References
- Thanks to Paul Voice for inviting me to contribute to this special issue and for his thought-provoking comments on an earlier draft of this article.
- For influential statements of the deliberative ideal see Joshua Cohen, ‘Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy’ in Alan Hamlin and Phillip Pettit (eds.) The Good Polity (Oxford: Polity Pres, 1989); the essays in James Bohman and William Rehg (eds.) Deliberative Democracy: Essays on Reason and Politics, (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Pre); Amy Guttman and Dennis Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Pre); and Jurgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Pres, 1996). A number of important recent essays are also reprinted in James S. Fishkin and Peter Laslett (eds.), Debating Deliberative Democracy, (Maiden, Mass. & Oxford: Blackwell, 2003). While also arguing for a form of deliberative democracy Iris Marion Young is critical of the focus on rational debate, appeals to the common good and the ideal of consensus, arguing that this focus privileges certain cultural styles and values and can exclude marginalised social groups and individuals. For a succinct statement of her critique, see the essay ‘Communication and the Other: Beyond Deliberative Democracy’ in Intersecting Voices: Dilemmas of Gender, Political Philosophy and Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Pres, 1997). For recent arguments that question the focus on normative concerns in the context of deliberation in cases of cultural conflict, see Monique Deveaux, ‘A Deliberative Approach to Conflicts of Culture’, Political Theory, 31(6), 2003: 780–807; and John Dryzek, ‘Deliberative Democracy in Divided Societies’, Political Theory, 33(2), 2005: 218–242.
- For an overview of different approaches to the issue of feasibility see James Bohman, ‘The Coming of Age of Deliberative Democracy’, Journal of Political Philosophy, 6(4), 1998: 400–425.
- Robert Goodin, Reflective Democracy, (Oxford: Oxford University Pres, 2003), especially chapters 8–12.
- Many of the important statements of simulation theory are collected in Martin Davies & Tony Stone (eds.), Mental Simulation, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995).
- My discussion draws most heavily on Peter Goldie, The Emotions: A Philosophical Exploration, (Oxford: Oxford University Pres, 2000), Chs. 1 & 7. A number of the themes developed here are also discussed in Peter Goldie, ‘Narrative, Emotion, and Perspective’, in M. Kieran and D. Lopes (eds.) Imagination and the Arts, (London: Routledge, 2003); Peter Goldie, ‘Wollheim on Emotion and Imagination’, Philosophical Studies, 127, 2006: 1–17; Peter Goldie, ‘Dramatic Irony and the External Perspective’, forthcoming in D. Hutto (ed.), Narrative and Understanding Persons, Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplementary Series (Cambridge: Cambridge University Pre).
- Iris Marion Young, ‘Asymmetrical Reciprocity: On Moral Respect, Wonder, and Enlarged Thought’, in Intersecting Voices.
- Goodin, Reflective Democracy, pp. 179–80.
- The claim that we can ‘put ourselves in the other's place’ is made throughout Reflective Democracy but the main references to simulation theory are on pp. 179 & 224, although there is no detailed discussion of this theory.
- Many of the important statements of both theories and of the debate between them are collection in Martin Davies & Tony Stone (eds.) Folk Psychology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995). Both the introduction to this collection and the introduction to Davies & Stone (eds.) Mental Simulation are useful overviews of this debate.
- This is Jane Heal's metaphor, in her essay ‘Understanding Other Minds from the Inside’, in Anthony O'Hear (ed.), Current Issues in Philosophy of Mind, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
- See the discussion in Heal, ‘Understanding Other Minds from the Inside’. For a related discussion see also Goldie, The Emotions, Ch. 1.
- Robert Gordon, for example, characterises simulation in terms of ‘pretend belief’. See Robert Gordon, ‘Folk Psychology as Simulation’, Mind and Language, 1, 1986:158–71. Reprinted in Davies & Stone, Folk Psychology; Robert Gordon, ‘Simulation Without Introspection or Inference from Me to You’, in Davies & Stone (eds.) Mental Simulation; and Robert Gordon, ‘The Simulation Theory: Objections and Misconceptions’, in Davies & Stone (eds.), Folk Psychology. For a critique of the notion of ‘pretend belief’, see Jane Heal, ‘Understanding Other Minds from the Inside’; and ‘How to Think About Thinking’, in Davies & Stone (eds.), Mental Simulation. Gregory Currie and Ian Ravenscroft employ the notion of the ‘recreative’ imagination, in Curry and Ravenscroft, Recreative Minds: Imagination in Philosophy and Psychology, (Oxford: Clarendon Pres, 2002).
