurée autour de l'examen de trois thèses concernant le rapport entre émotions et moi. J'examine d'abord la thèse selon laquelle toute émotion renferme une forme de réflexivité en ce qu'elle est intentionnellement dirigée vers le sujet qui la ressent. Le moi est ici considéré être l'objet particulier de toute émotion. Je me consacre à l'examen d'une deuxième thèse, plus subtile, qui considère que les émotions sont réflexives en ce qu'elles portent toujours sur d'autres états psychologiques du sujet. Je me tourne enfin vers une thèse qui situe le rapport entre émotions et moi au niveau de l'objet formel. Elle soutient que toute émotion a pour objet formel une propriété évaluative relationnelle dont l'un des termes est le sujet qui la ressent. Je cherche à montrer que ces trois thèses valent au mieux pour un sous-ensemble restreint d'émotions et qu'elles doivent parfois être remplacée par des thèses modestes quant au rapport entre émotions et moi, à savoir des thèses qui ne présupposent aucun rapport intentionnel entre les deux.

The moral error theory has become increasingly popular in recent decades. So much so indeed that a new issue emerged, the so-called “now-what problem”: if all our moral beliefs are false, then what should we do with them? So far, philosophers who are interested in this problem have focused their attention on the mode of the attitudes we should have with respect to moral propositions. Some have argued that we should keep holding proper moral beliefs; others that we should replace our moral beliefs with fictional attitudes, beliefs in natural facts, or conative attitudes. But all these philosophers have set aside an important question about the content of these attitudes: which moral propositions, and more generally which moral theory, should we accept? The present paper addresses this neglected issue, arguing that moral error theorists should adopt a utilitarian moral fiction. In other words, they should accept the set of moral principles whose general acceptance would maximize overall well-being.

Taking our lead from Solomon’s emphasis on the importance of the intentional object of emotion, we review the history of repeated attempts to make this object disappear. We adduce evidence suggesting that in the case of James and Schachter, the intentional object got lost unintentionally. By contrast, modern constructivists (in particular Barrett) seem quite determined to deny the centrality of the intentional object in accounting for the occurrence of emotions. Griffiths, however, downplays the role objects have in emotion noting that these do not qualify as intentional. We argue that these disappearing acts, deliberate or not, generate fruitless debate and add little to the advancement of our understanding of emotion as an adaptive mechanism to cope with events that are relevant to an organism’s life.

In this article, the authors examine and debate the categories of emotions, moods, temperaments, character traits and sentiments. They define them and offer an account of the relations that exist among the phenomena they cover. They argue that, whereas ascribing character traits and sentiments (dispositions) is to ascribe a specific coherence and stability to the emotions (episodes) the subject is likely to feel, ascribing temperaments (dispositions) is to ascribe a certain stability to the subject’s moods (episodes). The rationale for this distinction, the authors claim, lies in the fact that, whereas appeal to character traits or sentiments in explanation is tantamount to making sense of a given behaviour in terms of an individual’s specific evaluative perspective — as embodied in this individual’s emotional profile — appeal to temperaments makes sense of it independently of any such evaluative perspective.

The thesis that mental content is normative is ambiguous and has many forms. This article deals only with the thesis that normativity is connected to our mental attitudes rather than with the content of the attitudes, and more specifically with the view that it is connected to belief. A number of writers have proposed various versions of a ‘norm of truth’ attached to belief. I examine various versions of this claim, and defend it against recent criticisms according to which this norm lacks normative force, that it violates the principle that ‘ought implies can,’ and that it is viciously circular. I defend the view that we should distinguish the statement of the objective norm and the way it is regulated, and that this distinction can answer most of the criticisms of the norm of truth for belief.

