Published works by Lorraine Yeung
International Journal of Chinese and Comparative Philosophy of Medicine , 2023
本文旨在初步探索「限肉令」作為應對傳染病大流行和由工廠化畜牧業帶來的其他威脅的預防措施的正當性。「限肉令」並非指全面禁肉,而是以法律限制市民的人均肉品消耗量在滿足基本營養需求的範圍內。本文採用的... more 本文旨在初步探索「限肉令」作為應對傳染病大流行和由工廠化畜牧業帶來的其他威脅的預防措施的正當性。「限肉令」並非指全面禁肉,而是以法律限制市民的人均肉品消耗量在滿足基本營養需求的範圍內。本文採用的進路是緩解一些可能阻礙對此提案進行更宏觀、理性的思考的潛在心理拘繫。此進路參考了傅柯「日常經驗」(everyday experience) 的分析,和佛家倫理學回應全球環境倫理問題的策略。我們先以香港社會為主要案例研究,檢視形成「肉是必需的」一想法和嗜肉情結的社會模式。接著我們引入葷食心理學研究,討論嗜肉情結如何成為正面考慮「限肉令」的障礙。我們也嘗試回應一些反對此提案的理由,包括來自自由主義 (Liberalism)的批評。
Abstract
This article explores the preliminary justifiability of meat restriction order as a preventive measure to the risks of pandemic and other forms of harm posed by factory farming. A meat restriction order seeks to limit citizens’ meat consumption at the level of meeting individuals’ basic nutrient needs. This article aims to loosen some potential psychological hooks that prevent a more expansive, rational deliberation of the proposal. Inspired by Michel Foucault’s analysis of “everyday experience” and the Buddhist responses to global environmental issues, we investigate the social patterns that account for the formation of people’s meat commitment, using Hong Kong society as a major case study. With reference to scientific studies of meat-eaters’ psychology, we discuss how the meat commitment becomes a barrier for society to positively consider the justifiability of the proposal. We will also address a number of objections to our proposal, including those from liberalism.
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AI and Society, 2023
Mark Coeckelbergh (Int J Soc Robot 1:217–221, 2009) argues that robot ethics should investigate w... more Mark Coeckelbergh (Int J Soc Robot 1:217–221, 2009) argues that robot ethics should investigate what interaction with robots can do to humans rather than focusing on the robot’s moral status. We should ask what robots do to our sociality and whether human–robot interaction can contribute to the human good and human flourishing. This paper extends Coeckelbergh’s call and investigate what it means to live with disembodied AI-powered agents. We address the following question: Can the human–AI interaction contribute to our moral development? We present an empirically informed philosophical analysis of how the AI personal assistant Siri changes its users’ way of life, based on the responses obtained from 20 semi-directive individual interviews with Siri users. We identify changes in the users’ social interaction associated with the adoption of Siri. These changes include: (1) the indirect effect of reducing opportunities of human interaction, (2) the second-order effect of diminished expectations toward each other in a community, and (3) the acquired preference to obtain hassle-free interaction with Siri over human interaction. We examine them in relation to concerns that are voiced in the current debates over the rise of AI, namely the suspicion that humans could become overly reliant on AI (Danaher 2019) and the worry that social AI could impede on moral development (Fröding and Peterson, Ethics Inf Technol 23:207–214, 2012; Li, Ethics Inf Technol 23:543–550, 2021). We analyze the ethical costs that come from these changes in light of virtue ethics and address potential objections along the way. We end by offering directions for thinking about how to live with AI personal assistant while preserving favorable conditions for moral development.
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Think, 2022
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Film and Philosophy, 2022
The Black Mirror episode “Arkangel” tells a disturbing story of over-parenting driven by technolo... more The Black Mirror episode “Arkangel” tells a disturbing story of over-parenting driven by technology. The single mother Marie’s adoption of the Arkangel system has invited overwhelmingly negative moral evaluation from philosophers. But what accounts for the moral failure of a loving and concerned parent? Is it all about her flawed character, or are there situational factors at work? In the article, I first foreground the slipperiness of technology implicated in Albert Borgmann’s notion of the “device paradigm” and Hans Jonas’s analysis of modern technology. Then I analyze the character of the Arkangel system in the light of the two philosophers’ works and show how the technology turns Marie into a failing parent. In the end, I offer tentative answers to the two questions; the answers shall also shed light on the problem of under-parenting driven by digital technology.
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The Polish Journal of Aesthetics, 2021
This paper investigates the emotional import of literary devices deployed in fiction. Reflecting ... more This paper investigates the emotional import of literary devices deployed in fiction. Reflecting on the often-favored approach in the analytic tradition that locates fictional characters, events, and narratives as sources of readers' emotions, I attempt to broaden the scope of analysis by accounting for how literary devices trigger non-cognitive emotions. I argue that giving more expansive consideration to literary devices by which authors present content facilitates a better understanding of how fiction engages emotion. In doing so, I also explore the somatic dimension of reading fiction.
