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30Replies to Hatzimoysis, Hufendiek and Sievers, Majeed, Gerrans, and WhitingJournal of Philosophy of Emotion 5 (2): 52-61. 2024.The concerns of each commentary are addressed in turn. I clarify and defend the claims of The Emotional Mind with regards to the plausibility of automatic responses to representational content, the distinction between emotions and bodily feelings, the influence of social contexts upon emotional responses, the complex issue of whether emotions are modular or form natural kinds, the nature of pain asymbolia, and the nature of emotional authenticity.
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393Fear of Death and the Will to LiveAustralasian Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.The fear of death resists philosophical attempts at reconciliation. Building on theories of emotion, I argue that we can understand our fear as triggered by a de se mode of thinking about death which comes into conflict with our will to live. The discursive mode of philosophy may help us to avoid the de se mode of thinking about death, but it does not satisfactorily address the problem. I focus instead on the voluntary diminishment of one’s will to live. I argue that we can encourage a natural t…Read more
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421Consciousness, Attention, and the Motivation-Affect SystemJournal of Consciousness Studies 30 (7): 139-163. 2023.It is an important feature of creatures like us that our various motivations compete for control over our behaviour, including mental behaviour such as imagining and attending. In large part, this competition is adjudicated by the stimulation of affect — the intrinsically pleasant or unpleasant aspects of experience. In this paper I argue that the motivation-affect system controls a sub-type of attention called 'alerting attention' to bring various goals and stimuli to consciousness and thereby …Read more
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522Aesthetic Values Are Distal Versions of Practical ValuesJournal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 81 (1): 83-84. 2022.I believe the first thing to say about value is that it is something that we do. We value things. There is no value out there independent of valuing beings. Thi.
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336Imagination, Endogenous Attention, and Mental AgencyPhenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 1 1-21. 2023.This paper develops a mechanistic account of basic mental agency by identifying similarities between two of its major exemplars: endogenous attention and imagination. Five key similarities are identified: i) that both capacities are driven by currently prioritised goals that are either person-level or apt to become person-level. ii) that both deliver their outputs to the working memory iii) that both range across all and only conceptual contents; iv) that both proceed under the guidance of norms…Read more
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7822A case of shared consciousnessSynthese 199 (1-2): 1019-1037. 2020.If we were to connect two individuals’ brains together, how would this affect the individuals’ conscious experiences? In particular, it is possible for two people to share any of their conscious experiences; to simultaneously enjoy some token experiences while remaining distinct subjects? The case of the Hogan twins—craniopagus conjoined twins whose brains are connected at the thalamus—seems to show that this can happen. I argue that while practical empirical methods cannot tell us directly whet…Read more
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51An Interview with Tom CochraneWashington University Review of Philosophy 1 34-40. 2021.3500 word interview with Tom Cochrane discussing his philosophical background, the nature of aesthetic value, the benefits of art, and aestheticism.
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1841The Aesthetic Value of the WorldOxford University Press. 2021.This book defends Aestheticism- the claim that everything is aesthetically valuable and that a life lived in pursuit of aesthetic value can be a particularly good one. Furthermore, in distilling aesthetic qualities, artists have a special role to play in teaching us to recognize values; a critical component of virtue. I ground my account upon an analysis of aesthetic value as ‘objectified final value’, which is underwritten by an original psychological claim that all aesthetic values are distal …Read more
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561Moved by Music AloneBritish Journal of Aesthetics 61 (4): 455-470. 2021.In this paper I present an account of musical arousal that takes into account key demands of formalist philosophers such as Peter Kivy and Nick Zangwill. Formalists prioritise our understanding and appreciation of the music itself. As a result, they demand that any feelings we have in response to music must be directed at the music alone, without being distracted by non-musical associations. To accommodate these requirements I appeal to a mechanism of contagion which I synthesize with the expect…Read more
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567Reason to be CheerfulReview of Philosophy and Psychology 12 (2): 311-327. 2021.This paper identifies a tension between the commitment to forming rationally justified emotions and the happy life. To illustrate this tension I begin with a critical evaluation of the positive psychology technique known as ‘gratitude training’. I argue that gratitude training is at odds with the kind of critical monitoring that several philosophers have claimed is regulative of emotional rationality. More generally, critical monitoring undermines exuberance, an attitude that plays a central rol…Read more
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45Robert Solomon: True to Our Feelings (review)Metapsychology Online Reviews 11. 2007.I review Robert Solomon's last book. He reiterates much of his appraisal theory, but also adds the idea that emotions are strategies.