The aim of the present paper is to evaluate the notion of collective guilt feeling both in the light of research in affectivity and in collective intentionality. The paper is divided into an introduction and three main sections. Section 1) highlights relevant features of guilt-family emotions such as the relation between feeling guilt and objective guilt, the relation between feeling guilt and its content, and the relation between feeling guilt and the 'self'. Moreover, the distinction between feeling guilt and feeling regret is given due attention. Section 2) examines Margaret Gilbert's arguments in favor of a collectivist view of collective guilt feeling (displayed as 'We feel guilt for p'), according to which groups do genuinely feel guilt. Against the collectivist position I argue for an individualist 'membership account' of collective guilt feeling in terms of individual members' we-feeling of guilt. The membership account of collective guilt feeling is vindicated on grounds of a naturalist and non-judgmentalist understanding of emotions, as well as on the logic of personal pronouns. It combines individualism regarding the subject of the feeling with collec- tivism regarding the irreducibility of we-feelings and provides, as I further argue, the required moral force attributed to collective guilt feeling. The concern of section 3) is the question of the appropriate emotional response to collective wrongdoing. I argue against the view that group members are categorically 'committed to feel guilt as a body' for wrongdoings committed by the group. Given that individual members often do not participate in their groups' wrongdoings, it seems unjust to impose a requirement for feeling guilt upon them. I suggest that in a general account of the appropriate assessment of collective wrongdoing, feeling regret is the better candidate than feeling guilt for the role of the minimally required emotional response. For us collectively to feel guilt over our action A is for us to be jointly committed to feeling guilt as a body over our action A. (. . .) The parties (. . .) constitute, as far as possible, a single subject of guilt feelings (Gilbert 2002). (A) collective cannot respond affectively (. . .), only its constitutive members can. The lack of an affective counter-response is troubling, because the efficacy of responses of accountability partially depends upon affect. The response of shame, guilt, and regret help to register the significance of the harm (Kutz 2000).

«Neither with you nor without you»Francois Truffaut, La femme d’à coté No one can deny that there is a problem between Wittgenstein and analytic philosophers. To put it mildly, there are tensions between Wittgenstein’s and Wittgensteinian styled reflections and the views and practice of a lot of contemporary analytic philosophers, such that they often seem to be strange bedfellows, when they are bedfellows at all. Of course we know that Wittgenstein did not get along very well with Russell, t...

International audience; Is time flowing? A-theorists say ‘yes’, B-theorists say ‘no’. But both take time to be real, which means that B-theorists accept that time is real, even if lacking a property usually ascribed to it. In this paper, I ask what the different properties usually ascribed to time there are in order to draw the list of different possible kinds of realism and anti-realism about time. As we will see, there are three main kinds of anti-realism. I will argue that if time is defined as the universe's fourth dimension, there is no way time could be unreal.; Le temps s'écoule-t-il? Les théoriciens A répondent positivement, les théoriciens B négativement. Les deux camps s'accordent cependant sur la réalité du temps. Cela signifie que les théoriciens B acceptent la réalité du temps en dépit du rejet d'une propriété qui lui est communément attribuée. Dans cet article, je veux examiner les différentes propriétés qui sont généralement attribuées au temps afin de faire la liste des différents types de réalisme et d'anti-réalisme. Nous le verrons, il existe trois types d'anti-réalisme. Je soutiendrai que si l'on définit le temps comme la quatrième dimension de l'univers, l'irréalité du temps est exclue.

There are close links between emotions and values, or at least this is what our ordinary ways of talking suggest. For many, if not all, types of emotion it is thus possible to find a corresponding evaluative term, one often derived from the name of the emotion in question. These are for example evaluative terms such as ‘shameful', ‘offensive, ‘annoying', ‘dangerous', ‘contemptible', ‘admirable', ‘amusing', ‘exciting', ‘boring', and the like. Starting perhaps from these linguistic observations, the philosophical task is of course to elucidate the nature of the links between emotions and values, and attempts at doing so have traditionally revolved around the following three questions: first, what is the role of emotions in elucidating the nature of value? For example, should dangerousness be understood in term of the fear response? Second, what is the role of emotions in our getting access to values? For example, what may be the role of fear in becoming aware that a given animal is dangerous? Third, what value do emotions have? For example, is fear of special value because it helps behaving appropriately towards its object? We hall take up these questions in turn and survey the most important answers they have received in the literature. As we shall discover, answering the first question amounts to surveying a variety of theories according to which there is an ontological relation between values and emotions since the former should be elucidated in terms of the latter (Sec. 1). Addressing the second question consists in reviewing theories according to which there is an intentional relation between emotions and values because the former are apprehensions of value or evaluations (Sec. 2). Grappling with the third question, we shall explore some reasons for thinking that emotions can exemplify values (Sec. 3).

