Jesse J. Prinz

This article examines the status of artificial intelligence (AI) as an artistic medium. A definition is proposed according to which a medium is a manipulated grounding for a work’s tangible qualities. AI meets this definition when used in making art, and is, more specifically, characterized as a mediated latent medium. Objections to the thesis that AI is a medium are also addressed. The article then asks what it would be for an AI artwork to exhibit medium specificity. Strong forms of medium essentialism are rejected, but a weaker alternative is proposed, according to which media have characteristic aesthetic potentialities. Focusing on recent generative models, five potentialities are then identified: statistical idealization, digital aberrations, recombination, hypermnesia, and AI automatisms (e.g., prompting). Accentuating these features allows artists to demonstrate that AI is a new, distinctive artistic medium.

Adaptive preferences have been extensively studied in decision theory and feminist political theory, but not in experimental philosophy. In feminist contexts, the term is used to discuss cases in which women seem to accept abusive treatment and other conditions of oppression. According to one class of theories, women who accept abusive behavior are cognitively deficient: irrational, lacking autonomy, or not acting in accordance with their identity. Other theories deny this, saying that under certain conditions, accepting abuse can be a sound response, given available alternatives. We survey lay opinions about a case in which a woman endures domestic violence and find that people often attribute adaptive attitudes and tend to see them as rational, free, and reflective of identity. We also examine lay normative judgments, including options about the right course of action, and the locus of blame, finding, for example, some tendency to blame the victim in such cases. Such attitudes are impacts by gender and political orientation. We also manipulated the cultural setting of our vignette, but found no impact.

Two approaches dominate the literature on the construction of emotions: transitory role theory and the more recent Conceptual Act Theory. We identify two ways in which these approaches would benefit from correction, revision, or further development. First, they tend to downplay the body, insisting that social forces work primarily at a conceptual level. That is, culture is considered to primarily impact the conceptualization of emotion, not emotional embodiment. Second, they tend to neglect the impact social norms have on emotions. We include relevant work in traditions outside philosophy and psychology (sociology, anthropology, and queer theory) that may shed light on the impact of social norms on emotions, as well as the relationship between socialization and embodiment. We propose an account of emotions as constructs that combine sociality and corporeality—an account that understands social norms and bodily responses as interdependent. Our proposal is to understand emotions as constructed via societal norms that materialize in bodily states. This advances the debate on the nature of emotions by integrating different theoretical strands (construction and embodiment), and it also contributes to the emerging literature on emotional injustice by shedding light on the role the social plays, for example, in shaping whose body gets to express which emotions.

Agnes Moors challenges William James’s theory of emotions on multiple grounds. She argues that: James wrongly commits to the view that emotions must have perceptual causes; he wrongly insists that all emotions are embodied, ignoring emotions such as hope and regret; he errs in treating bodily feeling as sufficient for emotions; he cannot account for the “heat” (valence and intensity) of emotions; and he fails to account for emotions’ intentionality. This commentary addresses each of these objections, while also agreeing with Moors that James’s theory needs to be updated. An imperatival theory of emotions is proposed and compared to Moors’ response evaluation theory.

This paper examines the ontological status of images generated through AI-powered platforms such as Midjourney and DALL-E, termed “generative art.” We argue that artworks are functional kinds. In the production of art, there is usually a creator who uses a medium to create a work that is available for appreciation—a sequence we call CMWA. We argue that artworks are artifacts made for appreciation. Generative art often fits this functional characterization, so it is functionally continuous with traditional art at a macro level. At a micro level, there are significant functional differences. With generative art, the boundary between creator, medium, and work are harder to discern because the medium (a computer algorithm) actively contributes to the outcome. This can be regarded as a kind of collaboration, but it differs from traditional art, since the human artist shapes generative art through prompting. We call this “catalytic collaboration”. In addition, rather than simply reflecting the skills, context, and memory of an individual human creator, generative art is informed by the stored records of everything in its vast training corpus. We call this “hypermnesia”. Thus, when we appreciate a work of generative art, we are not focused exclusively on the creative individual. Each work also reflects large swaths of cultural memory. The functional analysis given by the CMWA sequence is, thus, both continuous with and different from traditional art.

Andy Clark has been an agenda-setting figure since the dawn of his career, and, in book after book, he has laid out grand theories that invite his readers to see the human mind in new ways. With each book, Clark delivers a new and exciting vision of how the mind works. His fans can hardly keep up, and each is left wondering which of Clark’s theories to sign up for. Are they progressive stages in one grand narrative? A protracted plea for pluralism? Or a succession of new paradigms that displace their predecessors? Some noted philosophers have early, late, and even middle periods. With Clark, one might ask if each book is a metamorphosis. If so, how do we decide which Clark to follow? This chapter is about that question, and about the broader issue, which it begs: What is a theory of mind?

