Moral Psychology with Nietzsche

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Leiter
Keyword(s):  
Moral Psychology ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Conscious Experience ◽  
Twin Studies ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Harry Frankfurt ◽  
Derk Pereboom ◽  
History Of

This book offers both a reading and defense of Nietzsche’s moral psychology, drawing on both empirical psychological results and contemporary philosophical positions and arguments. Among the views explained and defended are: anti-realism about all value, including epistemic value; a kind of sentimentalism about evaluative judgment; epiphenomenalism about certain conscious mental states, including those involved in the conscious experience of willing; and radical skepticism about free will and moral responsibility. Psychological research, from Daniel Wegner’s work on the experience of willing to the famed Minnesota Twin studies, is marshalled in support of the Nietzschean picture of moral psychology. Nietzschean views are brought into dialogue with contemporary philosophical views defended by, among many others, Harry Frankfurt, T.M. Scanlon, Gary Watson, and Derk Pereboom. Nietzsche emerges not simply as a museum piece from the history of ideas, but as a philosopher and psychologist who exceeds David Hume for insight into human nature and the human mind, one who repeatedly anticipates later developments in empirical psychology, and continues to offer sophisticated and unsettling challenges to much conventional wisdom in philosophy.

Dehumanization and Mentalizing Animals

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
T.J. Kasperbauer
Keyword(s):  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Mental State ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Mental State Attribution ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Phenomenal States

This chapter applies the psychological account from chapter 3 on how we rank human beings above other animals, to the particular case of using mental states to assign animals moral status. Experiments on the psychology of mental state attribution are discussed, focusing on their implications for human moral psychology. The chapter argues that attributions of phenomenal states, like emotions, drive our assignments of moral status. It also describes how this is significantly impacted by the process of dehumanization. Psychological research on anthropocentrism and using animals as food and as companions is discussed in order to illuminate the relationship between dehumanization and mental state attribution.

John Stuart Mill

Philosophy ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Riley
Keyword(s):  
David Hume ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
John Stuart Mill ◽  
Natural Order ◽  
Psychological Approach ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Real Nature ◽  
Real Essence

John Stuart Mill (b. 1806–d. 1873) was a brilliant philosopher who also displayed a passion for justice and equal rights. He represents the British empiricist “school of experience” at its finest, a school that includes luminaries such as John Locke, David Hume, David Hartley, Jeremy Bentham, James Mill, and Alexander Bain. He was a naturalist who held that humans are to be understood as belonging to the natural order. He was also a phenomenalist, which has epistemological and metaphysical aspects. For him, human knowledge is confined to appearances; that is, occurrences, memories, and expectations of sensations: we have no means of knowing the real essence of things in themselves, which we may believe produce our sensations but lie hidden behind them. He was neither a metaphysical idealist nor a materialist: he makes the epistemic claim that humans cannot know whether a fundamental substrate is matter or spirit or both, but he never denies that it exists. Remaining agnostic about fundamental ontology, he endorses a “psychological” approach to metaphysics, according to which we can analyze how the human mind constructs complex mental states, including ideas, desires, emotions, and volitions, out of sensations on an a posteriori basis in accord with psychological laws, with the caveat that some mental phenomena may remain inexplicable. This psychological approach is admittedly compatible with George Berkeley’s idealism, but it is also compatible with a belief in the existence of matter defined as “permanent possibility of sensation,” where the permanent possibility exists independently of whether we are actually experiencing the sensations. We cannot know that the possibility necessarily exists, but we observe that it always does, and this supports an enumerative induction that a fundamental substrate lies behind our sensations, although we have no idea of its real nature. Mill goes on to construct a pluralistic liberal version of hedonistic utilitarianism in accord with his naturalism and phenomenalism. His argument that utilitarianism can support a system of strong liberal rights, including a distinctive right of absolute liberty for self-regarding conduct that does not cause any nonconsensual harm to others, which he considered a suitable extension of the right of religious liberty, continues to inspire interest, although most scholars are not convinced. He was also a prominent political economist, theorist of representative democracy, and radical feminist. But his defense of imperialism and of despotic government for barbarian populations now provokes outrage from modern critics, even if he had in mind a “tolerant imperialism” and a “self-abolishing” despotism designed to prepare the natives for self-government.

