FILA9 Moral Psychology 3–5 ECTS
September 26 – September 30, 2016
Course Description and Syllabus
August 28, 2016
Antti Kauppinen ([email protected])
According to a crude but common picture of the human mind, it is divided into the two opposing faculties of Reason and Passion. Some, like Plato, are said to believe that morality is a matter of Reason, and others, like Hume, that morality is based on Passion. Recent work in psychology makes a related distinction between reflective and intuitive/affective processes, and emphasizes the importance of the latter in moral thought. In this seminar, we explore some of the philosophical implications of the alleged primacy of affective processes, and the very notion of a division between Reason and Passion. Perhaps emotions and attitudes are not only causally significant, but in part constitutive of good moral thinking and standing in some morally significant relationships to others. We’ll ask the following kind of questions: Is deliberation necessary for responding to reasons? Does reflective endorsement determine where our true self lies? What is the significance of reactive attitudes for morality? Do emotions constitute perceptions of value? Should people sometimes feel the negative other-directed emotions of anger, contempt, and disgust, or are they inherently morally problematic? How about the self-conscious emotions of pride and shame? We will make use of contemporary, historical, and empirical literature in exploring these topics.
This class is an advanced seminar, which means that all participants are expected to do the readings for each meeting in advance and be able to answer at least those questions about the texts that are distributed in advance. It will be very difficult to participate without reading at least the starred text for each class. The texts will be made available electronically.
WARNING: Reading and reflecting on the texts below may make you a morally better person.
Timetable Topics (roughly)
Mon 26-Sep-2016 at 12-16, Päätalo A2B Deliberation and Moral Worth, Accountability
Tue 27-Sep-2016 at 14-18, Päätalo A4 Accountability (continued), Epistemology
Wed 28-Sep-2016 at 12-14, Pinni B4117 Anger
Wed 28-Sep-2016 at 14-16, Päätalo A2B Contempt
Thu 29-Sep-2016 at 12-14, Päätalo A2B Disgust
Fri 30-Sep-2016 at 10-14, Päätalo A2A Pride and Shame
Syllabus
1. Deliberation, Desire and Moral Worth
Additional readings:
2. Moral Emotions: Accountability
Additional readings:
3. Moral Emotions: Epistemology
Additional readings:
4. Anger
Additional readings:
5. Contempt
Additional readings:
6. Disgust
Additional readings:
7. Pride
Additional readings:
8. Shame
Additional readings:
Recommended background reading:
Nomy Arpaly and Timothy Schroeder (2015), In Praise of Desire. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Macalester Bell (2013), Hard Feelings: The Moral Psychology of Contempt. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Michael Brady (2013), Emotional Insight: The Epistemic Role of Emotional Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Stephen Darwall (2007), The Second-Person Standpoint. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Martha Nussbaum (2016), Anger and Forgiveness: Resentment, Generosity, and Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Christine Tappolet (2016), Emotions, Values, and Agency. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gabriele Taylor (1985), Pride, Shame, and Guilt: Emotions of Self-Assessment. Clarendon Press, Oxford.
David Velleman (2006), Self to Self. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
R. Jay Wallace (1994), Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Highly recommended fiction on these topics:
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (pride, contempt)
Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (shame)
Jean-Luc Godard, Le Mépris (contempt)
Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn (moral worth)
Emile Zola, Germinal (anger)
Questions about the readings
Antti Kauppinen ([email protected])
These questions are intended to help focus your reading and facilitate informed discussion in the seminar. Once you’ve found the answer to a question, it’s probably a good idea to think about how the author’s take might be challenged – e.g. are Haidt and Kesebir right about what’s special about our moral system?
1. Deliberation, Desire, and Moral Worth
Haidt and Kesebir, ‘Morality’
Arpaly and Schoeder, ‘Deliberation and Acting for Reasons’
*Arpaly and Schoeder, ‘Praise, Blame, and the Whole Self’
2. Moral Emotions: Accountability
Strawson, ‘Freedom and Resentment’
*Brendan Dill and Stephen Darwall, ‘Moral Psychology as Accountability’
Bonus questions: What are the differences between Strawson’s, Darwall’s and Wallace’s conception of reactive attitudes? How does the accountability theory’s account of conscience compare with Adam Smith’s account?
3. Moral Emotions: Epistemology
*Christine Tappolet, ‘Emotions and Perceptions’
Jerome Dokic and Stephane Lemaire, ‘Are Emotions Perceptions of Value?’
