Hili Razinsky
University of Lisbon, Philosophy, Faculty Member
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy Of Language, Ethics, Ambivalence, Rationality, and 35 moreEpistemology, Personhood, Intersubjectivity, Philosophy of Agency, Consciousness, Practical Rationality, Value Theory, Analytic Philosophy, Phenomenology, Post-Structuralism, Emotion, Beliefs and attitudes, Philosophical Anthropology, Semiotics, Languages and Linguistics, Creativity, Semantics, Contextualism, Semantics/Pragmatics, Intentionality, Wittgenstein, Later Wittgenstein, Pragmatics, Philosophy of Language and communication, Political and Social Philosophy, Ethics, Indeterminacy, Openness, Philosophy of Language and Mind, Forms of life, Social Philosophy, Philosophy of perception, Conceptual change, Concepts, Beliefs, Judgment and decision making, and Moral Judgmentedit
- The publications below focus on ambivalence, and on subjectivity, emotion, belief, action, value, consciousness, rati... moreThe publications below focus on ambivalence, and on subjectivity, emotion, belief, action, value, consciousness, rationality, language, and ethics, as well as on some political philosophy, and aesthetics. I'm currently thinking about inter-subjectivity, as in interactions and communications, merging into this ontological, epistemic, linguistic, ethical, and political concerns.edit
Ambivalence is often presented through cases of defeated ambivalence and multivalence, in which opposed attitudes suggest mutual isolation and defeat each other. Properly understood, however, ambivalence implies the existence of poles... more
Ambivalence is often presented through cases of defeated ambivalence and multivalence, in which opposed attitudes suggest mutual isolation and defeat each other. Properly understood, however, ambivalence implies the existence of poles that are conflictually yet rationally interlinked and are open to non-defeated joint conduct. This paper
considers cases that range from indecisiveness and easy adoption of conflicting attitudes (when hungry, stressed, or exhausted), to tragically conflicted deliberation and to cases of shifting between self-deceptively serious attitudes. Analyzing such cases as variants of defeated ambivalence, I argue that the phenomena of defeated ambivalence are marginal to ambivalence even though they are by the same token exemplary of it. The poles in such cases are connected as opposing attitudes in such a way that the attitudes and the opposition are both undermined. The article focuses on two forms of vague multivalence, one of which is taken from Heidegger’s analysis of curiosity.
considers cases that range from indecisiveness and easy adoption of conflicting attitudes (when hungry, stressed, or exhausted), to tragically conflicted deliberation and to cases of shifting between self-deceptively serious attitudes. Analyzing such cases as variants of defeated ambivalence, I argue that the phenomena of defeated ambivalence are marginal to ambivalence even though they are by the same token exemplary of it. The poles in such cases are connected as opposing attitudes in such a way that the attitudes and the opposition are both undermined. The article focuses on two forms of vague multivalence, one of which is taken from Heidegger’s analysis of curiosity.
Research Interests: Emotion, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Agency, Philosophy of Action, Philosophical Psychology, and 15 moreCreativity, Rational Choice, Martin Heidegger, Visual Arts, Irrationality, Ambivalence, Rationality, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Psychological Philosophy, Weakness of Will, Attitude, Passivity, Existensialism, Philosophy of Change, Self-organisation, and vacillation
Abstract: Emotional perceptions are objectivist (objectivity-directed or cognitive) and conscious, both attributes suggesting they cannot be ambivalent. Yet perceptions, including emotional perceptions of value, allow for strictly... more
Abstract: Emotional perceptions are objectivist (objectivity-directed or cognitive) and conscious, both attributes suggesting they cannot be ambivalent. Yet perceptions, including emotional perceptions of value, allow for strictly objectivist ambivalence in which a person unitarily perceives the object in mutually undermining ways. Emotional perceptions became an explicandum of emotion for philosophers who are sensitive to the unique conscious character of emotion, impressed by the objectivist character of perceptions, and believe that the perceptual account solves a worry about the possibility of a conflict between an emotion and a judgement. Back into the 1980s Greenspan has argued that emotional ambivalence is possible, her reasons implying that
objectivist accounts of emotion are inconsistent with ambivalence. Tappolet has more recently replied that perceptual accounts allow for emotional ambivalence since the opposed values seen in ambivalence are good or bad in different senses. The present paper identifies strict objectivist ambivalence between judgements and between emotional perceptions by contrasting them with such ambivalence of separate values such as evoked by Tappolet.
objectivist accounts of emotion are inconsistent with ambivalence. Tappolet has more recently replied that perceptual accounts allow for emotional ambivalence since the opposed values seen in ambivalence are good or bad in different senses. The present paper identifies strict objectivist ambivalence between judgements and between emotional perceptions by contrasting them with such ambivalence of separate values such as evoked by Tappolet.