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33Daniel Kelly: Yuck! The Nature and Moral Significance of Disgust (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 11 (37). 2011.I review Daniel Kelly's 2011 book on disgust. I am convinced by his arguments that disgust should not be appealed to in moral judgement. I am bit more sceptical about the model of disgust itself.
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289On the resistance of the instrumentIn Tom Cochrane, Klaus Scherer & Bernardino Fantini (eds.), The Emotional Power of Music: Multidisciplinary perspectives on musical arousal, expression, and social control. pp. 75-83. 2013.I examine the role that the musical instrument plays in shaping a performer's expressive activity and emotional state. I argue that the historical development of the musical instrument has fluctuated between two key values: that of sharing with other musicians, and that of creatively exploring new possibilities. I introduce 'the mood organ'- a sensor-based computer instrument that automatically turns signals of the wearer's emotional state into expressive music.
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453Group FlowIn Micheline Lesaffre, Pieter-Jan Maes & Marc Leman (eds.), The Routledge Companion of Embodied Music Interaction, Routledge. pp. 133-140. 2017.In this chapter I analyse group flow: a state in which performers report intense interpersonal absorption with the music and each other. I compare group flow to individual flow, and argue that the same essential structure can be discerned. I argue that group flow does not justify an anti-representationalist enactivist interpretation. However, I claim that the cognitive task in which the music is produced is irreducibly collective.
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593Précis: The Emotional Mind: A Control Theory of Affective StatesJournal of the Philosophy of Emotion 5 (2): 1-16. 2024.A summary of The Emotional Mind: A Control Theory of Affective States is presented: I claim that a convincing account of the emotions requires a rethink of how the mind as a whole is structured. I provide this reconceptualization by introducing a fundamental type of mental concept called “valent representation" and then systematically elaborating this fundamental type in stages. In this way, accounts are provided of the various sorts of affective states ranging from pains and pleasures to charac…Read more
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70The Emotional Mind : A Control Theory of Affective StatesCambridge University Press. 2018.In this book, Tom Cochrane develops a new control theory of the emotions and related affective states. Grounded in the basic principle of negative feedback control, his original account outlines a new fundamental kind of mental content called 'valent representation'. Upon this foundation, Cochrane constructs new models for emotions, pains and pleasures, moods, expressive behaviours, evaluative reasoning, personality traits and long-term character commitments. These various states are presented a…Read more
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461No Hugging, No Learning: The Limitations of HumourBritish Journal of Aesthetics 57 (1): 51-66. 2017.I claim that the significance of comic works to influence our attitudes is limited by the conditions under which we find things funny. I argue that we can only find something funny if we regard it as norm-violating in a way that doesn’t make certain cognitive or pragmatic demands upon us. It is compatible with these conditions that humour reinforces our attitude that something is norm-violating. However, it is not compatible with these conditions that, on the basis of finding it funny, we come t…Read more
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373The Music Between Us: Is Music a Universal Language? by Kathleen Marie Higgins (review)Mind 124 (496): 1288-1292. 2015.A review of Kathleen Higgins book.
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813Intrusive Uncertainty in Obsessive Compulsive DisorderMind and Language 32 (2): 182-208. 2017.In this article we examine obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). We examine and reject two existing models of this disorder: the Dysfunctional Belief Model and the Inference‐Based Approach. Instead, we propose that the main distinctive characteristic of OCD is a hyperactive sub‐personal signal of being in error, experienced by the individual as uncertainty about his or her intentional actions (including mental actions). This signalling interacts with the anxiety sensitivities of the individual to…Read more
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620The Double Intentionality of Emotional ExperienceEuropean Journal of Philosophy 25 (4): 1454-1475. 2017.I argue that while the feeling of bodily responses is not necessary to emotion, these feelings contribute significant meaningful content to everyday emotional experience. Emotional bodily feelings represent a ‘state of self’, analysed as a sense of one's body affording certain patterns of interaction with the environment. Recognising that there are two sources of intentional content in everyday emotional experience allows us to reconcile the diverging intuitions that people have about emotional …Read more
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1474Using the persona to express complex emotions in musicMusic Analysis 29 (1-3): 264-275. 2010.This article defends a persona theory of musical expressivity. After briefly summarising the major arguments for this view, it applies persona theory to the issue of whether music can express complex emotions. The expression of jealousy is then discussed by analysis of two examples from Piazzolla and Janacek.
