Author: Lorenza D'Angelo

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Somogy Varga, Andrew J. Latham and Jacob Stegenga – “Health, Disease, and the Medicalization of Low Sexual Desire: A Vignette-Based Experimental Study”

In this post, Somogy Varga, Andrew J. Latham and Jacob Stegenga discuss the article they recently published in Ergo. The full-length version of their article can be found here.

Portrait of Elizabeth I of England, also known as “the Virgin Queen” (ca. 1575) author unknown

The concepts of health, disease and disorder play a central role in medical research, healthcare, and public health. They inform our understanding of these areas and they are crucial in establishing which conditions, correctly, fall within the domain of medicine.

Debates about these concepts have significant implications for both medical research and practice. These implications are clearly seen, for example, when we consider a contested condition such as “Female Sexual Interest/Arousal Disorder” (FSD).

FSD is in the current edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5; APA 2013). The core symptoms of FSD are a decrease in interest in sex, including (i) sexual activity, (ii) sexual thoughts, (iii) sexual reception and initiation, (iv) sexual pleasure, (v) sexual cues, and (vi) genital sensation. To be diagnosed with FSD, a woman must have at least three of these symptoms, the symptoms must cause distress, and they must not be explainable by another medical condition or external cause, such as relationship difficulties.

Whether FSD correctly counts as a disorder has significant implications for how it is viewed and treated. The FSD literature is divided between those who judge that low sexual desire is a disorder and appropriate target of medical treatment—call this the mainstream view (e.g., Berman, Berman, & Goldstein 1999)—and those who contest both claims—call this the critical view (e.g., Tiefer 2001). There are significant stakes in this debate: anyone with an intervention to market (pharmaceutical or otherwise) has an interest in sustaining the mainstream view.

Mainstream and critical theorists often ground their arguments in what they think are shared judgments (Stegenga 2021). To empirically inform this debate, we conducted a study to examine what factors influence people’s judgments regarding FSD as a disorder and an appropriate target of medical intervention. If a good making feature of a view is that it (better) aligns with shared judgments, then uncovering people’s judgments align could help advance the debate.

Of course, aligning with shared judgments provides, at best, only a defeasible reason in favour of a view. For instance, if people judged both that FSD is a disorder and an appropriate target for medical intervention, whereas they did not judge “hypoactive sexual desire disorder” (i.e., male low sexual desire) in the same way, then we would have good reason to discount the import of such judgments.

We found that people’s judgements did not straightforwardly align with either the mainstream or the critical view. 

The biggest predictor of whether FSD was judged to be a disorder was the extent to which people judged it to be a “dysfunction”. However, what it meant to people to be a dysfunction in this context reflected a complex interaction of both descriptive factors (the cause and intensity of the atypical sexual desire) and evaluative factors (how the atypical sexual desire is valued).

This stands in striking contrast with how people conceive of dysfunction in the context of somatic diseases: there, it has been reliably found that people’s judgments are not influenced by how the condition is valued. Instead, people’s judgments simply depend on descriptive facts about bodily systems (e.g., Latham & Varga forthcoming; Varga, Latham, & Machery, forthcoming).

We also found another discrepancy: while subjects’ evaluative attitude towards FSD had no direct influence on whether FSD was judged to fall within the scope of medicine, it did influence the extent to which medical intervention was deemed to be appropriate. People were more likely to judge that medical intervention would be appropriate when someone with FSD disvalued their condition.

This suggests that people take a permissive view about medicine’s role: a view according to which medicine not only treats disorders and diseases but also promotes people’s health and wellbeing (e.g., Stegenga 2018; Varga 2023).

References

  • American Psychiatric Association (2013). DSM-5: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th edition).
  • Berman, J. R., Berman, L., and Goldstein, I. (1999). “Female Sexual Dysfunction: Incidence, Pathophysiology, Evaluation, and Treatment Options”. Urology 54(3): 385–391.
  • Latham, A. J. and Varga, S. (forthcoming). “Is “Dysfunction” a Value-Neutral Concept?” Philosophical Studies.
  • Stegenga, J. (2018). Medical Nihilism. Oxford University Press.
  • Stegenga, J. (2021). “Medicalization of Sexual Desire”. European Journal of Analytic Philosophy 17(2): 5–34. 
  • Tiefer, L. (2001). “A New View of Women’s Sexual Problems: Why New? Why Now?” Journal of Sex Research, 38(2): 89–96.
  • Varga, S. (2023). “The Aim of Medicine. Sanocentricity and the Autonomy Thesis”. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly. 104(4): 720–745.
  • Varga, S., Latham, A. J., and Machery, E. (forthcoming). Health and Disease: Experimental Philosophy of Medicine. Cambridge University Press.

About the authors

Somogy Varga is Professor of Philosophy at Aarhus University. His current research focuses primarily on topics in the philosophy of medicine, science, and psychiatry. He is the author of four books: Science, Medicine, and the Aims of Inquiry (Cambridge University Press), Scaffolded Minds (MIT Press), Naturalism, Interpretation, and Mental Disorder (Oxford University Press), and Authenticity as an Ethical Ideal (Routledge).

Andrew J. Latham is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Aarhus University. He works mainly at the intersection of metaphysics, cognitive science, and ethics. His recent work has appeared, among other places, in Noûs, Journal of Philosophy, and Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.

Jacob Stegenga is Professor at Nanyang Technological University Singapore. He has published widely in philosophy of science and philosophy of medicine, and he is the author of Medical Nihilism (Oxford University Press), Care and Cure: An Introduction to Philosophy of Medicine (University of Chicago Press), and a book to be published in 2026 titled Heart of Science.

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Daniel Buckley – “On the Relevance of Self-Disclosure for Epistemic Responsibility”

In this post, Daniel Buckley discusses his article recently published in Ergo. The full-length version of Daniel’s article can be found here.

“The Mark on the Mirror Left by Breathing” (1977) Dieter Appelt ©  the Art Institute Chicago

According to one prominent view, a necessary condition for the appropriateness of holding someone responsible for their conduct (e.g. through moral blame) involves disclosure of an objectionable feature of their (“true”, “deep”, or “real”) self, where the latter consists, roughly, of the person’s values, ends, and commitments.  This is the kind of condition which is plausibly unmet in a case where a person’s action causes harm to others, but where the person performing the action manifested no malice, ill-will, or disregard. For instance, perhaps at the time of acting this person was, through no fault of their own, simply ignorant of the likely objective consequences of their action. Contrast this with a case where a person’s action causes harm to others, but where the person performing the action was fully aware of its likely objective consequences. Perhaps their action was underwritten by an egregious disregard for the well-being of others, or by an explicit intention to harm people. The idea is that moral accountability responses like blame are perhaps called for in this latter kind of case, but not in the former, in virtue of the fact that the conduct expressed objectionable values, ends, and commitments, i.e. an objectionable “self”. 

The aim of my paper is to investigate the relevance of self-disclosure for epistemic responsibility. The central question that I explore is the following: Is it the case that, in order to appropriately hold a person epistemically responsible, the person must express or disclose an objectionable doxastic self?