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The Journal of Aesthetic Education, 2020
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Film and Philosophy, 2019
What makes horror film music so distinctive that it is almost universally recognizable once the f... more What makes horror film music so distinctive that it is almost universally recognizable once the film goes public? What makes horror film music so powerful that it assumes “a heightened responsibility for triggering feelings of horror, fear and rage” in cinematic horror? In this paper, I develop an aesthetic of horror film music based on film sound theorist Kevin Donnelly’s “direct access thesis”. This thesis states that horror film scores have the power to provide “direct accesses” to the bodies of an audience in that they “produce physiological effects that bypass culture’s learned structures” and incite bodily sensations, exciting (mainly negative) emotions and even inserting in the audience “frames of mind and attitudes … much like a direct injection”. In the course of elucidating this proposal, I will critically examine two dominant theories in the field, namely, the culturalist theory of film music and Peter Kivy’s cognitivist theory of music and emotion. These theories maintain contrary positions regarding how listeners grasp the meaning of music; that is, via culture’s learned structures or musical knowledge. I contend that the two theories are inadequate in accounting for our actual experience with music, particularly cases in which listeners lacking knowledge of music (including knowledge of musical conventions) are moved by music. However, a more plausible theory can be constructed from Jenefer Robinson’s theory of music and emotion and Mark Johnson and Steve Larson’s contention that musical meaning is primarily embodied. I will show that this embodied theory of musical meaning nicely accounts for our actual experience with music and the role of musical knowledge in music appreciation. By aligning it with Donnelly’s direct access thesis, we will be able to reveal a deeper meaning of horror film scores than musical convention. It sheds light on why some horror film music, say, the shark motif in Jaws and Dies Irae in The Shining, so aptly represent threat or evil.
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International Philosophical Quarterly, 2018
Introduction
Discussions of the horror genre often feature the Noël Carroll’s “art-horror” and Ke... more Introduction
Discussions of the horror genre often feature the Noël Carroll’s “art-horror” and Kendall Walton’s “quasi-fear”. Walton’s “quasi-fear” is derived from a cognitive theory of emotion which maintains that belief is logically necessary for emotion, for example, a belief in danger is logically necessary for fear. Walton argues, however, that the belief in danger is missing when spectators are engaged with narrative horror. When watching, say, a dangerous green slime oozing towards the spectators, spectators do not believe that they are in danger. Although they indeed undergo affective responses like a pounding heart, tense muscle etc., they have “quasi-fear” but not genuine fear. “Quasi-fear” is evoked not by a belief in any real danger but by a realization of “fictional truths” generated from the audio-visual images showing the approaching of the green slime (Walton 1990, 245). Conversely, Carroll follows a cognitive theory of emotion which allows emotion to be evoked by propositional states other than beliefs, say, imagination, or what Carroll calls “thought-content”. He advances “art-horror” as a genuine emotion that has both cognitive and affective dimensions. “Art-horror” is an emotion “in which some physically abnormal state of felt agitation has been caused by the subject’s cognitive construal and evaluation of his/her situation” (Carroll 1990, 27). Art-horror is “an occurrent emotional state […] like a flash of anger, rather than a dispositional emotional state” (Carroll 1990, 24).
Despite the disputes between these two philosophers, their accounts have a few aspects in common. Both are aware of the affective dimension of spectators’ experience when they are engaged with narrative horror. However, informed by the cognitive theories of emotion, both accounts give cognitive components primacy over affective responses in the sense that affective responses are deemed the mere effects of cognitive components. There are two ramifications. First, as cognitive components always concern some object or event, both “quasi-fear” and “art-horror” require an object of the emotion. While Walton frequently instances a green-slime as an object of “quasi-fear”, Carroll postulates a threatening and impure monster as the object of art-horror. A spectator is art-horrified when the spectator makes related evaluative judgements towards the monster, judgements that provoke the emotion fear and visceral revulsion respectively (Carroll 1990, 27). Second, as the plot and narrative constitute the major source from which fictional truths and thought-content are obtained, both accounts rely almost exclusively on the plot and narrative to account for the spectator’s emotional engagement with horror.
Walton and Carroll’s accounts have received extensive criticisms that I cannot entirely canvas here, one of which is that the plot and narrative alone fail to explain away the affective impact of fiction and film, let alone the affective impact of the horror genre. The problem is perhaps most noticeable when it comes to cinematic horror, where audio-visual devices are deemed to be crucial in engaging the spectator’s emotions.
This article aims at constructing the emotion “horror” anew. As seen, the deficits of the two cognitivist accounts have it root in conceptualizing “horror” as a cognitive-based emotion. A way to rectify the deficits, as I will show, is to draw on the affective (or embodied) appraisal theories of emotion embraced by Jenefer Robinson and Jesse Prinz for a characterization of the emotion horror. Amidst a wider debate over what emotions are, I intend to show more specifically that the affective appraisal theories of emotion enable a finer conception of the emotion horror. It is finer for it betters at capturing literary depictions of horror experience. The finer conception in turns facilitates a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of spectator’s emotional experience when engaged with narrative horror, in which the role of formal devices and stylistic elements in narrative horror will also be illuminated.