Research Interests: Cognitive Psychology, Emotion, Philosophy of Mind, Visual Studies, Perception, and 36 moreVisual Anthropology, Emotional intelligence, Values, Modes of Perception, Interest, Cognition, Visual Semiotics, Embodied Cognition, Philosophy of the Emotions, Consciousness, Value Theory, Anthropology of emotions, Affect Theory, Emotional Intelligence (Psychology), Philosophy of perception, Social Perception, Value theory (Philosophy), Emotion perception, Moral emotions, Affect/Emotion, Affect Studies, Culture and Cognition, Affect (Cultural Theory), Affect (Philosophy), Curiosity & Interest, Emotions, Affect, Ambivalence, Cognition and Affect, Emotional Competence, Value, Valuation, Peter Goldie, Beliefs & Values, Operation of Feeling Involving the Senses, and Perceived Value
Although ambivalence in a strict sense, according to which a person holds opposed attitudes, and holds them as opposed, is an ordinary and widespread phenomenon, it appears impossible on the common presupposition that persons are either... more
Although ambivalence in a strict sense, according to which a person holds opposed attitudes, and holds them as opposed, is an ordinary and widespread phenomenon, it appears impossible on the common presupposition that persons are either unitary or plural. These two conceptions of personhood call for dispensing with ambivalence by employing tactics of harmonizing, splitting, or annulling the unitary subject. However, such tactics are useless if ambivalence is sometimes strictly conscious. This paper sharpens the notion of conscious ambivalence, such that the above tactics cannot be applied to ordinary moments of explicit and clear ambivalent consciousness. It is shown that such moments reveal ambivalence as an attitude that is part of human life. The argument employs three features of consciousness
that together capture its outgoing character (a notion that combines intentionality and self-consciousness). In the last section some of the implications of conscious ambivalence for consciousness and the mind are clarified as the analysis of conscious ambivalence in this paper is compared with Hume’s and John Barth’s phenomenalist conceptions.
that together capture its outgoing character (a notion that combines intentionality and self-consciousness). In the last section some of the implications of conscious ambivalence for consciousness and the mind are clarified as the analysis of conscious ambivalence in this paper is compared with Hume’s and John Barth’s phenomenalist conceptions.
Research Interests: Self and Identity, Hume, Altered States of Consciousness, Self Consciousness, Consciousness, and 20 moreIntentionality, Psychoanalysis And Literature, Literature and Philosophy, David Hume, Barth, John Barth, Ambivalence, Sensation, Humean theory of motivation, Phenomenal Consciousness, Split Consciousness, Werewolves, Hume's account of the passions, Early Modern theories of the passions, Humeanism, Double Consciousness, Consciousness and Creativity, Humean, Skepticism (Humean), and Hume's theory of mind
Wittgenstein has shown that that life, in the sense that applies in the first place to human beings, is inherently linguistic. In this paper, I ask what is involved in language, given that it is thus essential to life, answering that... more
Wittgenstein has shown that that life, in the sense that applies in the first place to human beings, is inherently linguistic. In this paper, I ask what is involved in language, given that it is thus essential to life, answering that language – or concepts – must be both alive and the ground for life. This is explicated by a Wittgensteinian series of entailments of features. According to the first feature, concepts are not intentional engagements. The second feature brings life back to concepts by describing them as inflectible: Attitudes, actions, conversations and other engagements inflect concepts, i.e. concepts take their particular characters in our actual engagements. However, inflections themselves would be reified together with the life they ground unless they could preserve the openness of concepts: hence the third feature of re-inflectibility. Finally, the openness of language must be revealed in actual life. This entails the possibility of conceptual ambivalence.