In this paper, we develop a fresh understanding of the sense in which emotions are evaluations. We argue that we should not follow mainstream accounts in locating the emotion–value connection at the level of content and that we should instead locate it at the level of attitudes or modes. We begin by explaining the contrast between content and attitude, a contrast in the light of which we review the leading contemporary accounts of the emotions. We next offer reasons to think that these accounts face substantial problems since they locate the link emotions bear to values at the level of content. This provides the incentive to pursue an alternative approach according to which emotions qualify as evaluations because they are specific types of attitudes, an approach we substantiate by appealing to felt bodily stances. We conclude by considering two reasons why this approach may be resisted; they respectively pertain to the alleged impossibility of drawing the attitude–content contrast in the case of the emotions and to the suspicion that so doing raises qualia-related worries.

This work is focused on the interconnections between evidence, knowledge, and justification. I defend here the following theses. All evidence that we have is knowledge. All knowledge that we have is evidence. A piece of evidence supports a proposition p just in case it raises p's probability. A justified belief is a belief that complies with the fundamental norm of belief. The fundamental norm of belief is: one ought to believe that p if and only if one knows that p. It is not the case that one's belief that p is epistemically justified if and only if one's total evidence supports p and one's belief that p is appropriately based on one's evidence. Nevertheless, if one's belief that p is epistemically justified then one's total evidence supports p and one's belief that p is appropriately based on one's evidence. The present thesis comprises a detailed defence of these claims.

International audience; L’université médiévale se distingue de manière essentielle par un antagonisme caractéristique entre faculté des arts et faculté de théologie, cet antagonisme ayant marqué de façon durable l’histoire de la philosophie, tout comme la conception de la profession même de philosophe. Que devient une telle distinction, et la séparation des corpus d’études qui en découle, à la fin de l’âge scolastique? Cet article se propose de répondre à cette question par une mise au point de la situation à l’Université de Paris, durant les XVe et XVIe siècles.

Tullmann et Buckwalter (2014) ont récemment soutenu que le paradoxe de la fiction tenait plus de l'illusion que de la réalité. D'après eux, les théories contemporaines des émotions ne fourniraient aucune raison d'adopter une interprétation du terme « existence » qui rende les prémisses du paradoxe incompatibles entre elles. Notre discussion a pour but de contester cette manière de dissoudre le paradoxe de la fiction en montrant qu'il ne prend pas sa source dans les théories contemporaines des émotions. Bien plutôt, son origine se situe dans ce que Radford (1975) décrit comme une incohérence dans nos réactions émotionnelles aux évènements fictionnels et non fictionnels. Malgré ce désaccord, nous concédons à Tullmann et Buckwalter qu'une solution satisfaisante au paradoxe de la fiction doit s'appuyer sur les théories des émotions. Ainsi, en guise de conclusion, nous expliquons comment il convient de comprendre l'incohérence en question et comment les théories des émotions pourraient contribuer à la résolution du paradoxe de la fiction.

International audience; A dispositional monist believes that all properties are essentially causal. Recently, an overdetermination argument has been proposed by Trenton Merricks to support nihilism about ordinary objects. I argue that this argument can be extended to target both nihilism about ordinary objects and nihilism about physical particles when dispositional monism is assumed. It implies that a philosopher who both endorses dispositional monism and takes seriously the overdetermination argument should not believe in the existence of physical particles. I end up by discussing possible objections. I suggest, then, that if we live in a world that is inhabited by causal properties but not by chairs and tables, then we also live in a world without electrons and quarks, a world of dispositional properties, that is, a world of causal fields

We start this overview by discussing the place of emotions within the broader affective domain-how different are emotions from moods, sensations, and affective dispositions? Next, we examine the way emotions relate to their objects, emphasizing in the process their intimate relations to values. We move from this inquiry into the nature of emotion to an inquiry into their epistemology. Do they provide reasons for evaluative judgments and, more generally, do they contribute to our knowledge of values? We then address the question of the social dimension of emotions, explaining how the traditional nature versus nurture contrast applies to them. We finish by exploring the relations between emotions, motivation and action, concluding this overview with a more specific focus on how these relations bear on some central ethical issues.

