Aristotelian Actions

Freeland, Cynthia

doi:10.2307/2214949

Cited by 46 publications

(9 citation statements)

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“…As described by Aristotle (Freeland, 1985), moral situations are divided into the two roles of moral agents and moral patients. Moral agents are those who do good or bad, whereas moral patients are those who are the recipients of good or bad.…”

Section: A Surprising Discoverymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Human cognition frequently divides the world into dichotomies (Fillmore, 1968), such as Black and White (Peery & Bodenhausen, 2008) and right and wrong (Haidt & Algoe, 2004), and moral situations are no different. As described by Aristotle (Freeland, 1985), moral situations are divided into the two roles of moral agents and moral patients. Moral agents are those who do good or bad, whereas moral patients are those who are the recipients of good or bad.…”

Section: A Surprising Discoverymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Blaming God for Our Pain: Human Suffering and the Divine Mind

Wegner

2009

Pers Soc Psychol Rev

237

180

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Believing in God requires not only a leap of faith but also an extension of people's normal capacity to perceive the minds of others. Usually, people perceive minds of all kinds by trying to understand their conscious experience (what it is like to be them) and their agency (what they can do). Although humans are perceived to have both agency and experience, humans appear to see God as possessing agency, but not experience. God's unique mind is due, the authors suggest, to the uniquely moral role He occupies. In this article, the authors propose that God is seen as the ultimate moral agent, the entity people blame and praise when they receive anomalous harm and help. Support for this proposition comes from research on mind perception, morality, and moral typecasting. Interestingly, although people perceive God as the author of salvation, suffering seems to evoke even more attributions to the divine.

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Section: A Surprising Discoverymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: A Surprising Discoverymentioning

confidence: 99%

Blaming God for Our Pain: Human Suffering and the Divine Mind

Wegner

2009

Pers Soc Psychol Rev

237

180

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“…Not surprisingly, Aristotle's distinction has been the subject of much commentary (see, for example, Ackrill, 1978;Freeland, 1985). Modern philosophers have been taught to distinguish between the description of an action and the action itself.…”

Section: Aristotle's Conception Of Politicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

What is Political in Sub-politics?

Vries

2007

Soc Stud Sci

146

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Recent contributions by Collins, Evans, Jasanoff and Wynne to the discussion of how science and technology studies (STS) might contribute to understanding 'subpolitics' -the complex, expert knowledge-intensive and distributed political issues technological societies have to deal with -and involvement of STS scholars in experiments to extend public participation in decision-making about science and technology are shown to be based on an un-reflexive use of an off-the-shelf conception of politics. This conception, grafted on the old model of the sovereign, frames political actors as 'mini-kings': as subjects with preferences, interests, aims and plans that they want to be executed. To reveal the limitations of this conception of politics, I confront it with Aristotle's conception of politics. The conception of politics that has guided work in STS is shown to be based on too narrow a conception of political action that fails to properly account for the object of politics. I argue that Aristotle invites us to analyse the object of politics in ways that closely resemble the way in which STS has learned to analyse the object of experimental science. Although Latour comes close to the tasks that an Aristotelian conception of politics suggest, his Politics of Nature shares some of the limitations that trouble other work of STS in the political domain. Despite 25 centuries separating us from his conception of politics, Aristotle may help STS to understand the politics implied in subpolitics.

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“…Although previous studies have focused on judgment of moral acts of humans, the present study examined judgment of moral properties, blameworthiness and considerability, of various entities. These two properties are associated with the dyadic roles in moral situations, that is, moral agency (the capacity to do moral right or wrong) and moral patiency (the capacity to be a target of moral right or wrong), which were described by Aristotle [Freeland, ]. The correlations between mind perception and moral judgments observed in both the autistic and non‐autistic groups support the hypothesis that the two dimensions of mind correspond to the two moral roles, that is, moral agency and patiency [Gray & Wegner, 2009; Gray et al, ; Wegner & Gray, ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 64%

Mind perception and moral judgment in autism

et al. 2018

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Social difficulties of autistic individuals have been suggested to be caused by mind blindness, the absence of a theory of mind. Numerous studies have investigated theory of mind in autism spectrum disorder or how autistic individuals represent the mental states of others. Here, we have examined, as an alternative, mind perception, namely how individuals perceive the minds of various animate and inanimate entities. Autistic and non-autistic participants demonstrated evidence of a similar two-dimensional mind perception; agency, capacity for doing (i.e., self-control, memory, plan), and experience, capacity for feeling (i.e., fear, hunger, pain). Some targets (e.g., human infant and dog) were perceived to have low agency but high experience, while others (e.g., robot and God) were perceived to have the reverse pattern. Moreover, in both autistic and non-autistic groups, the attribution of moral blame positively correlated with agency, whereas moral consideration positively correlated with experience. These results offer new evidence of social cognition, particularly conception of mind and morality, in autism.Lay Summary: We found that autistic and non-autistic individuals have similar thoughts regarding the minds of various living and nonliving entities. In addition, both groups gave moral consideration or blamed entities for wrongdoing according to their conception of the minds of those entities. Autistic individuals have this mind-based moral sense, which is a pivotal element with a key role in human society.

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Aristotelian Actions

Cited by 46 publications

References 0 publications

Blaming God for Our Pain: Human Suffering and the Divine Mind

Blaming God for Our Pain: Human Suffering and the Divine Mind

What is Political in Sub-politics?

Mind perception and moral judgment in autism

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