Numerous neuroimaging results show that brain structures associated with emotion are active when people make moral judgments. But structures associated with cognition are also often active, and imaging results are ostensibly compatible with many models of moral judgment, including models where cognition precedes emotions. This chapter reviews several leading models including the emotions as outputs model, the dual-process model, the emotions as inputs model, and the constitution model, and argues that the constitution model offers the best explanation when various behavioral and neuropsychological results are also considered. This leaves a puzzle about what the cognitive areas of the brain are doing and how activity in these areas relates to moral response. A sentimentalist interpretation of neuroimaging results is offered.

Dennett often argues that consciousness is an illusion, which we should aim to explain away. But his debunking claims are rarely met with approval. This paper provides a strategy for demystifying consciousness, while accepting the force of Dennett's critical project. While Dennett is probably wrong to claim that visual imagery is encoded in mental pictures or linguistic descriptions of such pictures, he's probably right that an adequate phenomenology of visual imagery will preserve the content and structure of the representations employed by subpersonal processes. And while conscious experience is richer than Dennett believes, we often think we are experiencing the world in richer detail than we actually are. But attention is at play wherever we find conscious experience. And an account of conscious conscious experience that begins from this fact—Attention to Intermediate-level Representations—suggests a way of naturalizing qualia that even Dennett could learn to love.

Motivational internalism is often defined as a conceptual thesis about the entailments of moral concepts. It can also be defined as a psychological thesis about the motivational impact of making moral judgments. Treating it this way, this chapter argues that motivational internalism can be defended on empirical grounds. Four empirical arguments are presented. The main argument, which occupies most of the chapter, begins with a defense of sentimentalism: if moral concepts are partially constituted by emotions, then moral judgments will have motivational force. Three other arguments are then presented more programmatically: an argument from behavior in economic games, an argument from cognitive dissonance, and an argument from moral tribalism—the idea that personal identity is linked to the moral values that one has internalized, values that establish membership in a moral community.

Friedrich Nietzsche is sometimes called a moral nihilist, and not without warrant. He wanted to undermine Christian morality, but he did not want to eliminate morality altogether. He wanted to replace existing values with better values. If every moral system is a cultural construction, and none has greater claim to absolute truth, what grounds do we have for saying any one system is better than any other? There are two kinds of moral nihilism. According to the first, all moral systems are empty: the claims they make are false. Error theories of morality are nihilistic in this sense. Morality is an illusion, but moral claims can be true. Our current values seem to be an improvement over the values of the past, and moral humility leads us to hope for continued improvement. If moral truth is shallow, then moral change is not a move forward, but a lateral repositioning in a space of equally acceptable options. This is a nihilism of directionless abundance.

Friedrich Nietzsche's ethical theory has two components: one negative, the other positive. The negative component is his genealogical program. Its primary function is critical and destructive. Nietzsche wanted to undermine deeply held values by exposing their sordid history and base underlying motives. The positive component is captured in Nietzsche's myth of the "bermensch — a being who is capable of living in a world beyond the good and evil dichotomy of contemporary morality. The theme of natural values appears in_On the Genealogy of Morals_, where Nietzsche claims that our current values are reactive, or reactionary. This chapter concedes that we are biologically prone to have certain kinds of values, but rejects the notion that there is an innate morality. It also argues that our biological predispositions do not qualify as moral rules without cultural elaboration. Morality is artificial all the way down, and 'evolutionary ethics" is a myth.

Philosophers are more interested in normative questions rather than descriptive questions such as the origins of moral values. Questioning where our values come from is seen as irrelevant and those making the inquiry are accused of committing genetic fallacy. This chapter reconsiders the assumptions centering on the argument that normative theories are designed to encompass present-day intuitions. Investigating the origin of values can be done through the genealogical method, as shown in this chapter, that supports the idea of moral convictions being the product of social history through justifying examples of Friedrich Nietzsche's historical analyses. The chapter also examines whether it can be used to support skepticism on current moral values and compares it to Nietzsche's overstated usage of genealogy.