Nietzsche’s Theory of Agency

2019 ◽  
pp. 115-146
Author(s):  
Brian Leiter
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Harry Frankfurt ◽  
Derk Pereboom ◽  
Gary Watson ◽  
The Will ◽  
And Control ◽  
Galen Strawson ◽  
Alternate Possibilities

Nietzsche’s repudiation of free will and moral responsibility is documented throughout his corpus, and his arguments for this conclusion—arguments from his distinctive kind of fatalism, his skepticism about the causal efficacy of the will, and his particular brand of epiphenomenalism about the conscious mental states crucial to deliberation—are shown to undermine both compatibilist and incompatibilist views about free will and moral responsibility by engaging the views of many contemporary philosophers working on these topics, including Harry Frankfurt, Galen Strawson, Robert Kane, Derk Pereboom, Gary Watson, and others. In particular, the chapter argues that both “alternate possibilities” and “control” views of free will are vulnerable to Nietzsche’s critique. Some empirical evidence is adduced in support of Nietzsche’s view.

Philosophy and Psychology

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise Antony ◽  
Georges Rey
Keyword(s):  
Computer Science ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Research Program ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Noam Chomsky ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Mind

Philosophy and psychology have always been inseparable, particularly with regard to issues of methodology. The chapter begins with a brief history of the a priori and introspectivist traditions of both, and of the various forms of behaviorism that were a reaction to them. It then turns to the “computational” and “functionalist” approaches to the mind that grew out of the development of the computer and especially the linguistic work of Noam Chomsky. These blossomed into the research program of “cognitive science” that combines work in linguistics, psychology, neuroscience, biology, and computer science to empirically address questions about the nature and architecture of the mind, and issues in semantics, epistemology, and moral psychology. the chapter concludes by briefly discussing two important cases concerning the nature of consciousness, its supposed “unity,” and various forms of self-blindness, which raise surprising empirical questions about our introspective access to our mental states.

The Challenges in Dealing with Organized Crime and its Consequences in Modern Societies in Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia – the Balkan Peninsula

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 161
Author(s):  
Bashkim Selmani ◽  
Bekim Maksuti
Keyword(s):  
Organized Crime ◽  
Balkan Peninsula ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
The Public ◽  
Before And After ◽  
History Of ◽  
European Standards ◽  
Organized Crime Groups ◽  
Further Development

The profound changes within the Albanian society, including Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia, before and after they proclaimed independence (in exception of Albania), with the establishment of the parliamentary system resulted in mass spread social negative consequences such as crime, drugs, prostitution, child beggars on the street etc. As a result of these occurred circumstances emerged a substantial need for changes within the legal system in order to meet and achieve the European standards or behaviors and the need for adoption of many laws imported from abroad, but without actually reading the factual situation of the psycho-economic position of the citizens and the consequences of the peoples’ occupations without proper compensation, as a remedy for the victims of war or peace in these countries. The sad truth is that the perpetrators not only weren’t sanctioned, but these regions remained an untouched haven for further development of criminal activities, be it from the public state officials through property privatization or in the private field. The organized crime groups, almost in all cases, are perceived by the human mind as “Mafia” and it is a fact that this cannot be denied easily. The widely spread term “Mafia” is mostly known around the world to define criminal organizations.The Balkan Peninsula is highly involved in these illegal groups of organized crime whose practice of criminal activities is largely extended through the Balkan countries such as Kosovo, Albania, Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, Montenegro, etc. Many factors contributed to these strategic countries to be part of these types of activities. In general, some of the countries have been affected more specifically, but in all of the abovementioned countries organized crime has affected all areas of life, leaving a black mark in the history of these states.

The Thanatosis of Enlightenment

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 83-106
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Reasoning ◽  
Phenomenological Theory ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Unsuccessful Attempt ◽  
Trace Back ◽  
Methodological Errors ◽  
Psychological Models ◽  
History Of ◽  
Living Nature ◽  
Dialectic Of Enlightenment