The content of an emotion, unlike the content of a perception, is directly dependent on the motivational set of the subject experiencing the emotion. Given the instability of this motivational set, it might be thought that there is no sense in which emotions can be said to pick up information about the environment in the same way that perception does. Whereas it is admitted that perception tracks for us what is the case in the environment, no such tracking relation, it is argued, holds between one's emotions and what they are about. It is to this worry – that the construal of the emotions as perceptions inevitably raises – that this paper tries to respond. In this paper, I suggest that when it is realized that one dimension of perception itself is directly dependent on the perceiver's perspective on her environment, then emotion, which is also essentially perspectival in this sense, bears the comparison with perception very well. After having clarified the nature and the role that perspective plays in perception, I argue that, in the case of emotions, the same perspectival role can be played by agents' long-standing evaluative tendencies and character traits. The resulting conception of emotion as perception is then tested against possible objections.

International audience; According to no-futurism, past and present entities are real, but future ones are not. This view faces a skeptical challenge (Bourne 2002, 2006, Braddon-Mitchell, 2004): if no-futurism is true, how do you know you are present? I shall propose a new skeptical argument based on the physical possibility of Gödelian worlds (1949). This argument shows that a no-futurist has to endorse a metaphysical contingentist reading of no-futurism, the view that no-futurism is contingently true. But then, the no-futurist has to face a new skeptical challenge: how do you know that you are in a no-futurist world?

Le questionnement sur l'origine du langage a pris, dans un contexte néo-darwiniste, un tournant biologiste allant de pair avec une définition instrumentale du langage ainsi qu'une naturalisation de la linguistique. Prenant le contrepied de cette approche dominante, nous proposons d'étudier une tradition dont l'histoire n'a pas réellement été écrite, faisant du langage et de son origine une affaire passionnelle et de la linguistique une science sociale. L'étude de trois auteurs principaux nous permet de mettre en évidence cette alternative à la biologisation du langage et de son origine : Rousseau refuse le caractère instrumental du langage et lui substitue une origine et une définition passionnelles ; Darwin donne une explication non-adaptative de l'origine de l'expression et du langage basée sur la sélection sexuelle ; Saussure définit la linguistique comme une science historique, établissant un cadre épistémologique applicable à l'anthropologie rousseauiste et à l'éthologie darwinienne.

Je suis d'avis qu'une investigation de la rationalité des émotions suscitées par la fiction offre un point de vue privilégié à qui souhaite mieux cerner la nature de notre implication dans la fiction ainsi que celle de l'intelligence affective. C'est en tout cas ce que je m'efforcerai de montrer au cours de ma discussion, qui se structure de la manière suivante. La première section esquisse la nature du lien entre émotions et valeurs et introduit une conception selon laquelle les émotions sont des attitudes évaluatives. Au cours de la deuxième section, nous nous tournerons vers le problème de la rationalité des émotions pour mettre l'accent sur deux de ses aspects – celui qui regarde le rapport entre une émotion et sa base cognitive, d'un côté, et, de l'autre, celui entre l'émotion elle-même et les jugements et comportements auxquels elle peut donner lieu. La troisième section applique ces considérations à propos de la rationalité affective aux émotions suscitées par la fiction, dont je distingue trois types principaux : les émotions esthétiques, les émotions-blob et les émotions-pour. Une quatrième et dernière section explore quelques conséquences des conclusions auxquelles m'auront amené ce qui précède.

The thesis defended is that at a certain arbitrary level of granularity, mountains have sharp, bona fide boundaries. In reply to arguments advanced by Varzi (2001), Smith & Mark (2001, 2003) I argue that the lower limit of a mountain is neither vague nor fiat. Relying on early works by Cayley (1859), Maxwell (1870) and Jordan (1872), this lower limit consists in the lines of watercourse which are defined as the lines of slope starting at passes. Such lines are metaphysically sharply delineated although they are not always easy to get at when facing a mountain. Hence, the indetermination is only epistemic. In the second part of the paper, I try to combine this claim about the lower limit of a mountain with more recent claims advanced by alpinists on the right way to measure the height of a mountain, so as to capture its topographic prominence. I argue following them that the proper height of a mountain is the difference of altitude between its summit and its key-saddle, defined as the highest saddle one needs to cross in order to reach the closest higher summit. Combining this two plausible views about the lower limit and height of a mountain leads to the surprising result that the key-saddle needed to measure the height of a mountain is not necessarily located on the lower-boundary of that mountain.