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724Expression and Extended CognitionJournal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 66 (4): 59-73. 2008.I argue for the possibility of an extremely intimate connection between the emotional content of the music and the emotional state of the person who produces that music. Under certain specified conditions, the music may not just influence, but also partially constitute the musician’s emotional state.
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987Music, Emotions and the Influence of the Cognitive SciencesPhilosophy Compass 5 (11): 978-988. 2010.This article reviews some of the ways in which philosophical problems concerning music can be informed by approaches from the cognitive sciences (principally psychology and neuroscience). Focusing on the issues of musical expressiveness and the arousal of emotions by music, the key philosophical problems and their alternative solutions are outlined. There is room for optimism that while current experimental data does not always unambiguously satisfy philosophical scrutiny, it can potentially sup…Read more
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980The emotional experience of the sublimeCanadian Journal of Philosophy 42 (2): 125-148. 2012.The literature on the venerable aesthetic category of the sublime often provides us with lists of sublime phenomena — mountains, storms, deserts, volcanoes, oceans, the starry sky, and so on. But it has long been recognized that what matters is the experience of such objects. We then find that one of the most consistent claims about this experience is that it involves an element of fear. Meanwhile, the recognition of the sublime as a category of aesthetic appreciation implies that attraction, ad…Read more
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843A Simulation Theory of Musical ExpressivityAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 88 (2): 191-207. 2010.This paper examines the causal basis of our ability to attribute emotions to music, developing and synthesizing the existing arousal, resemblance and persona theories of musical expressivity to do so. The principal claim is that music hijacks the simulation mechanism of the brain, a mechanism which has evolved to detect one's own and other people's emotions.
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5511Eight Dimensions for the EmotionsSocial Science Information 48 (3): 379-420. 2009.The author proposes a dimensional model of our emotion concepts that is intended to be largely independent of one’s theory of emotions and applicable to the different ways in which emotions are measured. He outlines some conditions for selecting the dimensions based on these motivations and general conceptual grounds. Given these conditions he then advances an 8-dimensional model that is shown to effectively differentiate emotion labels both within and across cultures, as well as more obscure ex…Read more
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362Mikko Salmela and Christian von Scheve , collective emotions: perspectives from psychology, philosophy, and sociology: Oxford University Press, 2014, 447 pages, ISBN 9780199659180, £55.00 (review)Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 15 (3): 467-473. 2016.Review of OUP volume on collective emotions which provides a taxonomy of the different theories, raising potential objections for each.
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489Joint attention to musicBritish Journal of Aesthetics 49 (1): 59-73. 2009.This paper contrasts individual and collective listening to music, with particular regard to the expressive qualities of music. In the first half of the paper a general model of joint attention is introduced. According to this model, perceiving together modifies the intrinsic structure of the perceptual task, and encourages a convergence of responses to a greater or lesser degree. The model is then applied to music, looking first at the silent listening situation typical to the classical concert…Read more
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90The Emotional Power of Music: Multidisciplinary perspectives on musical arousal, expression, and social control (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2013.How can an abstract sequence of sounds so intensely express emotional states? In the past ten years, research into the topic of music and emotion has flourished. This book explores the relationship between music and emotion, bringing together contributions from psychologists, neuroscientists, musicologists, musicians, and philosophers
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320Costelloe, Timothy M., ed. The Sublime: From Antiquity to the Present. Cambridge University Press, 2012, xiii + 304 pp., 36 b&w illus., $35.95 paper (review)Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 71 (4): 390-392. 2013.Book review
Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
Areas of Specialization
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Philosophy of Mind |
Aesthetics |
Theories of Personal Identity |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Emotions |
Imagination |
Well-Being |