Mood and Ethics

Author(s):  
Carl Plantinga

Our understanding of the moral psychology of screen stories is incomplete and underdeveloped unless we examine the ethical significance of moods, which are quite different than emotions. This chapter examines the role of moods in screen stories. More specifically, it shows how moods figure into the ethical implications of screen stories. To understand what moods in screen stories are, we must first distinguish between moods that screen stories have and moods that people have; they are different things. Moods are significant for an ethics of screen stories because (a) moods express a perspective, (b) moods are closely related to moral understanding, and (c) moods have effects on the spectator that have ethical implications.

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 355-368
Author(s):  
YEVGENIY ALEKSANDROV

The aim of the article is to recall the fi steps of comprehension by the scientific community of possibilities of a newly born means of the reality reflection. The means was initially oriented for obtaining reliable information and supposing a delayed reaction of the spectator in the process of communication. Recollection and understanding become more important under the distance education condition. Pre-revolutionary Russia lived anticipating changes, and the filmmaking was considered by the society as one of those progressive phenomena evidencing the coming of a new age. The scientists’ activity during the development of scientific fi in pre-revolutionary Russia was long hushed up and wasn’t considered as forming a basis for the future system of educational audio-visual communication. In this process there participated striking, creative personalities, mostly belonged to the community of Imperial Moscow University, which activity was during the age of changes. The significant contribution of pleiad of eminent scientists’ activity to the new direction formation was a reason to unify in one paper both their whole professional life data and information about their time-limited period of scientific fi In the future a more profound study of their achievements are considered to be promising. In the introduction the anterior period of the Russian fi appearance, where the scientific and education community of Russia was exploring the possibilities of a new means of information transfer for education purposes, is considered. Two main units are dedicated to the role of scientists in the development of scientific filmmaking for research and popularization of biomedical and physical problems.


This book takes a fresh look at the land question in India. It goes beyond re-engagement in the rich transition debate by critically examining both theoretically and empirically the role of land in contemporary India. Springing from the political economy discourse surrounding the classic capitalist transition issue in agriculture in India, the book gravitates toward the development discourse that inevitably veers toward land and the role of the state in pushing a process of dispossession of peasants through direct expropriation for developmental purposes. Contemporary dispossession may look similar to the historical process of primitive accumulation that makes room for capitalist agriculture and expanded accumulation. But this volume shows that land in India is sought increasingly for non-agricultural purposes as well. These include risk mitigation by farmers, real estate development, infrastructure development by states often on behalf of business, and special economic zones. Tribal communities (advasis), who depend on land for their livelihoods and a moral economy that is independent of any price-driven markets, hold on to land for collective security. Thus land acquisition continues to be a turbulent arena in which classes, castes, and communities are in conflict with the state and capital, each jockeying to determine the terms and conditions of land transactions or their prevention, through both market and non-market mechanisms. The volume collectively addresses the role of the state involved in the process of dispossession of peasants and tribal communities. It provides new analytical insights into the land acquisition processes, their legal-institutional and ethical implications, and captures empirically the multifaceted regional diversity of the contestations surrounding the acquisition experiences in India.


2009 ◽  
pp. 161-182
Author(s):  
Stefano Cirillo

- The author analyses some clinical cases in order to reflect upon the varying consequences of child sexual abuse on the development of abused males. Three distinct cases observed in clinical population are discussed. The typical victim's transformation into offender, the persistent tendency in victims to perpetuate the role of victim and the persistent tendency in the brothers' female victims to perpetuate the role of the spectator. The attachment system (provided both by the protective parent and by the abusing parent) plays a key role in the abused child's development related to the dimension of fear produced by the traumatic event.


Hypatia ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 675-695 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maurice Hamington

This article addresses the world's contemporary crisis of care, despite the abundance of information about distant others, by exploring motivations for caring and the role of imagination. The ethical significance of caring is found in performance. Applying Victor Vroom's expectancy theory, caring performances are viewed as extensions of rational expectations regarding the efficacy of actions. The imagination creates these positive or negative expectations regarding the ability to effectively care. William James's notion of the will to believe offers a unique twist on rational expectations in that he regards humans as having the capacity to work within uncertainty to take decisive action. Applying this idea to caring performance is, this article argues that people can have the will to care, beyond strict rational calculations or limits of social norms. Historically, caring has been associated with the imagination's ability to empathize, but the will to care offers another role for the imagination in envisioning effective action. Given the significance of the imagination for ethical behavior, this article explores the implications for cultivating care in terms of what educating for care might look like. The work of feminist care ethicists, particularly Nel Noddings, is discussed, and contemporary case examples of caring performances are investigated.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (15) ◽  
pp. 78-94
Author(s):  
Giorgio Oikonomou

