Al Baker

I present some considerations regarding how we ought to use the tools of argumentation theory in the analysis of persuasive communication material, with implications for the way such material can be modelled for use with persuasive technology or artificial deliberative intelligences. I focus here on how a refined understanding of the underlying argumentative structure of a traditional TV commercial (in particular, the Danone Yoghurt commercial In Soviet Georgia, previously discussed by Douglas Walton (2010)), reveals some limitations on how far an argumentative analysis can take us in understanding the persuasive power of advertisements like this. Specifically, I will argue that understanding advertisements as arguments using standard analytical tools fails to capture their motivational force, and hence will fail to predict their effectiveness in achieving behaviour change in their audience. The issues raised, concerned with the way adverts of various kinds engage the desires of their audience, turn out to be especially relevant for understanding how advertisements and marketing material function effectively in achieving behaviour change in domains such as encouraging the use of sustainable transport, where persuading people to cut down on personal car use rests largely on making certain altruistic desires more relevant for their decision-making than other desires to, for instance, use the most convenient and efficient means of getting from A to B. If computational models of advertisements as instances of natural argument are to be used as a means of generating arguments to effect behaviour change in domains such as personal transport, it is necessary that they are able to correctly predict behavioural effects. As such, I argue in this paper that there is a need to develop a means to model the non-argumentative features of communication material that make certain desires more or less relevant to individuals' motivational frameworks.

In this thesis I present and defend a theory of empathy, and then apply that theory of empathy to understanding how we engage with stories. I argue that empathy should be understood as a well grounded demonstrative ascription of the form ‘[the target] feels like this’. I take the well-groundedness of such an ascription to consist in a series of ‘proto-empathic’ imaginings, which justify our ascription to a target by virtue of being congruent with one another. In laying out my conception of empathy I argue against several prominent theories of empathy, including those favoured by Preston and de Waal and Alvin Goldman. I argue in particular against the idea that empathy should be understood as aiming primarily at a matching of affect between an empathiser and their target.

Moving on to narrative engagement, I argue that when audiences engage with stories they empathise with an implied narrator of that story. I make this case by showing how empathy can prima facie be employed to solve two outstanding philosophical problems about stories by virtue of its employment of perspective shifting. I sketch a conception of ‘perspectives’ and go on to argue that every story features what I call a ‘narrative perspective’, and by process of elimination conclude that the holder of the narrative perspective must be an implied narrating agency. I then show how an empathic theory of narrative engagement can help us understand how stories can help or hinder our moral education.

Finally, I outline a theory of how audiences engage with interactive artworks such as videogames, drawing out the consequences of that view for how we might apply my theory of empathic engagement to furthering the understanding of interactive

Arguments in favour of videogames being considered as bona fide members of the artworks club seem old hat by now, even though surprisingly few have been put forward by philosophers and art critics. Still, the received and popular opinion seems to be that, of course, videogames can be works of art, but how can we answer the question of why they are without broadening the concept of art so as to allow it to include almost anything we find enjoyable? Traditionally when deciding whether something is or is not a work of art we simply measure it up to our preferred definition of ‘art’ and see if it matches, but in the case of videogames (and other ‘new media’) I argue that such an approach is woefully inadequate: that will only tell us whether a particular (in our case) videogame is art, what it doesn’t tell us is the question I think we are really interested in, which is what do videogames do that is artistic? In this talk I will offer a suggestion of the kinds of things videogames can do, and should perhaps do more of, that make them stand out not just as a new medium in which artworks can be made (a very broad class that, after all, includes Brillo Boxes, Urinals and Blu-Tac) but a medium with the potential to deliver unique and significant artistic experiences.

In this paper I argue that none of the most influential theories of truth in fiction can adequately handle the generation of fictional truths via the common literary device of the unreliable narrator.  After providing a philosophically useful definition of what an unreliable narrator is, I examine the view of David Lewis and argue that, even with the modification of his theory laid out in his Postscript to ‘Truth in Fiction’, Lewis’ theory is either false or redundant.  I argue that Currie’s fictional author fares a little better – his account can arguably handle cases of exaggeration such as Lewis's 'Flash Stockman'.  However, in instances of first person unreliable narration I argue that Currie has no principled reason to posit a further reliable and dispassionate fictional author when an existing fictional entity (the unreliable narrator) fulfills all the requirements for that role.  I go on to refute Bonomi’s and Zucchi’s claim that Currie’s account can be made to accommodate unreliable narrators by introducing a ‘presumption of reliability’, defeasible when reasons ‘intrinsic to the fiction’ point us to the narrator’s unreliability.  Finally, I argue that Walton’s principles of generation also struggle to cope with various types of unreliable narration.  I conclude by suggesting that an illocutionary-act account of fiction making, of the type recently suggested by Manuel Garcia-Carpintero, would be uniquely well placed to not only ‘handle’ the generation of fictional truths by unreliable narrators, but also to give full philosophical expression to the notion that sometimes the unreliability of a narrator is the key fictional truth that must be apprehended if a literary work is to be properly understood.  I defend this account by showing that it can handle a variety of literary examples that cause problems for rival accounts.