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Film Studies, 2016
The significance of aural elements in horror cinema has been gaining recognition in film studies.... more The significance of aural elements in horror cinema has been gaining recognition in film studies. Yet it still receives relatively scare attention in the philosophical accounts of film music and cinematic horror. Informed by the cognitive theories of emotion, these philosophical accounts tend to focus on the monsters, themes, plot/narrative or visual images and underappreciate the power of horror film sound and music in inducing emotions. As Jeff Smith (2009) laments, only a only a handful of philosophers (including Peter Kivy, Noël Carroll and Jerrold Levinson) have tickled the issues of music and sound in horror.
This paper investigates the emotive potency of horror soundtracks. The account illuminates the potency of aural elements in horror cinema to engage spectator's body in the light of a philosophical framework of emotion, namely, the affective (embodied) appraisal theories of emotion. Drawing on Jenefer Robinson and Stephen Davies's respective accounts of music and emotion, I advance an affective approach to horror soundtracks that encompasses music and ambient sounds. The affective approach accommodates nicely Kevin Donnelly's, Michel Chion's and Elizabeth Weis's analyses of film music and sound. Using the soundtrack of The Blair Witch Project (1999), I will also show that the affective approach can be extended to account for the power of human voices and diegetic sounds to engage viewers' emotions.
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The Philosophical Quarterly, 2017
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Book Chapter by Lorraine Yeung
Philosophical Reflections on Black Mirror (Dan Shaw, Kingsley Marshall and James Rocha (eds) Bloomsbury Academic Publishing), 2022
The Black Mirror episode “San Junipero” (Harris 2016) considers the possibility of technology’s t... more The Black Mirror episode “San Junipero” (Harris 2016) considers the possibility of technology’s triumph over human mortality. By uploading their minds to the virtual world known as San Junipero, the two protagonists—Kelly, a terminally ill, widowed elderly woman, and the quadriplegic Yorkie, who has spent over forty years in bed attached to life-sustaining tubes—can be rid of the bondage of their physical bodies and live forever in simulated reality.
Unlike other episodes in the Black Mirror series, some critics find “San Junipero” uplifting. While showing awareness of the sometimes-frightening consequences of the technologies depicted in Black Mirror, Laura T. Di Summa argues that Black Mirror is not merely a portrait of a dystopia, instancing the mind-uploading technology of this episode “as a clearly positive take on the potentials of technology” (2019: 110). It allows Kelly and Yorkie to live a second life after their bodily death. The executive producer Annabel Jones, however, remarks that although the ending of “San Junipero” is positively upbeat, “it’s not exactly a happy ever after. It’s more about being happy for now, and seeing how this goes” (2018: 190). It suggests what might have been downplayed, if not missed, in the positive reading of the episode: Kelly and Yorkie do not merely live a second life in San Junipero—they live immortally.
Why does immortality cast a shadow on the upbeat ending of “San Junipero”? Wouldn’t it be a dream come true for Dmitry Itskov and Ray Kurzweil? Kelly’s emotional speech to Yorkie provides a clue: “You want to spend forever somewhere nothing matters? End up like Wes[ley]; all those . . . lost fucks at the Quagmire, trying anything just to feel something?” Interestingly, Kelly’s speech is reminiscent of many fictional stories in which immortal life goes sour (e.g., Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Jorge Luis Borges’ “The Immortal,” Mary Shelley’s The Mortal Immortal, and Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire), as well as various philosophical arguments saying that immortality is tedious. Adopting Stephen Mulhall’s “film as philosophizing” thesis (2008), this chapter shows how the Black Mirror series contributes to philosophical debates over immortality and mind-uploading technology. In particular, “San Junipero” provides a thought experiment that enriches current philosophical reflection on the desirability of immortality. Inspired by other episodes in the series—namely, “White Christmas” (Tibbets 2014), “Black Museum” (McCarthy 2017), and “USS Callister” (Haynes 2017)—we use maximin decision-making to construct a dilemma against choosing immortality via mind-uploading technology. In doing so, we reveal the gloomy view of the technology implicit in the Black Mirror universe.
