•  6
    Carnivore Minds: Who These Fearsome Creatures Really Are
    Journal of Animal Ethics 9 (2): 229-231. 2019.
  •  83
    Raising the Bar in the Justification of Animal Research
    Journal of Animal Ethics 5 (1). 2015.
    Animal ethics committees (AECs) appeal to utilitarian principles in their justification of animal experiments. Although AECs do not grant rights to animals, they do accept that animals have moral standing and should not be unnecessarily harmed. Although many appeal to utilitarian arguments in the justification of animal experiments, I argue that AECs routinely fall short of the requirements needed for such justification in a variety of ways. I argue that taking the moral status of animals seriou…Read more
  •  61
    A Critique of the Cultural Defense of Animal Cruelty
    Journal of Animal Ethics 9 (2): 184-198. 2019.
    I argue that cultural practices that harm animals are not morally defensible: Tradition cannot justify cruelty. My conclusion applies to all such practices, including ones that are long-standing, firmly entrenched, or held sacred by their practitioners. Following Mary Midgley, I argue that cultural practices are open to moral scrutiny, even from outsiders. Because animals have moral status, they may not be harmed without good reason. I argue that the importance of religious or cultural rituals t…Read more
  •  21
    Animal Rights and African Ethics: Congruence or Conflict?
    Journal of Animal Ethics 7 (2): 175-182. 2017.
    In his new book Animals and African Ethics, Kai Horsthemke examines whether an African morality can be extended to include animal rights. He argues that the African ethical systems of ubuntu and ukama, because they are anthropocentric at heart, do not adequately make space for animal rights. In his defense of animal rights, Horsthemke responds to arguments claiming that there is a difference between racism and speciesism, and that the latter is morally justifiable even though the former is not. …Read more
  • Poetic Faith and Prosaic Concerns
    Dissertation, Rutgers the State University of New Jersey - New Brunswick. 2000.
    This dissertation examines our emotional responses to works of fictional literature. It begins with the examination of a puzzle concerning our ability to have cognitive-type emotions, such as pity, for fictional characters. Cognitive emotions require the holding of certain beliefs regarding their intentional objects, beliefs that seem lacking in the case of fictional characters. And yet we are able to feet certain cognitive emotions towards fictional entities. The solution that is posed and exam…Read more
  •  26
  • Tragedy and Reparation
    In Pedro Alexis Tabensky (ed.), The Positive Function of Evil, Palgrave-macmillan. 2009.
    The Kleinian psychoanalyst Hanna Segal argues for the reparative nature of art, and especially of the genre of classical tragedy. According to Kleinian theory, healthy psychological development requires that early infantile aggressive and destructive emotions are worked through; such “working through” is necessary for the development of conscience, for feelings of empathy, as well as for cognitive development. It is also a necessary condition for creative activity. Segal examines the roots of…Read more
  •  21
    Acting on Phantasy and Acting on Desire
    South African Journal of Philosophy 30 (2): 132-142. 2011.
    According to Davidson, an agent S acts for a reason if S has a pro-attitude towards actions of a certain kind, and if S believes that her action is of that kind. Reasons not only explain actions, but they also justify them. Given this account of rational action, how do we explain what happens when an agent acts irrationally? Psychoanalysis seems to explain irrational behaviour by extending the domain of rational explanation into the unconscious, and Davidson himself admits that many of the reaso…Read more
  •  48
    Poetic faith and prosaic concerns. A defense of “suspension of disbelief”
    South African Journal of Philosophy 21 (3): 190-199. 2002.
    This paper defends a version of “suspension of disbelief” in an analysis of the problem concerning our emotional responses to fictional characters. The paper begins with an analysis of the issues, as raised initially by Colin Radford. It then offers an examination of Coleridge's notion of the suspension of disbelief. It is argued that a developed version of this concept provides a solution to Radford's problem. The concept is defended against possible objections. Finally, its psychological plaus…Read more
  •  72
    Tragic Katharsis and Reparation: A Perspective on Aristotle's Poetics
    South African Journal of Philosophy 28 (1): 13-24. 2009.
