Although widely used across psychology, economics, and philosophy, the concept of effort is rarely ever defined. This article argues that the time is ripe to look for an explicit general definition of effort, makes some proposals about how to arrive at this definition, and suggests that a force-based approach is the most promising. Section 1 presents an interdisciplinary overview of some chief research axes on effort, and argues that few, if any, general definitions have been proposed so far. Section 2 argues that such a definition is now needed and proposes a basic methodology to arrive at it, whose first step is to make explicit the various tacit assumptions about effort made across sciences and ordinary thinking. Section 3 unearths 4 different conceptions of effort from research on effort so far: primitive-feelings accounts, comparator-based accounts, resource-based accounts and force-based accounts. It is then argued that the first 2 kinds of accounts, although interesting in their own right, are not strictly speaking about effort. Section 4 considers the 2 most promising general approaches to efforts: resource-based and force-based accounts. It argues that these accounts are not only compatible but actually extensionally equivalent. This notwithstanding, it explains why force-based accounts should be regarded are more fundamental than resource-based accounts.
This paper defends the view that Newtonian forces are real, symmetrical and non‐causal relations. First, I argue that Newtonian forces are real; second, that they are relations; third, that they are symmetrical relations; fourth, that they are not species of causation. The overall picture is anti‐Humean to the extent that it defends the existence of forces as external relations irreducible to spatio‐temporal ones, but is still compatible with Humean approaches to causation (and others) since it denies that forces are a species of causation.
Effort and the feeling of effort play important roles in many theoretical discussions, from perception to self-control and free will, from the nature of ownership to the nature of desert and achievement. A crucial, overlooked distinction within the philosophical and scientific literatures is the distinction between theories that seek to explain effort and theories that seek to explain the feeling of effort. Lacking a clear distinction between these two phenomena makes the literature hard to navigate. To advance in the unification and development of this area, this article provides an overview of the main theories of the nature of effort and the nature of the feeling of effort, and then discusses how efforts and their feelings are related. Two key takeaways emerge. First, there is widespread agreement that efforts are goal-directed actions. Second, one of the main philosophical issues to be decided is whether feelings of effort should be defined by reference to efforts (effortfirst approach), or whether efforts are defined by reference to the feeling of effort (feeling-first approach).Research on effort is as abundant as it is scattered. First, literatures on different kinds of efforts remain largely isolated from one another; for instance, works on cognitive efforts, on the one hand, and on physical efforts on the other, rarely overlap. Second, efforts cut across many research areas (psychology, exercise sciences, economics, philosophy…) which pursue different goals and are based on different conceptual frameworks and terminologies. Efforts are sometimes approached in decision-theoretic terms, in mechanistic terms, in cognitive terms, in physiological terms, etc. This renders interdisciplinary integration of research on effort challenging. Third, integration of research on effort is hampered by the multiplicity of definitions of the term, which often remain tacit or inchoate. Few attempts have been made so far at mapping existing definitions (Massin, 2017;Steele, 2020;von Kriegstein, 2017). Fourth, the question of the relation between efforts and their feelings is
What is the contrary of pleasure? "Pain" is one common answer. This paper argues that pleasure instead has two natural contraries: unpleasure and hedonic indifference. This view is defended by drawing attention to two often-neglected concepts: the formal relation of polar opposition and the psychological state of hedonic indifference. The existence of mixed feelings, it is argued, does not threaten the contrariety of pleasure and unpleasure.What is the contrary of pleasure? "Pain" is one common answer. This paper argues that pleasure instead has two contraries: unpleasure and hedonic indifference. This view is defended by drawing attention to two often-neglected concepts: the formal relation of polar opposition and the psychological state of hedonic indifference, here called "indolence". Section 1 introduces the concepts of pleasure, pleasantness, contrariety, and contradiction, and argues that the contradictories of pleasures do not constitute a natural kind. Section 2 introduces the concept of polar opposition and argues that the real polar opposite of pleasure is unpleasure. Section 3 maintains that indolence is the neutral opposite of pleasure and argues (i) that indolences do exist, (ii) that they are sui generis episodes, and (iii) that they do not necessarily stand directly in the middle of the pleasure/unpleasure continuum. Section 4 addresses an objection to the project of identifying the contraries of pleasure, to the effect that mixed feelings entail that pleasure and unpleasure are independent orthogonal dimensions of experience.
The problem was first noted by Aristotle (De Anima,. Sensory modalities, Aristotle argued, are to be individuated by their intentional object. The difficulty, however, is that prima facie tactile objects do not constitute a natural class. Let us call the proper object of a sensory modality, the entity that we directly perceive through this modality only; and its primary object, the entity that we directly perceive through it as a matter of necessity (Sanford, 1976). It is classically assumed that the primary and proper objects of sight, hearing, taste and smell are respectively color, sound, taste and smell. The proper objects of touch, however, are at first sight too heterogeneous to constitute a natural class and to be its primary objects. Hardness, solidity, impenetrability, texture, weight, mass, pressure, tension, contact, temperature, humidity, vibrations, painfulness, ticklishness, wetness and so forth have all been claimed to be perceived by touch exclusively. Yet, it is highly unlikely that they all belong to the same natural class. Furthermore, it is dubious that each instance of tactile perception necessarily involves the perception of some hardness, vibration, temperature, texture, and so forth.Faced with the heterogeneity of the proper objects of touch, one may renounce defining touch by its intentional objects. Suppose one endorses a biological criterion instead. On this view, sensory modalities are individuated by their proper and primary organ. Touch is then defined by the biological apparatus (including organs, tissues, and receptors) dedicated to touch only and that touch necessarily involves. The skin is often put forward as the proper and primary organ of touch. But it is neither. First, the skin is not only a perceptual organ, it also accomplishes several other functions that we do not want to include in tactile perception (including protection, heat regulation, perspiration and respiration). Second, tactile perception does not essentially involve skin stimulation.Touch on the eyes, on mucous membranes such as the mouth, on internal organs, and on teethes can induce tactile sensations as well. One might even conceive that skinless creatures (such as arthropods) have tactile sensations.Looking for more specific organs, one faces an impressive anatomical and functional diversity of receptors involved in touch (Johnson, 2001). Some are dedicated to the perception of mechanical properties such as pressure, vibration and texture, some to the . Touch. In M. Matthen (ed), Oxford Handbook of perception, Oxford University Press.
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