In a 2016 paper, Jeanine Diller usefully distinguishes between Global and Local theisms and atheisms. A Local (a)theist directs their (dis)belief towards one particular conception of God, a Global (a)theist directs their (dis)belief towards all conceptions of God. There are no Global Theists, and Diller argues that there should also be no Global Atheists, because no aspiring Global Atheist has successfully refuted every Local Theism. In a 2018 paper, Shoaib Ahmed Malik takes further a claim implicit in Diller's paper; that in a case where any Local Theism has been raised and refuted, the burden of proof is on the Atheist to then justify the move from Local to Global Atheism, and that the only justified position for each at that point is a soft agnosticism.  What follows is a dialogue wherein, by use of a thinly veiled analogy, it is argued that this burden is stronger than that which would usually fall to the sceptical position in any similar metaphysical dispute. By our usual standards of philosophical argument, an Atheist is licensed to hold the Global position until the reasons justifying their Local Atheism are shown not to hold for a different Local Theism.

We observe that the current UK safeguarding guidance makes no reference to the possible harms of radicalisation, unlike the other areas in which relevant organisations are under a duty to prevent specific harms to vulnerable people. We discuss the problems this raises for the politics and practice of safeguarding policy, and suggest that the concept of Cultic Abuse should be employed to ground ethical, legal and practical responses to the risk of radicalisation of vulnerable people.

This paper is intended to serve four primary purposes: first, to show why a common  argument purporting to describe why videogames are artistically valuable fails.  Second, to show that the failure of that argument is actually in the best interests of the group who advocate it.  Third, the subject matter of this paper will demonstrate some interesting metaphysical features of interactive artworks, and some interesting features of videogame players, that make themselves plain under close scrutiny of the medium.  Finally, I intend that this paper should serve to highlight a case study of the kinds of muddles that can be avoided if some attention is paid to the ontologies of (especially new) artistic media when pronouncing on their various artistic merits.
To meet these aims this paper will proceed in the following way: I will firstly lay out, in its most defensible form, the claim that part of what makes videogames artistically interesting is that the player has a creative role in the production of the work.  I will then show how this claim, while not actually self-contradictory, commits us to a particular, and I will argue unwelcome, answer to what Dominic Lopes calls the ontological problem of frigidaire poetry.  I will set out Lopes’ problem, as well as his proposed method for finding a solution (which I will replace with what I think is a more useful one).  I will conclude that the idea that players of videogames have a uniquely creative role is neither true nor helpful.

The problem formerly known as 'The Puzzle of Imaginative Resistance', currently known variously as 'The Fictionality Puzzle' or 'The Alethic Puzzle', is the problem of why it should be the case that we find it hard to engage with particular kinds of stories, illustrated by the now infamous one line fiction: "In killing her baby, Giselda did the right thing; after all, it was a girl." Derek Matravers has recently offered a promising, but incomplete, solution to this problem, analysing the failure to engage with stories like Giselda's as instances of transmission failure, a variety of testimonial failure. I highlight two objections to this view, the first of which is anticipated by Matravers, concerning why transmission failure does not appear to occur in stories in which Matravers' view predicts that it should. I suggest that by incorporating perspectives, as grounds for moral beliefs, Matravers' view can overcome these problems.

We often credit artworks, especially narrative fictions, with having some significant role in the evolution of our moral attitudes. Speaking for myself, I might say of All Quiet on the Western Front that it made me less tolerant of the suffering of soldiers who happen to be fighting for the enemy; of Darkness at Noon that it made me more suspicious of revolutionary notions of sacrifice in the interests of the greater good; of Brideshead Revisited that it softened my antipathy towards Catholicism, and so on. Taking for granted that I am not mistaken that these works did in fact change something in my moral outlook, the question of how exactly this change came about naturally presents itself. Shen-Yi Liao has recently argued that much of our theorising on this point has been contaminated by a tendency to focus realistic fictions as examples of how fictions in general can morally persuade.

There are countless examples of stories that appear to successfully induce audiences to experience emotional, aesthetic, humorous and moral responses to their represented events in ways that seem surprising, given how we would expect audiences to ordinarily react to those kinds of events. Indeed, for some of the most (in)famous examples, inducing the audience to depart from their ordinary emotional and moral standards in engaging with the story seems to be one of the central goals of the author. Entire genres of story depend for their success on getting the audience to laugh at what they would ordinarily find horrifying, hope for the success of plans they would ordinarily wish to be thwarted and cheer for characters whom they would ordinarily despise. The problem of Disparate Response is why it should be the case that we would respond to representations of events in stories in ways that apparently depart from how we ordinarily would respond to those events.1 This paper is about how we should understand the Problem of Disparate Response, and specifically what criteria we should use to determine the 'ordinary' responses from which our responses to stories are apparently so often 'disparate'. This is an important question for philosophers of art to address, since how we understand the ways that stories (and other works) can encourage us to depart from our so-called 'ordinary' responses will have a tremendous bearing on how we can appraise the role of artists and artworks in the development their audiences' moral character, as well as many related questions concerning the appropriateness of our moral and aesthetic judgements about morally challenging works, as well as the nature of our emotional responses to art more generally.