We review the history of the philosophy of fondue since Aristotle so as to arrive at the formulation of the paradox of Swiss fondue. Either the wine and the cheese cease to exist (Buridan), but then the fondue is not really a mixture of wine and cheese. Or the wine and the cheese continue to exist. If they do, then either they continue to exist in different places (the chemists), but then a fondue can never be perfectly homogenous (it is a French fondue). Or the wine and the cheese continue to exist in the same place (the Stoïcs), but then wine and cheese have to be, oddly, penetrable and spatially expansible. Aristote attempted to solve this paradox by arguing that the cheese and wine continue to exist, but only potentially in the fondue. We sketch an alternative answer. The wine and the cheese continue to exist, but only non-spatially in the fondue. Wine and cheese, once mixed, become non-spatial constituents of the fondue, a bit like character traits are non-spatial constituents of persons. The wine and the cheese are in the fondue, but only the fondue is there in the fondue pot.

Why think that emotions are kinds of evaluations? This chapter puts forward an original account of emotions as evaluations apt to circumvent some of the chief difficulties with which alternative approaches find themselves confronted. We shall proceed by first introducing the idea that emotions are evaluations (sec. I). Next, two well-known approaches attempting to account for this idea in terms of attitudes that are in and of themselves unemotional but are alleged to become emotional when directed towards evaluative contents are explored. According to the first approach, emotions are nothing but evaluative judgments. Sec. II reminds the reader of the problems associated with this idea: one of its consequences is to deprive creatures with limited cognitive capacities of any sort of partaking of emotional life. According to the second approach, which is often praised for its capacity to avoid the pitfalls facing an appeal to evaluative judgments, emotions are perception-like experiences of evaluative properties and are as such within the reach of creatures bereft of conceptual capacities. This perceptual theory is taken up in sect. III, in which we explain why it remains unsatisfactory insofar as it shares with the evaluative judgement theory the idea that what makes emotions evaluations is the specific contents that they have. On this basis, we proceed by outlining in sect. IV an alternative—the attitudinal theory of emotions. Its main point of departure from current theorizing about the emotions consists in elucidating the fact that emotions are evaluations not in terms of what they represent, but rather in terms of the sort of attitude subjects take towards what they represent. We explore here what sorts of attitudes emotions are and defend the idea that they are felt bodily attitudes.

Cognitive penetration of perception, broadly understood, is the influence that the cognitive system has on a perceptual system (e.g., visual, auditory, haptic). The paper shows a form of cognitive penetration in the visual system (defined as early vision) which I call ‘architectural'. Architectural cognitive penetration is the process whereby the behaviour or the structure of the perceptual system is influenced by the cognitive system, which consequently may have an impact on the content of the perceptual experience. I scrutinize a study in perceptual learning that provides empirical evidence that cognitive influences in the visual system produce neural reorganization in the primary visual cortex. The type of cognitive penetration can be synchronic and diachronic.

Anton Marty und Karl Bühler verbinden in ihren wegweisenden Ansätzen über das Verhältnis von Sprache und Denken (sprach-) philosophische, linguistische und psychologische Erkenntnisse. Zu Unrecht sind die beiden grossen Denker bisher im Hintergrund der Forschung geblieben – ihre Positionen werden deshalb in diesem Band eingehend untersucht und ihr Einfluss sowie ihre Beziehung zu anderen Traditionen beleuchtet, so u.a. zur analytischen Philosophie und der kognitiven Pragmatik. In der Forschung der letzten Jahre ist ein wachsendes Interesse für die aus den Werken Bernard Bolzanos und Franz Brentanos entspringende österreichisch-deutsche Philosophie zu verzeichnen. Anton Marty (1847−1914) und Karl Bühler (1879−1963) sind zwei Schlüsselfiguren dieser Tradition. Ihre Beiträge im Gebiet der Philosophie der Sprache, der Psychologie und der Linguistik haben einen tiefgreifenden Einfluss auf die Entwicklung dieser Disziplinen ausgeübt. Trotzdem wurde den beiden Denkern im Vergleich zu Brentano, Husserl oder Wittgenstein in der Forschung bisher nur wenig Aufmerksamkeit geschenkt. Im vorliegenden Band werden die Sprachphilosophien der beiden Autoren näher untersucht und ihr Verhältnis zueinander und zu späteren Traditionen – wie die der analytischen Philosophie und der kognitiven Pragmatik – beleuchtet. Im Zentrum der vorliegenden Studien steht die Frage des Verhältnisses von Denken und Sprache, ein Verhältnis, das zugleich den gemeinsamen Nenner und den Scheidepunkt von Martys und Bühlers Denken darstellt. Beide Denker sind sich einig, dass Denken und Sprache aufs Engste verbunden sind. Ihre Meinungen gehen jedoch auseinander, wenn es darum geht, die Rolle der Sprache genauer zu bestimmen. Während Marty die Hauptfunktion der Sprache (die Bedeutung) im Erwecken bestimmter psychischer Phänomene im Anderen sieht, besteht für Bühler das Wesentliche der Sprache in ihrer Darstellungsfunktion, in der objektiven Koordination von Sprachmitteln mit Sachen und Sachverhalten.

