. When I have a conscious experience of the sky, there is a bluish way it is like for me to have that experience. We may distinguish two aspects of this "bluish way it is like for me": the bluish aspect and the for-me aspect. Let us call the bluish aspect of the experience its qualitative character and the for-me aspect its subjective character . What is this elusive for-me-ness, or subjective character , of conscious (...) experience? In this paper, I examine six different attempts to account for subjective character in terms of the functional and representational properties of conscious experiences. After arguing against the first five, I defend the sixth. (shrink)

This article contributes to the debate on self-consciousness, inner awareness, and subjective character. Philosophers puzzle over whether subjective character has a monadic or a relational form. But the present article deploys formal ontology to show that this is a false dichotomy. From this vantage, a common objection to non-relational views is deflated. The common objection is that one-level, non-relational views are either unexplanatory or smuggle in resources from higher-order and/or relational views. The author uses an argument (...) from formal ontology to suggest that such objections stem from a category error. The result is that first-order non-relational views need not lapse into higher order or relational views – subjective character can be a structured and intrinsic feature involved in the ontological constitution of mental acts. Ultimately, the author emphasizes the need to conceive of subjective character as the source of intentionality, and not the result of a prior intentional relation. (shrink)

There is a substantive disagreement with regard to the characterization of pre-reflective self-awareness despite the key role that is supposed to play for the distinction between conscious and unconscious states. One of the most prominent ones—between egological and non-egological views—is about the role that the subject of experience plays.I show that this disagreement falls short to capture the details of the debate, as it does not distinguish phenomenological and metaphysical disputes. Regarding the former, the contenders disagree on whether pre-reflective self-awareness (...) concerns the subject of experience or the experience itself. I first argue that such an awareness has to be indexical—de se or de mentis respectively—, and then show that de se awareness can straightforwardly address classical objec­tions against egological views, whereas de mentis awareness fails to support epistemological arguments in favor of non-egological ones. The metaphysical commitments of a phenomenologically egological view depend on what the corresponding de se awareness demands from reality. I consider two alternatives, the structural and the representational approach and offer some consid­erations in favor of the later and its prima facie neutrality with regard to the metaphysical dispute. (shrink)

John Perry’s splendid book, Knowledge, Possibility, and Consciousness, sets out to dispel the three main objections currently lodged against mind-body materialism. These are the objection from the alleged possibility of zombies, the knowledge argument made famous by Frank Jackson, and the modal objections due principally to Saul A. Kripke and David Chalmers. The discussion is penetrating throughout, and it develops many points in illuminating detail.

Kim Atkins argues that Thomas Nagel’s argument regarding a bat’s phenomenal experience is important for understanding the value placed on patient autonomy in medical ethics. In this paper I demonstrate that Atkins’s argument (a) is based on her misinterpretations of Nagel’s argument, and (b) can be established without appealing to such a controversial assumption as that which she makes.

In recent debates on phenomenal consciousness, a distinction is sometimes made, after Levine (2001) and Kriegel (2009), between the “qualitative character” of an experience, i.e. the specific way it feels to the subject (e.g. blueish or sweetish or pleasant), and its “subjective character”, i.e. the fact that there is anything at all that it feels like to her. I argue that much discussion of subjective character is affected by a conflation between three different notions. I (...) start by disentangling the three notions in question, under the labels of “for-me-ness”, “me-ness” and “mineness”. Next, I argue that these notions are not equivalent; in particular, there is no conceptual implication from for-me-ness to me-ishness or mineness. Empirical considerations based on clinical cases additionally suggest that the three notions may also correspond to different properties (although the claim of conceptual non-equivalence does not depend on this further point). The aim is clarificatory, cautionary but also critical: I examine four existing arguments from subjective character that are fuelled by an undifferentiated use of the three notions, and find them to be flawed for this reason. (shrink)

Books reviewed:Stephen R. L. Clark, The Political – Biology, Ethics and PoliticsTorbjörn Tannsjö, Coercive CareDavid Carr and Jan Steutel, Virture Ethics and Moral EducationLaura Westra and Patricia Werhane, The Business of Consumption: Environmental Ethics and the Global CommunityDavid Conway, Free‐Market Feminism.