As I understand it, a person’s “doxastic self” consists of values, ends, and commitments which pertain to the maintenance and regulation of their beliefs. So, for instance, a diligent and conscientious doxastic self might include a commitment to carefully weigh the evidence, avoid biases and fallacies, etc. A reckless and dogmatic doxastic self, on the other hand, might be characterized by a tendency to draw hasty conclusions, cherry pick evidence, etc. I argue for a negative answer to the above question. In other words, my view is that a person can be appropriately held epistemically responsible even if they have revealed nothing objectionable about their “doxastic self”, so understood. 

Consider the following two cases which frame much of my discussion: 

Stubborn Sam: Sam has an abundance of available evidence which is such that, were he to consider it more carefully, he would feel rationally compelled to abandon his denial of the existence of human-induced climate change. However, Sam doesn’t consider this evidence more carefully and, as a result, he maintains his belief that human-induced climate change isn’t real. 

Diligent Doug: Doug lives in a community run by a group of individuals who have managed to shut off access to evidence pertaining to the existence of human-induced climate change. Doug is interested in forming true beliefs about this topic, frequently going to the library to research it. Nevertheless, given the evidence available to him, Doug believes that human-induced climate change isn’t real.

Unlike Sam, Doug does not reveal an objectionable doxastic self in believing as he does; he is a conscientious and responsible believer who is doing his best to respond to the available evidence. In spite of this, I argue that Doug can be appropriately held responsible for believing that human-induced climate change isn’t real.

Sam can of course also be held responsible for believing that human-induced climate change isn’t real. What’s more, the accountability responses that can be appropriately adopted towards Sam may amount to a distinctly epistemic form of blame (I am willing to grant this). My view is that Doug is also an appropriate target of distinctly epistemic accountability responses.

Importantly, I do not argue that Doug is blameworthy for believing as he does. Thus, one claim that I defend is that the epistemic domain involves accountability responses which can be appropriately adopted towards an individual even when that person is in no way blameworthy.

What is it, though, to hold a person responsible in a distinctly epistemic manner? Here I follow Boult (2021) and Kauppinen (2018) in thinking that adjusting my trust in an individual is a way of holding that person responsible in a distinctly epistemic manner. For instance, I might cease to take a person’s words at face value when it comes to certain topics or subject matters (e.g. climate change).

Interestingly, both Boult and Kauppinen suggest that this kind of trust modification only constitutes a genuine accountability response in cases where the person in question manifests an objectionable doxastic self (e.g. Stubborn Sam). Here I disagree: this kind of trust modification can also constitute a genuine accountability response in cases where the person does not manifest an objectionable doxastic self (e.g. Diligent Doug).

My hope is that this paper advances our understanding of epistemic responsibility and contributes to broader discussions of epistemic normativity, especially those which connect the latter with our social practices. 

References

  • Boult, Cameron. (2021). “There is a Distinctively Epistemic Kind of Blame”. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 103(3), 518–534.
  • Kauppinen, Antti. (2018). “Epistemic norms and epistemic accountability”. Philosophers Imprint, 18(8).

About the author

Daniel Buckley is currently Assistant Teaching Professor at Penn State Harrisburg. His research focuses on issues in ethics and epistemology, especially questions concerning normativity, agency, and responsibility. 

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Ofer Malcai and Re’em Segev – “The Imperialism of Desert”

In this post, Ofer Malcai and Re’em Segev discuss the article they recently published in Ergo. The full-length version of their article can be found here.

Picture of the opening credits of the Twin Peaks TV show
Still from the TV show “Twin Peaks” (1990)

Most people are value pluralists. They believe that there are several different moral values. For example, many believe that there is a reason to maximize well-being (for instance, that a greater benefit is better than a smaller one), but also that there is a reason to give some priority to the worse off such that a benefit to a person who is worse off is more valuable than a slightly greater benefit to a person who is much better off. It may seem that this is true also regarding desert (e.g., Arneson 1999, 239). However, on closer inspection, desert turns out to be different—it is much more difficult to accept desert together with other values. 

Shelly Kagan (1998, 2012) has noted this unique aspect of desert regarding its relationship with equality and priority for the worse off. His argument begins with the following case:

Twin Peaks: A is a sinner, who is doing better than he deserves. B is a saint, who is doing less well than she deserves. Yet B is still better-off than A (she deserves much more). We can benefit either A or B. Here is a graphic representation of it.

In this graph, the X (horizontal) axis tracks how much wellbeing a person has, while the Y (vertical) axis tracks how morally good it is, from the standpoint of desert, that a given person has a given amount of wellbeing. The “peaks” of A and B represent the levels of wellbeing that maximize moral value, namely, the levels of wellbeing that A and B exactly deserve. Thus, in this graph, A (the “sinner”) deserves less than B (the “saint”), and his peak is accordingly at a much lower level of wellbeing than that of B. 

In this case, equality and priority favor A, the sinner, since he is worse-off. However, Kagan claims that we should instead favor B, as desert advocates. After all, B is a saint who is getting less than she deserves, while A is sinner who is doing better than he deserves. Moreover, Kagan claims that there isn’t even a pro tanto reason in favor of preferring A. Therefore, he concludes that if you accept desert, you should reject equality and priority as intrinsic values.

Kagan directs his argument only against equality and priority. However, it seems to us that this argument suggests conclusions that are even more radical: a commitment to desert is discordant with a number of additional salient considerations.

First, although Kagan (1998, 305) himself denies this, we think that desert undermines utility, i.e. the reason to maximize wellbeing. Assume, for example, that we increase overall utility by 10%, but all of this increased utility goes to a sinner whose level of well-being is already higher than what he deserves. Is the resulting state of affairs indeed morally better? It seems that, to the extent that Kagan’s argument is compelling, this is because there is nothing good in increasing the sinner’s wellbeing beyond what he deserves.

One may insist that utility is valuable in itself, independently of desert, and that, for this reason, it is in one respect better if the sinner gets more utility. According to this view, if desert is also valuable, these values may clash.

This view seems odd. however. While it is perfectly coherent to accept several independent values that may clash – for example, to hold that it is pro tanto good to increase the wellbeing of a person even if this is bad in terms of equality – it seems less plausible to hold that there is something good in increasing the wellbeing of a sinner who already fares better than he deserves. This suggests that desert is incompatible with equality, priority, and utility. 

We propose an even more radical conclusion: if we accept desert, we should accept monism about value. This is because the tension between desert and other values is not limited to utility, priority, and equality. For example, it appears to apply also to the relation between desert and sufficiency, namely the view that inequality is objectionable only if the worse-off is below a certain threshold of wellbeing (e.g., Frankfurt 1987).

Kagan does not consider whether his argument applies to sufficiency. However, it seems to us that it does. Consider, on the one hand, a sinner who is evil enough to grant the claim that, although he has more than he deserves, what he has is still below the sufficiency threshold. Consider, on the other hand, a saint who has much less than she deserves, although she is above the threshold. It seems that Kagan’s intuition regarding the Twin Peaks case has considerable force also regarding this case. After all, here too, the saint is getting less than she deserves while the sinner is doing better than he deserves.

This monistic view also has the theoretical virtue of simplicity: it explains diverse intuitions regarding specific cases in light of a single basic value. Moreover, it explains (away), at least partly, the intuitive appeal of the pluralistic view: equality, priority, and utility are prima facie appealing because their implications often coincide with those of desert. For example, desert implies that we should allocate benefits equally, or in a way that gives priority to the worse off when people are equally deserving or when there is no evidence that they are unequally deserving.