Additional reading: Peter Railton, ‘The Affective Dog and Its Rational Tale’
4. Anger
Aristotle, Rhetoric (excerpt).
Butler, ‘Upon Resentment’.
Frye, ‘A Note on Anger’.
Berkowitz and Harmon-Jones, ‘Toward an Understanding of the Determinants of Anger’
*Martha Nussbaum, ‘Anger: Downranking, Weakness, Payback’
5. Contempt
Mason, ‘Contempt as a Moral Attitude’
*Bell, ‘The Moral Value of Contempt’ (from Hard Feelings)
6. Disgust
Kahan, The Anatomy of Disgust in Criminal Law
*Nussbaum, ‘Disgust and Our Animal Bodies’
7. Pride
*Taylor, ‘Pride and Humility’
Tracy, Shariff, and Cheng, ‘A Naturalist’s View of Pride’
Fischer (2012), ‘Feeling Proud and Being Proud’.
8. Shame
Tangney and Tracy, ‘Self-Conscious Emotions’.
*Velleman, ‘The Genesis of Shame’.
Bonus questions: Stipek, ‘A Developmental Analysis of Pride and Shame’.
September 26 – September 30, 2016
Course Description and Syllabus
August 28, 2016
Antti Kauppinen ([email protected])
According to a crude but common picture of the human mind, it is divided into the two opposing faculties of Reason and Passion. Some, like Plato, are said to believe that morality is a matter of Reason, and others, like Hume, that morality is based on Passion. Recent work in psychology makes a related distinction between reflective and intuitive/affective processes, and emphasizes the importance of the latter in moral thought. In this seminar, we explore some of the philosophical implications of the alleged primacy of affective processes, and the very notion of a division between Reason and Passion. Perhaps emotions and attitudes are not only causally significant, but in part constitutive of good moral thinking and standing in some morally significant relationships to others. We’ll ask the following kind of questions: Is deliberation necessary for responding to reasons? Does reflective endorsement determine where our true self lies? What is the significance of reactive attitudes for morality? Do emotions constitute perceptions of value? Should people sometimes feel the negative other-directed emotions of anger, contempt, and disgust, or are they inherently morally problematic? How about the self-conscious emotions of pride and shame? We will make use of contemporary, historical, and empirical literature in exploring these topics.
This class is an advanced seminar, which means that all participants are expected to do the readings for each meeting in advance and be able to answer at least those questions about the texts that are distributed in advance. It will be very difficult to participate without reading at least the starred text for each class. The texts will be made available electronically.
WARNING: Reading and reflecting on the texts below may make you a morally better person.
Timetable Topics (roughly)
Mon 26-Sep-2016 at 12-16, Päätalo A2B Deliberation and Moral Worth, Accountability
Tue 27-Sep-2016 at 14-18, Päätalo A4 Accountability (continued), Epistemology
Wed 28-Sep-2016 at 12-14, Pinni B4117 Anger
Wed 28-Sep-2016 at 14-16, Päätalo A2B Contempt
Thu 29-Sep-2016 at 12-14, Päätalo A2B Disgust
Fri 30-Sep-2016 at 10-14, Päätalo A2A Pride and Shame
Syllabus
1. Deliberation, Desire and Moral Worth
- Twain, Huckleberry Finn (excerpt)
- Jonathan Haidt and Selin Kesebir (2010), ‘Morality’, focus on pp. 797-814.
- Nomy Arpaly and Timothy Schroeder (2012), ‘Deliberation and Acting for Reasons’
- *Nomy Arpaly and Timothy Schroeder (1999), ‘Praise, Blame, and the Whole Self’
Additional readings:
- Jonathan Evans and Keith Stanovich (2013), ‘Dual-Process Theories of Higher Cognition: Advancing the Debate’.
- Julia Markovits (2013), ‘Acting for the Right Reasons’.
2. Moral Emotions: Accountability
- Strawson, Peter (1962), ‘Freedom and Resentment’.
- *Brendan Dill and Stephen Darwall (2014), ‘Moral Psychology as Accountability’.
Additional readings:
- Smith, Adam, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (excerpt).
- R. Jay Wallace (1994), ‘Emotions, Expectations, and Responsibility’ (from Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments).
- Allais, Lucy (2008), ‘Wiping the Slate Clean: The Heart of Forgiveness’.
- C. Daniel Batson (2008), ‘Moral Masquarades: Experimental Exploration of the Nature of Moral Motivation’.