There is widespread agreement among many contemporary philosophers of mind that, in addition to their qualitative character, phenomenally conscious states contain some kind of subjective character. The subjective character of experience is most commonly characterized as a subject’s awareness that it is currently undergoing a specific experience. This idea is nothing new, of course, and something similar has been proposed quite some time ago by Franz Brentano, among others, under the name of “secondary consciousness”. That (...) fact hasn’t remained unnoticed. Indeed, a number of competing contemporary accounts of subjective character refer to Brentano as an early proponent of their particular view. This article pursues two objectives. First, it argues that the so-called self-mode account of subjective character is, for systematical reasons, superior to self-representational and pre-reflective accounts. Second, the article briefly suggests a novel interpretation of Brentano’s concept of secondary consciousness that sets it in relation to the previously introduced self-mode account and bears some similarities with Thomasson’s adverbial interpretation of Brentano’s concept of secondary consciousness. (shrink)

It is widely believed that the phenomenal character of conscious mental states is composed of two different components: its qualitative character and its subjective character, with the latter also being referred to as ‘mineness’, ‘for-me-ness’ or ‘me-ishness’. While many researchers agree that the subjective character is an essential part of conscious life, there is great disagreement about what the metaphysical nature of this component of experience has to be like. One answer to this question, (...) originally presented in Smith (1986), conceptualizes the subjective character as being part of the modality of experience rather than as a constituent of its representational content. I call the branch of theories developed along these lines ‘the self-mode approach to the subjective character of experience’. This self-mode approach to the metaphysics underlying the subjective character appears to be promising, yet it can still be developed in a number of different ways – some of which are fraught with problems, while others less so. Here I will introduce three different approaches to the idea that the subjective character is grounded in the modality of experience. I name these distinct accounts ‘evaluatism’ (Musholt 2015; Pereira 2018; Recanati 2007, 2012), ‘adverbialism’ (Thomasson 2000), and ‘relationalism’. I am going to argue for relationalism, and explore how this position relates to a general representational theory of consciousness and different views about the metaphysics of the subjects of experiences, i.e. the entities in relation to which experiences are instantiated. Relationalism consists of the very simple idea that the subjective character is grounded in a sui generis mental relation that holds between a conscious mental state and the subject of experience having this state. In contrast to most of the existing accounts of subjective character, relationalism aims to account for the subjective character not by introducing something additional to our ontology of the mind and consciousness (such as a self-representational content or a higher-order state), but by adopting a different view on the grounding or basing relation holding between the representational structure of a conscious mental state and its phenomenal character. (shrink)

I. Zombies and the Knowledge Argument John Perry.

It’s a familiar fact that there is something it is like to see red, eat chocolate or feel pain. More recently philosophers have insisted that in addition to this objectual phenomenology there is something it is like for me to eat chocolate, and this for-me-ness is no less there than the chocolatishness. Recognizing this subjective feature of consciousness helps shape certain theories of consciousness, introspection and the self. Though it does this heavy philosophical work, and it is supposed to (...) be relatively obvious to anyone who introspects, it is rather difficult to see just what this phenomenal me-ness is supposed to be; indeed, many philosophers deny it exists. In this paper we try to provide a clear sense of what phenomenal me-ness involves, and then then consider some arguments for the existence of phenomenal me-ness experience as well as some accounts of what gives rise to it. In the end, we argue that the plausible senses of me-ness are a good deal thinner than what often seems to be claimed. (shrink)

The study was designed to explore the relationships among character strengths, strengths use, future self-continuity and subjective well-being. A total of 225 undergraduates completed paper-and-pencil questionnaires assessing character strengths, strengths use, future self-continuity and subjective well-being. Results suggested several character strengths were correlated with subjective well-being and the strongest correlations were found for hope, curiosity, zest, perseverance and love. All character strengths were significantly correlated with strengths use. Strengths use and future self-continuity were (...) robustly correlated with subjective well-being. The mediation analysis showed that strengths use mediates the relationship between character strengths and subjective well-being, and specifically, the indirect effects of strengths use varies from different character strengths. The moderated mediator suggested that future self-continuity moderated the mediation of strengths use because future self-continuity moderates the effect of strengths use on subjective well-being. Furthermore, the indirect effect of strengths use was stronger with high level of future self-continuity than those with low level of future self-continuity. The present findings make a contribution to understand the underlying mechanisms involving in character strengths are associated with higher level of well-being. Additionally, the findings expand knowledge about future self-continuity and its relation to strengths use and subjective well-being among undergraduates, having significant implications in the educational context. (shrink)