However, there are also strong reasons to doubt monism. One such reason is that desert does not always apply. Consider babies, non-human animals, or other individuals who are not morally responsible. These individuals still warrant moral concern, even though desert does not apply to them. If well-being, equality, and priority matter in these cases, why would they suddenly lose importance when desert becomes applicable?

Another challenge to desert monism is

the “Desert Monster” thought experiment: Imagine two persons whose initial levels of well-being accurately reflect what they deserve. Assume that both are decent persons who are, accordingly, reasonably well-off (say, each has 500 units of well-being). If one of these persons performs a good action that entitles her to an additional amount of well-being (say, 10 units), and there are no more available goods, we should allocate to her some goods at the expense of the other person, who did not perform such action (although he could have), in order to equalize the distance of the two persons from what they deserve, i.e., their “peaks” (the new distribution should thus be 495:505).

“The Desert Monster” created by Ofer and Re’em using AI

This seems plausible. But now assume that the more virtuous person keeps on performing good deeds, so we keep on transferring goods from the less virtuous to the more virtuous person. At a certain point, equalizing the distance between what the persons have and what they deserve requires that the more virtuous get all the goods, while the other gets nothing. Intuitively, this result seems wrong. The fact that the less virtuous person is very badly-off appears relevant when deciding if additional transfers are just. This means that desert cannot be the only pertinent moral factor: we should also consider the degree to which a person is worse (or better) off.

The relationship between desert and other values thus raises an interesting dilemma: both the monistic and pluralistic options involve significant costs. This may lead some to reconsider the initial assumption that desert is valuable, but this course has its costs too.  Our conclusion is that there is no easy way out of this dilemma. Indeed, we suggest that this dilemma is due to the unique nature of desert. Unlike other values, desert, especially its more robust form, not only sometimes conflicts with competing considerations that favor different courses of action but rather seems to dispel other values, even as pro tanto ones.

References

  • Arneson, Richard J. (1999). “Egalitarianism and responsibility”. The Journal of Ethics 3: 225-247.
  • Frankfurt, Harry G. (1987). “Equality as a Moral Ideal”. Ethics, 98: 21-43. 
  • Kagan, Shelly. (1998). “Equality and Desert”. In O. McLeod and L. Pojman (eds.), What Do We Deserve? A Reader on Justice and Desert . Oxford University Press.
  • Kagan, Shelly. (2012). “The Geometry of Desert”. Oxford University Press.

About the authors

Ofer Malcai is a Lecturer at the Faculty of Law of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research focuses on moral and legal philosophy and law and complexity theory.

Re’em Segev is a Professor at the Faculty of Law of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research focuses on moral philosophy and philosophy of law. 

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Sara Aronowitz and Grace Helton – “Subjectivity in Film: Mine, Yours, and No One’s”

In this post, Sara Aronowitz and Grace Helton discuss the article they recently published in Ergo. The full-length version of their article can be found here.

a young girl attending a carnival wanders off by herself into a poorly lit funhouse
Still from the movie “Us” (2019)

When you watch a movie, where do you experience yourself as located? And who do you imagine yourself to be? The answers to these questions might seem obvious. You experience yourself as located in the movie theatre, reclining in a velvet-covered chair, your legs sprawled under the chair in front of you, your hand clutching some popcorn. And the person you imagine yourself to be is, well, you, the same person you always are, one who happens to be watching a film.

Some aspects of film experience suggest these answers to be incorrect. In at least some cases, viewers seem to imagine themselves to be located in the world of the film. Consider the opening sequence of Us (2019), in which a young girl attending a carnival wanders off by herself into a poorly lit, seemingly abandoned funhouse. Unable to find her way out, the girl descends further and further into the strange space, occasionally confronted by spooky animatronic figures or by her own distorted image reflected in half-hidden mirrors. As viewers, we might feel as though we too are there, in that claustrophobic space, disoriented and unsettled by it.

Or, think of the famous shower scene in Psycho (1960), in which you view the killer through a mist of water, about to deliver blows to his victim Marion Crane. This might create a sense that you are endangered. Thus, you might clutch your seat, feel your heart race, or even raise your hands briefly in a defensive gesture, as though to protect your own body from the onslaught. Examples such as these suggest that viewers sometimes imagine themselves to be embodied in the world of the film.

But other considerations push back against the suggestion that in viewing a film, you imagine yourself to be embodied within that world. Suppose, for instance, that in watching the opening sequence of Us, you imagine yourself in the world of the film. In doing this, you must further represent yourself as an invisible element of the narrative, a shadow character who is for some reason unseen by the young girl. For, consider that the girl lost in the funhouse doesn’t acknowledge the presence of anyone who might help her. It would be very odd to build yourself into the narrative in this way, as an additional, inefficacious element.

This paradox of film, wherein film can engender a powerful sense of felt presence at the same time that film typically requires that the viewer remain at a kind of distance, undergirds several competing views of film experience. In our recent paper, ‘‘Subjectivity in Film: Mine, Yours, and No One’s’’, we develop a new theory of film experience, one which aims to solve both this traditional puzzle and two new puzzles.

Our theory is pluralistic: we think different film sequences mandate different points of view, and sometimes, they mandate no point of view at all. Put otherwise: in some cases, film experience involves the representation of a kind of subjectively presented perspective, one that is ‘from the inside.’ In other cases, film experience mandates an impersonal presentation of the world. For instance, establishing shots, wide shots which depict a scene’s broader environmental context, typically involve an impersonal presentation.

But back to the subjective cases. In some of these cases, a perspective is indexed to one of the film’s characters, and in some cases, this perspective is indexed to you, the viewer. But, we maintain, in still other cases, this perspective is indexed to no one at all. This view helps to resolve the decades-old puzzle about how films can, sometimes via the same sequence, engender both a sense of here-ness and a sense of distance. Films do this via integrated sensory and emotional cues which together ground complex perspectives or what we call subjectivities. These subjectivities are presented ‘from the inside’ but are at least sometimes indexed to no one at all.

We argue that the view that film sometimes mandates the representation of an unindexed subjectivity can help solve two new puzzles about film. The first puzzle concerns perspective divergence, which occurs when a film sequence suggests that a certain spot both is and is not occupied by a viewer. For instance, in a sequence from Caro Diario (1993), we view the main character riding on a Vespa. Our vantage point is from some distance directly behind the main character, and the camera shakes, as though it is mounted on a moving vehicle. At one point, a pedestrian looks directly into the camera, as though acknowledging someone’s presence. Together, these cues suggest the presence of someone behind the protagonist, but the narrative of the film makes it implausible that anyone follows this character during this period. We argue that in sequences such as this one, viewers represent a perspective, or a ‘subjectivity,’ that is indexed neither to a character in the film, nor to the viewer herself, but to no one at all.

Still from the movie “Caro Diario” (1993)

The second puzzle concerns what we call post facto point-of-view sequences. These are point-of-view sequences which are disclosed to be point-of-view sequences only after the presentation of the relevant sequence. For instance, in one sequence from Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019), we see the protagonist Héloïse through the flickering flames of a bonfire. She slowly walks a short distance before pausing, gazing in what seems to be the direction of the viewer. The hem of her dress catches fire, which she doesn’t notice. It gradually dawns on us that the vantage point from which we see Héloïse is her companion Marianne’s perspective and has been all along; this is why the gaze is so fixed, so unmoving from Héloïse, even after her dress catches fire, and why Héloïse’s gaze returns so unwaveringly. It is the gaze of someone transfixed by Héloïse as an object of desire and who in turn transfixes Héloïse. 