3. Moral Emotions: Epistemology
- *Christine Tappolet (2016), ‘Emotions and Perceptions’
- Jerome Dokic and Stephane Lemaire (2013), ‘Are Emotions Perceptions of Value?’
Additional readings:
- Peter Railton (2014), ‘The Affective Dog and Its Rational Tale’.
- Antti Kauppinen (2013), ‘A Humean Theory of Moral Intuition’.
- Sabine Döring (2015), ‘Why Recalcitrant Emotions Are Not Irrational’.
4. Anger
- Aristotle, Rhetoric (excerpt).
- Bishop Butler, ‘Upon Resentment’.
- Marilyn Frye (1983), ‘A Note on Anger’.
- Leonard Berkowitz and Eddie Harmon-Jones (2004), ‘Toward an Understanding of the Determinants of Anger’.
- *Martha Nussbaum, ‘Anger: Downranking, Weakness, Payback’
Additional readings:
- Seneca, On Anger (excerpt).
- Paul Rozin, Laura Lowery, Jonathan Haidt, and Sumio Imada (1999), ‘The CAD Triad Hypothesis: A Mapping Between Three Moral Emotions (Contempt, Anger, Disgust) and Three Moral Codes (Community, Autonomy, Divinity).
5. Contempt
- Michelle Mason (2003), ‘Contempt as a Moral Attitude’.
- *Macalester Bell (2013), ‘The Moral Value of Contempt’ (from Hard Feelings).
Additional readings:
- Ronald de Sousa (forthcoming), ‘Is Contempt Redeemable?’
6. Disgust
- Dan Kahan (1998), ‘The Anatomy of Disgust in Criminal Law’. [Note: contains graphic descriptions of sexual violence]
- *Martha Nussbaum (2004), ‘Disgust and Our Animal Bodies’ (from Hiding from Humanity).
Additional readings:
- Leon Kass (1997), ‘The Wisdom of Repugnance’.
- Daniel Kelly and Nicolae Morar (2014), ‘Against the Yuck Factor: On the Ideal Role of Disgust in Society’.
- John William Fischer (2016), ‘Disgust as Heuristic’.
7. Pride
- *Gabriele Taylor (1985), ‘Pride and Humility’ (from Pride, Shame, and Guilt).
- Jessica Tracy, Azim Shariff, and Joey Cheng (2010), ‘A Naturalist’s View of Pride’
- Jeremy Fischer (2012), ‘Feeling Proud and Being Proud’.
Additional readings:
- Aquinas, Summa Theologica II.II.162.
- David Hume, ‘Of Pride and Humility’ (from Treatise of Human Nature).
- Robert C. Roberts (2009), ‘The Vice of Pride’.
8. Shame
- June Tangney and Jessica Tracy (2013), ‘Self-Conscious Emotions’ (especially pp. 1–21).
- *David Velleman (2001), ‘The Genesis of Shame’.
Additional readings:
- Deborah Stipek (1983), ‘A Developmental Analysis of Pride and Shame’.
- Bernard Williams (1993), ‘Shame and Autonomy’ (from Shame and Necessity)
Recommended background reading:
Nomy Arpaly and Timothy Schroeder (2015), In Praise of Desire. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Macalester Bell (2013), Hard Feelings: The Moral Psychology of Contempt. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Michael Brady (2013), Emotional Insight: The Epistemic Role of Emotional Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Stephen Darwall (2007), The Second-Person Standpoint. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Martha Nussbaum (2016), Anger and Forgiveness: Resentment, Generosity, and Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Christine Tappolet (2016), Emotions, Values, and Agency. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gabriele Taylor (1985), Pride, Shame, and Guilt: Emotions of Self-Assessment. Clarendon Press, Oxford.
David Velleman (2006), Self to Self. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
R. Jay Wallace (1994), Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Highly recommended fiction on these topics:
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (pride, contempt)
Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (shame)
Jean-Luc Godard, Le Mépris (contempt)
Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn (moral worth)
Emile Zola, Germinal (anger)
Questions about the readings
Antti Kauppinen ([email protected])
These questions are intended to help focus your reading and facilitate informed discussion in the seminar. Once you’ve found the answer to a question, it’s probably a good idea to think about how the author’s take might be challenged – e.g. are Haidt and Kesebir right about what’s special about our moral system?
1. Deliberation, Desire, and Moral Worth
Haidt and Kesebir, ‘Morality’
- What do Haidt and Kesebir mean by moral systems, and what is special about ours?
- What is the key evidence for affective primacy?
- What are the main functions of moral reasoning, according to Haidt and Kesebir?