Moral variation is explored in this chapter even though some moral philosophers argue that variation has been exaggerated. Alternative opinion from other philosophers is that variations in moral values do not imply variation in moral facts as there can be one true morality despite different moral convictions. This chapter argues that moral relativism is a result of the sensibility theory which is dubbed constructive sentimentalism and although the link between sentimentalist theories and relativism has been observed, the implication has not been studied much by sentimental theorists. This chapter also explores the objections faced by relativism and addresses the concern that moral relativism results in political indifference. Relativism is explained as a coherent doctrine supported by anthropology and which could lead people to reconsider some moral convictions.

The sensibility theory of morals is a subjectivist theory. To some, this is a sufficient reason for rejection. They insist that morality is objective. It is an objective fact that killing innocent people is wrong. Subjectivism loses sight of this. It makes morality too dependent on us. Subjectivists can respond to this objection in one of two ways. One strategy is to deny that objectivity and subjectivity are incompatible. Another is to deny that morality is objective. The former strategy has been more popular, but the latter is more viable. This chapter argues that objectivity and subjectivity are compatible, but that morality is not objective. It surveys leading ethical theories that have defended objectivism in one or another sense. Some of these objectivist theories are compatible with subjectivism, and others are not. This chapter contends that all of them have insurmountable flaws. It concludes by pointing out that a flight from objectivism need not be a flight from realism. There are moral facts; they are just purely subjective facts.

This chapter presents and defends an emotionist theory known as sensibility theory. It argues that sensibility theories can explain some central folk intuitions about the nature of morality. However, sensibility theories face a number of serious objections. In the second part of this chapter, ten objections that can be found in the literature are discussed. It is argued that a properly formulated sensibility theory has resources to overcome each of these. Sensibility theory offers one way of accommodating the evidence that moral judgement is affect-laden. This is one of its main advantages, but it is not the only approach that ties moral judgements to emotions. Emotivism, for example, can boast the same. To motivate the adoption of sensibility theory, we need to show that it has other advantages. One attraction is that sensibility theory accommodates the evidence used to support moral intuitionism without taking on any of the baggage.

There are reasons for thinking that moral ontology and moral judgements both involve emotions essentially. The nature of that involvement remains to be worked out, but there is an important hurdle to face before the project can even begin. Historically, philosophers who invoked emotions in their moral theories also provided detailed, independently motivated accounts of the emotions. All too often, we are told that emotions are central to morality without being told what the emotions really are. Emotionists cannot afford to be silent on this question, because some theories of emotion are difficult to reconcile with their approach to morality. This chapter defends a non-cognitive theory of emotions, which can be reconciled with emotionism. It then presents an overview of the moral emotions, and argues that different moral emotions play different functional roles. It also claims that the moral emotions are not basic. Rather, they are derived from non-moral emotions.

Moral judgements are anything but indifferent and this is exemplified in this chapter through the comparison of asking opinion about capital punishment in which a common answer would be the feeling that it is unjustifiable. If it is turned into the question of one's feeling about trees, the answer would probably not be that one feels they photosynthesize. Ethical theorists, on the other hand, are prepared to reject the contrast as the claim that emotions figure into morality can be defined in various ways. There are two distinct emotionist theses and these are discussed in the present chapter arguing first that identifying moral properties cannot be made without referring to an emotion or class of emotions. Philosophical arguments are considered in favor of emotionism, although the cases presented are not intended to be demonstrative proof that the ontology and epistemology of morals can be implicated by emotions.

Morality is a normative domain concerned with how the world ought to be, not how it is. The investigation of morality seems to require a methodology that differs from the methods used in the sciences. According to David Hume, there is no way to deduce a statement that has prescriptive force (a statement that expresses an unconditional obligation) from statements that are purely descriptive. No facts about how the world is configured entail that you ought to refrain from stealing or killing or blowing up buildings. Hume's Law is appealing because it makes morality seem special; moral truths are unlike the cool truths of science. But, on one reading, Hume's Law is a recipe for moral nihilism. By insulating moral truths from scientific methods, it may imply that morality is supernatural. If so, morality should go the way of spirits and fairies.

Jesse Prinz begins this chapter by noting that existentialism is often regarded as a philosophy of radical freedom—leading existentialists emphasized the human capacity for choice and self-creation. At the same time, a countercurrent in existentialist thought calls freedom into question. This countercurrent draws attention to the ways in which behavior is determined by forces outside of our control. This is especially vivid in the moral domain. Borrowing a term from phenomenology, Prinz calls this phenomenon “sedimentation.” After tracing the idea of sedimentation and related concepts in existentialist thought, with special emphasis on the moral domain, Prinz argues that recent work in neuroscience, psychology, and other social sciences add support to the thesis that we are vulnerable to sedimentation. He concludes by considering various tactics against sedimentation that have been proposed, arguing that some of the more prominent historical tactics are problematic, while also pointing to some alternatives.

