This paper criticises Miranda Fricker's account of the primary harm of testimonial injustice as a kind of epistemic objectification, where the latter is understood on the model provided by Martha Nussbaum's influential analysis of sexual objectification and where it is taken to involve the denial of someone's epistemic agency. I examine the existing objections to Fricker's account of the primary harm, criticising some while accepting the force of others, and I argue that one of Fricker's own central examples (...) of testimonial injustice in fact offers the basis of a particularly telling objection. While Fricker's other critics have mostly concluded that we need to look at alternative theoretical resources to offer an account of the primary harm of testimonial injustice, I aim to show that this is premature; both Fricker and her critics have underestimated the resources provided by Nussbaum's analysis of objectification when offering an account of the primary harm, and something very much in the spirit of Fricker's account survives the objections. (shrink)

According to Martha Nussbaum, objectification is essentially a form of instrumentalization or use. I argue that this instrumentalization account fails to capture the distinctive harms and wrongs of sexual objectification, because it does not explain the relationship between instrumentalization and the processes of social stereotyping that make it possible. I develop an imposition account of sexual objectification that provides such an explanation and, therefore, should be preferred over the instrumentalization account. It draws on a contrast between imposition (...) and self-presentation and explains why sexual objectification, understood as the imposition of sex object status on women, is harmful and wrong. (shrink)

Objectification involves treating someone as a thing. The role of images in perpetuating objectification has been discussed by feminist philosophers. However, the precise effect that images have on an individual's visual system is seldom explored. Kathleen Stock’s work is an exception—she describes certain images of women as causing viewers to develop an objectifying ‘gestalt’ which is then projected onto real-life women. However, she doesn’t specify the level of visual processing at which objectification occurs. In this paper, I (...) propose that images can affect a viewer's early visual system. I will argue that if a viewer is exposed to a lot of images that depict women as sexual objects, this will bias their early visual selection mechanisms in a way that can result in an objectifying way of seeing. This is an important contribution to work on objectification as it incorporates empirical studies on vision and findings from philosophy of mind. It also examines some of the epistemic and moral consequences of objectification occurring at this early visual stage. (shrink)

Sexual objectification, in the broadest terms, involves treating people as things. Philosophers have offered different accounts of what, more precisely, this involves. According to the conjoint view of Catherine Mackinnon and Sally Haslanger, sexual objectification is necessarily morally objectionable. According to Martha Nussbaum, it is not: there can be benign instances of it, in the course of a healthy sexual relationship, for instance. This is taken to be a serious disagreement, both by Nussbaum and by recent commentators such (...) as Lina Papadaki. However it isn't a serious disagreement, for the two theories have different aims and methodology, and are not rivals. They both could be apt, simultaneously. (shrink)

In this article I offer an analysis of harms associated with sexual objectification. Objectification can be benign, but harm tends to occur in three circumstances: (i) when objectification is non-consensual, (ii) when a phenomenon that I term ‘context-creeping’ occurs, and (iii) when the objectification is also enacting or reinforcing some kind of oppression. I defend the view that objectification is not always harmful, and I explain the popular intuition to the contrary by demonstrating that these (...) three harm-generating circumstances are especially prevalent. The phenomenon of ‘context-creeping’ objectification is introduced to capture what is intuitively wrong with much objectification in media and advertising. This phenomenon describes when instances of sexual objectification (which may be, in themselves, benign) regularly occur outside sexual contexts, in a way that reinforces particular rape myths and thereby contributes to harms. This means that the ubiquity of discussion of pornography in the objectification literature is misleading, and a shift in focus to other media is warranted. I end with a warning, though: we should be very careful in how we respond to these problems, as attempts to mitigate any harms associated with objectifying media can badly misfire. (shrink)