- Heal, ‘Understanding Other Minds from the Inside’ and ‘How to Think about Thinking’.
- This is Goldie's characterisation in The Emotions.
- See for example the essays, ‘Folk Psychology as Simulation’, ‘Simulation Without Introspection or Inference from Me to You’, and ‘The Simulation Theory: Objections and Misconceptions’.
- Gordon, ‘Simulation Without Introspection’.
- Gordon, ‘The Simulation Theory: Objections and Misconceptions’, p. 102.
- Compare Gordon's example of the grizzly on the trail, ‘The Simulation Theory: Objections and Misconceptions’, pp. 102–4.
- Gordon, ‘Simulation Without Introspection’, p. 62.
- Goodin, Reflective Democracy, p. 180.
- Goodin, Reflective Democracy, pp. 180–182, 189–191.
- This policy was in place in Australia until the 1950's. The children who were removed usually had some white parentage. They were placed in mission schools and trained to become domestic servants in white households or tock and station hands on outback properties. The term ‘the stolen generation’ is the term that has been adopted by both indigenous and non-indigenous Australians to refer to those who suffered as a result of this policy. The film Rabbit-Proof Fence tells the story of three young girls removed from their mother in northern Western Australia and placed in a mission school thousands of kilometres away in south eastern Western Australia. The film, based on a true story, narrates the story of the girls' attempt to re-unite with their mother by walking thousands of kilometres along a fence running north to south along mot of the length of Western Australia that was built to keep rabbits out of farm land.
- Goodin, Reflective Democracy, pp. 171, 190.
- Goodin, Reflective Democracy, p. 183.
- Goodin, Reflective Democracy, p. 189.
- Richard Wollheim, The Thread of Life, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Pres, 1984). See note 5 above for the relevant references to Goldie's work.
- For more detailed discussion of these different modes of ‘imagining oneself otherwise’, in the context of an argument about the importance of this mode of imagining for autonomous agency, see Catriona Mackenzie, ‘Imagining Oneself Otherwise’ in Catriona Mackenzie and Natalie Stoljar (eds.), Relational Autonomy Feminist Perspectives on Autonomy, Agency and the Social Self, (New York: Oxford University Pres, 2000).
- David Velleman develops the distinction between the actual and notional first-person perspectives in his paper ‘Self to Self’, The Philosophical Review 105, 1996: 39–76. Gordon makes a similar distinction in ‘Simulation Without Introspection’ and ‘The Simulation Theory: Objections and Misconception’.
- Goldie, The Emotions, p. 198
- Heal similarly restricts the scope of simulation to such cases.
- Goldie, The Emotions, p. 200.
- Goldie, The Emotions, p. 195.
- Wollheim, The Thread of Life, p. 81.
- Gordon briefly mentions an example like this in ‘Folk Psychology as Simulation’.
- Goldie, The Emotions, p. 202.
- Goodin, Reflective Democracy, p. 187.
- Elaine Scarry makes a similar point in an essay titled ‘The Difficulty of Imagining Other People’, written in response to Martha Nussbaum's essay ‘Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism’, both in Joshua Cohen (ed.) For Love of Country: Debating the Limits of Patriotism, (Boston: Beacon Pres, 1996). Scarry write: ‘Transport the problems of trying to imagine a single friend to the imaginative labor of knowing the other—not an intimate friend, not any single person at all, but instead five, or ten, or one hundred, or one hundred thousand; or x, the number of Turks residing in Germany; or y, the number of illegal aliens living in the United State; or z, the estimated number of Iraqi soldiers and citizens killed in our bombing raids; or 70 million, the scale of the population that stands to suffer should the United States fire a nuclear missile (a conservative estimate)’ (p. 103).
- The contrast between a ‘politics of ideas’ and a ‘politics of presence’ refers of course to Anne Phillips' classic essay, ‘Dealing with Difference: A Politics of Ideas or a Politics of Presence?’, Constellations, 1, 1994: 74–91.
- Iris Young makes a related point in ‘Communication and the Other’, pp. 67–69.
- Goodin, Reflective Democracy, p. 224.
- Goodin, Reflective Democracy, p. 224.
- This is a central concern of Young in ‘Asymmetrical Reciprocity’.
- David Hume, ‘Of the Standard of Taste’ (1757), cited in Tamar Szabo Gendler, ‘The Puzzle of Imaginative Resistance’, Journal of Philosophy, 97(2), 2000: 55–81.
- Richard Moran, ‘The Expression of Feeling in Imagination’, The Philosophical Review, 103(1), 1994: 75–106.
