Being Emotional about the Past: On the Nature and Role of Past‐Directed Emotions*

We sometimes experience emotions which are directed at past events (or situations) which we witnessed at the time when they occurred (or obtained). The present paper explores the role which such “autobiographically past‐directed emotions” (or “APD‐emotions”) play in a subject's mental life. A defender of the “Memory‐Claim” holds that an APD‐emotion is a memory, namely a memory of the emotion which the subject experienced at the time when the event originally occurred (or the situation obtained) towards which the APD‐emotion is directed. On this view, APD‐emotions might play an important role in our acquiring knowledge about our own past emotions, which renders the view rather attractive. However, as I show in the present paper, none of the various possible versions of the Memory‐Claim are tenable. This leaves us with the “Universal‐New‐Emotion‐Claim”, according to which all APD‐emotions are new emotional responses to the past events (or situations) towards which the relevant APD‐emotions are directed. Further consideration of the “Universal‐New‐Emotion‐Claim” shows that while APD‐emotions do not play the epistemological role they could have played had some version of the Memory‐Claim turned out to be true, a subject's APD‐emotions nevertheless do play a vital role in a subject's mental life: they help the subject to develop a balanced sense of self.     

The Extreme Claim,Psychological Continuity and the Person Life View

Marya Schechtman has raised a series of worries for the Psychological Continuity Theory of personal identity (PCT) stemming from what Derek Parfit called the ‘Extreme Claim’. This is roughly the claim that theories like it are unable to explain the importance we attach to personal identity. In her recent Staying Alive (2014), she presents further arguments related to this and sets out a new narrative theory, the Person Life View (PLV), which she sees as solving the problems as well as bringing other advantages over the PCT. I look over some of her earlier arguments and responses to them as a way in to the new issues and theory. I will argue that the problems for the PCT and advantages that the PLV brings are all merely apparent, and present no reason for giving up the former for the latter.     

On the Harm of Imposing Risk of Harm

What is wrong with imposing pure risks, that is, risks that don’t materialize into harm? According to a popular response, imposing pure risks is pro tanto wrong, when and because risk itself is harmful. Call this the Harm View. Defenders of this view make one of the following two claims. On the Constitutive Claim, pure risk imposition is pro tanto wrong when and because risk constitutes diminishing one’s well-being viz. preference-frustration or setting-back their legitimate interest in autonomy. On the Contingent Claim, pure risk imposition is pro tanto wrong when and because risk has harmful consequences for the risk-bearers, such as psychological distress. This paper argues that the Harm View is plausible only on the Contingent Claim, but fails on the Constitutive Claim. In discussing the latter, I argue that both the preference and autonomy account fail to show that risk itself is constitutively harmful and thereby wrong. In discussing the former, I argue that risk itself is contingently harmful and thereby wrong but only in a narrow range of cases. I conclude that while the Harm View can sometimes explain the wrong of imposing risk when (and because) risk itself is contingently harmful, it is unsuccessful as a general, exhaustive account of what makes pure imposition wrong.

     

Can There Be Full Excuses for Morally Wrong Actions?*

Most people (and philosophers) distinguish between performing a morally wrong action and being blameworthy for having performed that action, and believe that an individual can be fully excused for having performed a wrong action. My purpose is to reject this claim. More precisely, I defend what I call the “Dependence Claim”: A's doing X is wrong only if A is blameworthy for having done X. I consider three cases in which, according to the traditional view, a wrong action could be excused: duress, mental illness, and mistake. I try to show that the reasons for excusing in either case are not relevantly distinguishable from the reasons for claiming that the prima facie wrong action is not wrong all things considered.     

Magical Contagion Beliefs and Fear of AIDS1

Extreme overreaction to nonrisky contact with persons with AIDS is considered to be a case of the operation of the sympathetic magical law of contagion. Prior work has shown that this principle (once in contact, always in contact) holds in the belief systems of American adults. In this paper, we show that four characteristics of this law correspond to the attitudes of college students toward AIDS: (a) actual physical contact is a critical factor in determining negative reactions, (b) even very brief contact is capable of transmitting substantial negative properties (dose insensitivity), (c) the effects of even brief contact are long lasting (permanence), and (d) the effects of contact can occur in a direction opposite to that of the normal causal arrow (backward contagion). We conclude that the magical law of contagion provides a useful way of formulating overconcern about the transmission of AIDS.     