This study examines whether character strengths predict resilience (operationalized as stable or higher mental health and subjective well-being despite an adverse event) over a period of approximately one month during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in Spain. Using a longitudinal design, participants (N = 348 adults) completed online measures of sociodemographic data, information regarding their situation in relation to the COVID-19, character strengths, general mental health, life satisfaction, positive affect and negative affect. All variables were measured at Time (...) 1 and Time 2, except for sociodemographic and most COVID-related information (Time 1 only). Time 1 data collection was conducted between March 21, 2020 and April 2, 2020, i.e., approximately the second week of lockdown in Spain. Time 2 data collection was conducted between April 24, 2020 and May 18, 2020, after the Spanish government announced ita intention to progressively release the lockdown. A principal component analysis of character strengths was conducted. Five character strength factors were extracted: fortitude, goodness, intellectual, interpersonal, and restraint. Factor structures at Times 1 and 2 were highly consistent. All character strength factors at Time 1 correlated positively with life satisfaction and positive affect, and negatively with negative affect and mental health at T2 (higher scores in the mental health measure indicate poorer mental health). Fortitude strengths showed the highest correlations. We conducted a series of regression analyses with strength factors at Time 1 as predictors, and mental health, life satisfaction, and positive and negative affect as dependent variables, controlling for their baseline levels. To test the directionality of the relationship between strengths and the dependent variables, all analyses were reversed. All character strength factors predicted an increase in mental health. They also predicted positive affect, with the exception of strengths of restraint. Fortitude, intellectual and interpersonal strengths predicted an increase in life satisfaction. Finally, fortitude strengths, interpersonal strengths, and strengths of restraint, predicted a decrease in negative affect. None of the reversed analyses yielded significant effects. Limitations, implications, and possible character strengths-based interventions aimed at promoting mental health in the COVID-19 pandemic are discussed. (shrink)

The author discusses the subjective and irreproducible character of the method of direct experience, which is the ground of the acceptance of observation statements. It is also shown how this method forms a part of the method of arriving at universal statements on the basis of experience without depriving the latter of its intersubjective and reproducible character.

Free games that are monetized by selling virtual items, such as cosmetic microtransactions for one’s avatar, seem to offer a better gaming experience to paying players. To experimentally explore this phenomenon, the effects of character customization with cosmetic microtransactions on objective and self-estimated player performance, subjective identification with the avatar, fun and the players’ perceived competence were examined in the game League of Legends. This study introduces a new laboratory-based, experimental task to objectively measure within-game player performance. Each (...) participant performed this game-based task in two different conditions: With a character that was customized using a provided set of cosmetic microtransactions and with a default character. Results showed that customization increased subjective identification with the player character. However, objective performance measures were unaffected by this manipulation although the novel experimental approach provided reliable performance results. Additionally, identification was positively related to perceived competence, fun, and self-estimated performance. Implications for the design of cosmetic microtransactions and their influence on competitive gaming are discussed. (shrink)

As it has been pointed out in the literature, a Theory of Consciousness should satisfy two desiderata: i) account for the particular qualitative character of any particular conscious state, and ii) account for the fact that a conscious state is conscious ‘for the subject’.. Many have claimed that the RepresentationaI Theory of Consciousness can satisfy the first desideratum. It obviously fails, however, to meet the second desideratum. Higher-Order Approaches to Consciouness satisfy the second desideratum straightforwardly, but it remains unclear (...) whether they satisfy the first desideratum. In the first section, I underscore some problems indicating that RTC fails to satisfy the first desideratum. These problems suggest that qualitative character should be understood not as a non-mental represented feature of the world, as RTC suggests, but as a represented feature of the very conscious state itself. This suggests that HOAC are, after all, in a better position than RTC to satisfy the first desideratum, and hence both desiderata. I argue, however, that insofar as HOAC are supposed to satisfy the first desideratum, they are faced with an intolerable vicious regress. I propose that an alternative approach, the Self-Representational Theory of Consciousness is in a better position than HOAC to satisfy both desiderata. (shrink)