A l'instar de bien d'autres activités, manger du chocolat suscite du plaisir. Mais comment articuler de manière satisfaisante les différents sens en jeu dans l'ingestion d'un aliment – le goût, bien sûr, mais aussi l'odorat, l'ouïe et le toucher – avec ce plaisir ? Selon une approche traditionnelle, ce dernier n'est rien de plus qu'une expérience ineffable qui, si elle s'avère accompagner certaines stimulations sensorielles ou des activités plus intellectuelles, ne porte sur rien du tout. Est-ce plausible ? Ou faudrait-il plutôt comprendre le plaisir comme un sens supplémentaire qui viendrait prêter main forte au goût, à l'odorat et au toucher afin de parachever notre appréhension du chocolat ? Et, après tout, qu'est-ce qu'un plaisir ? Je suggère dans ce qui suit que la variété des types de plaisirs que nous sommes susceptibles de ressentir ainsi que la manière dont nous les ressentons vont à l'encontre de l'approche traditionnelle : les plaisirs portent sur quelque chose et nous renseignent à son propos. Cependant, cela ne signifie pas pour autant qu'il faille situer le plaisir sur le même plan que les sens. Il se situe plutôt en aval de leur activité, présuppose les informations qu'ils délivrent et constitue une réaction évaluative à leur endroit.

This doctoral thesis presents a definition of vulnerability that resolves the problems of former definitions and outlines the moral implications of vulnerability ascriptions to humans and animals. In the first part, I present a philosophical analysis of the conditions of vulnerability ascription and my definition of vulnerability. I argue that the general vulnerability of living beings relies on their having either welfare or agency interests that could potentially be frustrated. I identify the following manifestations of vulnerability: justified or unpreventable harm, unjustified harm, and harmless wrongs. The second part is dedicated to theoretical issues regarding ascriptions of vulnerability to animals. I show that some animals have welfare interests and sometimes agency interests, which leads to a list of prima facie claims of animals that should be justly considered by moral agents. In the third part, I discuss some case scenarios of just and unjust consideration of the claims of animals.

Quel est le lien entre les émotions et la connaissance ? Selon une idée répandue, la réponse s'impose avec évidence : les émotions sont en rapport avec la connaissance dans la seule mesure où elles y font obstacle. Leur caractère disruptif, envahissant et sélectif empêcherait de raisonner correctement ou de poser un regard englobant et objectif sur les situations auxquelles nous faisons face. Je souhaite soutenir l'idée opposée, à savoir que les émotions permettent à ceux qui les ressentent d'entrer en relation avec certaines valeurs. L'hypothèse est, plus précisément, la suivante : les émotions constituent une voie épistémique privilégiée vers la connaissance des valeurs. Il conviendra bien sûr d'élucider le sens dans lequel une émotion peut constituer ou conduire à une forme de connaissance évaluative. J'aborderai ce problème à travers la notion de justification en répondant à la question : qu'est-ce qu'une émotion justifiée ? Après avoir considéré les raisons de ressentir une émotion – d'abord, dans la section 2, les raisons liées à la prise en compte de certains aspects de l'environnement (les « bases cognitives des émotions ») puis, dans la section 3, celles liées aux besoins, désirs et dispositions affectives (leurs « bases motivationnelles ») – je serai alors en mesure, dans la section 4, d'expliquer en quoi les émotions constituent une voie privilégiée vers la connaissance des valeurs. Toutefois, avant de m'aventurer sur ces terres épistémologiques, je souhaite dire quelques mots à propos du genre de conception des émotions qui sous-tend ma discussion.