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漫畫與哲學 (羅雅俊編,中華書局出版社) (Manga and Philosophy, ed. Josh Law, Chunghwa Book co.), 2019
2016年5月智利國立動物園發生廿歲青年全裸跳入獅子園區企圖自殺,園方開槍擊斃兩頭獅子救人事件。裸男此舉為道德哲學論述提供了不亞於經典的「電車難題」的道德兩難。在電車難題中,我們要決擇應否把正高... more 2016年5月智利國立動物園發生廿歲青年全裸跳入獅子園區企圖自殺,園方開槍擊斃兩頭獅子救人事件。裸男此舉為道德哲學論述提供了不亞於經典的「電車難題」的道德兩難。在電車難題中,我們要決擇應否把正高速行駛卻失控的電車由主軌轉轍軌道至旁軌。若不轉轍軌道,則正在主軌上工作的五名工人必死無疑。若轉轍至旁軌,則會把電車撞向一名在旁軌上工作的工人。電車難題要問的是,為救五個無辜的人而犧牲一個同樣無辜的人的生命在道德上是可容許的嗎?有心理學研究指出,在三十萬來自不同地區的受訪者中,四分之三對此問題給予肯定的答案。當然,若旁軌道上的工人是受訪者的家人或朋友,答案便截然不同。 在各人的生命價值相同大前提下,轉轍軌道能救回更多的生命,故轉轍軌道在道德上比起不轉轍軌道更可取。依照如此的邏輯,若主軌道上只有兩個工人,轉轍軌道在道德上仍然比起不轉轍軌道更可取。只有當主旁軌道都有同等數量的工人時,兩個行動再沒有如上的道德差異。
回頭看智利動物園事件:園方的決定明顯預設了牽涉在事件中的生命的價值不相同。園方發言人一面對兩頭獅子的死亡表示難過,一面解釋說:「對我們來說,人的生命非常重要。」 「非常重要」是指,從數量上說,兩頭成年獅子的生命價值也抵不上一個尋死的成年人的生命。更甚的是,被射殺的兩頭獅子跟管理動物園的團隊相處了20多年,被視之為團隊的家人。可是在園方眼中,那兩頭獅子的生命不比一個陌生遊客的生命重要。
可是,為什麼人類的生命如此重要? 一個典型的答案是,人類貴為萬物之靈,道德地位比其他物種崇高,故人類的道德權利如生存權、利益均淩駕其他物種的利益。這個看似理所當然的答案,除了長久以來為哲學家所非議外,也是日本漫畫 《寄生獸》 (1990-1995, 岩明均) 嘗試對之作出反省的課題。 本文會籍著《寄生獸》的故事,介紹(含大量情節透露)數個相關的哲學觀點。 本文的第一部份「人是萬物之靈,還是惡魔?」將介紹當代反生育論者貝納塔爾 (Benatar) 的「厭人論證」,而第二部份則檢視物種主義及智力決定道德地位等哲學觀點。
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Conference Presentations by Lorraine Yeung
Proceedings of the European Society for Aesthetics, 2018
This paper investigates horror experience in relation to life. I advance an account of horror tha... more This paper investigates horror experience in relation to life. I advance an account of horror that captures its intriguing effect of disrupting and modifying the everyday experience of audiences. I draw on Dewey's philosophy of art and experience, Foucault's concept of "experience book", and the approach to the value of fiction developed by Timothy O'Leary (2009) and argue that some works of horror can effectuate what O'Leary calls "transformative experience" in audiences. I will flesh out my account by offering a close reading of Robert Bloch's Psycho (1959). I defend my account by showing its merit over, for example, the hedonic accounts of the appeal of horror, which maintains that the appeal of horror lies in the pleasure it affords. The inquiry is also an attempt to shield the horror genre against accusations like G. Di Muzio’s, who argues in “The Immorality of Horror Films” (2006) that horror films are immoral in that they have corrupting effect on audience by desensitizing viewers’ compassion towards the victims.
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The film sound theorist K. J. Donnelly's essay 'Demonic possession: horror film music' (2005) fam... more The film sound theorist K. J. Donnelly's essay 'Demonic possession: horror film music' (2005) famously remarks that some horror film music attempts at a " direct engagement with the physical " in that they trigger bodily effects " bypassed culture's learned structures ". Donnelly notes that his 'direct-access thesis' of (horror) film music is subject to challenge from the " culturalist " view of film music, which contends that musical meaning is a mere matter of convention, and thus it is via learning the conventional meaning that film viewers come to be emotionally affected by the music and sound. This culturalist view of film music is supported by a position on musical meaning favoured by many philosophers —the cognitivist theory of music and emotion defended by Peter Kivy. It argues that musical meaning is grasped primarily via intellectually or cognitively processing the music's formal properties and/or the properties' conventional meaning. In this paper, I defend Donnelly's " direct access thesis ". I first examine the extent to which knowledge of music and musical conventions are required for music appreciation, in the course of which Kivy's cognitivist theory will be confronted. Then I put forward the view that musical meaning is primarily embodied, and show its merits over the culturalist and the cognitivist one. I wish to show how reflecting on horror film music provides interesting objections to a long-standing philosophical position of music and emotion, and enhance understanding of musical meaning. iafor The International Academic Forum www.iafor.org
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Papers by Lorraine Yeung
AI & SOCIETY, Sep 21, 2023
Mark Coeckelbergh (Int J Soc Robot 1:217–221, 2009) argues that robot ethics should investigate w... more Mark Coeckelbergh (Int J Soc Robot 1:217–221, 2009) argues that robot ethics should investigate what interaction with robots can do to humans rather than focusing on the robot’s moral status. We should ask what robots do to our sociality and whether human–robot interaction can contribute to the human good and human flourishing. This paper extends Coeckelbergh’s call and investigate what it means to live with disembodied AI-powered agents. We address the following question: Can the human–AI interaction contribute to our moral development? We present an empirically informed philosophical analysis of how the AI personal assistant Siri changes its users’ way of life, based on the responses obtained from 20 semi-directive individual interviews with Siri users. We identify changes in the users’ social interaction associated with the adoption of Siri. These changes include: (1) the indirect effect of reducing opportunities of human interaction, (2) the second-order effect of diminished expectations toward each other in a community, and (3) the acquired preference to obtain hassle-free interaction with Siri over human interaction. We examine them in relation to concerns that are voiced in the current debates over the rise of AI, namely the suspicion that humans could become overly reliant on AI (Danaher 2019) and the worry that social AI could impede on moral development (Fröding and Peterson, Ethics Inf Technol 23:207–214, 2012; Li, Ethics Inf Technol 23:543–550, 2021). We analyze the ethical costs that come from these changes in light of virtue ethics and address potential objections along the way. We end by offering directions for thinking about how to live with AI personal assistant while preserving favorable conditions for moral development.