The article analyzes methodological errors Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment, particularly their incorrect use of the concepts of mimicry and mimesis. The author of the article maintains that the leaders of the Frankfurt School made a mistake that threatens to undermine their argument when they juxtaposed mimesis and the attraction to death, which has led philosophers to trace back to mimesis the desire for destruction that is found in a civilization constructed by instrumental reasoning. The author reviews the arguments of the Dialectic of Enlightenment and emphasizes the unsuccessful attempt to fuse Freudian and Hegelian methods, which exposes the instability of opposing scientific reasoning to “living” nature. Some amusing quotations from Roger Caillois, who refused to think of mimesis as something entirely rational, are also brought to bear. As Brassier gradually unfolds Adorno and Horkheimer’s thesis, he indicates the consequences of their mistake, which confined thinkers to the bucolic dungeon of “remembering” the authentic nature that they cannot abandon because they have denied themselves access to both reductionist psychological models and to phenomenological theory as such. Brassier delineates the boundaries of this trap and notes the excessive attachment of the Dialectic of Enlightenment to the human. Brassier goes on to describe the prospects for a civilization of enlightenment: a mimesis of death in both senses (death imitates and is imitated) finds its highest expression in the technological automation of the intellect, which for Adorno and Horkheimer means the final implementation of the self-destructive mind. However, for Brassier it means the rewriting of the history of reason in space. This topological rewriting of history, carried out through an enlightenment, reestablishes the dynamics of horror more than mythical temporality: it will become clear that the human mind appears as the dream of a mimetic insect.

Intersectionality as a Framework for Theory and Research in Feminist Psychology

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leah R. Warner ◽  
Stephanie A. Shields
Keyword(s):  
Social Activism ◽  
Data Gathering ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Science Practices ◽  
Intersectionality Theory ◽  
Psychological Science ◽  
Psychological Theories ◽  
History Of

Intersectionality theory concerns the interdependence of systems of inequality and implications for psychological research. Social identities cannot be studied independently of one another nor separately from the societal processes that maintain inequality. In this chapter we provide a brief overview of the history of intersectionality theory and then address how intersectionality theory challenges the way psychological theories typically conceive of the person, as well as the methods of data gathering and analysis customarily used by many psychologists. We specifically address two concerns often expressed by feminist researchers. First, how to reconcile the use of an intersectionality framework with currently-valued psychological science practices. Second, how intersectionality transforms psychology’s concern with individual experience by shifting the focus to the individual’s position within sociostructural frameworks and their social and political underpinnings. In a concluding section we identify two future directions for intersectionality theory: how psychological research on intersectionality can facilitate social activism, and current developments in intersectionality theory.

Atonement

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleonore Stump
Keyword(s):  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Negative Emotions ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Central Question ◽  
Mind Reading ◽  
Shared Attention ◽  
History Of Interpretation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Eleonore Stump

The doctrine that Christ has saved human beings from their sins, with all that that salvation entails, is the distinctive doctrine of Christianity. Over the course of many centuries of reflection on the doctrine, highly diverse understandings have been proposed, many of which have also raised strong positive or negative emotions in those who have reflected on them. In this book, in the context of this history of interpretation, Eleonore Stump considers this theological doctrine with philosophical care. The central question of the book is the nature of the atonement. That is, what is it that is accomplished by the passion and death of Christ (or the life, passion, and death, of Christ)? Whatever exactly it is, it is supposed to include a solution to the problem of the post-Fall human condition, with its guilt and shame. This volume canvasses major interpretations of the doctrine of the atonement that attempt to explain this solution, and it argues that all of them have serious shortcomings. In their place, Stump employs an extension of a Thomistic account of love and forgiveness to argue for a relatively novel interpretation of the doctrine, which she calls ‘the Marian interpretation.’ Stump argues that this Marian interpretation makes better sense of the doctrine of the atonement than other interpretations do, including Anselm’s well-known theory. In the process of constructing the Marian interpretation, she also discusses love, union, guilt, shame, forgiveness, retribution, punishment, shared attention, mind-reading, empathy, and various other issues in moral psychology and ethics.

History of Sexual Orientation and Mental Health

2020 ◽  
pp. 9-24
Author(s):  
Kristin A. Hancock ◽  
Douglas C. Haldeman
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Movements ◽  
International Policy ◽  
Psychological Science ◽  
Aids Epidemic ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Bisexual ◽  
The Impact

Psychology’s understanding of lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) people has evolved, become more refined, and impacted the lives of LGB people in profound ways. This chapter traces the history of LGB psychology from the nineteenth century to the present and focuses on major events and the intersections of theory, psychological science, politics, and activism in the history of this field. It explores various facets of cultural and psychological history that include the pathologizing of homosexuality, the rise of psychological science and the political movements in the mid-twentieth century, and the major shifts in policy that ensued. The toll of the AIDS epidemic on the field is discussed as is the impact of psychological research on national and international policy and legislation.

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