The authority of pleasure

The aim of the paper is to reassess the prospects of a widely neglected affective conception of the aesthetic evaluation and appreciation of art. On the proposed picture, the aesthetic evaluation and appreciation of art are non-contingently constituted by a particular kind of pleasure. Artworks that are valuable qua artworks merit, deserve, and call for a certain pleasure, the same pleasure that reveals (or at least purports to reveal) them to be valuable in the way that they are, and constitutes their aesthetic evaluation and appreciation. This is why and how art is non-contingently related to pleasure. Call this, the Affective View. While I don’t advance conclusive arguments for the Affective View in this paper, I aim to reassess its prospects by (1) undermining central objections against it, (2) dissociating it from hedonism about the value of artworks (the view that this value is grounded in, and explained by, its possessors’ power to please), and (3) introducing some observations on the practice of art in support of it. Given that the objections I discuss miss their target, and given the observations in support of it, I conclude that the Affective View is worth serious reconsideration

Intuitive and Counterintuitive Morality

Recent work in the cognitive science of morality has been taken to show that moral judgment is largely based on immediate intuitions and emotions. However, according to Greene’s influential dual process model, deliberative processing not only plays a significant role in moral judgment, but also favours a distinctive type of content—a broadly utilitarian approach to ethics. This chapter argues that this proposed tie between process and content is based on conceptual errors, and on a misinterpretation of the empirical evidence. Drawing on some of the author’s own empirical research, the chapter will argue so-called “utilitarian” judgments in response to trolley cases often have little to do with concern for the greater good, and may actually express antisocial tendencies. A more general lesson of this argument is that much of current empirical research in moral psychology is based on a far too narrow understanding of intuition and deliberation.</p

Patronesses and "mothers" of Roman collegia

This paper studies the meaning and function of the titles "patroness" and "mother" of collegia in Italy and the Latin-speaking provinces of the Roman Empire in the Wrst three centuries ce. It is investigated why some collegia co-opted female patrons or appointed "mothers." What was expected from these women and was there any diVerence between a "mother" and a patroness of a collegium? On the basis of epigraphic evidence it is argued that patrona collegii and mater collegii were no empty titles but denoted distinct functions exercised by diVerent classes of women. Whereas patronesses were, as a rule, outsiders to the collegium they patronized, "mothers" were mostly social climbers from within the ranks of the collegia. Though both types of women acted on behalf of the collegia, they did so in a diVerent way. Moreover, they were honored diVerently. Collegia, therefore, had good reasons to distinguish between the titles they gave them