Benedict Smith

What is a “sense of foreshortened future?” A phenomenological study of trauma, trust, and time

One of the symptoms of trauma is said to be a “sense of foreshortened future.” Without further qualification, it is not clear how to interpret this. In this paper, we offer a phenomenological account of what the experience consists of. To do so, we focus on the effects of torture. We describe how traumatic events, especially those that are deliberately inflicted by other people, can lead to a loss of “trust” or “confidence” in the world. This undermines the intelligibility of one’s projects, cares, and commitments, in a way that amounts to a change in the structure of temporal experience. The paper concludes by briefly addressing the implications of this for how we respond to trauma, as well as offering some remarks on the relationship between trauma and psychosis.

Analogy in moral deliberation: the role of imagination and theory in ethics

This paper develops themes addressed in an article by Eric Wiland in the Journal of Medical Ethics 2000;26:466–8, where he aims to contribute to the debate concerning the moral status of abortion, and to emphasise the importance of analogies in moral argument. In the present paper I try to secure more firmly a novel understanding of why analogy is an essential component in the attempt to justify moral beliefs. I seek to show how analogical argument both encapsulates and exercises the notions of rationality and imagination and that the construction, development, and comparison of analogies fundamentally underpins ethical argument. In so doing, it enables us to adopt imaginative and ethically illuminating perspectives but in a manner that does not relinquish any claims to intellectual rigour. I present a critique of a brand of “moral particularism” by showing how it cannot, if construed in a certain way, adequately conceive of how we use analogies and imaginary cases in ethics. Although such a particularism is thus impotent with regard to ethical debate, I show that the wider motivation behind particularism that can be extracted is of clear relevance and importance to medical practitioners.

Particularism and the Space of Moral Reasons

Characterizing Moral Particularism Particularism and Subjectivity Perception and the Myth of the Moral Given Moral Judgement Moral Phenomenology The Space of Moral Reasons Bibliography Index

Reasons, Responsibility, and Fiction

Cartwright’s article considers two candidate theories of responsibility and examines their relative adequacy by assessing them in light of our reactions to a dramatic and horrifying set of circumstances. Cartwright initiates the dialectic by noting how our intuitions are in conflict. For instance, although we are instantly horrified by the murders Harris perpetrated, we might naturally experience quite different emotions and reach different judgments when we reflect on the miserable and pathetic nature of Harris’s upbringing and his experiences in adult life. Although we might think that Harris is responsible in a very clear sense for murdering his victims, we might feel also that his actions were the outcome of factors beyond his control, and for which he cannot be held responsible. In short, we think that Harris is and is not responsible. Overall, Cartwright’s aim is to: “illuminate both the theory and practice of holding people responsible” (2006, 144). In the end, what is illuminated is that “the practice of responsibility unavoidably depends on one sort of pretence or another” (2006, 155). Although the two theories that Cartwright has chosen to consider differ in various ways, they share a common feature of being, in some sense, “fictitious.” The article examines in some detail the two theories of responsibility and succeeds in providing insight to some potentially intricate material. In this brief commentary, I cannot address adequately the variety of interesting aspects and implications of Cartwright’s paper. I do, however, offer some critical interpretation of Cartwright’s construal of the theories under consideration, and also say a little about the status and role of fiction in Cartwright’s analysis.

Naturalism, Experience, and Hume’s ‘Science of Human Nature’

Abstract A standard interpretation of Hume’s naturalism is that it paved the way for a scientistic and ‘disenchanted’ conception of the world. My aim in this paper is to show that this is a restrictive reading of Hume, and it obscures a different and profitable interpretation of what Humean naturalism amounts to. The standard interpretation implies that Hume’s ‘science of human nature’ was a reductive investigation into our psychology. But, as Hume explains, the subject matter of this science is not restricted to introspectively accessible mental content and incorporates our social nature and interpersonal experience. Illuminating the science of human nature has implications for how we understand what Hume means by ‘experience’ and thus how we understand the context of his epistemological investigations. I examine these in turn and argue overall that Hume’s naturalism and his science of man do not simply anticipate a disenchanted conception of the world.