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Philosophical Reflections on Black Mirror, 2022
The Black Mirror episode “San Junipero” (Harris 2016) considers the possibility of technology’s t... more The Black Mirror episode “San Junipero” (Harris 2016) considers the possibility of technology’s triumph over human mortality. By uploading their minds to the virtual world known as San Junipero, the two protagonists—Kelly, a terminally ill, widowed elderly woman, and the quadriplegic Yorkie, who has spent over forty years in bed attached to life-sustaining tubes—can be rid of the bondage of their physical bodies and live forever in simulated reality. Unlike other episodes in the Black Mirror series, some critics find “San Junipero” uplifting. While showing awareness of the sometimes-frightening consequences of the technologies depicted in Black Mirror, Laura T. Di Summa argues that Black Mirror is not merely a portrait of a dystopia, instancing the mind-uploading technology of this episode “as a clearly positive take on the potentials of technology” (2019: 110). It allows Kelly and Yorkie to live a second life after their bodily death. The executive producer Annabel Jones, however, remarks that although the ending of “San Junipero” is positively upbeat, “it’s not exactly a happy ever after. It’s more about being happy for now, and seeing how this goes” (2018: 190). It suggests what might have been downplayed, if not missed, in the positive reading of the episode: Kelly and Yorkie do not merely live a second life in San Junipero—they live immortally. Why does immortality cast a shadow on the upbeat ending of “San Junipero”? Wouldn’t it be a dream come true for Dmitry Itskov and Ray Kurzweil? Kelly’s emotional speech to Yorkie provides a clue: “You want to spend forever somewhere nothing matters? End up like Wes[ley]; all those . . . lost fucks at the Quagmire, trying anything just to feel something?” Interestingly, Kelly’s speech is reminiscent of many fictional stories in which immortal life goes sour (e.g., Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Jorge Luis Borges’ “The Immortal,” Mary Shelley’s The Mortal Immortal, and Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire), as well as various philosophical arguments saying that immortality is tedious. Adopting Stephen Mulhall’s “film as philosophizing” thesis (2008), this chapter shows how the Black Mirror series contributes to philosophical debates over immortality and mind-uploading technology. In particular, “San Junipero” provides a thought experiment that enriches current philosophical reflection on the desirability of immortality. Inspired by other episodes in the series—namely, “White Christmas” (Tibbets 2014), “Black Museum” (McCarthy 2017), and “USS Callister” (Haynes 2017)—we use maximin decision-making to construct a dilemma against choosing immortality via mind-uploading technology. In doing so, we reveal the gloomy view of the technology implicit in the Black Mirror universe.
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The Journal of Aesthetic Education, 2020
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Think
Facing a recent surge in anti-natalist arguments saying that human procreation is immoral, some d... more Facing a recent surge in anti-natalist arguments saying that human procreation is immoral, some defend human procreation by saying that procreative parenting adds meaning to parents’ life. This article examines one such defence, and argues that it does not suffice to rescue human procreation from the challenges to procreation.
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Uploads
Published works by Lorraine Yeung
Abstract
This article explores the preliminary justifiability of meat restriction order as a preventive measure to the risks of pandemic and other forms of harm posed by factory farming. A meat restriction order seeks to limit citizens’ meat consumption at the level of meeting individuals’ basic nutrient needs. This article aims to loosen some potential psychological hooks that prevent a more expansive, rational deliberation of the proposal. Inspired by Michel Foucault’s analysis of “everyday experience” and the Buddhist responses to global environmental issues, we investigate the social patterns that account for the formation of people’s meat commitment, using Hong Kong society as a major case study. With reference to scientific studies of meat-eaters’ psychology, we discuss how the meat commitment becomes a barrier for society to positively consider the justifiability of the proposal. We will also address a number of objections to our proposal, including those from liberalism.