This work focuses on three topics: the social value of motor cognition (i.e. experimental studies in human and non-human primates showing that the parieto-frontal mirror circuit plays a crucial role in action understanding before and below mindreading abilities); motor encoding of action anomalies in individuals with autism spectrum disorder that may explain – to a degree – their limited social abilities; failure of social agreement resulting in criminal actions that may be clarified thanks to neuroscience data in forensic psychiatric evaluation. Describing the role of experimental data – notably the functional role of cortical motor system – in clarifying social experience, this work reverses also the way in which we consider ourselves as agents in social interactions. This work focuses on behaviours, brain and concepts. This work draws a synergetic view integrating conceptual, experimental, clinical and forensic perspectives. This work, for saving phenomena, forces the categories.

This thesis defends the cognitive penetration of perception. Cognitive penetration can be roughly defined as those cognitive influences on perceptual systems which have consequences for the modularity of mind and epistemic theories of perceptual justification. The thesis focuses mainly on the visual system and shows that cognitive penetration occurs in early and late vision. The results of this thesis are supported by philosophical arguments as well as empirical evidence.

Simulation , if used as a way of becoming aware of other people's mental states, is the joint exercise of imagination and attribution. If A simulates B, then (i) A attributes to B the mental state in which A finds herself at the end of a process in which (ii) A has imagined being in B's situation. Although necessary, imagination and attribution are not sufficient for simulation: the latter occurs only if (iii) the imagination process grounds or justifies the attribution. Depending on the notion of justification we use to make sense of the idea that an episode of imagining serves as a reason for attributing a mental state, the shape of the debate and the options it offers look very different. Reconfiguring the discussion in this way, we claim, shifts the focus of the simulation vs. theory-theory debate to a question located in epistemology.

In Being in Time I articulate and defend a theory of diachronic identity based on a new account of the relation between objects and time. Traditionally, the relation between objects and time has been considered to be a direct one, analogous to the one they have with space, and accordingly called location. In my dissertation, I argue that this locative approach is metaphysically problematic insofar as it commits us to questionable consequences about the nature of objects or about the metaphysics of location. In particular, the locative approach, depending on how it is specified, requires that objects do not persist, have multiple exact locations, divide into temporal parts, or are extended simples. In place of this locative approach, and drawing from an analysis of our temporal semantics, I put forward an account of the relation between objects and time – transcendentism, to give it a name – according to which this relation is indirect, and has to be analysed in terms of the events in which objects participate. Accordingly, for a object to exist at a time is for it to participate in an event which is located at that time. As such, transcendentism is not yet a theory of persistence – insofar as objects may be in time without persisting, i.e. by existing at an instant alone –. Transcendentism is an open option for every kind of persistence theorist – be one an endurantist, a perdurantist, or an exdurantist –. However, the combination of transcendentism and endurantism may reveal itself to be a semantically grounded and metaphysically fruitful choice. Semantically grounded, insofar as the analysis of our temporal semantics speaks against the locative approach and in favour of endurantism. Metaphysically fruitful, insofar as it allows us to frame a theory of persistence that avoids all questionable consequences mentioned before – a theory according to which objects persist without having temporal parts and without being extended simples or multilocated entities. The dissertation consists of four self-standing chapters in which (i) I systematize and highlight the problematicity of the locative approach, (ii) I put forward and articulate the transcendentist alternative, (iii) I develop a suitable metaphysics of events, and (iv) I reply to five objections that have been moved against the view both in official communications and in print.

A long-­‐standing debate surrounds the question as to what justifies memory judgements. According to the Past Reason Theory, these judgements are justified by the reasons we had to make identical judgements in the past, whereas the Present Reason Theory claims that these justifying reasons are to be found at the time we pass the memory judgements. In this paper, I defend the original claim that, far from being exclusive, these two theories should be applied to different kinds of memory judgements. The Past Reason Theory offers the most appealing account of justified propositional memory judgements, while the Present Reason Theory provides the best approach to justified episodic memory judgements. One outcome of my discussion is thus that memory is not epistemologically unified and my argumenti n favour of this conclusion connects with the issues of internalism, reliabilism and the basing relation.

