Michael Lacewing

Philosophy for AS is the definitive textbook for students of the current AQA Advanced Subsidiary Level. Structured closely around the examination specifications, it covers the two units of the AS Level in an exceptionally clear and student-friendly style. As an invitation to philosophy, the book encourages and enables students to engage philosophically with the following syllabus topics: reason and experience Why should I be governed? Why should I be moral? the idea of God persons knowledge of the external world tolerance the value of art God and the world the debate about free will and determinism. Each chapter contains an introduction to the basic ideas, arguments and objections of the issue, and a development section, which clarifies the previous material, introduces more complex ideas, and encourages students to link up ideas and draw new implications. To aid student learning and revision, each chapter includes: comprehension questions to test core knowledge discussion questions to deepen understanding 'going further' sections for advanced study cross-references to help students make connections helpful summaries and a glossary. In addition, a chapter on exam preparation contains a wealth of helpful hints and tips on revision and exam techniques. Written by an experienced philosopher and A Level consultant, Philosophy for AS is an essential course book for all students of AS Level philosophy

How are we to distinguish between appropriate emotional responses that reveal morally salient reasons and inappropriate emotional responses that reflect our prejudices? It is often assumed that reason – considered as distinct from emotion – will make the distinction. I argue that this view is false, and that the process by which emotional responses are vetted involves ‘emotional self-awareness’. By this, I mean feeling an emotion, being aware of so doing, and feeling some usually subtle emotional response, often of calm or anxiety, to it, together with a general readiness to feel and acknowledge what emotions one has. Registering and exploring feelings of anxiety that arise in emotional self-awareness helps enable us to detect when emotions and thoughts are inappropriate. Deliberation that is not emotionally open in this way is therefore at an epistemic disadvantage. Furthermore, the attempt to remain unemotional when evaluating one’s emotions can be produced or co-opted by anxiety about one’s feelings of precisely the kind that indicates one’s emotional responses and thoughts are being distorted.

Philosophy for AS is an accessible textbook for the new 2014 AQA Advanced Subsidiary Philosophy syllabus. Structured closely around the AQA specification this textbook covers the two units, Epistemology and Philosophy of Religion, in an engaging and student-friendly way. With chapters on 'How to do philosophy', exam preparation providing students with the philosophical skills they need to succeed, and an extensive glossary to support understanding, this book is ideal for students studying philosophy. Each chapter includes: explanation and commentary of the AQA anthology texts comprehension questions to test understanding discussion questions to generate evaluative argument 'going further' sections for advanced study cross-references to help students make connections bullet-point summaries of each topic. The companion website hosts a wealth of further resources, including PowerPoint slides, flashcards, further reading, weblinks and handouts, all structured to accompany the textbook. It can be found at www.routledge.com/cw/alevelphilosophy

A Platonic dialogue, an undergraduate lecture, an enquiry in philosophy for children (P4C): Are all three activities "philosophy"? Is there a difference between doing philosophy and studying philosophy? What is the importance of philosophy in each guise, and how might the different guises relate to the aims of "teaching" philosophy? Drawing on the work of Bernard Williams, I suggest that doing philosophy involves making sense of our lives, and that this requires a wider knowledge base than traditionally taught in academic philosophy. I argue that both academic philosophy and P4C both involve philosophising, and that this is more valuable than an encyclopedic knowledge of the products of this process - the canon.

Philosophy for AS is the definitive textbook for students of the current AQA Advanced Subsidiary Level. Structured closely around the examination specifications, it covers the two units of the AS Level in an exceptionally clear and student-friendly style. As an invitation to philosophy, the book encourages and enables students to engage philosophically with the following syllabus topics: reason and experience Why should I be governed? Why should I be moral? the idea of God persons knowledge of the external world tolerance the value of art God and the world the debate about free will and determinism. Each chapter contains an introduction to the basic ideas, arguments and objections of the issue, and a development section, which clarifies the previous material, introduces more complex ideas, and encourages students to link up ideas and draw new implications. To aid student learning and revision, each chapter includes: comprehension questions to test core knowledge discussion questions to deepen understanding 'going further' sections for advanced study cross-references to help students make connections helpful summaries and a glossary. In addition, a chapter on exam preparation contains a wealth of helpful hints and tips on revision and exam techniques. Written by an experienced philosopher and A Level consultant, Philosophy for AS is an essential course book for all students of AS Level philosophy

Grünbaum argues that psychoanalysis cannot justify its inferences regarding motives using its own methodology, as only the employment of Mill’s canons can justify causal inferences (which inferences to motives are). I consider an argument offered by Hopkins regarding the nature and status of our everyday inferences from other people’s behavior to their motives that seeks to rebut Grünbaum’s charge by defending a form of inference to the best explanation that makes use of connections in intentional content between behavior and motives. I argue that Hopkins succeeds in defeating Grünbaum’s objection as it is presented, but that work in social psychology presents a further challenge. I discuss the extent to which the challenge can be met, and conclude that certain types of inference in psychoanalysis are justifiable, but others, including those which are the target of Grünbaum’s objection, cannot be justified by the methods defended by Hopkins.