The purpose of this study is to explore the evolution of EU administration by focusing and critically examining the role of EU agencies in advancing the European integration project. The research question deals with identifying the factors that account for the formulation of EU agencies and the reasons behind their sharp increase in numbers since the 2000s. The tasks are to analyse critical EU agencies’ parameters such as their typology, the policy area they deal with, origin of their resources and funding, and their output. In addition, transparency and accountability issues accompanying the proliferation of EU agencies are also considered. Emphasis is placed on the evolution of the European administration as expressed by the establishment of various types of agencies since 1975 thereafter. Methodologically, the research utilizes quantitative data based on annual EU budgets as well as official reports and policy papers issued by main EU institutions (European Commission, European Parliament, European Court of Auditors) and agencies, analyzing them from a historical perspective. As a result, it is argued that the proliferation of EU agencies has advanced the process of European integration, namely the EU enlargement and expansion in new policy areas following successive reforms of the Treaties. However, concerns regarding accountability and transparency issues remain in place.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elias Garcia-Pelegrin ◽  
Clive Wilkins ◽  
Nicola Clayton

Abstract The use of magic effects to investigate the blind spots in the attention and perception and roadblocks in the cognition of the spectator has yielded thought-provoking results elucidating how these techniques operate. However, little is known about the interplay between experience practising magic and being deceived by magic effects. In this study, we performed two common sleight of hand effects and their real transfer counterparts to non-magicians, and to magicians with a diverse range of experience practising magic. Although, as a group, magicians identified the sleights of hand as deceptive actions significantly more than non-magicians; this ability was only evidenced in magicians with more than 5 years in the craft. However, unlike the rest of the participants, experienced magicians had difficulty correctly pinpointing the location of the coin in one of the real transfers presented. We hypothesise that this might be due to the inherent ambiguity of this transfer, in which, contrary to the other real transfer performed, no clear perceptive clue is given about the location of the coin. We suggest that extensive time practising magic might have primed experienced magicians to anticipate foul play when observing ambiguous movements, even when the actions observed are genuine.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
António Cardoso

This article examines how the emergence of interactive art brought about the necessity of re-positioning the traditional role of the spectator and led to the re-formulation of the notion of authorship. The non-linear structure of interactive artworks empowers the spectator with the (apparent) control of its narrative and creates a relational space filled with an input-output dynamic. It is suggested that this elevates the spectator to the realm of co-authorship of the work of art that he/she is interacting with, because the specificity of each interaction generates symbolic meanings that the original author cannot anticipate.It is also argued that the input required from the spectator to interact with the artwork could be compared to a theatrical performance. Thus, an analogy between the spectator-in-action of an interactive artwork and the figure of an actor is established. This brings us to the question concluding the article: as the reception of interactive art implies an action from its spectator, the compatibility between action and contemplation is questioned.Finally, the article concludes that the corpus of an interactive artwork has to include the spectator that acts and creates the input needed for the interaction to be established. Therefore, only from the point of view of an external observer one can gain access to its global dimension, that is, as meta-spectators.


Author(s):  
Webb Keane

This chapter explores some of the major findings in developmental, cognitive, and moral psychology that have been taken as evidence for the foundations of ethics. It looks at research on human capacities and propensities for things such as sharing and cooperation, intention-seeking, empathy, self-consciousness, norm-seeking and enforcement, discrimination, and role-swapping. While these human capacities are necessary, they are not sufficient conditions for ethical life. What they help explain is what it is about humans that makes them prone to taking an ethical stance. For the psychology of ethics to have a full social existence, it must be manifest in ways that are taken to be ethical by someone. Ethics must be embodied in certain palpable media such as words or deeds or bodily habits. The ethical implications must be at least potentially recognizable to other people.


2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Marechal

Abstract In this paper I examine the moral psychology of the Phaedo and argue that the philosophical life in this dialogue is a temperate life, and that temperance consists in exercising epistemic discernment by actively withdrawing assent from incorrect evaluations the body inclines us to make. Philosophers deal with bodily affections by taking a correct epistemic stance. Exercising temperance thus understood is a necessary condition both for developing and strengthening rational capacities, and for fixing accurate beliefs about value. The purification philosophers strive for, and the purifying role of philosophy, should then be understood as a clarificatory act consisting in making one’s thoughts clear and withdrawing assent from erroneous evaluative content in our desires and pleasures. Along the way, I argue that philosophers must neither avoid situations and activities that cause bodily affections as much as possible, nor ignore or care little about them.


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