What is consciousness? How does the subjective character of consciousness fit into an objective world? How can there be a science of consciousness? In this sequel to his groundbreaking and controversial The Conscious Mind, David Chalmers develops a unified framework that addresses these questions and many others. Starting with a statement of the "hard problem" of consciousness, Chalmers builds a positive framework for the science of consciousness and a nonreductive vision of the metaphysics of consciousness. He replies to (...) many critics of The Conscious Mind, and then develops a positive theory in new directions. The book includes original accounts of how we think and know about consciousness, of the unity of consciousness, and of how consciousness relates to the external world. Along the way, Chalmers develops many provocative ideas: the " consciousness meter", the Garden of Eden as a model of perceptual experience, and The Matrix as a guide to the deepest philosophical problems about consciousness and the external world. This book will be required reading for anyone interested in the problems of mind, brain, consciousness, and reality. (shrink)

Using data from 1,352 middle-school Israeli adolescents, the current study examines the interface of spirituality and character strengths and its longitudinal contribution to subjective well-being and prosociality. Participants were approached three times over a 14-months period and completed measures of character strengths, spirituality, subjective well-being (positive emotions, life satisfaction), and prosociality. Findings revealed a fourth-factor structure of character strengths that included the typical tripartite classification of intrapersonal, interpersonal, and intellectual strengths together with spirituality emerging as (...) a statistically autonomous factor. Spirituality was stable over time and contributed to higher subjective well-being and prosociality both cross-sectionally and longitudinally. Discussion focuses on spirituality as a fundamental character strength and an important aspect of positive development. (shrink)

The starting point of this paper is the thought that the phenomenal appearances that accompany mental states are somehow only there, or only real, from the standpoint of the subject of those mental states. The world differs across subjects in terms of which appearances obtain. Not only are subjects standpoints across which the world varies, subjects are standpoints that we can ‘adopt’ in our own theorizing about the world (or stand back from). The picture that is suggested by these claims (...) has an appeal but is at the same time obscure and stands in need of regimentation. This paper explores and motivates a metaphysical account of what it is for subjects to be standpoints, what it is to adopt standpoints in our representations and, most importantly, how these notions might help us better understand the subjective character of conscious mental states. Some well-known observations by Thomas Nagel serve as starting points and the paper concludes by revisiting Nagel’s argument for the inevitable incompleteness of objective accounts of mental states, which will be reframed in terms of the central commitments of the proposed framework. (shrink)

The untranslatable and intriguing notion of ethos (mores, goodness, character, etc.) contrasts in Ancient rhetoric with pathos and logos, the other two pisteis or means of persuasion. Rhetorical ethos is characterized by ambivalence; is it essentially extra- or intra-discursive? an effect of the soul or an effective simulacrum? stable or circumstantial? As a discursive image, an artefact of speech, ethos remains problematic in its legitimacy. As shown in this volume, Montaigne's readings of Ancient theories of ethos resonate in the (...) Essais. The rhetorical effectiveness of Plutarch and Socrates versus Brutus and Seneca, for instance, is assessed in terms of ethos and a revealing style. Montaigne weighs rhetorical and ethical theories as he judges the writings of others, stages diverse types or characters, and develops in his book his own notion of ethos, paradoxical and dynamic, changing as is our soul. A variety of ethe narrated or enacted are also examined: Stoic figures and philosophers, generals, courtiers and honnetes hommes, Indians, tragic heroes and heroines, among others. This collection of essays, beyond Montaigne studies, contributes to intellectual history, and to rhetorical, ethical, and political inquiry, for the early modern period and beyond. Montaigne's quest for more human and humane modes of expression and action can be better understood in light of the notion of ethos, which raises issues of representation, subjectivity, social interaction, moral philosophy, politics, pragmatics, anthropology and identity. The contributors to this volume offer fresh new voices in the art of conversation about the Essais as they explore the many ramifications of Montaigne's ethos and the manifold ethe he brings forth. (shrink)