Objectification is a foundational concept in feminist theory, used to analyze such disparate social phenomena as sex work, representation of women's bodies, and sexual harassment. However, there has been an increasing trend among scholars of rejecting and re-evaluating the philosophical assumptions which underpin it. In this work, Cahill suggests an abandonment of the notion of objectification, on the basis of its dependence on a Kantian ideal of personhood. Such an ideal fails to recognize sufficiently the role the body (...) plays in personhood, and thus results in an implicit vilification of the body and sexuality. The problem with the phenomena associated with objectification is not that they render women objects, and therefore not-persons, but rather that they construct feminine subjectivity and sexuality as wholly derivative of masculine subjectivity and sexuality. Women, in other words, are not objectified as much as they are derivatized, turned into a mere reflection or projection of the other. Cahill argues for an ethics of materiality based upon a recognition of difference, thus working toward an ethics of sexuality that is decidedly ­and simultaneously ­incarnate and intersubjective. (shrink)

I resolve a tension between two prominent strands of feminist social critique. On the first, the domination of women consists largely in their objectification, and the objectifying character of such domination primarily explains why it is wrong. On the second, some salient forms of domination have a distinctively intersubjective dimension that makes them crucially unlike our standard modes of relating to objects. Yet in that case, how could characterizing these acts as objectifying capture why they are wrong? Focusing on (...) domination that seeks recognition from the subordinate, I argue that each strand contains half the truth, weaving these together. The first is correct to point out that that the concept of objectification is necessary for capturing the wrong of recognition-seeking domination, and that acts can be objectifying and ‘subjectifying’ all at once. The second strand is right to insist that domination of this sort has an irreducibly subjectifying character in light of which the concept of objectification is insufficient for clarifying its wrongness. The general lesson is that an account of the wrong of recognition- seeking domination is adequate only if it does justice to both its objectifying and subjectifying aspects. (shrink)

Illness and injury are often accompanied by experiences of bodily objectification. Medical treatments intended to restore the structure or function of the body may amplify these experiences of objectification by recasting the patient’s body as a biomedical object—something to be examined, measured, and manipulated. In this article, we contribute to the phenomenology of embodiment in illness and medicine by reexamining the results of a qualitative study of the experiences of nurses and patients isolated in an intensive care unit (...) during the first wave of COVID-19. Drawing upon the phenomenological concept of embodiment—as developed in the work of Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Emmanuel Levinas—we reconsider how bodily objectification manifests in complex clinical encounters. We show that, in these settings, objectification is not simply the unilateral act of a clinician objectifying a patient. Rather, both clinicians and patients reported a variety of objectifying experiences influenced by their interactions, the immediate context of the intensive care milieu, and the broader atmosphere of a global pandemic. In light of these findings, we argue that bodily objectification in illness and medicine can often be more complicated than typically presented in the phenomenological literature. (shrink)

This paper offers a novel interpretation of Arthur Schopenhauer’s central metaphysical doctrine of the world‑as‑representation — namely, that the empirical world is the “objectification” of a blind, non‑rational “will” — by reading it through the lens of Yogācāra (Consciousness‑Only) Buddhist philosophy. I argue that Schopenhauer’s “will‑objectification” can be fruitfully understood as a form of representational genesis: the will, in itself unconscious of multiplicity and temporal‑spatial structure, becomes manifest only insofar as it is “objectified” into representation — that is, (...) as phenomenal appearances conditioned by subjectivity. This move aligns with the Yogācāra insight that what we take as external objects are in fact “vijñapti‑mātra”: consciousness‑only constructions, devoid of independent external ontological status. By mapping Schopenhauer’s metaphysics onto a Yogācāra epistemology, the paper shows that (1) the distinction between “thing‑in‑itself” (will) and “phenomenal world” (representation) mirrors Yogācāra’s distinction between pure cognition and manifest cognition; (2) Schopenhauer’s account of suffering, aesthetic reprieve, and ascetic negation of the will obtains a deeper resonance when re‑interpreted as a yogācāra path of releasing attachment to constructed representations; and (3) this bridge challenges common readings that cast Schopenhauer’s worldview as fundamentally Kantian or as mere pessimistic metaphysical dualism. The result is a cross‑tradition hermeneutic that enriches our understanding both of Schopenhauer’s metaphysics and of Yogācāra’s phenomenology, offering a fresh perspective on the nature of representation, subjectivity, and liberation. (shrink)