We argue that the main objections against two central tenets of a Jamesian account of the emotions, that is, that (a) different types of emotions are associated with specific types of bodily feelings ( specificity), and that (b) emotions are constituted by patterns of bodily feeling ( constitution), do not succeed. In the first part, we argue that several reasons adduced against specificity, including one inspired by Schachter and Singer’s work, are unconvincing. In the second part, we argue that constitution, too, can withstand most of the objections raised against it, including the objection that bodily feelings cannot account for the outward-looking and evaluative nature of emotions. In both sections, we argue that the kinds of felt bodily changes posited by a Jamesian account of emotions are best understood in terms of felt states of action readiness.

This thesis explores the relationships between experimental moral psychology and normative ethics. It specifically examines neuromoral theories, according to which a deeper understanding of the machinery for moral judgments could lead humans to make better moral judgments. In this thesis I use the widely discussed neuromoral theory by Joshua Greene as a case study. I first examine Greene's descriptive claims in experimental moral psychology (Ch. 2). Then I review descriptive hypotheses concerning human moral cognition that are alternative to Greene's and I conclude that the data available so far are not sufficient to rule all alternatives out. Theories in experimental moral psychology are presently underdetermined by the data. In Ch. 4 I critically delve into Greene's neuromoral theory, highlighting its problematic points. Greene derives normative consequences from empirical results through the Argument from Morally Irrelevant Factors. This argument is not persuasive because it is not backed by an analysis of judgments about moral relevance of factors, such as "Spatial distance is a moral irrelevant factor", which are key premises in Greene's argument. I argue that these judgments cannot be taken for granted because they are often deeply controversial. Greene also falls in a recurring problem, i.e. the so-called ‘meta-normativity problem'. It is not clear what kind of normativity neuromoral theorists are referring to when they say that empirical science could help humans make better moral judgments. These shortcomings make Greene's neuromoral theory unconvincing. However, Greene's descriptive work has greatly contributed to further the understanding of the machinery for moral judgments.

The unintendedness of the phenomenon that is to be explained is a constraint visible in the various applications and clarifications of invisible hand explanations. The article casts doubt on such a requirement and proposes a revised account. To have a role in an invisible hand process it is argued agents may very well act with a view to contributing to the occurrence of the social outcome that is to be explained provided they see what they do as an aggregation of their individual actions rather than as something they jointly perform. Keywords collective intentionality conventions David Lewis invisible hand explanations joint action unintended consequences

Les objectifs de la thèse sont essentiellement deux : a) en premier lieu, celui d'effectuer une relecture historique-philosophique de la conception égyptienne de l'être humain, en essayant de faire ressortir le rôle joué par la sphère corporelle ; b) en deuxième lieu, celui de s'interroger sur la structure et les implications du système de pensée qui se trouve à l'origine de cette conception, en cherchant à trouver des parcours conceptuels qui nous permettent de mieux en saisir, autant que possible, le «statut épistémologique». La conception égyptienne de l'être humain n'est pas fondée sur le binôme âme-corps, apparu en Grèce vers le V siècle a. J. Ch. Dans l'Égypte pharaonique, l'homme est conçu comme un ensemble ou une constellation de composantes en relation entre eux. La résultante de cet ensemble de rapports est l'individualité humaine. Le monde présente la même structure. Tant l'homme que le monde, d'après les Égyptiens, sont un réseau de relations qui se réorganise selon la situation concrète ou le problème donné. En abordant ces thématiques, la thèse propose des nouvelles catégories anthropologiques et réexamine quelques aspects des mathématiques et du langage égyptiens.

Le emozioni possono essere penose, addirittura nefaste. Pensiamo per esempio alla paura, alla collera, all'odio, alla gelosia o al disprezzo. Simili emozioni sono spesso considerate negative. Ma cosa sono le emozioni negative e come si distinguono da quelle positive? Più in generale, che cosa implicano per la nostra comprensione delle emozioni? Quali sono concretamente i loro effetti sui nostri pensieri e sulla nostra vita? E come analizzare l'ambivalenza affettiva, quando si prova allo stesso tempo amore e odio, felicità e pena? Riunendo i contributi su questo tema di importanti studiosi, Le ombre dell'anima propone originali risposte a tali interrogativi e getta le basi per una filosofia delle emozioni negative e della complessità dei sentimenti.