We often speak of a person's character--good or bad, strong or weak--and think of it as a guide to how that person will behave in a given situation. Oddly, however, philosophers writing about ethics have had virtually nothing to say about the role of character in ethical behavior. What is character? How does it relate to having a self, or to the process of moral decision? Are we responsible for our characters? Character answers these questions, and (...) goes on to examine the place of character in ethical philosophy. Both the Kantian and utilitarian traditions, Kupperman argues, have largely ignored the ways in which decisions are integrated over time, and instead provide a "snapshot" model of moral decision. Kupperman demonstrates the deficiencies of a number of classic and contemporary ethical theories that do not take account of the idea of character, and offers his own character-based theory. Along the way he touches on such subjects as personal identity, the importance of happiness, moral education, and the definition of a valuable life. (shrink)

An important theme running through D.H. Mellor’s work is his realism, or as I shall call it, his objectivism: the idea that reality as such is how it is, regardless of the way we represent it, and that philosophical error often arises from confusing aspects of our subjective representation of the world with aspects of the world itself. Thus central to Mellor’s work on time has been the claim that the temporal A-series (previously called ‘tense’) is unreal while the (...) B-series (the series of ‘dates’) is real. The A-series is something which is a product of our representation of the world, but not a feature of reality itself. And in other, less central, areas of his work, this kind of theme has been repeated: ‘Objective decision making’ (1980) argues that the right way to understand decision theory is as a theory of what is the objectively correct decision, the one that will actually as a matter of fact achieve your intended goal, rather than the one that is justified purely in terms of what you believe, regardless of whether the belief is true or false. ‘I and now’ (1989) argues against a substantial subjective conception of the self, using analogies between subjective and objective ways of thinking about time and subjective and objective ways of thinking about the self. And in the paper which shall be the focus of my attention here, ‘Nothing like experience’ (1992), Mellor contests arguments which try and derive anti-physicalist conclusions from reflections on the subjective character of experience. A common injunction is detectable: when doing metaphysics, keep the subjective where it belongs: inside the subject’s representation of the world. (shrink)

Qualities of personal character would appear to play a significant role in the professional conduct of teachers. It is often said that we remember teachers as much for the kinds of people they were than for anything they may have taught us, and some kinds of professional expertise may best be understood as qualities of character After (roughly) distinguishing qualities of character from those of personality, the present paper draws on the resources of virtue ethics to try (...) to make sense of the former. In the course of this, it is argued that while the key virtue ethical concept of phronesis orpractical wisdom has been widely deployed to account for aspects of professional teacher expertise, it has also been subject to rather un-Aristotelian interpretation as a kind of situation specific productive reasoning. The present paper seeks to show that it is better employed for understanding character in general and character in teaching in particular. The paper concludes with some observations about the professional education or cultivation of character. (shrink)

Character education in schools in England is flourishing. I give many examples of the enthusiasm for it as well as drawing attention to the UK government's new ambivalence towards it. Character education seems largely impervious to the many criticisms to which it has been subjected. I touch on these only briefly as my focus is on a criticism that has received little coverage. This is because the virtues on offer are unstable. They are best understood as sites on (...) which we contest our understanding of what it is to be a good person rather than reach conclusive answers. There is support for this argument in Aristotle, notwithstanding its many oddities and those of some modern uses of his conception of the virtues. The proliferation of the virtues in the practice and theory of education today is, I suggest, a sign of weakness and not of strength, while the very instability of the virtues demands that they be continually discussed and debated. This places them at the heart of any vision of education worth having. (shrink)

Character Education in America's Blue Ribbon Schools is based upon descriptive, documentary, and qualitative research conducted on the award winning school applications in the United Stated Department of Education's Elementary School Recognition Program, i.e. the Blue Ribbon Schools. The purpose of the program is to focus national attention on schools that are doing an exceptional job with all of their students. Areas studied are developing a solid foundation of basic skills and knowledge of subject matter and fostering the development (...) of character, values, and ethical judgement. The first edition of this book reported on the first decade of this program, from 1985 to 1994. The second edition adds the schools that have won the award from 1996-2001. Included are the Blue Ribbon schools that applied for Special Honors in Character Education and five that actually won that recognition in 1998-1999. This edition finds character education much stronger in American schools in recent years and is full of many promising practices. It is a practical book that will guide school administrators, teachers, parents, board members, and concerned citizens interested in starting or strengthening the character education focus of their school. (shrink)