The Space of Moral Reasons

Sellars suggests that a characterization of knowledge that underlies the Myth of the Given, in his sense, can be avoided by ‘placing’ knowledge in the space of reasons. The idea that there can be states of awareness the having of which does not presuppose knowledge, learning, or the possession of concepts which at the same time are able to provide justification is not coherent.1 The image of the space of reasons is introduced by Sellars partly as a way to maintain that knowledge can be adequately understood only in a normative context. The context incorporates the sense in which placing episodes or states within it, involves the knower being justified or being able to justify what they say. It is distinctive and contrasts with other ways in which we make things intelligible, including perhaps other states or episodes. According to McDowell, we sometimes make phenomena intelligible by placing them in a network of intrinsically non-rational relations; the kind of relations that unify phenomena as conforming to laws of nature, for instance. The space of reasons, by contrast, is a domain which involves justificatory relations, and is one of the ways in which we make things (ourselves, for instance) intelligible as being sensitive to, asking for, and providing, reasons.

Perception and the Myth of the Moral Given

Particularism often incorporates a perceptual model of moral knowledge. McKeever and Ridge suggest that this is partly because moral knowledge is often seemingly unlike rule-governed activities such as following a recipe, and that a natural way of describing our moral experience and the justification of moral judgements is in perceptual terms (McKeever and Ridge, 2006, p.76). We see that Robert is cruel, or that a certain action is kind, just as we see that the tree is there. The thought is that there need be no principles which serve to rationalize our moral perceptions or constitute the basis of inferences to moral knowledge. Rather, moral knowledge is enjoyed through exercising an awareness which does not need to be articulated by invoking principles.1 In a stronger version, such knowledge cannot be articulated in a principled way. The strong version raises an immediate concern: if this sort of bald perceptualism were true, then in what sense can the relevant sort of knowledge be articulated? The worry is that it might be very difficult to make sense of how such knowledge is shared — how it is passed on to children, for example.

Characterizing Moral Particularism

Moral particularism is becoming one of the most important topics in contemporary moral theory. Although there are reasons to think that the roots of particularism are very ancient, the position has been placed firmly at the forefront of recent philosophy primarily through the work of Jonathan Dancy (for example, 1993, 2004), who cites as inspiration the writings of John McDowell (Dancy, 1993, p. xii).1 There is no settled way to characterize moral particularism, and this is partly because of the variety of considerations which explicitly support or can be interpreted as endorsing the position. Particularism is sometimes characterized as the source, and sometimes as the consequence, of commitments to theses about the relation between ethics, mind and world and there are an increasing number of nuanced qualifications and distinctions geared to defend or criticize particularism. Despite the wide interest that it now commands, the debate over particularism has recently been described as enjoying a well-earned ‘reputation for obscurity’, and that it ‘has been thought by some to be a refuge for those with patience for the murky’ (Schroeder, 2009, pp. 568, 578).2 However, working through the problems and prospects of particularism need not lead to a dialectic of ever-decreasing circles. In fact, and as I hope to demonstrate, I think the opposite is true.

Particularism and Subjectivity

Although according to moral particularism, principles need not be in themselves metaphysically or rationally dubious, the order of priority between principle and particular runs from the latter to the former. Thus, whatever moral principles exist, they ‘are learnt in and from particular cases’ (Dancy, 1985a, p.151), and it is also suggested that an agent who is in possession of a ‘large list of principles … [could be] at an advantage when coming to a decision in a particular case’ (Dancy, 1985a, p.150). Notwithstanding the admission that principles can be learnt, and it can be a good thing to learn them from the point of view of moral reasoning, the role of principles is nevertheless highly restricted. Recall from Chapter 1 §1.4 that ‘a moral principle amounts to a reminder of the sort of importance that a property can have in suitable circumstances’ (Dancy, 1985a, p.150).

Traditional Moral Knowledge and Experience of the World

Abstract MacIntyre shares with others, such as John McDowell, a broad commitment in moral epistemology to the centrality of tradition and both regard forms of enculturation as conditions of moral knowledge. Although MacIntyre is critical of the thought that moral reasons are available only to those whose experience of the world is conceptually articulated, he is sympathetic to the idea that the development of subjectivity involves the capacity to appreciate external moral demands. This paper critically examines some aspects of MacIntyre’s account of how knowledge is related to tradition, and suggests ways in which the formation of moral subjectivity involves the ability to experience the world.