Reading On Certainty through the Lens of Cavell: Scepticism,Dogmatism and the ‘Groundlessness of our Believing’

Abstract

While Cavell is well known for his reinterpretation of the later Wittgenstein, he has never really engaged himself with post-Investigations writings like On Certainty. This collection may, however, seem to undermine the profoundly anti-dogmatic reading of Wittgenstein that Cavell has developed. In addition to apparently arguing against what Cavell calls ‘the truth of skepticism’ – a phrase contested by other Wittgensteinians – On Certainty may seem to justify the rejection of whoever dares to question one’s basic presuppositions. According to On Certainty, or so it seems, the only right response to someone with different certainties is a reproach like ‘Fool!’ or ‘Heretic!’. This article aims to show that On Certainty need not be taken to prove Cavell wrong. It explains that Wittgenstein, in line with the first two parts of The Claim of Reason, does not reject scepticism out of hand but rather questions the sceptic’s self-understanding. Using arguments from Part Three of The Claim, the article moreover argues that a confrontation with divergence calls for self-examination rather than self-righteousness. Precisely because Wittgenstein acknowledges ‘the groundlessness of our believing’ or, in Cavellian terms, ‘the truth of skepticism’, he is not the authoritarian thinker that some have taken him to be.     

“A GREATEST MIRACLE”: STANLEY CAVELL,MORAL PERFECTIONISM,AND THE ASCENT INTO THE ORDINARY

What to make of “the ordinary,”“the everyday,” and their common “eventfulness”? What to think of what Veena Das, in her recent book Life and Words, prefaced by Stanley Cavell, has called our need to “descent into the ordinary”? Is there a parallel figure of “ascent,” again, into the same “ordinary,” that we might we want to juxtapose with it and that resembles the motif of “change,” even “conversion,” that Cavell analyzes at some length in The Claim of Reason and throughout his oeuvre as a whole? And what could be our reasons for doing so? This essay will draw on Cavell's reading of Ibsen's work in the volume Cities of Words to spell out what such an “ascent” might mean.     

Positive and negative appraisals of the consequences of activated states uniquely relate to symptoms of hypomania and depression

Individuals may appraise internal states positively or negatively. Positive appraisals involve desiring or pursuing the state or experience, while negative appraisals involve dreading or avoiding the experience. The extent to which individuals make extreme positive or negative appraisals of high, activated, energetic states might determine whether they experience symptoms of high or low mood. This study extends the existing literature by considering the role of opposing appraisals and beliefs about the same internal states and by controlling for the potential correlation between depression and activation symptoms. Extreme, positive and negative appraisals of activated mood states related distinctly to experiences of activation and depression symptoms respectively, in an analogue sample (n=323). Positive appraisals of activated internal states were uniquely associated with elevated activation and hypomania symptoms. Negative appraisals of the same states were uniquely associated with elevated depression symptoms. Opposing appraisals of internal states may underlie mood swing symptoms.     

Originary Temporality and Existential Commitment: A Defense of Heidegger's A Potiori Claim

Being and Time's fundamental ontoogy and existentialism both rest on the A Potiori Claim, which states that originary temporality is, although non‐sequential, a genuine and basic concept of time from which we derive our more ordinary, sequential concept of time. In this paper, I develop a new reading and defense of this claim against the readings of William Blattner, which ties originary temporality too tightly to the particular roles and identities we live out and must therefore find Heidegger's project a failure, and Tony Fisher, who implies that our various roles and identities hang together in time in a merely accidental and non‐rational way. On my reading, originary temporality is the structure of Dasein's characteristic activity of existential commitment. Through this activity, we each work out, in our own case, what it takes to embody the capacity for sense‐making, at all. Here, the non‐sequentiality of originary temporality reflects the way in which commitments are revised and sustained through time, while the sequence of nows derives from our need to embody our commitment in a single life that negotiates among the practical demands that our various identities make of us.     

Views and Counterviews

Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts, by James A. Nestingen and Gerhard O. Forde, p.291 The Episcopal No Spin Zone, by Meg Madson, p.293 Response to Madson, by Elizabeth Purdum and Louis Schneider, p.296 Misconstruing Miracles, by Ronald F. Marshall, p.297 WordAlone: Extreme, Unfocused, or What? By C. Richard Peterson, p.298     

Against One Form of Judgment-Determinism

Taking 'rationalized judgments' to be those formed by inference from other judgments, I argue against 'Extreme Determinism': the thesis that theoretical rationalization just is a kind of predetermination of 'conclusion-judgments' by 'premise-judgments'. The argument rests upon two key lemmas: firstly, that a deliberator - in this case, his/her assent to some proposition - to be predetermined (I call this the 'Openness Requirement'): secondly, that a subject's logical insight into his/her premise-judgments must enter into the explanation of any judgment s/he forms that is rationalized by those judgments. My contention is that, given the Openness Requirement, no version of Extreme Determinsim can allow for the role played by logical insight in the rationalization of judgment. I end by indicating briefly how this result might figure in a wider argument against any form of determinism about rationalized judgment, and by explaining why I have focused specifically upon rebutting a deterministic view of theoretical as opposed to 'practical' rationalization.     