Arpaly and Schoeder, ‘Deliberation and Acting for Reasons’
- What kind of mental activity is necessary for deliberation?
- When is deliberation irrational?
- What are the regress problems that Arpaly and Schoeder identify?
- What is the significance of Oscar Wilde’s pun?
- When and why is deliberation valuable for responding to reasons?
- How do we respond to reasons without deliberation, according to Arpaly and Schroeder?
*Arpaly and Schoeder, ‘Praise, Blame, and the Whole Self’
- What are inverse akratics praiseworthy for?
- What are Real Self theories?
- Why do inverse akrasia cases pose a problem for Real Self theories?
- Why won’t it help to reverse the priority of Reason over Appetite in constituting the agent’s true self?
- What is the Whole Self theory, and how does it explain akrasia cases?
- How do Arpaly and Schroeder explain responsibility for out-of-character actions?
2. Moral Emotions: Accountability
Strawson, ‘Freedom and Resentment’
- How does Strawson conceive of the dialectic between ‘optimists’ and ‘pessimists’ about free will?
- What makes an attitude a ‘reactive’ one?
- What makes some facts about an agent excuses?
- What is it to adopt an objective attitude toward someone, and what follows from adopting such an attitude?
- What is the significance of the supposed fact that we wouldn’t adopt an objective attitude toward everyone even if we accepted the truth of determinism? Why?
- How are moral and self-reactive attitudes related to personal reactive attitudes?
- How does the distinction between reactive and objective attitudes bear on the debate between optimists and pessimists?
*Brendan Dill and Stephen Darwall, ‘Moral Psychology as Accountability’
- Why must moral obligation and wrongness be analyzed in terms of accountability, according to Darwall?
- What is distinctive of second-personal reactive attitudes according Dill and Darwall? What is the content of blame and guilt in particular?
- What are the advantages of the accountability theory of condemnation over the egoistic, deterrence, and retributive theories?
- Why does the accountability theory explain moral hypocrisy and moral licensing better than the approval theory?
- How can the accountability theory be reconciled with the influence of peer approval?
- How does the difference between guilt and shame related to the competing views of conscience?
- What makes Haidt and Kesebir’s definition of morality too broad, according to Dill and Darwall?
Bonus questions: What are the differences between Strawson’s, Darwall’s and Wallace’s conception of reactive attitudes? How does the accountability theory’s account of conscience compare with Adam Smith’s account?
3. Moral Emotions: Epistemology
*Christine Tappolet, ‘Emotions and Perceptions’
- What are Tappolet’s main reasons for rejecting the feeling and conative theories of emotion?
- Why is recalcitrance a problem for judgmentalist and quasi-judgmentalist theories of emotion?
- What are the distinctive features of the Perceptual Theory of emotion?
- How are emotions analogous with perceptions, according to Tappolet?
- Why aren’t disanalogies between perception and emotion reasons to reject the Perceptual Theory?
- How can the Perceptual Theory be reconciled with the fact that emotions, unlike perceptions, are subject to rational assessment and supportable by reasons?
Jerome Dokic and Stephane Lemaire, ‘Are Emotions Perceptions of Value?’
- What is the distinction between perceptually presenting and perceptually representing the world?
- How do Dokic and Lemaire conceive of normative perception?
- What is the problem with the analogy to colour perception? Why is the analogy tempting?
- Why couldn’t emotions be perceptions of response-independent properties?
Additional reading: Peter Railton, ‘The Affective Dog and Its Rational Tale’
- What are the characteristics of an intuition, according to Railton?
- What is implicit competence? How is it distinct from automatic action?
- How does the contemporary conception of intuition relate to classical view of intuition as found in Aristotle and Kant?
- Why does Railton reject the conception of System 1 at work in Haidt and Greene’s accounts? What is the alternative he offers, and how is it supported by empirical psychology?
- What is the role of empathy in Railton’s account?
- What are the epistemic implications of the implicit attunement model for the sibling incest and trolley cases?
4. Anger
Aristotle, Rhetoric (excerpt).
- What is Aristotle’s definition of anger?
- What is it to be slighted?
- What kind of people make us angry?
Butler, ‘Upon Resentment’.
- What is distinctive of sudden anger?
- What is distinctive of deliberate anger or resentment?
- What is in common to abuses of resentment?
- What is the function of resentment?
Frye, ‘A Note on Anger’.
- What does Frye mean by a claim to a domain?
- How is anger analogous to a speech act?