Recent work on consciousness has distinguished between the qualitative character of an experience (what a particular experience is like) and its subjective character or subjectivity (the for-me-ness of any experience). It is often suggested that subjectivity is a characteristic inner awareness subjects enjoy of their own occurrent experiences. A number of thinkers have also suggested that not only is each subject aware of her own experiences, but that in having these experiences she is aware of them as (...) her own. This is the subjectivity-mineness thesis: necessarily, an experience which is given to its subject is given as the subject’s own experience. I shall argue against the subjectivity-mineness thesis. While I agree that experiences are characterised by inner awareness, it is questionable whether inner awareness entails an awareness of my experiences as mine. I shall offer an alternative account of inner awareness, the impersonal account. On this account the subject of the experience is not presented in the content of inner awareness, but the mode of inner awareness is such that necessarily, this awareness is an awareness of experiences which belong to this subject. This is what makes inner awareness a characteristically first-personal form of awareness. (shrink)

In his book The View from Nowhere , Thomas Nagel says that ‘the subjectivity of consciousness is an irreducible feature of reality’ . He speaks of ‘the essential subjectivity of the mental’ , and of ‘the mind's irreducibly subjective character’ . ‘Mental concepts’, he says, refer to ‘subjective points of view and their modifications’ : The subjective features of conscious mental processes—as opposed to their physical causes and effects—cannot be captured by the purified form of thought (...) suitable for dealing with the physical world that underlines the appearances. Not only raw feels but also intentional mental states—however objective their content—must be capable of manifesting themselves in subjective form to be in the mind at all. (shrink)

The enactive approach offers a distinctive view of how mental life relates to bodily activity at three levels: bodily self-regulation, sensorimotor coupling, and intersubjective interaction. This paper concentrates on the second level of sensorimotor coupling. An account is given of how the subjectively lived body and the living body of the organism are related via dynamic sensorimotor activity, and it is shown how this account helps to bridge the explanatory gap between consciousness and the brain. Arguments by O'Regan, Noë, and (...) Myin that seek to account for the phenomenal character of perceptual consciousness in terms of ‘bodiliness’ and ‘grabbiness’ are considered. It is suggested that their account does not pay sufficient attention to two other key aspects of perceptual phenomenality: the autonomous nature of the experiencing self or agent, and the pre-reflective nature of bodily self-consciousness. (shrink)

Naïve Realism claims that the Phenomenal Character of perception is constituted by the mind-independent objects one perceives. According to this view, the Phenomenal Character of perception is object-dependent: experiences of different objects have different Phenomenal Characters, even if those objects are qualitatively identical. Proponents of Naïve Realism often defend this conception by arguing that it is necessary to accommodate the cognitive role of perceptual experience. John Campbell has presented the most influential version of this argument, according to which (...) only an object-dependent conception of the Phenomenal Character of experience can explain its epistemic role—how (conscious) perception ‘justifies’ the patterns of inference that reflect our conception of mind-independence. In this paper, I argue that Campbell’s argument is unsound. First, I reconstruct the relevant patterns and argue that, independently of one’s conception of Phenomenal Character, perceptual experience does not ‘justify’ them in the way Campbell intends—by making their validity transparent to the subject. Second, I suggest that perception justifies those patterns by justifying their premises. I argue that a Representationalist, object-independent conception of its Phenomenal Character is at least as well suited as an object-dependent one to explain how this is possible. This undermines one of the main motivations to endorse a Naïve Realist, object-dependent account of the Phenomenal Character of perception. (shrink)

Neo-Aristotelian forms of character education often draw on literary sources as materials, although rarely poetry. This article offers retrospective reflections on a poetry-based character-education intervention, conducted in an Icelandic secondary-school setting. Having run into practical difficulties during the implementation phase, the challenges of implementation were reflected upon through consultation with ten subject experts who shared their views about the enablers and barriers encountered when running such an intervention. The interviews yielded a rich data set, which often took interviewees (...) beyond the boundaries of a poetry-based curricular context to focus on more general conditions for effective, character-inspiring school-work. Through thematic analysis, four themes were identified: freedom, time, creativity, and wonderment. Of these four, creativity had been identified in advance as an interview theme, meaning that the researchers expected to find it. The remaining three provide an insight into how, according to the interviewees, the ideal Icelandic school system should be designed. The theme of freedom addresses both negative and positive aspects of the current state of affairs, while the theme of time mostly reflects negative aspects of the Icelandic curriculum. The theme of wonderment has solely positive connotations in the minds of interviewees, and is the core of this analysis because it seems to hold the key to the question: what factors would enable an effective intervention of the sort under scrutiny here? This theme is analysed in detail, and some specific and general educational implications are elicited. (shrink)

