Eva-Maria Düringer

It is often claimed that we cannot desire fictional states of affairs when we are aware of the fact that we cannot interact with fictional worlds. But the experiences we have when we read an engaging novel, watch a horror film or listen to a gripping story are certainly very similar to desires: we hope that the lovers get together, we want the criminal to get caught, we long for the hero to make his fortune. My goal in this paper is to outline the reasons why we might find it difficult to call these experiences genuine desires and to argue that they are not good reasons. In the second section I look at three reasons in particular: first, the reason that, if we genuinely desired fictional outcomes, we would act in silly or dangerous ways; second, the reason that, if we genuinely desired fictional outcomes, we would change plot lines if we had the chance, which in fact, however, we would not; and third, the reason that, if we genuinely desired fictional outcomes, we would not think it impossible to interact with fictional worlds, which, however, we do. I will dismiss the first two reasons right away: depending on how we interpret the first reason, either it does not have much weight at all, because we have many desires we never act on, or it rests on a functionalist definition of desires that wrongly takes it to be the functional role of desires to bring about action. I will dismiss the second reason by arguing that, if we desire a particular fictional outcome that we could bring about by changing the plot line, whether or not we would do it turns on our assessment of the cost of interference; and this, in turn, depends on the perceived quality of the literature. There is nothing that speaks against taking both the desire for a particular fictional outcome and the desire for a work of literature to remain what it is as genuine desires. I turn to possible ways of dealing with the third and strongest reason in the third section. The claim that, if I desire that p, I must not think that there is nothing I could possibly do to bring it about that p, is plausible. And of course, I do think that there is nothing I could possibly do to bring about a fictional state of affairs. I will argue that there are three possible ways of dealing with this problem. The first is to point to partners in crime such as the desire that one is reunited with a loved one who has recently passed away. I take these to be genuine and ordinary desires, even though they are accompanied by thoughts, indeed agonising thoughts, that there is nothing we could possibly do to bring about the desired end. Secondly, I will look at Maria Alvarez’s recent account of desires as multi-track dispositions. Alvarez claims that desires are dispositions not only to actions, but also to certain thoughts, feelings, and expressive behaviours and that they need to have had at least one manifestation in order to exist. Modifying this view a little, I argue that desires need to have manifested at least once in action preparations and show how, on this picture, the thought that I can do nothing to bring about the desired end is not in unbearable tension with the existence of the desire. Finally, I will point to the distinction between physical and metaphysical possibility and argue that, even if we accept the claim that a mental attitude cannot be a desire if it is accompanied by the thought that there is nothing one could possibly do to bring about the desired end, then this is only a problem for desires about fictional states of affairs if we think that metaphysical possibility is at play. However, there is no problem for desires about fictional states of affairs if they are accompanied by thoughts about the physical impossibility of bringing them about. I begin the paper by describing in the first section how desires enter into the controversies surrounding the classic Paradox of Fiction, which is the puzzle about whether and how we can have emotions about fictional characters, and by providing some examples designed to feed the intuition that we do, indeed, have genuine desires about fictional states of affairs.

Should we try to understand ourselves better? It seems like a good idea, not least if we want to try to improve morally. Iris Murdoch, however, disagrees. If we want to improve morally, we should be less self-occupied, not more. Introspection tends to lead attentive moral energy, which should be directed outwards, back towards the self. For the few instances in which self-knowledge seems to be morally required, Silvia Caprioglio Panizza sketches four ways of gaining self-knowledge that a Murdochian can easily allow: observing our public behaviour, seeing ourselves through the eyes of others, comparing our perception of objects to the perceptions of others, and acquiring knowledge about our mental states through their transparency. The author will show that these four ways cover a lot of ground, but not all the ground necessary. Introspection must be employed on some occasions. In order not to trip into the pitfalls of self-obsession that Murdoch rightly warns of, the author argues that we should apply a filter to our introspection: the filter of second or third personal loving attention.

The last five years have seen a welcome rise in philosophical research on suffering. In this paper I will introduce the main new proposals and point out their respective weaknesses. All accounts focus on an important aspect of suffering, but each one is too narrow. I will sketch an account of suffering as being forced to endure the unendurable, based on Simone Weil's writings. I will argue that not only does this account manage to encompass the important aspects of suffering emphasised by current research, but that it much more plausibly brings out the ethical dangers, such as seeking consolations in fabricated narratives of meaning, and the value of suffering, such as enabling the mind to make unfiltered contact with reality.

In this comment we take up two points made by Douglas Hollan in his article “Emerging Issues in the Cross-Cultural Study of Empathy,” and discuss their possible philosophical implications. Hollan‘s concept of complex empathy may give rise to the idea that we can learn about other people’s beliefs via empathy, which is something we do not believe is possible. Furthermore, Hollan’s description of possible negative effects of empathy, such as manipulations of a person on the basis of knowledge about their emotions, might pose a problem for proponents of care ethics, who generally start from the assumption that empathy fosters altruistic behavior.

Some recent theories of emotion propose that emotions are perceptions of value laden situations and thus provide us with epistemic access to values. In this paper I take up Mark Wynn’s application of this theory to religious experience and try to argue that his McDowell-inspired account of intentional emotions leads to limitations for the justificatory force of religious experiences and to difficult questions about the metaphysical status of the object of religious experiences: if emotions and religious experiences are largely similar, then, just as emotions, religious experiences cannot justify beliefs about the existence of objects, but merely beliefs about certain qualities they might have. Also, if emotions and religious experiences are largely similar, then, just as the objects of emotions, the object of religious experience turns out to be essentially mind-dependent.

Being understanding is a moral virtue. But what exactly is it that an understanding person does excellently? And what exactly makes it a moral virtue, rather than an intellectual one? Stephen Grimm suggests that an understanding person judges other people’s moral failings accurately without being too permissive or too judgemental. I argue against this view and develop an alternative one. First I demonstrate that judging other people’s failures accurately is neither necessary nor sufficient for being understanding and that Grimm leaves the moral nature of being understanding underexplored. I then draw on a related discussion on the moral virtue of open-mindedness and argue that a virtue is a moral one when it is a corrective to selfish and other weak inclinations that pull us away from feeling and acting as the situation demands. In order to fill in what this means in the case of being understanding, I turn to Iris Murdoch’s notion of attention. Being understanding, I argue, is the virtue of appropriately attending to others who are in a difficult situation.