- Why is women’s anger on their own behalf seen as problematic, according to Frye?
Berkowitz and Harmon-Jones, ‘Toward an Understanding of the Determinants of Anger’
- How do psychologists conceive of the nature of anger?
- What are the elements of the widely accepted view of the causes of anger?
- What evidence is there for the sufficiency of goal-frustration for anger?
- What’s the case for thinking that attributions of blame and felt coping potential are results rather than causes of anger?
- What is Berkowitz’s aversive condition hypothesis? What further evidence is there for it?
*Martha Nussbaum, ‘Anger: Downranking, Weakness, Payback’
- Which elements of Aristotle’s definition does Nussbaum endorse?
- What is status-injury and what is its role in anger, according to Nussbaum?
- What are the three paths open to an angry person? What’s wrong with the two first ones?
- What are the characteristics of Transition-Anger? What is there to be said in favour of anger?
- How does anger relate to other negative reactive attitudes?
5. Contempt
Mason, ‘Contempt as a Moral Attitude’
- How does contempt present its object, according to Mason? How does the case of Camille and Paul illustrate this?
- How is contempt a reactive attitude? What makes it a moral one?
- How does contempt differ from resentment?
- How is contempt linked to character traits? Why don’t redeeming qualities make it morally inappropriate?
- How does distinguishing between recognition respect and appraisal respect help with Mason’s defense of contempt?
*Bell, ‘The Moral Value of Contempt’ (from Hard Feelings)
- What’s wrong with Aristotle’s and Nietzsche’s defenses of contempt?
- Under what conditions is contempt apt?
- Why does contempt have instrumental value?
- Why and when does contempt partially constitute integrity and relationships of mutual accountability?
- When and why is contempt compatible with respect and fundamental moral equality of persons?
- What is special about contempt as a form of moral address?
6. Disgust
Kahan, The Anatomy of Disgust in Criminal Law
- What roles does disgust as a matter of fact play in criminal law?
- What is the relationship between disgust, hierarchy, and boundaries of the self, according to Miller?
- What is Miller’s Conservation Thesis?
- What is the role of disgust in hate crimes and hate crime jurisprudence, according to Kahan?
- How can the law express disgust?
- Why and when should the law express disgust, according to Kahan?
*Nussbaum, ‘Disgust and Our Animal Bodies’
- What does Nussbaum see as common themes among the defenders of disgust in law?
- What is the significance of our animality and vulnerability for disgust?
- How does disgust get extended beyond its primary objects?
- Why does (past) Nussbaum think indignation is superior to disgust?
- How is disgust intertwined with racism and misogyny?
- How are disgust and civilization linked?
7. Pride
*Taylor, ‘Pride and Humility’
- In what ways does Hume’s analysis of pride go wrong, according to Taylor?
- How does Taylor reformulate the idea of a connection to the self?
Tracy, Shariff, and Cheng, ‘A Naturalist’s View of Pride’
- What is the evidence for a distinction between authentic and hubristic pride? What are their distinctive features?
- What is the evolutionary function of pride, according to Tracy et al? By what mechanisms does it serve this function?
- Is there a functional difference between the two facets?
Fischer (2012), ‘Feeling Proud and Being Proud’.
- What is the problem with dispositional accounts of the trait pride?
- What’s Fischer’s charge against accounts based on epistemic expectations?
- How does Fischer explain the unity and diversity of pride in terms of personal ideals?
- Why isn’t trait pride linked with sense of superiority?
- How does the personal ideals-based account explain vicious and virtuous trait pride?
8. Shame
Tangney and Tracy, ‘Self-Conscious Emotions’.
- What is, and what isn’t, different between shame and guilt?
- Why is shame not ‘adaptive’?
- When might shame be useful, according to Tangney and Tracy? Why did it evolve in the first place?
*Velleman, ‘The Genesis of Shame’.
- What is Velleman’s interpretation of the story of Adam and Eve’s forbidden fruit? What’s the main point of divergence from Augustine’s?
- What is the connection between the will and privacy?
- Why do we have an interest in being recognized as a self-presenting creature, according to Velleman?
- Why is bodily insubordination shameful?
- How does Velleman extend his account to those features of ourselves that we regard as falling short of some ideal?
- Why are certain punishments inherently shaming?
Bonus questions: Stipek, ‘A Developmental Analysis of Pride and Shame’.
- What are the precursors of pride, according to Stipek?
- What is the precursor of shame?
- What must be added to these precursors for the child to come to have full-blown self-conscious emotions?