Transparent emotions? A critical analysis of Moran's transparency claim

I critically analyze Richard Moran's account of knowing one's own emotions, which depends on the Transparency Claim (TC) for self-knowledge. Applied to knowing one's own beliefs, TC states that when one is asked “Do you believe P?”, one can answer by referencing reasons for believing P. TC works for belief because one is justified in believing that one believes P if one can give reasons for why P is true. Emotions, however, are also conceptually related to concerns; they involve a response to something one cares about. As a consequence, acquiring self-knowledge of one's emotions requires knowledge of other mental attitudes, which falls outside the scope of TC. Hence, TC cannot be applied to emotions.     

On Husserl and Cavellian Scepticism

In the early parts of The Claim of Reason , Stanley Cavell develops an account of scepticism based on his distinction between specific and generic objects. Because there are no ('Austinian') criteria for generic objects, it seems that we cannot know them; and the sceptic argues that this kind of knowledge is a 'best case', so that failure here indicates the impossibility of knowledge in general. I show that, in Husserl's Ideen I, the transcendental ego is the cause of being of all objects qua generic, or, in other words, that we know generic objects in the manner of an intellectus archetypus . Hence Husserl has a kind of refutation of the Cavellian sceptic, albeit perhaps at a very high price.     

Personality and Fears

The contribution to self-reported fears of individual differences in extraversion-introversion (E) and neuroticism (N) was studied in 102 female college students. Four groups of 20 Ss each were constituted - high E high N, high E low N, low E high N, and low E low N. A fear survey schedule and the Eysenck Personality Inventory were employed. By analysis of variance, total fear scores were a significant function of N but not E. Extreme or phobic fears were a significant function of neither personality dimensions, though the N effect approached conventional significance levels. Correlational analyses on the full sample confirmed these findings, except that a statistically significant though slight (6 percent) proportion of extreme fear variance was accountable by N.     

The Significance of the Poetic in Early Childhood Education: Stanley Cavell and Lucy Sprague Mitchell on Language Learning

This paper begins with a discussion of Stanley Cavell??s philosophy of language learning. Young people learn more than the meaning of words when acquiring language: they learn about (the quality of) our form of life. If we??as early childhood educators??see language teaching as something like handing some inert thing to a child, then we unduly limit the possibilities of education for that child. Cavell argues that we must become poets if we are to be the type of representatives of language that education calls for. In the final section of the paper I discuss the work of Lucy Sprague Mitchell, someone who developed an approach to language teaching that overlaps in interesting ways with Cavell??s approach in The Claim of Reason.     

Notes and Comments

Two Short Communications:
R. A. Markus, Gregory the Great and In I Regum , by Francis Clark
Aquinas's Claim 'Anima Mea Non Est Ego', by Stephen Priest     

Ethnic Diversity and the Nation State

ABSTRACT The coterminality of nation and state is the central legitimising principle of the modern state, which has recently come to be challenged by a variety of ethnic groups across the world. This essay identifies two such challenges: (a) The Claim of Alternative Statehood, which endorses the coterminality of cultural and political community, challenges the political boundaries of existing nation-states, and grounds its secessionist demands in a more precise congruence between nationality and state; and (b) The Claim of Alternative Citizenship, which does not threaten the nation-state, and seeks only protection for the special requirements of cultural community, for which it demands autonomy, agency and rights. Both types of challenge tend to submerge the individual, as they uphold the rival claims of states and cultural communities.
It is argued that the failed promise of pluralism in modern multi-ethnic societies demands a rethinking of the notion of citizenship. Extending citizenship from its location in polity/state to society as such, and providing space for affiliative and affinitive identities in addition to filiative ones, may help to strengthen civil society, within a non-majoritarian and non-homogenising political framework.     

From Independence to Conciliationism: An Obituary

Conciliationists about peer disagreement hold that when one disagrees with an epistemic peer about some proposition p, one should significantly change one's view about p. Many arguments for conciliationism appeal to a principle Christensen [2011] dubs Independence. Independence says that evaluations of the beliefs of those with whom one disagrees should not be made on the basis of one's initial reasoning about p. In this paper, I show that this principle is false. I also show that two weaker principles that vindicate conciliationism are either false, unmotivated, or both.     

On “Epistemic Permissiveness”

In ??Epistemic Permissiveness??, Roger White presents several arguments against Extreme Permissivism, the view that there are possible cases where, given one??s total evidence, it would be rational to either believe P, or to believe ??P. In this paper, we carefully reconstruct White??s arguments and then argue that they do not succeed.     

The long way to “extreme psychologism”

In “Clearing Space for Extreme Psychologism about Reasons”, Mitova argues against two main views about the ontology of reasons. Instead, she presents an argument by elimination for “extreme psychologism” as a prima facie superior alternative. I will argue for the following claims. First, the case against the Standard Story – the view that normative and motivating reasons are facts and psychological states, respectively – includes premises that are in need of support. Second, the critical examination of factualism – the view that normative and motivating reasons are facts – misses a relevant distinction between motivating and explanatory reasons. This distinction brings new resources to factualism to answer the raised worries. Third, the case for extreme psychologism rests on a requirement that is either too easy to threaten other alternatives, or so strong as to challenge extreme psychologism itself.