Discussions of the horror genre often feature the Noël Carroll’s “art-horror” and Kendall Walton’s “quasi-fear”. Walton’s “quasi-fear” is derived from a cognitive theory of emotion which maintains that belief is logically necessary for emotion, for example, a belief in danger is logically necessary for fear. Walton argues, however, that the belief in danger is missing when spectators are engaged with narrative horror. When watching, say, a dangerous green slime oozing towards the spectators, spectators do not believe that they are in danger. Although they indeed undergo affective responses like a pounding heart, tense muscle etc., they have “quasi-fear” but not genuine fear. “Quasi-fear” is evoked not by a belief in any real danger but by a realization of “fictional truths” generated from the audio-visual images showing the approaching of the green slime (Walton 1990, 245). Conversely, Carroll follows a cognitive theory of emotion which allows emotion to be evoked by propositional states other than beliefs, say, imagination, or what Carroll calls “thought-content”. He advances “art-horror” as a genuine emotion that has both cognitive and affective dimensions. “Art-horror” is an emotion “in which some physically abnormal state of felt agitation has been caused by the subject’s cognitive construal and evaluation of his/her situation” (Carroll 1990, 27). Art-horror is “an occurrent emotional state […] like a flash of anger, rather than a dispositional emotional state” (Carroll 1990, 24).
Despite the disputes between these two philosophers, their accounts have a few aspects in common. Both are aware of the affective dimension of spectators’ experience when they are engaged with narrative horror. However, informed by the cognitive theories of emotion, both accounts give cognitive components primacy over affective responses in the sense that affective responses are deemed the mere effects of cognitive components. There are two ramifications. First, as cognitive components always concern some object or event, both “quasi-fear” and “art-horror” require an object of the emotion. While Walton frequently instances a green-slime as an object of “quasi-fear”, Carroll postulates a threatening and impure monster as the object of art-horror. A spectator is art-horrified when the spectator makes related evaluative judgements towards the monster, judgements that provoke the emotion fear and visceral revulsion respectively (Carroll 1990, 27). Second, as the plot and narrative constitute the major source from which fictional truths and thought-content are obtained, both accounts rely almost exclusively on the plot and narrative to account for the spectator’s emotional engagement with horror.
Walton and Carroll’s accounts have received extensive criticisms that I cannot entirely canvas here, one of which is that the plot and narrative alone fail to explain away the affective impact of fiction and film, let alone the affective impact of the horror genre. The problem is perhaps most noticeable when it comes to cinematic horror, where audio-visual devices are deemed to be crucial in engaging the spectator’s emotions.
This article aims at constructing the emotion “horror” anew. As seen, the deficits of the two cognitivist accounts have it root in conceptualizing “horror” as a cognitive-based emotion. A way to rectify the deficits, as I will show, is to draw on the affective (or embodied) appraisal theories of emotion embraced by Jenefer Robinson and Jesse Prinz for a characterization of the emotion horror. Amidst a wider debate over what emotions are, I intend to show more specifically that the affective appraisal theories of emotion enable a finer conception of the emotion horror. It is finer for it betters at capturing literary depictions of horror experience. The finer conception in turns facilitates a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of spectator’s emotional experience when engaged with narrative horror, in which the role of formal devices and stylistic elements in narrative horror will also be illuminated.
This paper investigates the emotive potency of horror soundtracks. The account illuminates the potency of aural elements in horror cinema to engage spectator's body in the light of a philosophical framework of emotion, namely, the affective (embodied) appraisal theories of emotion. Drawing on Jenefer Robinson and Stephen Davies's respective accounts of music and emotion, I advance an affective approach to horror soundtracks that encompasses music and ambient sounds. The affective approach accommodates nicely Kevin Donnelly's, Michel Chion's and Elizabeth Weis's analyses of film music and sound. Using the soundtrack of The Blair Witch Project (1999), I will also show that the affective approach can be extended to account for the power of human voices and diegetic sounds to engage viewers' emotions.
Book Chapter by Lorraine Yeung
Unlike other episodes in the Black Mirror series, some critics find “San Junipero” uplifting. While showing awareness of the sometimes-frightening consequences of the technologies depicted in Black Mirror, Laura T. Di Summa argues that Black Mirror is not merely a portrait of a dystopia, instancing the mind-uploading technology of this episode “as a clearly positive take on the potentials of technology” (2019: 110). It allows Kelly and Yorkie to live a second life after their bodily death. The executive producer Annabel Jones, however, remarks that although the ending of “San Junipero” is positively upbeat, “it’s not exactly a happy ever after. It’s more about being happy for now, and seeing how this goes” (2018: 190). It suggests what might have been downplayed, if not missed, in the positive reading of the episode: Kelly and Yorkie do not merely live a second life in San Junipero—they live immortally.