We argue that in sequences such as this one, viewers initially represent a perspective, or a ‘subjectivity,’ that is indexed neither to a character in the film nor to the viewer herself, but to no one at all. Only later do viewers represent this perspective as a particular character’s (such as Marianne’s). 

Want more?

Read the full article at https://journals.publishing.umich.edu/ergo/article/id/5707/.

About the authors

Sara Aronowitz studies learning and memory. She’s an assistant professor at the University of Toronto.

Grace Helton is a philosopher of cognitive science and epistemology. She’s currently writing a book on the emotions, with a special emphasis on grief, PTSD, and awe. She’ll be joining the University of Rochester in July of 2025.

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Nicholas Wiltsher – “The Aesthetic Constitution of Genders”

In this post, Nicholas Wiltsher discusses his article recently published in Ergo. The full-length version of Nick’s article can be found here.

photo of a woman and a man with overlapping geometric patterns
Detail of “121” by Ren Hang © 2023 Taschen GmbH

Sometimes, you write a paper because you think you’ve got the right answer. Sometimes, you just want to explore some ideas; whether you have them exactly right isn’t so important. This paper is of the second kind. It starts from the thought that genders are socially constructed. This means that they’re made from coordinated human thought and action—what we can call social practices. These social practices generate constraints, enablements, and norms: rules about things you can, can’t, should, and shouldn’t do, according to your gender. A gender is constituted by those rules, and thus constructed from social practice.

My general notion was to think about whether, and how, aesthetic practices such as judgements of attractiveness and dress codes contribute to the construction of genders by generating constitutive rules.

Now, you might think that it’s obvious that genders have something to do with aesthetics, but let’s be clear: the claim isn’t just that genders have aesthetic effects. The claim is that what makes genders substantial, what really makes them whatever they are, is in large part rules generated by the gendered aesthetic practices in which we collectively engage. In the paper, I try to justify this claim in three stages: first, by showing that there’s conceptual space for it; second, by showing that the conceptual space can be filled; third, by suggesting that it’s useful to do so.

Let’s start from conceptual space. We can divide human thought and practice into three domains: epistemic, practical-ethical, and aesthetic. Each has its own distinctive kind of value (truth, goodness, beauty), its own salient mental states (knowledge, virtue, appreciation), and so on. On my reading, most of the work on genders is either about epistemic practice or practical-ethical practice. On the epistemic approach, the categories woman and man are constructed from the explanations and predictions we make of people so categorised: for example, from explanations for action appealing to gendered character traits (emotionality, aggression). On the practical-ethical approach, the categories are constructed from the ways we treat and judge people so categorised: for example, from differential judgement of similar sexual behaviour in women and men (promiscuity). Very few people have thought about genders as constructed through their use in aesthetic valuation of people. So there’s the conceptual space.

How do you fill such a conceptual space? With a model, is my answer. A model is a selective account of something. You could think of it in terms of telling a story from a perspective. When it comes to complicated things, it’s worth making multiple models, telling multiple stories, which highlight different important aspects. A model of gender construction shows us one important aspect of it. So aesthetic, epistemic and practical models aren’t really in competition: they’re showing us different things.

The aesthetic model begins with an account of aesthetic social practices. These are coordinated patterns of thought and behaviour focussed on the creation and appreciation of things with aesthetic value. Making art is an obvious example of such a practice. So are lots of practices with humans at their centre. Think of fashion, grooming, perfume; think, in fact, of what people often mean by “aesthetics”. These are coordinated ways of finding aesthetic value in people: of finding each other beautiful, striking, interesting, stylish, expressive.

Lots of human-centred aesthetic practices are gendered. But that doesn’t mean they all contribute directly to constructing genders. The really important practices are those in which gender differentiation occurs essentially: those where it’s definitional of the practice that it’s done differently by people of different genders. It’s essential to the practice of professional dress that men and women do it differently—you can tell this because the very same action, say wearing red lipstick, has very different aesthetic consequences depending on the gender of the actor. Perhaps surprisingly, drag is another aesthetic practice in which gender differentiation is essential. It’s definitional of drag that aesthetic value varies depending on the gender of the performer.

These important aesthetic practices help to construct genders because they generate constraints, enablements, and norms. They tell us how people belonging to a given gender ought to look, dress, comport themselves, express themselves. You can see this most clearly by thinking of gender policing. Which transgressions of gender norms are most often and obviously punished by societies? I say it’s transgressions of aesthetic norms: norms of what we wear and how we present ourselves. 

So there’s a model of how aesthetic social practices in which gender differentiation occurs essentially generate norms that are sufficiently substantial to constitute genders. But is this model useful? The third part of the paper says it is, because it can bridge a troublesome gap between gender categories and self-identity.

We each establish our gender identity in relation to gender categories. Moreover, people want to identify with genders. They often put their gender at the core of their self-identity. But, ideally, we want our self-identity to be something we positively embrace. Yet if we think of genders as defined by epistemic or practical-ethical practices, it’s not clear why anyone would want to positively embrace them, rather than just accept them. 

The aesthetic model allows us to tell a fluent story about how genders can be embraced as constituents of self-identity. Identifying with a gender means embracing the aesthetic norms that constitute it. By embracing those norms, one adopts reasons to value oneself and makes assertions about how one wishes to be valued. Moreover, by participating in gendered aesthetic practices, one finds tools with which to construct and express one’s gendered identity, while also actively participating in the construction of gender itself.

So there’s the argument. There’s space for an aesthetic model of genders; there’s a credible model to be made; and the model can do useful work. I don’t think I’ve done everything right in this paper, and I’d be delighted if someone else were to do it better. But I think the basic idea is sound: whatever genders are, aesthetic practices substantially make them so.

Want more?

Read the full article at https://journals.publishing.umich.edu/ergo/article/id/6160/.

About the author

Nicholas Wiltsher is currently a lecturer at Uppsala University. He will take up a similar position at St Andrews in September 2025. He has previously worked in Belgium, Brazil, the USA, and the UK. His research encompasses several topics in aesthetics, and also the imagination.

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Michael Dickson – “Musical Notation”

In this post, Michael Dickson discusses his article recently published in Ergo. The full-length version of Michael’s article can be found here.

a painting of three musicians by pablo picasso
Three Musicians (1921) Pablo Picasso

While scholars have often discussed the artifacts created from musical notation (scores), philosophical exploration of the nature of notation is relatively sparse. My essay “Musical Notation” takes a step back to address foundational questions about notation: What is it? What and how does it express? And what are the implications of this expression?

In my essay, I do not offer an exhaustive philosophy of notation, but I develop a framework that accommodates the complexity and context-dependence inherent in musical notation. The essay focuses on notation in the Western tradition, itself quite diverse, and does not pursue a comprehensive treatment of other traditions.

My approach differs from Nelson Goodman’s work on this topic in two ways: firstly, it avoids his nominalist commitments and, secondly, it acknowledges that musical notation is not a formal language and resists being treated as such.  