Sexual objectification is a common theme in contemporary feminist theory. It has been associated with the work of the anti-pornography feminists Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, and, more recently, with the work of Martha Nussbaum. Interestingly, these feminists' views on objectification have their foundations in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Fully comprehending contemporary discussions of sexuality and objectification, therefore, requires a close and careful analysis of Kant's own theory of objectification. In this paper, I provide such (...) an analysis. I explain what is involved, for Kant, in the process of objectification, what it really means for a person to be an object (what Kant calls an `object of appetite'), and finally deal with his reasons for thinking that marriage can provide the solution to the problem of sexual objectification. I then proceed to some contemporary feminist discussions on sexual objectification, showing how influential Kant's ideas have been for contemporary feminist thinkers MacKinnon, Dworkin, and Nussbaum. My analysis of these feminists' work focuses on the striking similarities, as well as the important differences, that exist between their views and Kant's views on what objectification is, how it is caused, and how it can be eliminated. (shrink)

Objectification is a notion central to contemporary feminist theory. It has famously been associated with the work of anti-pornography feminists Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, and more recently with the work of Martha Nussbaum. However, objectification is a notion that has not yet been adequately defined. It has been used rather vaguely to refer to a broad range of cases involving, in some way or another, the treatment of a person as an object. My purpose in this paper (...) is to offer a plausible understanding of objectification. I do that by focusing on the work of four prominent thinkers: Immanuel Kant, and contemporary feminists Catharine MacKinnon, Andrea Dworkin and Martha Nussbaum. Through drawing on these thinkers' conceptions of objectification, I am finally led to a more complete and coherent understanding of this notion. (shrink)

The weak objectification of physical properties is shown to yield the same probabilistic implications as strong objectification and can therefore be refuted on the basis of suitable interference experiments. An alternative test of hypothetical objectification statements, as they occur in the EPR experiment, is based on joint probabilities and the ensuing Bell inequalities. Quantum mechanics turns out to be partially compatible with Bell's inequalities even in cases where weak objectification is excluded by interference.

The paper is about objectification in and of social work. Drawing on a decade-long cooperation with a Copenhagen social workers network focused in the organization Wild Learning, and starting from an Internet essay this organization has provided, the problems with objectifying social work are discussed. Viewed as basically a wholistic subjectification, social work cannot easily be endowed with objectivity in the form of scientific standards, and the objects representing it are often like novels, uniqueness mass-produced; they can be said (...) to ideologically confirm rather than scientifically model its activities and communities. The approach to objectification must dig a level deeper. It is considered how objectifications in social work – and the Internet essay is taken as example – can be approached critically as ideological objectifications and at the same time, in the cultural-historical tradition, as prototypes with some scope of relevance. (shrink)

Is finding someone funny a way of treating them as an object? And if so, does that make it immoral? In this paper, I argue that seeing someone as comic involves failing to take into account their subjectivity, which makes it a form of objectification. As for the morality of this ‘comic objectification’, I argue that regarding someone with a comically objectifying attitude is wrongful when such an attitude plays a role in legitimating the oppression of members of (...) their social group. (shrink)

Whether in the anti-anthropocentrism of Rosi Braidotti and Donna Haraway, the vitalism of Jane Bennett, the agentic realism of Karen Barad or the actor-network theorists inspired by Bruno Latour, recent continental feminism has taken a posthumanist turn. Whilst such theorists differ in many respects, this paper focuses on a shared claim: that humans are not special when it comes to agency. In such theories, objects, networks, and assemblages are just as agentic as humans. The paper argues that this leaves the (...) posthumanist feminist unable to make sense of objectification. The paper considers three responses that the posthumanist feminist might offer: (1) endorsing a variegated notion of agency, (2) giving up on objectification, and (3) endorsing an error theoretic notion of objectification. The paper argues that only the last of these options will work for the posthumanist feminist, but that it leads to a new problem: we can no longer describe the distinctive wrongs faced by people in objectification, relegating violent forms of objectification to the same moral status as kicking a rock. The paper concludes that feminism needs to make sense of objectification and that the posthumanist turn in some parts of feminist thought is misguided. (shrink)

