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205Grounding Moralism: Moral Flaws and Aesthetic PropertiesJournal of Aesthetic Education 45 (4): 34-53. 2011.My goal in this article is to provide support for the claim that moral flaws can be detrimental to an artwork's aesthetic value. I argue that moral flaws can become aesthetic flaws when they defeat the operation of good-making aesthetic properties. I do not defend a new theory of aesthetic properties or aesthetic value; instead, I attempt to show that on both the response-dependence and the supervenience account of aesthetic properties, moral flaws with an artwork are relevant to what aestheti…Read more
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49The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Love (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2017.The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Love offers a wide array of original essays on the nature and value of love. The editors, Christopher Grau and Aaron Smuts, have assembled an esteemed group of thinkers, including both established scholars and younger voices. The volume contains thirty-three essays addressing both issues about love as well as key philosophers who have contributed to the philosophy of love, such as Plato, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, and Murdoch. The topics range from central is…Read more
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HorrorIn Paisley Livingston & Carl Plantinga (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film, Routledge. 2008.
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The ethics of singing along : the case of "Mind of a lunatic"In Jeanette Bicknell & John Andrew Fisher (eds.), Song, songs, and singing, Wiley. 2013.
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131On Transwomen and Sports: Evaluating the ArgumentsArc Digital 6 (6.1.2019). 2019.The move for greater inclusion of transwomen in women’s sports through the adoption of increasingly less stringent criteria has progressed very quickly, faster than public consensus, and seemingly without much debate. In an effort to further rational discussion of this issue, I want to lay out clear versions of the best arguments in favor of greater inclusion. Versions of these arguments have been appearing in a variety of merged and mangled forms in popular and social media. Hence, my task is …Read more
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539To Be or Never to Have Been: Anti-Natalism and a Life Worth LivingEthical Theory and Moral Practice 17 (4): 711-729. 2013.David Benatar argues that being brought into existence is always a net harm and never a benefit. I disagree. I argue that if you bring someone into existence who lives a life worth living, then you have not all things considered wronged her. Lives are worth living if they are high in various objective goods and low in objective bads. These lives constitute a net benefit. In contrast, lives worth avoiding constitute a net harm. Lives worth avoiding are net high in objective bads and low in object…Read more
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68The Metaphorics of Hume's Gendered SkepticismIn Anne Jaap Jacobson (ed.), Feminist Interpretations of David Hume, Penn State Up. 2000.In "Of Scepticism with Regard to the Senses" (Treatise I.IV.II) David Hume begins by saying that he will attempt to trace the causes of our belief in a mind-independent world, "a belief we must take for granted in all our reasonings". Yet the causes arrived at – namely natural inclination or imagination - are presented as so untrustworthy as to cast doubt on the credibility of the inescapable belief itself. However, in the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding Hume presents a radically differ…Read more
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25Haunting the House from Within: Disbelief Mitigation and Spatial ExperienceFilm-Philosophy 6 (1). 2002.The Haunting, Directed by Robert Wise MGM/Argyle, 1963.
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743The Ethics of Singing Along: The Case of “Mind of a Lunatic”Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 71 (1): 121-129. 2013.In contrast to film, theater, and literature, audiences typically sing along with popular songs. This can encourage a first-person mode of engagement with the narrative content. Unlike mere spectators, listeners sometimes imagine acting out the content when it is recited in the first-person. This is a common mode of engaging with popular music. And it can be uniquely morally problematic. It is problematic when it involves the enjoyment of imaginatively doing evil. I defend a Moorean view on the …Read more
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22The Desire‐Frustration Theory of SuspenseJournal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 66 (3): 281-290. 2008.
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9Hitchcock as Philosopher by yanal, robert jJournal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 65 (3): 339-341. 2007.
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1572The Good Cause Account of the Meaning of LifeSouthern Journal of Philosophy 51 (4): 536-562. 2013.I defend the theory that one's life is meaningful to the extent that one promotes the good. Call this the good cause account (GCA) of the meaning of life. It holds that the good effects that count towards the meaning of one's life need not be intentional. Nor must one be aware of the effects. Nor does it matter whether the same good would have resulted if one had not existed. What matters is that one is causally responsible for the good. I argue that the best theory of the meaning of life should…Read more
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27'The Little People': Power and the WorshipableIn Lester Hunt & Noel Carroll (eds.), The Twilight Zone and Philosophy, Blackwell. 2008.Philosophers and social scientists have explored the ritual practices and the experience of worship, but there has been relatively little discussion of what makes something worthy of worship.However, we find a characteristically sophisticated examination of the issue by Rod Serling in the Twilight Zone episode "The Little People" (3rd Season, March 30, 1962). By considering the example of “The Little People” and a few variations, we can clarify the role power plays in making something worthy of …Read more
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104Popular ArtIn The Continuum Companion to Aesthetics, Continuum. 2012.The common assumption is that works of popular are less serious, less artistically valuable. Popular art is driven by a profit motive; real art, high art, is produced for loftier goals, such as aesthetic appreciation. Further, popular art is formulaic and gravitates toward the lowest common denominator. High art is innovative. It enriches, elevates, and inspires; popular art just entertains. Worse, popular art inculcates cultural biases. It is a corporate tool of ideological indoctrination…Read more
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20L'HumorIn Julien Deonna Emma Tieffenbach (ed.), Petite Dictionnaire des Valeurs, . forthcoming.Most everything one might think about humor is in dispute. Only a few negative claims are fairly clear. Does humor always involve feelings of superiority? Probably not. But what properties do objects need in order to be amusing? Most plausibly, humorous objects present non-threatening incongruities. However, not all such incongruities are amusing. So there must be something more. What is the connection between feelings of amusement and laughter? Amusement typically leads to laughter, but not alw…Read more