To ground the discussion, I introduce four desiderata for any theory of musical notation:

  1. Diverse Uses: The theory must explain the various roles notation plays – e.g., prescriptive (as in scores), mnemonic, transcriptional, pedagogical, and analytic.
  2. Diverse Systems: The theory must accommodate the multitude of notational systems and their integration with specific musical practices.
  3. Extra-notational Interaction: The theory should account for how notation interacts with contextual information, such as titles, composer names, and stylistic indications.
  4. Entanglement with Practice: The theory must recognize that notation is deeply interwoven with the practices it supports, reflecting the cultural, historical, and practical contexts of its use.

I distinguish various types of symbol: for example, sonic symbols, such as quarter-notes, which relate directly to the production of a sound, and supporting symbols, such as staves and clefs, which provide context for establishing the meaning of sonic symbols.

I then turn to disentangling the components of musical notation.

  • Symbol-forms are the abstract shapes or other configurations (such as the shape of a notehead or a rest) that carry musical meaning.
  • Symbol-engravings are the physical manifestations of these forms, found in scores and other notational media.
  • Symbols themselves are abstract entities, created through the association of symbol-forms with meanings, intended for use within a notational system.

This model allows for a nuanced understanding of how notation functions. For instance, the same symbol-form (e.g., a dot) can have different meanings depending on context, as seen in late medieval mensural notation where dots signify various rhythmic values. Similarly, the variability of symbol-engravings, especially in historical manuscripts, underscores the flexibility of notation. A quarter-note engraved as an odd squiggle by Janáček might differ morphologically from the standard engraving, but it remains a quarter-note because of its role within the system.

Symbols are not reducible to their forms or engravings. They are abstract artifacts with meanings and relationships that evolve over time. A clear illustration of this can be found in the historical development of rhythmic notation in the 13th-century treatise De mensurabili musica, where symbols (like the semibrevis) were created by associating specific forms with new rhythmic meanings.

A key contention of my essay concerns the meaning of musical symbols. I call it

Instructional Meaning: the thesis that musical notation denotes imperative meaning.  

Musical instructions are open-ended and flexible.  A whole note, for instance, instructs the performer to sustain a pitch for a duration but leaves details like dynamics, timbre, and phrasing to the performer’s discretion. This abstraction aligns with the nature of performance, where expertise and context fill in the gaps.

I also explore how instructions are expressed. Musical notation employs symbolic, iconic, and sometimes ostensive modes of expression. A crescendo marking might iconically represent a gradual increase in volume, while a symbolic convention determines its precise interpretation. This interplay of modes underscores the richness of notation as a medium for conveying meaning.

One notable feature of musical instructions is their self-directedness. Unlike instructions for baking bread, where the aim is an external product, musical instructions aim at their own enactment. Performing a push-up or playing a scale exemplifies this self-directedness; the goal is the performance of the action itself, irrespective of downstream objectives like fitness or musical presentation.

I contrast Instructional Meaning with

Sonicism: the thesis that notation denotes fixed sonic structures.

Sonicism struggles to account for the variability of performance and interpretation. If scores were tied univocally to specific sonic outcomes, much of the nuance and adaptability of musical practice would be lost.

Instructional Meaning, by contrast, reflects the fact that performers interpret scores as flexible guides, not rigid blueprints. For example, debates about whether a modern piano performance of Bach’s Goldberg Variations constitutes a ‘genuine performance’ illustrate the interpretative richness of musical instructions. These debates arise because the instructions encoded in notation (like all instructions) are always mediated by the norms and practices of interpretation.

Instructional Meaning also makes good sense of unperformable scores – notations that describe impossible actions, such as each performer playing louder than the others. Such scores reinforce Instructional Meaning because their interest lies not in any hypothetical sonic outcome but in the instructions themselves and the conceptual engagement they provoke.

Another strength of Instructional Meaning is its ability to account for extra-notational elements. Titles, composer names, stylistic annotations, and other markings often influence how performers interpret scores. For instance, the tempo marking “Maestoso” in Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 32 shapes the performer’s approach, even though it is not part of the core sonic symbols. These interactions demonstrate how musical instructions (like all instructions) are embedded within broader interpretative contexts.

My essay emphasizes that musical notation is inextricably linked to the practices it supports. Understanding a notational system requires familiarity with the cultural and historical context in which it operates. For example, the rhythmic notation of the Notre Dame school of polyphony relies on an implicit knowledge of rhythmic modes specific to that practice. Similarly, contemporary chord symbols like “Fm7” depend on the tonal conventions of modern music.  This entanglement underscores the limitations of treating musical notation as a formal language. Instead, musical notation must be understood as part of a dynamic, context-sensitive practice.

In the conclusion, I speculate on the ontological implications of Instructional Meaning. If musical scores represent musical pieces, and if scores express instructions, then perhaps musical pieces themselves are instructions. This view aligns with the observation that musical pieces are created, instantiated, and contextualized within specific practices. By conceiving musical works as instructions, we gain a fresh perspective on their nature and the role of notation in their realization.

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About the author

Michael Dickson is Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Carolina.  For many years he worked in philosophy of science, especially physics.  More recently his work has focused on the philosophy of music and psychiatry.

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Martin Glazier and Stephan Krämer – “The Logic of Contingent Actuality”

In this post, Martin Glazier and Stephan Krämer discuss the article they recently published in Ergo. The full-length version of their article can be found here.

porcelain bust of a woman, with a large baguette and bronze statue precariously set on her head
Retrospective Bust of a Woman (1933) on view at the MoMA © 2025 Gala-Salvador Dalí
Foundation / Artists Rights Society, New York

The word “actually” can be used in many ways. One prominent use is to compare the way things actually are with the way they could have been or must be. For example, we may say that the weather could have been nicer than it actually is or that the chemical formula of any substance must be what it actually is. The orthodox view of this notion of actuality accepts the thesis of

actuality necessitism: for all p, if actually p, then it is necessary that actually p.

For example, since it is actually the case that Trump is president, the necessitist will take it to be necessary that he is actually president.

Although this view is widespread, there are reasons to reject it (Glazier forthcoming). One argument against it, which draws on Dorr and Goodman (2020), appeals to the idea that actuality – the collection of propositions that are actually true –  changes over time. Since actuality has been otherwise, it must be possible for it to be otherwise. So actuality necessitism is false.

In our paper “The Logic of Contingent Actuality”, we explore the logic that results if the assumption of necessitism is dropped. What principles govern necessity, possibility, and actuality, once we allow what is actually true to be contingent?

We do not think that under contingentism just anything goes with respect to actuality. Not every proposition – nor even, perhaps, every possible proposition – could have been actually true. The contingency of actuality has limits, some of which are imposed by the very nature or essence of the notion of actuality. With an eye to these limits, we develop a number of axiomatic systems of modal logic with contingent actuality.

What sort of semantics characterizes these systems? Necessitist logics are typically characterized by a possible worlds semantics with a designated actual world. The statement “actually p” is taken to be true at a possible world just in case p is true at the designated world.

However, a semantics like this will not do for contingentist logics. Instead, our semantics appeals to an actuality function: a function which maps each possible world w to another possible world which serves as w’s actual world. (This world may, but need not be, w itself.) Different possible worlds may therefore have different actual worlds. The statement ‘actually p’ is taken to be true at a world w just in case p is true at w’s actual world, the world to which the actuality function maps w. We establish soundness and completeness results for our contingentist systems.