- Moran, ‘The Expression of Feeling in Imagination’, p. 103.
- Moran, ‘The Expression of Feeling in Imagination’, p. 105.
- Moran neither refers to nor addresses simulation theory and his concerns are with distinct issues concerning aesthetic representation. Nevertheless, his account of the differences between hypothetical reasoning and dramatic imagining provides support for the arguments of Jane Heal and Peter Goldie for restricting the cope of simulation theory to hypothetical reasoning.
- Gendler, ‘The Puzzle of Imaginative Resistance’.
- Gendler, ‘The Puzzle of Imaginative Resistance’, p. 71.
- Gendler, ‘The Puzzle of Imaginative Resistance’, p. 79.
- Goodin, Reflective Democracy, p. 183.
- Goodin, Reflective Democracy, p. 184.
- Goodin, Reflective Democracy, p. 185.
- Again Young makes a related point in ‘Asymmetrical Reciprocity’, p. 67.
- Young, ‘Asymmetrical Reciprocity’, p. 42. Some relevant references from the literature in medical psychology to which I am referring include: Ubel, PA., Loewenstein, G., Schwarz, N., Smith, D., ‘Misimagining the unimaginable: the disability paradox and health care decision making’, Health Psychology, 24(4 Suppl.), 2005: S57–62; Gerhart, KA., Koziol-McLain, J., Lowenstein, SR., Whiteneck, GG., ‘Quality of life following spinal cord injury: knowledge and attitudes of emergency care providers’, Annuals of Emergency Medicine, 23 (4), 1994: 807–12; Stensman, R., ‘Severely mobility-disabled people asses their quality of live’, Scandinavian Journal of Rehabilitative Medicine, 17(2), 1985: 87–99. Thanks to Jackie Leach Scully for bringing this literature to my attention.
- In this discussion I have emphasised the dangers of projection, partly in response to Goodin's over-confidence in our abilities to imagine ourselves in the place of others. However, Paul Voice has pointed out to me that in certain contexts the kind of projection involved in imagining in the other's hoes may not be normatively objectionable. For by merging one's own perspective with the perspective of the other, one may come to see the world not as the other actually sees it, but as she should see it. For example, a person may not recognise the oppressive nature of her situation, or of her relationships with others, and may not notice the extent to which her perspective and her emotional responses are shaped by these oppressions. By coming to see the world as she sees it, but fusing her perspective with one's own, this oppression becomes normatively perspicuous. A well-known example is the (now somewhat dated) film Tootsie, in which the central male character, played by Dustin Hoffman, assumes the persona of a woman and is shocked to discover what it is like to be at the receiving end of men's treatment of women, as well as being appalled by women's passivity in the face of this treatment. The film presents itself as making their own oppression normatively perspicuous to women, while at the same time making men's contribution to women's oppression normatively perspicuous to men. Whether the film actually succeeds in doing so, or whether it just ends up projecting onto women a male representation of women's oppression, was the subject of some debate at the time. Thus while I agree with Voice that in certain situations representing or imagining the world not as the other does, but as she should, is normatively enlightening, it is also crucially important to be attentive to some of the risks involved in doing so, including the risks of paternalism and misrepresentation discussed here.
- Goodin, Reflective Democracy, p. 184.
- Goodin, Reflective Democracy, p. 225.
- Young, ‘Asymmetrical Reciprocity’, p. 53.
- Young, ‘Asymmetrical Reciprocity’, p.56.
- Marilyn Friedman, ‘Diversity, Trust, and Moral Understanding’, in Cheshire Calhoun (ed.), Setting the Moral Compass: Essays by Women Philosophers, (New York: Oxford University Pres, 2004).
- Sandra Bartky also argues for the importance of sympathetic, rather than empathetic, imagining in understanding others, in her essay ‘Sympathy and Solidarity: On a Tightrope with Scheler’, in Diana Meyers (ed.) Feminists Rethink the Self, (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Pres, 1997). Goldie, like Bartky, draws on Max Scheler's analysis of sympathy.
- Goldie, The Emotions, p. 215.
- Scarry, ‘The Difficulty of Imagining Other People’, p. 102.
- For Hume the capacity for sympathy is central to both moral responsiveness and moral judgment. See Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), Book 3; and An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975).
- Goldie, The Emotions, p. 217.
- Compare Young's analysis of enlarged thought in ‘Asymmetrical Reciprocity’, pp. 57–59.
- Scarry, ‘The Difficulty of Imagining Other People’, p. 105.