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901Although we can try to explain why we love, we can never justify our love. Love is neither based on reasons, nor responsive to reasons, nor can it be assessed for normative reasons. Love can be odd, unfortunate, fortuitous, or even sadly lacking, but it can never be appropriate or inappropriate. We may have reasons to act on our love, but we cannot justify our loving feelings. Shakespeare's Bottom is right: "Reason and love keep little company together now-a-days." Indeed, they keep none and the…Read more
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237HumorInternet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2006.According to the standard analysis, humor theories can be classified into three neatly identifiable groups:incongruity, superiority, and relief theories. Incongruity theory is the leading approach and includes historical figures such as Immanuel Kant, Søren Kierkegaard, and perhaps has its origins in comments made by Aristotle in the Rhetoric. Primarily focusing on the object of humor, this school sees humor as a response to an incongruity, a term broadly used to include ambiguity, logical impos…Read more
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774"Introduction" for the Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of LoveIn Christopher Grau & Aaron Smuts (eds.), Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Love, Oxford University Press. pp. 1-23. forthcoming.The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Love offers a wide array of original essays on the nature and value of love. The editors, Christopher Grau and Aaron Smuts, have assembled an esteemed group of thinkers, including both established scholars and younger voices. The volume contains thirty-three essays addressing both issues about love as well as key philosophers who have contributed to the philosophy of love, such as Plato, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, and Murdoch. The topics range from centra…Read more
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3118Art and negative affectPhilosophy Compass 4 (1): 39-55. 2009.Why do people seemingly want to be scared by movies and feel pity for fictional characters when they avoid situations in real life that arouse these same negative emotions? Although the domain of relevant artworks encompasses far more than just tragedy, the general problem is typically called the paradox of tragedy. The paradox boils down to a simple question: If people avoid pain then why do people want to experience art that is painful? I discuss six popular solutions to the paradox: conversio…Read more
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67Review of Simon Critchley, On Humour (review)Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 61 (4): 414-416. 2003.The highlight of Simon Critchley's small book On Humor (2002) is the inclusion of seven beautiful prints by Charles Le Brun at the start of each chapter. Le Brun's captivating drawings are zoomorphic studies of the human face, each in relation to a different animal.
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467The feels good theory of pleasurePhilosophical Studies 155 (2): 241-265. 2011.Most philosophers since Sidgwick have thought that the various forms of pleasure differ so radically that one cannot find a common, distinctive feeling among them. This is known as the heterogeneity problem. To get around this problem, the motivational theory of pleasure suggests that what makes an experience one of pleasure is our reaction to it, not something internal to the experience. I argue that the motivational theory is wrong, and not only wrong, but backwards. The heterogeneity problem …Read more
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111Love and Death: The Problem of ResilienceIn Michael Cholbi (ed.), Immortality and the Philosophy of Death, Rowman & Littlefield. forthcoming.The strongly resilient are able to quickly get over the loss of their beloved. This is not an entirely attractive capacity. In this paper, I argue that it is appropriate to be distressed about the fact that we might, quickly or slowly, get over the death of our loved ones. Moller argues that the principal problem with resilience is that it puts us in a defective epistemological position, one where we are no longer able to appreciate the significance of what we have lost. Although I think this is…Read more
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247Many think that love would be a casualty of free will skepticism. I disagree. I argue that love would be largely unaffected if we came to deny free will, not simply because we cannot shake the attitude, but because love is not chosen, nor do we want it to be. Here, I am not alone; others have reached similar conclusions. But a few important distinctions have been overlooked. Even if hard incompatibilism is true, not all love is equal. Although we have only minimal control over love, it can be mo…Read more
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172Cognitive and Philosophical Approaches to HorrorIn Harry Benshoff (ed.), Blackwell Companion to the Horror Film, Blackwell. forthcoming.Four main issues have occupied center stage in the analytic-cognitivist work on horror: (1) What is horror? (2) What is the appeal of horror? (3) How does it frighten audiences? and, (4) is it irrational to be scared of horror fiction?
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86Helpless Spectators: Suspense in Videogames and FilmText Technology 1 (1): 13-34. 2004.The most surprising conclusion of our analysis is that videogames can be most effective in generating suspense not by highlighting their unique ability to be interactive, but, to the contrary, limiting interactivity at key points, thereby turning players into helpless spectators like those that watch films. Discovering this technique in video games allows us to turn our attention back to film, where we are able to highlight a previously ignored feature of viewer film interaction, namely, helples…Read more
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298Film as Philosophy: In Defense of a Bold ThesisJournal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 67 (3): 409-420. 2009.I argue for a position close to what Paisley Livingston calls the bold thesis of cinema as philosophy. The bold thesis I defend is that films can make innovative, independent philosophical contributions by paradigmatic cinematic means. I clarify the thesis before presenting what Livingston thinks is a fatal problem for any similar position—the problem of paraphrase. As an example in defense of the bold thesis, I offer the "For God and Country" sequence in Sergei Eisenstein’s October (1928). …Read more
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570Wings of Desire: Reflections on the Tedium of ImmortalityFilm & Philosophy (Society for the Philosophic Study of the Contemporary Visual Arts) 13 (1): 137-151. 2008.The question Wings of Desire (Wim Wenders, 1987) forces us to answer is whether we too would be willing to renounce immortality? Or, to put it conversely, would we be wise to exchange our current mortal existence for immortality? If a state of senseless, inefficacious existence is undesirable, the question of the value of immortality becomes one of the conceivably of an alternative to the angels' form of existence. By contemplating the existence of the angels in Wings of Desire, we can see that …Read more
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