References

  • Dorr, C. and J. Goodman. (2020). “Diamonds are forever”. Noûs 54(3): 632-65.
  • Glazier, M. (forthcoming). “The contingency of actuality”. Ergo

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Michael Walschots – “The Rationality of Love: Benevolence and Complacence in Kant and Hutcheson”

In this post, Michael Walschots discusses his article recently published in Ergo. The full-length version of Michael’s article can be found here.

A couple kissing, flowers in her hands, and a cake on the breakfast table.
“Birthday” (1915) Marc Chagall

Not so long ago, saying that Immanuel Kant had something interesting to say about love would have struck most people as odd. As a prototypical rationalist who looks down upon the sensible side of human existence, it was assumed that love plays an insignificant role in Kant’s thought. Thankfully, this stereotype is fading due to very important research on Kant’s understanding of love published in the past few years.

In Love’s Enlightenment, for instance, Ryan Patrick Hanley argues that Kant is one of the truly preeminent modern theorists of love because of the radical alternative Kant proposes to what Hanley calls the ‘sentimentalist’ and ‘theological’ conceptions that preceded him (Hanley 2017, 135).

In his 2018 book Kant on Love, Pärttyli Rinne carries out the most comprehensive study of Kant’s understanding of love published to date. In it, he illustrates both that Kant has quite a lot to say about love and that his account is relatively detailed, systematic, and consistent throughout all of his major writings (Rinne 2018, 1).

In Sex, Love, and Gender: A Kantian Theory, Helga Varden argues that, although Kant himself had mistaken views about sex and gender minorities, Kant’s philosophy nonetheless contains the philosophical resources we need to better understand sex, love, and gender in ways that can improve the experience and lives of those most affected by the misunderstanding of these concepts (Varden 2020, 7-8).

Collectively, this recent research illustrates that Kant’s understanding of love might not be as objectionable as one might have expected from a philosopher with such old-fashioned (to put it mildly) views about women, sex, and marriage.

At the same time, a consensus has emerged in the literature, according to which Kant understands love to be a purely pathological phenomenon. Kant himself suggests this reading in various places: in the Metaphysics of Morals, for instance, he claims that

“[l]ove is a matter of feeling [Empfindung], not of willing” (6:401).

He also states that what he calls “practical love”– namely benevolent action from duty – should not be considered love properly speaking because it is “conduct” rather than a feeling (6:399). 

However, Kant also makes an additional claim about love that complicates conceiving of it as a mere feeling. He claims, namely, that

“love in general […] can be divided into that of benevolence and that of complacence (benevolentiae et complacentiae), and both (as is self-evident) must be rational” (6:45n, translation modified)

This “general division” of love, as Rinne has called it (Rinne 2018: 1), is central to Kant’s thinking and raises some important questions about his understanding of love more generally. Perhaps most importantly: Does Kant really think that “love in general”, i.e., all love, can be classified as either benevolence or complacence and thus that all love is rational?

We can only answer this question once we know how Kant understands both benevolence and complacence in the first place. And although Kant and his commentators have lots to say about benevolence, unfortunately not much attention has been given to complacence.

My aims in this paper are twofold:

  1. I offer an interpretation of Kant’s notion of complacence by situating it next to what is likely the historical inspiration for it, namely Francis Hutcheson’s own very similar notion, with which Kant was familiar and with whose terminology Kant remains consistent. 
  2. I seek to identify the sense in which both benevolence and complacence are rational, for Kant, in light of my previous analysis. 

The paper has five sections. 

In section one (1), I introduce Kant’s distinction between benevolence and complacence and its place in his thought.

In section two (2), I outline Hutcheson’s understanding of benevolence and complacence. For Hutcheson, these two types of love correspond to the two central topics of moral philosophy, namely the approval of morally good action, affection, and character by the moral sense (love of complacence) and the motive of morally praiseworthy action (love of benevolence). Hutcheson conceives of these two types of love as rational in the sense that they can only have rational beings as both their subject and object.

In section three (3), I offer an interpretation of Kant’s conception of love of complacence that is informed by certain features of Hutcheson’s understanding of the term. More specifically, I argue that Kant understands complacence as approval and that he distinguishes between two kinds of approval, namely sensible and intellectual, depending on whether the object we approve of is a maxim that promotes happiness or one that is consistent with morality, respectively.

In section four (4), I argue that both complacence and benevolence are rational, for Kant, in the sense that they presuppose that human beings possess certain higher cognitive capacities, namely the capacity to use concepts and the ability to make inferences. I also explain how it is perfectly compatible with, and perhaps even required by, Kant’s empirical psychology for both kinds of love to be rational in this way and yet nonetheless remain a feeling.

I conclude in section five (5) by discussing some broader implications of my previous conclusions. For instance, I give reason to believe that Kant does indeed conceive of all love, properly speaking, as rational in the sense I have described. I also argue that this means that “love as attraction” (6:470), i.e. affectionate love, and sexual love do not count as love properly speaking, for Kant, because they do not involve reason.

As a whole, it is my hope that the paper places us in a position to better understand the nuances of Kant’s conception of love more generally.

References

  • Hanley, R. P. (2017). Love’s Enlightenment. Cambridge University Press.
  • Kant, I. (1900–). Gesammelte Schriften (Akademie Ausgabe). Vol. 1–22 Ed. Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vol. 23 Ed. Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, Vol. 24ff. Ed. Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen.
  • Rinne, P. (2018). Kant on Love. De Gruyter.
  • Varden, H. (2020). Sex, Love, and Gender: A Kantian Theory. Oxford University Press.

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Read the full article at https://journals.publishing.umich.edu/ergo/article/id/4670/.

About the author

Michael Walschots is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Philosophy at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in Germany, where he is part of a project entitled: ‘Rethinking Enlightenment: The Reception of John Locke in Germany’. He is the editor and translator of Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason: Background Source Materials (Cambridge University Press, 2024) and the co-editor of Christian Wolff’s German Ethics: New Essays (Oxford University Press, 2024).

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Brandon Smith – “Healthy and Happy Natural Being: Spinoza and Epicurus Contra the Stoics”

In this post, Brandon Smith discusses the article he recently published in Ergo. The full-length version of Brandon’s article can be found here.

etching showing death coming in from the window while a doctor chases it away with a syringe
“The Doctor dismissing Death” (1785) Peter Simon, Francis Jukes, and Thomas Rowlandson

Like many of his fellow philosophers in the seventeenth-century, Benedict de Spinoza (1632-1677) was heavily engaged with the views of ancient thinkers. In particular, Spinoza’s philosophy shares many affinities with Stoicism (James 1993; Miller 2015; Pereboom 1994). Both, for example:

  1. think that God is the universe itself (pantheism) and everything that occurs happens necessarily (determinism);
  2. conceive of happiness as being rational and virtuous;
  3. critique passions as flawed judgments about good and bad; 
  4. promote a therapeutic approach to combatting harmful passions through the practice of modifying our value judgments; and
  5. distinguish between passions and rational emotions.