    What Aristotle meant by katharsis has tantalised philosophers, psychologists, and literary critics alike for centuries - from metaphors of purgation, purification and ritual cleansing, to claims that katharsis is not an experience of the audience but a property of the play1, a release of feeling, or a kind of pleasure 2. Some authors, such as Daniels and Scully3, even deny that katharsis is essentially an aspect of the emotional experiences of an audience. This paper will provide an attempt at g…Read more
  •  18
    Do we weep for Cordelia?
    South African Journal of Philosophy 22 (3): 267-275. 2003.
    'It is ... exactly because Hecuba is nothing to us that her sorrows are so suitable a motive for a tragedy.' Oscar Wilde Much of the contemporary debate concerning the nature and role of fictive emotions has argued that we do feel garden-variety emotions for fictional characters; the puzzle has been to account for this, given our knowledge of their fictional status. In this paper I argue that many of the emotional responses we have towards fictional characters are nothing like the emotions we fe…Read more
  •  65
    Projective Properties and Expression in Literary Appreciation
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 68 (2): 143-153. 2010.
    The paper defends Wollheim’s account of aesthetic expressive perception by showing that it may fruitfully be extended to artistic genres other than painting. The paper hopes to show the richness of Wollheim’s theory of expressive projection as an account of aesthetic perception. In investigating the application of Wollheim’s account of artistic expression to literature, I shall illustrate how understanding expression as the result of the projective activity of the writer is a useful way of und…Read more
  •  30
    Harnessing the Imagination
    Contemporary Aesthetics 12. 2014.
    Contemporary philosophical discussion on the nature of the imagination has been influenced by recent empirical work in cognitive science. Our imaginative and emotional engagement with works of fiction has been explained by appealing to the similarities between our ordinary cognitive functioning and the workings of our imagination. Believing and imagining, it is argued, are governed by a “single code.” I argue against this claim, and suggest that our imagination – and in particular our literary…Read more
  •  206
    The poetry and the pity: Hume's account of tragic pleasure
    British Journal of Aesthetics 41 (4): 411-424. 2001.
    I defend Hume's account of tragic pleasure against various objections. I examine his account of the emotions in order to clarify his "conversion theory". I also argue that Hume does not give us a theory of tragedy as an aesthetic genre, but rather elucidates the felt experience of a particular work of tragedy. I offer a partial reading of King Lear by way of illustration. Finally, I suggest that the experiences of aesthetic pleasure, and aesthetic sadness, share certain qualities. "Tragic …Read more
  •  151
    Hume’s Aesthetic Standard
    Hume Studies 38 (2): 183-200. 2012.
    In his famous essay “Of the Standard of Taste,” Hume seeks to reconcile two conflicting intuitions—one affirming the subjectivity and variety of taste and the other acknowledging the existence of an artistic standard that is both based on taste and has stood the test of time—by postulating “ideal critics”1 who can serve as the arbiters of taste. However, because philosophers disagree about the role of the ideal critics themselves, instead of settling the matter, Hume’s attempt at reconciliation …Read more
  •  47
    Simulation and irrationality
    Philosophical Papers 34 (1): 25-44. 2005.
    In this paper, I hope to show how a recent theory in the philosophy of mind concerning how we ‘read’ the minds of others – namely, Heal’s version of simulation theory – is consistent with the view that the kind of understanding we bring to bear on the irrational is different in kind from the way we understand one another in the course of everyday life. I shall attempt to show that Heal’s version of simulation theory (co-cognition) is to be favoured over its rival ‘theory theories’ in the light o…Read more
  •  69
    Wishful thinking and the unconscious: A reply to Gouws
    South African Journal of Philosophy 24 (1): 14-21. 2005.
    This paper argues against the view that the Freudian unconscious can be understood as an extension of ordinary belief-desire psychology. The paper argues that Freud’s picture of the mind challenges the paradigm of folk psychology, as it is understood by much contemporary philosophy of psychology and cognitive science. The dynamic unconscious postulated by psychoanalysis operates according to rules and principles which are distinct in kind from those rules that organise rational and conscious …Read more