Research Interests: Semiotics, Languages, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy Of Language, Philosophy of Agency, and 73 morePragmatism, Languages and Linguistics, Contact Linguistics, Philosophical Anthropology, Creativity, Pragmatics, Semantics, Social Philosophy, Sociolinguistics, Linguistic Anthropology, Contextualism, Theories of Meaning, Semantics/Pragmatics, Phenomenology, Conceptual change, History of concepts, Political communication, Applied Linguistics, Personhood, Vagueness, Intentionality, Language And Power (Philosophy), Meaning, Sociology of the Middle Classes, Wittgenstein, Later Wittgenstein, Linguistics, Semantics/Pragmatics interface, Pragmatism (Philosophy), Pragmatics, Philosophy of Language and communication, Concepts, Social and Political Philosophy, Political and Social Philosophy, Ethics, Philosophy of Language (Anthropology), Philosophy of Language (Humanities), Wittgensteinian Ethics, Construction of Meaning, Ordinary Language Philosophy, Higher-Order Vagueness, Pragmatic Sociology, Meaning Making, Theories of Vagueness, Livelihood, Ambivalence, Language contact, Language economics, Indeterminacy, Philosophy of Language (esp. Wittgenstein, Rule-following, and the Normativity of Meaning), Philosphy of Language, Kripke-Wittgenstein paradox, Openness, Ambiguity, Philosophical investigations, Philosophy of Language and Mind, Reference of Mental Concepts, Language Contacts, Forms of life, Economics of Language, Lived Experience, Language of Politics, Language Philosophy, Utterance in Pragmatics, Vague Language, Confusion Between Sentence and Utterance, Moral Vagueness, Utterance, Lived Experiences, Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Language, MAPAS MENTALES Y CONCEPTUALES, Pragmatist Sociology, Morally Ambiguous, Pragmatist sociology and ethics, and The mental and linguistic hierarchy of concepts, meanings, semasies
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Ambivalence of desire and action in light of it are ordinary human engagements and yet received conceptions of desire and action deny that such action is possible. This paper contains an analysis of the possibility of fertile ambivalent... more
Ambivalence of desire and action in light of it are ordinary human engagements and yet received conceptions of desire and action deny that such action is possible. This paper contains an analysis of the possibility of fertile ambivalent compromises conjointly with a reconstruction of (Davidsonian) basic rationality and of action-desire relations. It is argued that the Aristotelian practical syllogism ought not to be conceived as paralysing the ambivalent agent. The practical syllogism makes compromise behaviour possible, including compromise action in the strong sense of acting to satisfy both of one's contrary desires at once. One's action can to a certain extent fulfil both desires by not exactly satisfying either. In showing this, attitudes including desires are analysed in terms of a soft identity, according to which they are both defined by concrete interlinkages with other attitudes and actual and possible behaviour, and transcend any such connections. In particular, not only do desires have a range, but rather the relation of desire and fulfilment is such that to want something allows a wider range as to what counts as fulfilment.
Research Interests: Philosophy of Agency, Philosophy of Action, Action Research, Creativity, Sigmund Freud, and 14 moreWittgenstein, Practical Reasoning, Later Wittgenstein, Agency Structure, Creative thinking, Practical Rationality, Aristotle's Ethics, Indeterminacy, Action, Motivation and volition, Practical syllogism, Volition, Maternal Ambivalence, and Practical Conflicts
This paper understands mental attitudes such as emotions and desires to be dispositions to behavior. It also acknowledges that people are often ambivalent, i.e., that they may hold opposed attitudes towards something or someone. Yet the... more
This paper understands mental attitudes such as emotions and desires to be dispositions to behavior. It also acknowledges that people are often ambivalent, i.e., that they may hold opposed attitudes towards something or someone. Yet the first position seems to entail that ambivalence is either tantamount to paralysis or a contradictory notion. I identify the problem as based on a reductive interpretation of the dispositional character of attitudes and of ambivalence. The paper instead defends a post-Davidsonian view of the basic rationality of human life. By focussing on desire and emotion we can see that the mutually exclusive ways of life involved in ambivalence are manifested in the person’s conduct.
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Research Interests: Philosophy, Aesthetics, Languages and Linguistics, Human Values, Values, and 17 moreConcepts of Value in Health Care, Personal and Moral Autonomy, Value Theory, Aesthetics and Ethics, Moral Philosophy, Concepts, Non-cognitivism, Value pluralism, Ambivalence, Judgment, Cognitivism, Moral Judgment, Conflict of Values, To Know About Moral Vaues, Moral Cognition, Moral Non-Cognitivism, and Art Cognitivism
Research Interests: Philosophy, Aesthetics, Judgment and decision making, Practical Reasoning, Metaethics, and 15 moreAesthetics and Ethics, Value theory (Philosophy), Moral and Cognitive Reasoning, Practical Rationality, Non-cognitivism, Practical Reasons and Rationality, Deliberation, Ambivalence, Moral Judgment, Art Theory and Criticism, Conflict of Values, Lottery paradox, Moral Non-Cognitivism, Lottery Problem, and Congitivism
Ambivalence (as in practical conflicts, moral dilemmas, conflicting beliefs, and mixed feelings) is a central phenomenon of human life. Yet ambivalence is incompatible with entrenched philosophical conceptions of personhood, judgement,... more
Ambivalence (as in practical conflicts, moral dilemmas, conflicting beliefs, and mixed feelings) is a central phenomenon of human life. Yet ambivalence is incompatible with entrenched philosophical conceptions of personhood, judgement, and action, and is denied or marginalised by thinkers of diverse concerns. This book takes a radical new stance, bringing the study of core philosophical issues together with that of ambivalence. The book proposes new accounts in several areas – including subjectivity, consciousness, rationality, and value – while elucidating a wide range of phenomena expressive of ambivalence, from emotional ambivalence to self-deception. The book rejects the view that ambivalence makes a person divided, showing that our tension-fraught attitudes are profoundly unitary. Ambivalence is not tantamount to confusion or to paralysis: it is always basically rational, and often creative, active, and perceptive as well. The book develops themes from Wittgenstein, Davidson, Sartre, and Freud. It engages with contemporary debates in Analytic Philosophy in addition to work ranging from Aristotle to Cultural Studies and Empirical Psychology, and considers a rich set of examples from daily life and literature.