However, Spinoza also (from his perspective) improves on certain Stoic doctrines by denying that God acts purposefully, acknowledging the goodness of passions in certain contexts, and conceiving of virtue and happiness as both physical and intellectual in nature (DeBrabander 2007; Long 2003; Miller 2015).

Curiously, Spinoza also shares noteworthy affinities with Epicureanism, an important ancient opponent to Stoicism (Bove 1994; Guyau 2020; Lagrée 1994; Vardoulakis 2020). For instance, Spinoza and Epicurus are both committed to:

  1. a rejection of providence, creation, supernatural phenomena, and the immortality of the soul;
  2. materialistic (rather than supernatural) explanations of natural phenomena; and
  3. a pleasure-oriented conception of happiness. 

My focus in this paper is on (iii) because I think that pleasure plays a foundational role in both their philosophies and that previous scholarship does not capture the richness and nuance of the agreements and disagreements between them on this subject. Moreover, Spinoza’s agreements with Epicurus on pleasure make it clear that he is neither a dogmatic disciple of nor a mere innovator on Stoicism, despite his common ground with them in many respects. Ultimately, I argue that Spinoza and Epicurus are committed to three central claims which the Stoics reject:

  1. pleasure holds a necessary connection to being healthy;
  2. pleasure manifests healthy being through positive changes in state and states of healthy being in themselves;
  3. pleasure is by nature good.

Epicurus distinguishes between two kinds of pleasures: kinetic and katastematic (DL X.136; OM I.37). Kinetic pleasure represents a change in one’s state of being through the process of satisfying a desire. Necessary kinetic pleasures, like eating, drinking, sleeping, and learning, directly promote our natural functioning or health by removing either pain in the body or disturbance in the mind. Unnecessary kinetic pleasures conversely diversify the expression of healthy being through desires related to preferences (e.g., satisfying my basic need for food through steak or chocolate in particular), activities (e.g., reading or running), or external things (e.g., wealth, marriage, or social approval). Katastematic pleasure is the enjoyment of being healthy in itself through the absence of desire, for example, being satiated, well-rested, and tranquil. Happiness as the highest good consists specifically in katastematic pleasure. According to Epicurus, all pleasures essentially promote healthy being and happiness, and are thus intrinsically good, because they either lead to, constitute, or diversely express, the unimpeded natural functioning of the body or mind. A pleasure can only be bad then insofar as it is pursued in a manner that leads to its destruction by causing pain or disturbance (i.e., impediments to natural functioning), namely through excess or misunderstanding of the hierarchy of value amongst pleasures (LM 128–132; PD VIII, XXIX–XXX). 

Spinoza makes a similar distinction between transitional and non-transitional pleasures (E3da2; E5p36s; E5p42). All individuals possess an essential power to express and preserve themselves through bodily and mental activities (E3p6; E4p38–9; E4p26). Transitional pleasures, like eating, drinking, and learning, increase our self-affirmative power. Non-transitional pleasures express our degree of self-affirmative power in itself through bodily activities like sculpting or running and mental activities like scientific understanding of God, nature, and ourselves as human beings and individuals. Blessedness, as the highest happiness and good, consists specifically in the non-transitional pleasure of being as physically and intellectually active as possible. Both kinds of pleasure for Spinoza are however by nature good insofar as they are tied to promoting bodily and mental health in the form of physical and intellectual self-empowerment. Any badness that arises from a pleasure is due to that pleasure being enjoyed in an excessive manner that undermines its self-empowering nature. Insofar as we knowingly pursue pleasure in line with its nature then it can only lead to flourishing (E4p41–4s; E5p10s).

In summary, both Epicurus and Spinoza draw necessary connections between pleasure, health, goodness, and happiness.

Health manifests itself as unimpeded bodily/mental functioning for Epicurus and self-affirmative bodily/mental power for Spinoza. Because health is the shared metric of goodness here and happiness is the ultimate good, both philosophers place a happy life in the joy of healthy being (i.e. natural functioning or self-affirmative power) itself.  From this foundation, they distinguish between pleasures as positive health-oriented changes in one’s state of being (kinetic pleasure and transitional pleasure) and pleasures as expressions of healthy being in itself (katastematic pleasure and non-transitional pleasure). It is pleasure’s essential role in promoting bodily and mental health that leads Epicurus and Spinoza to argue that all forms of pleasure are by nature good, and that pleasures can only be bad if enjoyed in a manner that undermines their health-promoting nature as pleasures.

Epicurus and Spinoza, in their own distinctive ways, help us to see the true nature and value of pleasure in our pursuit of flourishing and fulfillment. Epicurus offers us an account of happiness which carries the advantage of being fairly easy to achieve and maintain as the simple enjoyment of physical and mental health, while Spinoza offers us an account which carries the advantage of strongly emphasizing the active connotations of being and living well, in order to encourage us to joyfully express ourselves as fully as possible both physically and intellectually. The ultimate lesson for us is that any harm that comes to us by way of pleasure is the result of our own misunderstanding and misuse of nature’s greatest good and not at all the fault of pleasure (in any of its forms) or our essential desire for it.

References

  • Bove, Laurent (1994). “Épicurisme Et Spinozisme: L’éthique.”  Archives de Philosophie 57(3): 471–484.
  • Cicero, Marcus Tullius (2004). On Moral Ends. Julia Annas (Ed.) and Raphael Woolf (Trans.). Cambridge University Press. [OM]
  • Epicurus (1994). “Letter to Menoeceus”. In Brad Inwood and L.P. Gerson (Eds. and Trans.), The Epicurus Reader: Selected Writings and Testimonia (28–31). Hackett. [LM]
  • Epicurus (1994). “Principal Doctrines”. In Brad Inwood and L.P. Gerson (Eds. and Trans.), The Epicurus Reader: Selected Writings and Testimonia (32–36). Hackett. [PD]
  • Guyau, Jean-Marie (2020). Spinoza: A Synthesis of Epicureanism and Stoicism. Frederico Testa (Trans.). Parrhesia, 32, 33–44.
  • James, Susan (1993). “Spinoza the Stoic”. In Tom Sorrell (Ed.), The Rise of Modern Philosophy: The Tensions between the New and Traditional Philosophies from Machiavelli to Leibniz (289–316). Oxford University Press.
  • Lagrée, Jacqueline (1994). “Spinoza “Athée & Épicurien””. Archives de Philosophie 57(3): 541–558.
  • Long, A. A. (2003). “Stoicism in the Philosophical Tradition”. In Jon Miller and Brad Inwood (Eds.), Hellenistic and Early Modern Philosophy (7–29). Cambridge University Press. 
  • Miller, Jon (2015). Spinoza and the Stoics. Cambridge University Press. 
  • Pereboom, Derk (1994). Stoic Psychotherapy in Descartes and Spinoza. Faith and Philosophy, 11(4), 592–625. 
  • Spinoza, Benedict de (2002). Ethics. In Michael L. Morgan (Ed.) and Samuel Shirley (Trans.), Spinoza: Complete Works (213–282). Hackett. [E]  [da = definitions of the affects/emotions; p = proposition; s = scholium]
  • Vardoulakis, Dmitris (2020). Spinoza, The Epicurean: Authority and Utility in Materialism. Edinburgh University Press. 

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Read the full article at https://journals.publishing.umich.edu/ergo/article/id/6156/.