It has often been noted that evil – by which I mean evil in human motivation and action – is difficult to understand. We find it hard to make sense of what ‘drives’ a person to commit evil. This is not because we cannot recognise or identify with some aspect of the psychology of evil; we all experience feelings of envy, spite, cruelty, and hatred. But somehow this shared experience can seem insufficient, and we are left at a loss as to how such natural, universal human motivations could have resulted in this. The aims of this paper are modest, to do no more than point in a particular direction our attempts to understand the psychology of evil. §2 is a synoptic overview of what I shall call the ‘traditional’ picture of the psychology of evil. In §3, I argue that this picture is explanatorily inadequate. §§4-6 develop the traditional picture by suggesting some resources drawn from psychoanalytic theory that can meet the explanatory challenge. My argument here is schematic, seeking only to motivate a research project. It would take a much longer exploration of these resources, providing far more psychological detail, to work out what can rightfully be called an account of the psychology of evil. §7 situates the psychology of evil in relation to ‘normal’ psychology by noting the positive functions of mental processes involved in the psychology of evil.

Philosophy for A2: Unit 3 is the definitive textbook for students of the current AQA Advanced Level syllabus. Structured very closely around the AQA specifications for Unit 3: Key Themes in Philosophy, it introduces the student to each of the core themes: philosophy of mind political philosophy epistemology and metaphysics moral philosophy philosophy of religion. All chapters are helpfully subdivided into short digestible passages, and include: quiz questions to test core knowledge discussion questions to deepen understanding 'going further' sections for advanced study text boxes highlighting key definitions and arguments cross-references to help students make connections lively illustrations, diagrams and a glossary. In addition, a chapter on exam preparation contains a wealth of helpful hints and tips on revision and exam techniques. Written by an experienced philosopher and A Level consultant, Philosophy for A2: Unit 3 is an essential companion for all students of A2 Level philosophy.

ExtractThe central question of ethics is ‘How should I live?’. It covers not only actions, but more broadly, our reactions and our characters, questions of what we should feel and how we should be as people. This has been the central concern of theories of virtue. Aristotle claimed that a virtue is a character trait that enables us to ‘stand well’ in relation to our desires and emotions. To be virtuous with regard to a type of emotion – anger, sadness, joy, fear, etc. – is to feel that type of emotion ‘at the right times, with reference to the right objects, towards the right people, with the right motive, and in the right way’.Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.PSYCHOANALYSIS, EMOTIONS AND LIVING A GOOD LIFEVolume 12, Issue 33Michael LacewingDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1477175612000346Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. PSYCHOANALYSIS, EMOTIONS AND LIVING A GOOD LIFEVolume 12, Issue 33Michael LacewingDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1477175612000346Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. PSYCHOANALYSIS, EMOTIONS AND LIVING A GOOD LIFEVolume 12, Issue 33Michael LacewingDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1477175612000346Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation.

In this article, I provide a guide to some current thinking in empirical moral psychology on the nature of moral intuitions, focusing on the theories of Haidt and Narvaez. Their debate connects to philosophical discussions of virtue theory and the role of emotions in moral epistemology. After identifying difficulties attending the current debate around the relation between intuitions and reasoning, I focus on the question of the development of intuitions. I discuss how intuitions could be shaped into moral expertise, outlining Haidt’s emphasis on innate factors and Narvaez’s account in terms of a social-cognitive model of personality. After a brief discussion of moral relativism, I consider the implications of the account of moral expertise for our understanding of the relation between moral intuitions and reason. I argue that a strong connection can be made if we adopt a broad conception of reason and a narrow conception of expertise.

Ever since Freud, psychoanalysts have explored the connections between psychoanalysis and literature and psychoanalysis and philosophy, while literary criticism, social science and philosophy have all reflected on and made use of ideas from psychoanalytic theory. The Academic Face of Psychoanalysis presents contributions from these fields and gives the reader an insight into different understandings and applications of psychoanalytic theory. This book comprises twelve contributions from experts in their fields covering philosophy, psychoanalysis, sociology and literary theory. The chapters are divided into three distinct sections: Psychoanalysis Philosophy Social science and literary theory Louise Braddock and Michael Lacewing successfully bring these contributions together with an in-depth introduction that allows the reader to explore the connections between the different disciplines. The multi-disciplinary approach to this book is rare; it will appeal to academics and students, from the subject areas of psychoanalysis, humanities and social science