Conscious intentional states are mental states that represent things as being a certain way and do so consciously: they involve a phenomenally conscious representation. For any phenomenally conscious state, there is something it is like for its subject to be in it. The way it is like for a subject to be in a certain phenomenal state is the state’s phenomenal character. According to some authors, phenomenal character has two components: qualitative character (i.e., the “what it is (...) like” component) and subjective character (the “for the subject” component). Elsewhere, I have argued for an acquaintance theory of subjective character: a conscious representation is “for the subject” iff the subject is acquainted with it (Giustina forthcoming). The aim of this paper is to take some initial steps toward developing an acquaintance account of qualitative character. More specifically, I develop an acquaintance-representational account of the qualitative character of conscious intentional states, on which qualitative character is constituted by a subject’s being acquainted with the conscious intentional state’s representational properties. By reviewing the main extant accounts of qualitative character and highlighting their shortcomings, I argue that the acquaintance-representational account is antecedently more plausible than its competitors. (shrink)

In his recent book Lack of Character, John Doris argues that people typically lack character (understood in a particular way). Such a claim, if correct, would have devastating implications for moral philosophy and for various human moral projects (e.g. character development). I seek to defend character against Doris's challenging attack. To accomplish this, I draw on Socrates, Aristotle, and Kant to identify some of the central components of virtuous character. Next, I examine in detail some (...) of the central experiments in social psychology upon which Doris's argument is based. I argue that, properly understood, such experiments reveal differences in the characters of their subjects, not that their subjects lack character altogether. I conclude with some reflections on the significance of such experiments and the importance of character. (shrink)

Theorizing about human character to understand what it is to be a morally good person and how being morally good relates to acting rightly and living well has always been a central concern of moral philosophy. Traditional virtue theory, however, neglects two significant matters. The first is the sociopolitical dimensions of character: how character is shaped by, supports, and resists domination and subordination. While feminist ethics has begun to theorize virtue in relation to oppression, it shares with (...) traditional virtue theory a second problematic inattention to something of equal importance for understanding character and moral life, namely, bad character or vice. I argue that rich accounts of vice are needed to achieve the aims not only of traditional and feminist ethical theory but also of every moral agent facing the central moral task of trying to become a morally good person leading a morally worthy life. This paper explicates a substantive reorientation in moral theory in general and feminist ethics in particular, arguing for two changes. The first is a move to “critical character theory,” which seeks to understand moral character as both a site and source of domination and subordination, as a center of resistance both to oppression and to change, and as both subject and object of liberatory struggle. The second change is more serious and sustained attention to theorizing vice both as damage inflicted by domination, subordination, and by struggles both to maintain and to resist and overthrow them, and as a mechanism through which domination persists and emancipation is thwarted. (shrink)

A classic and fraught question in the philosophy of film is this: when you watch a film, do you experience yourself in the world of the film, observing the scenes? In this paper, we argue that this subject of film experience is sometimes a mere impersonal viewpoint, sometimes a first-personal but unindexed subject, and sometimes a particular, indexed subject such as the viewer herself or a character in the film. We first argue for subject pluralism: there is no single (...) answer to the question of what kind of subjectivity, if any, is mandated across film sequences. Then, we defend unindexed subjectivity: at least sometimes, films mandate an experience that is first-personal but not tied to any particular person, not even to the viewer. Taken together, these two theses allow us to see film experience as more varied than previously appreciated and to bridge in a novel way the cognition of film with the exercise of other imaginative capacities, such as mindreading and episodic recollecting. (shrink)

where _x_ stands for a visible object and _y_ for a perceiving subject (the reference to a time may be neglected).¹ I take here ”character” in the sense of Kaplan (1977) as substantiated by Haas-Spohn (1995 and Chapter 14 in this book)). The point of using Kaplan’s framework is simple, but of utmost importance: It provides a scheme for clearly separating epistemological and metaphysical issues, for specifying how the two domains are related, and for connecting them to questions concerning (...) meaning where confusions are often only duplicated. All this is achieved by it better than by any alternative I know of.². (shrink)