There are some striking similarities in medium, form, content, and emotional impact between canonical works of art and porn films. Nevertheless, the latter are rarely regarded as art. This chapter explains this ‘paradox of porn’ by arguing that porn films do not permit the taking of an aesthetic stance because they lack any aspiration to excellence in their effort to instantiate characteristic features of art. Market forces are likely to be blamed for this since pornographers, in order to make money, have to cater to the wishes and expectations of their target audience. Hence, they avoid creative risk-taking and opt instead for reliable tricks and formats that trigger without delay, surprise, or ambiguity the strong, simple emotional response of sexual arousal. According to this chapter, market forces also help to explain what one could label the second paradox of porn: the fact that very few art films have strong pornographic content, while one would expect this sort of content to fit perfectly with the common ambition of these films to evoke and explore human emotions and moral dilemmas in all their intensity and extremity.

Beauty, and other aesthetic qualities, are often analysed in terms of emotional responses to artworks. But when we see a work as beautiful, it does not feel like we have two separate and sequenced psychological states: the perception and the emotional response. Rather, beauty seems to be part of what we see—part of what is given in perception. How then can beauty be an emotional response to seeing? Drawing on work in cognitive science, the chapter describes how emotions can interact bidirectionally with perception. This, it is argued, gives rise to a kind of emotional infusion of perception, wherein the two seem phenomenally inseparable. The perception of aesthetic qualities such as beauty may be a case of emotionally infused perception.

In this chapter I ask whether empathy is necessary for morality. This question can be disambiguated in several ways. Is empathy necessary for making moral judgments? Is empathy necessary for developing a moral sense? Is empathy necessary for moral motivation? Is empathy normatively necessary‐‐i.e., should we necessarily try to cultivate an empathy-based moral psychology? I argue that the answer to each of these questions is no. Empathy is less integral to morality, than some have thought, and potentially an impediment to moral motivation. Other moral emotions are more important.

What happens in the mind when we judge that an artwork is good? A growing body of evidence from neuroscience and psychology suggests that such appraisals have an emotional basis. To judge an artwork as good is to have a positive emotional response towards it. Against this, one might object that some good works evoke negative emotions or lack emotional content entirely. To address this worry, we must distinguish two stages of appraisal: a response stage in which the work is perceived, analyzed, and affectively experienced, and an assessment stage in which these responses are used to decide whether the work is good. A positive emotion underwrites positive assessment. But which emotion? There are a number of competing candidates (pleasure, admiration, interest, etc.), but here a case is made for the conclusion that positive appraisal is experienced as wonder, a basic emotion that has been neglected in recent research.

This paper argues that all cognitive phenomenology can be reduced to sensory phenomenology, including mental imagery and inner speech. The position is called restrictivism and it contrasts with expansionism, which asserts that there is proprietary phenomenology associated with cognition. Four phenomena that seem to demand expansion are considered and rejected: conceptual phenomenology, imageless thoughts, languageless thoughts, and attitude differentiation. The paper also sketches a case against expansionism, and concludes that restrictivism is both immune to standard objections and more plausible than expansionism overall.

This chapter surveys empirical evidence linking emotions to moral judgments and describes several processing models that are consistent with these data. It then considers the question of which particular emotions are involved in moral judgment, and suggests a way to distinguish moral and non-moral emotions that does not require a cognitive theory of what emotions are. Finally, the chapter discusses two particularly important moral emotions—anger and guilt—describing the conditions under which they arise and their distinctive contributions to moral motivation.

Evaluative judgments imply positive or negative regard. But there are different ways in which something can be positive or negative. How do we tell them apart? According to Evaluative Sentimentalism, different evaluations (e.g., dangerousness vs. offensiveness) are grounded on different emotions (e.g., fear vs. anger). If this is the case, evaluation differentiation requires emotional awareness. Here, we test this hypothesis by looking at alexithymia, a deficit in emotional awareness consisting of problems identifying, describing, and thinking about emotions. The results of Study 1 suggest that high alexithymia is not only related to problems distinguishing emotions, but also to problems distinguishing evaluations. Study 2 replicated this latter effect after controlling for individual differences in attentional impulsiveness and reflective reasoning, and found that reasoning makes an independent contribution to evaluation differentiation. These results suggest that emotional sensibilities play an irreducible role in evaluative judgment while affording a role for reasoning.