Why does immortality cast a shadow on the upbeat ending of “San Junipero”? Wouldn’t it be a dream come true for Dmitry Itskov and Ray Kurzweil? Kelly’s emotional speech to Yorkie provides a clue: “You want to spend forever somewhere nothing matters? End up like Wes[ley]; all those . . . lost fucks at the Quagmire, trying anything just to feel something?” Interestingly, Kelly’s speech is reminiscent of many fictional stories in which immortal life goes sour (e.g., Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Jorge Luis Borges’ “The Immortal,” Mary Shelley’s The Mortal Immortal, and Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire), as well as various philosophical arguments saying that immortality is tedious. Adopting Stephen Mulhall’s “film as philosophizing” thesis (2008), this chapter shows how the Black Mirror series contributes to philosophical debates over immortality and mind-uploading technology. In particular, “San Junipero” provides a thought experiment that enriches current philosophical reflection on the desirability of immortality. Inspired by other episodes in the series—namely, “White Christmas” (Tibbets 2014), “Black Museum” (McCarthy 2017), and “USS Callister” (Haynes 2017)—we use maximin decision-making to construct a dilemma against choosing immortality via mind-uploading technology. In doing so, we reveal the gloomy view of the technology implicit in the Black Mirror universe.
回頭看智利動物園事件:園方的決定明顯預設了牽涉在事件中的生命的價值不相同。園方發言人一面對兩頭獅子的死亡表示難過,一面解釋說:「對我們來說,人的生命非常重要。」 「非常重要」是指,從數量上說,兩頭成年獅子的生命價值也抵不上一個尋死的成年人的生命。更甚的是,被射殺的兩頭獅子跟管理動物園的團隊相處了20多年,被視之為團隊的家人。可是在園方眼中,那兩頭獅子的生命不比一個陌生遊客的生命重要。
可是,為什麼人類的生命如此重要? 一個典型的答案是,人類貴為萬物之靈,道德地位比其他物種崇高,故人類的道德權利如生存權、利益均淩駕其他物種的利益。這個看似理所當然的答案,除了長久以來為哲學家所非議外,也是日本漫畫 《寄生獸》 (1990-1995, 岩明均) 嘗試對之作出反省的課題。 本文會籍著《寄生獸》的故事,介紹(含大量情節透露)數個相關的哲學觀點。 本文的第一部份「人是萬物之靈,還是惡魔?」將介紹當代反生育論者貝納塔爾 (Benatar) 的「厭人論證」,而第二部份則檢視物種主義及智力決定道德地位等哲學觀點。
Conference Presentations by Lorraine Yeung
Papers by Lorraine Yeung
Abstract
This article explores the preliminary justifiability of meat restriction order as a preventive measure to the risks of pandemic and other forms of harm posed by factory farming. A meat restriction order seeks to limit citizens’ meat consumption at the level of meeting individuals’ basic nutrient needs. This article aims to loosen some potential psychological hooks that prevent a more expansive, rational deliberation of the proposal. Inspired by Michel Foucault’s analysis of “everyday experience” and the Buddhist responses to global environmental issues, we investigate the social patterns that account for the formation of people’s meat commitment, using Hong Kong society as a major case study. With reference to scientific studies of meat-eaters’ psychology, we discuss how the meat commitment becomes a barrier for society to positively consider the justifiability of the proposal. We will also address a number of objections to our proposal, including those from liberalism.
Discussions of the horror genre often feature the Noël Carroll’s “art-horror” and Kendall Walton’s “quasi-fear”. Walton’s “quasi-fear” is derived from a cognitive theory of emotion which maintains that belief is logically necessary for emotion, for example, a belief in danger is logically necessary for fear. Walton argues, however, that the belief in danger is missing when spectators are engaged with narrative horror. When watching, say, a dangerous green slime oozing towards the spectators, spectators do not believe that they are in danger. Although they indeed undergo affective responses like a pounding heart, tense muscle etc., they have “quasi-fear” but not genuine fear. “Quasi-fear” is evoked not by a belief in any real danger but by a realization of “fictional truths” generated from the audio-visual images showing the approaching of the green slime (Walton 1990, 245). Conversely, Carroll follows a cognitive theory of emotion which allows emotion to be evoked by propositional states other than beliefs, say, imagination, or what Carroll calls “thought-content”. He advances “art-horror” as a genuine emotion that has both cognitive and affective dimensions. “Art-horror” is an emotion “in which some physically abnormal state of felt agitation has been caused by the subject’s cognitive construal and evaluation of his/her situation” (Carroll 1990, 27). Art-horror is “an occurrent emotional state […] like a flash of anger, rather than a dispositional emotional state” (Carroll 1990, 24).
Despite the disputes between these two philosophers, their accounts have a few aspects in common. Both are aware of the affective dimension of spectators’ experience when they are engaged with narrative horror. However, informed by the cognitive theories of emotion, both accounts give cognitive components primacy over affective responses in the sense that affective responses are deemed the mere effects of cognitive components. There are two ramifications. First, as cognitive components always concern some object or event, both “quasi-fear” and “art-horror” require an object of the emotion. While Walton frequently instances a green-slime as an object of “quasi-fear”, Carroll postulates a threatening and impure monster as the object of art-horror. A spectator is art-horrified when the spectator makes related evaluative judgements towards the monster, judgements that provoke the emotion fear and visceral revulsion respectively (Carroll 1990, 27). Second, as the plot and narrative constitute the major source from which fictional truths and thought-content are obtained, both accounts rely almost exclusively on the plot and narrative to account for the spectator’s emotional engagement with horror.