About the author

Brandon Smith is a FRQSC Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Institute for Research in the Humanities. His research interests include Spinoza, 17th century philosophy, ancient Greek philosophy, ethics, and philosophy of happiness. He is in in the process of turning his dissertation into a book, The Search for Mind-Body Flourishing in Spinoza’s Eudaimonism, which explores Spinoza’s engagement with Aristotle, Epicurus, and the Stoics on the roles of pleasure, virtue, mind, and body in living a happy, flourishing life.

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Ella Whiteley – “Order-Based Salience Patterns in Language: What They Are and Why They Matter”

In this post, Ella Whiteley discusses their article recently published in Ergo. The full-length version of Ella’s article can be found here.

Portrait of the Duke and Duchess of Urbino (ca. 1473-1475) by Piero Della Francesca
Portrait of Federico da Montefeltro and Battista Sforza (ca. 1474) Piero Della Francesca

Imagine you’re talking with someone, and suddenly they shout their last sentence while making emphatic hand gestures. “I do enjoy Jeff Goldblum’s outfits in shows; his luxe dressing gown in Kaos is pretty excellent BUT OH MY GOSH THE UNBUTTONED SHIRT IN JURASSIC PARK!” Outside of finding this mildly disconcerting or amusing, you’d likely find that last part of the communication the most attention-grabbing. The volume, the phrase ‘oh my gosh’, the banging-of-fists on the table – these are explicit cues to focus on those latter words. The part about the unbuttoned shirt stands out, which invites you to treat it as more important and memorable. (The result of course is that the image of Goldblum on that metal doctor’s table is what insists upon your mind’s eye. If it doesn’t, we have identified a horrifying gap in your cultural knowledge that you should now rectify.)

We make certain elements of what we’re saying more salient to our audience in a range of ways – tone of voice, repetition, and so on. Philosophers have pointed out how just mentioning something makes it salient. Maxime LePoutre (2024), for instance, has shown how mentioning a conspiracy theory in service of debunking it can raise the salience of that conspiracy theory. This can have counterproductive consequences: its heightened salience makes the theory feel more familiar and, ultimately, true.  

I want to focus on a different salience mechanism: the order in which we communicate information. Since we cannot say, hear, or read everything at once, ordering is unavoidable. This makes it a particularly important phenomenon to analyse.

Sometimes, the significance of ordering is not subtle or elusive. It’s intuitive that the first page of the newspaper is more salient than page 10. It’s intuitive that what comes up at the top of one’s social media feed is likely to grab one’s attention the most. But I don’t think we’re used to recognising the importance of order in other aspects of communication. Most of us talk about ‘men and women’, ‘kings and queens’, ‘he or she’, without noticing this persistent pattern of positioning men first. Many of us gloss over the pattern whereby we standardly position the ‘for’ first, when we ask if one is ‘for or against’ a given proposal. 

What are the implications of these orderings for audience interpretation? One place to look for answers is psychological research into ‘order effects’ (Haugtvedt & Wegener,1994). A general picture emerges from this research. Firstly, the content positioned first, call it content 1, is generally processed as more salient – more attention-grabbing. Other factors, like volume and tone of voice, inevitably complicate this general rule. But once we control for other factors, we find that, systematically, the first-mentioned content is treated as more salient. Heightened salience is then processed as indicating heightened relevance – content 1 is considered more important for understanding. Audiences then unconsciously draw on various accessible beliefs and associations that help to make sense of this signalled relevance.

This picture explains various psychological findings. For instance, talking about men before women tends to activate gender stereotypes in audiences’ minds, including men being more agential, powerful, assertive, decisive, and so on (Kesebir, 2017). These stereotypes are cognitively accessible and socially licensed ways of interpreting why, through being discussed first, men have been signalled as more salient and relevant. Troublingly, stereotypes that are activated in this covert way generally resist being blocked, and thus audiences are liable effectively to endorse those stereotypes in their subsequent inferences. Order-based salience patterns have unexpected normative significance, then, in virtue of triggering ethically and/or epistemically problematic biases.

I am keen that this insight avoids being appreciated only in certain circumscribed contexts, such as the ordering of binomials. So, let’s think about another example. One trend I have noticed in sex/gender science papers is the tendency to mention sex or gender differences first. In recent decades it has become more standard explicitly to acknowledge gender similarities—something that historically was rarely mentioned or recognised. But routinely such similarities do not make the first page. There’s reason to consider this a problem. A great deal of research has documented a particularly accessible, easy-to-trigger bias of gender essentialism, which treats gender differences as extreme and immutable, a belief routinely justifying a range of harmful social practices (Gelman & Taylor, 2000). By discussing gender differences before similarities, researchers are making them more salient. Order effect research gives us reason to think that audiences will likely process this salience as indicating relevance, which audiences then try to understand by drawing on accessible and licensed beliefs and associations that fit with this gender difference being made more relevant. Gender essentialism, easy-to-activate as it is, risks being triggered in this process. 

There are other risks to consider. Rather than activating specific problematic beliefs or associations, discussing differences before similarities may help more broadly to shape audiences’ overall cognitive map of sex/gender, which has significant effects for what they then notice in the world, the inquiries they conduct, and so on. Or, rather than focus on the downstream effects of these salience patterns, we might reflect on whether the patterns themselves constitute subtle forms of prejudicial speech. Speech act theory, for instance, recognises that we do things with words; saying ‘Run, there’s a fire!’ does not just cause people to flee, it constitutes an act of warning (Langton, 1993). Mentioning men before women might constitute an androcentric act of placing men at the centre of things. Routinely discussing sex/gender differences before similarities might count as a particularly subtle act of essentialising gender.

Imagine an account of a phenomenon, whether that be a historical event, a person, a scientific topic. Imagine that account contained no falsehoods – only truths. Imagine further that it contained every significant and relevant truth –nothing important is left out. I suggest that there may still be ways in which that account can be normatively criticisable. By ordering those truths in a particular way, this account might make salient the ‘wrong’ truths. Perhaps the ordering elicits biases of ours, which trigger false beliefs. Perhaps it simply counts as a subtle form of prejudice. 

References

  • Gelman, S., and M. Taylor (2000). “Gender Essentialism in Cognitive Development”. In P. H. Miller and E. Scholnick (Eds.), Towards a Feminist Developmental Psychology (169–90). Routledge.
  • Haugtvedt, C. O. and D. T. Wegener (1994). “Message Order Effects in Persuasion: An Attitude Strength Perspective”. Journal of Consumer Research, 21(1): 205–18.
  • Kesebir, S. (2017). “Word Order Denotes Relevance Differences: The Case of Conjoined Phrases with Lexical Gender”. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113(2): 262–279.
  • Langton, R. (1993). “Speech Acts and Unspeakable Acts”. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 22(4): 293–330.
  • Lepoutre, M. (2024). “Narrative Counterspeech”. Political Studies, 72(2): 570-589.

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About the author

Ella Whiteley is a Lecturer in PPE at the University of Sheffield. Their research interests are primarily in ethics, social epistemology, and political philosophy. Their key specialism is the normative dimensions of salience and attention; Ella is interested in how mere patterns of salience can cause or constitute discrimination, a harm, or an epistemic flaw. Since their role at the ‘Invisible Labour Project’ at the University of Cambridge, Ella also works on the philosophy of labour.