Walton and Carroll’s accounts have received extensive criticisms that I cannot entirely canvas here, one of which is that the plot and narrative alone fail to explain away the affective impact of fiction and film, let alone the affective impact of the horror genre. The problem is perhaps most noticeable when it comes to cinematic horror, where audio-visual devices are deemed to be crucial in engaging the spectator’s emotions.
This article aims at constructing the emotion “horror” anew. As seen, the deficits of the two cognitivist accounts have it root in conceptualizing “horror” as a cognitive-based emotion. A way to rectify the deficits, as I will show, is to draw on the affective (or embodied) appraisal theories of emotion embraced by Jenefer Robinson and Jesse Prinz for a characterization of the emotion horror. Amidst a wider debate over what emotions are, I intend to show more specifically that the affective appraisal theories of emotion enable a finer conception of the emotion horror. It is finer for it betters at capturing literary depictions of horror experience. The finer conception in turns facilitates a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of spectator’s emotional experience when engaged with narrative horror, in which the role of formal devices and stylistic elements in narrative horror will also be illuminated.
This paper investigates the emotive potency of horror soundtracks. The account illuminates the potency of aural elements in horror cinema to engage spectator's body in the light of a philosophical framework of emotion, namely, the affective (embodied) appraisal theories of emotion. Drawing on Jenefer Robinson and Stephen Davies's respective accounts of music and emotion, I advance an affective approach to horror soundtracks that encompasses music and ambient sounds. The affective approach accommodates nicely Kevin Donnelly's, Michel Chion's and Elizabeth Weis's analyses of film music and sound. Using the soundtrack of The Blair Witch Project (1999), I will also show that the affective approach can be extended to account for the power of human voices and diegetic sounds to engage viewers' emotions.
Unlike other episodes in the Black Mirror series, some critics find “San Junipero” uplifting. While showing awareness of the sometimes-frightening consequences of the technologies depicted in Black Mirror, Laura T. Di Summa argues that Black Mirror is not merely a portrait of a dystopia, instancing the mind-uploading technology of this episode “as a clearly positive take on the potentials of technology” (2019: 110). It allows Kelly and Yorkie to live a second life after their bodily death. The executive producer Annabel Jones, however, remarks that although the ending of “San Junipero” is positively upbeat, “it’s not exactly a happy ever after. It’s more about being happy for now, and seeing how this goes” (2018: 190). It suggests what might have been downplayed, if not missed, in the positive reading of the episode: Kelly and Yorkie do not merely live a second life in San Junipero—they live immortally.
Why does immortality cast a shadow on the upbeat ending of “San Junipero”? Wouldn’t it be a dream come true for Dmitry Itskov and Ray Kurzweil? Kelly’s emotional speech to Yorkie provides a clue: “You want to spend forever somewhere nothing matters? End up like Wes[ley]; all those . . . lost fucks at the Quagmire, trying anything just to feel something?” Interestingly, Kelly’s speech is reminiscent of many fictional stories in which immortal life goes sour (e.g., Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Jorge Luis Borges’ “The Immortal,” Mary Shelley’s The Mortal Immortal, and Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire), as well as various philosophical arguments saying that immortality is tedious. Adopting Stephen Mulhall’s “film as philosophizing” thesis (2008), this chapter shows how the Black Mirror series contributes to philosophical debates over immortality and mind-uploading technology. In particular, “San Junipero” provides a thought experiment that enriches current philosophical reflection on the desirability of immortality. Inspired by other episodes in the series—namely, “White Christmas” (Tibbets 2014), “Black Museum” (McCarthy 2017), and “USS Callister” (Haynes 2017)—we use maximin decision-making to construct a dilemma against choosing immortality via mind-uploading technology. In doing so, we reveal the gloomy view of the technology implicit in the Black Mirror universe.
回頭看智利動物園事件:園方的決定明顯預設了牽涉在事件中的生命的價值不相同。園方發言人一面對兩頭獅子的死亡表示難過,一面解釋說:「對我們來說,人的生命非常重要。」 「非常重要」是指,從數量上說,兩頭成年獅子的生命價值也抵不上一個尋死的成年人的生命。更甚的是,被射殺的兩頭獅子跟管理動物園的團隊相處了20多年,被視之為團隊的家人。可是在園方眼中,那兩頭獅子的生命不比一個陌生遊客的生命重要。
可是,為什麼人類的生命如此重要? 一個典型的答案是,人類貴為萬物之靈,道德地位比其他物種崇高,故人類的道德權利如生存權、利益均淩駕其他物種的利益。這個看似理所當然的答案,除了長久以來為哲學家所非議外,也是日本漫畫 《寄生獸》 (1990-1995, 岩明均) 嘗試對之作出反省的課題。 本文會籍著《寄生獸》的故事,介紹(含大量情節透露)數個相關的哲學觀點。 本文的第一部份「人是萬物之靈,還是惡魔?」將介紹當代反生育論者貝納塔爾 (Benatar) 的「厭人論證」,而第二部份則檢視物種主義及智力決定道德地位等哲學觀點。