Objectification is a real problem in medicine that can lead to bad medical practice or, in the worst case, dehumanization of the patient. Nevertheless, objectification also plays a major and necessary role in medicine: the patient’s body should be viewed as a biological organism in order to find diseases and be able to cure them. Listening to the patient’s illness story should not be replaced, but, indeed, developed by the physical examination of his body searching for the causes (...) of his complaints. Whereas phenomenologists have so far mainly been identifying the back sides of objectification in medicine, in this paper the aim is to analyze differences between detrimental objectifications and objectifications that do not deprive the patient of his subjectivity but, rather, at least in some cases, may lead the patient to feel more at home with his body. (shrink)

This paper examines the enduring structural, ethical, cultural, and psychological vulnerabilities of democratic governance through the integrated perspectives of Plato, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer. Plato’s critique highlights democracy’s susceptibility to excess liberty, factionalism, and manipulation by sophistic actors, while Nietzsche emphasizes the cultural and moral erosion arising from populist strategies, herd morality, and opportunistic political behavior. Schopenhauer contributes a deeper existential dimension, demonstrating how the cyclical, insatiable nature of human desire—the endless striving of the Will—perpetuates repetitive patterns of ambition, dissatisfaction, and (...) ethical compromise among political actors and citizens alike. By synthesizing these perspectives, this study argues that democratic fragility is not solely institutional but also ethical and psychological, shaped by human ambition, cultural dynamics, and structural incentives. Furthermore, the concept of the “identity of Will” suggests a potential path for reorienting collective striving toward shared ethical and civic objectives, offering a framework for mitigating the destructive cycles of democratic life. This integrative approach provides insights into contemporary challenges in representative democracies, including populism, factionalism, media-driven manipulation, and public disillusionment, emphasizing the necessity of combining institutional safeguards, civic education, ethical cultivation, and cultural awareness to sustain democracy and foster collective flourishing. (shrink)

This chapter defends a theory of objectification, conceiving of it as a species of what aestheticians have called ‘seeing‐as’, and more specifically, a kind of seeing‐as which to some degree is insensitive to the mind or mental aspects. An advantage of this view is that it covers both sexual and racial objectification, and can also explain how photographic images can objectify their subjects: namely, by encouraging the viewer to view in a way insensitive to the mind or mental (...) aspects of the subject. It also explains in what context objectification to can be harmless. This view is discussed in relation to several others. (shrink)

Sara Heinämaa and James Jardine demonstrate that both classical and existential phenomenology offer analytical concepts that are of crucial pertinence and value to contemporary dehumanization research. They begin by outlining an account of dehumanization that distinguishes this phenomenon both from the general operation of objectification and from the violation of autonomy. What is essential to dehumanizing acts and practices they argue, is not objectification or the violation of autonomy per se, but rather a disregard for, and undermining of, (...) the unique singularity of human persons. Moreover, it is proposed that dehumanization ought to be theorized as an intersubjective process that also incorporates how the dehumanizing activity is experienced by the person dehumanized. Two concrete cases of dehumanizing treatment are then discussed in detail: colonial racism and gender hierarchization. The analytical concepts of inferiorization, epidermalization, and emotive projection are introduced to account for some of the specific features of these varieties of dehumanization. The chapter thus argues that dehumanization is not one unified phenomenon but a pattern of social dynamics that emerges in different guises relative to specific practical and historical contexts. (shrink)

This article centres around objectification. It offers an analysis of the notions that are involved in this phenomenon, their moral wrongness, as well as the connections that exist between them. Martha Nussbaum has suggested that seven notions are involved in objectification: instrumentality, denial of autonomy, inertness, fungibility, violability, ownership, and denial of subjectivity. She espouses the view that the instrumentalisation of human beings is especially problematic as compared to the other ways in which we can treat human beings (...) as objects . In this paper, I argue against the view that instrumentalisation should be thought of as more suspicious from a moral point of view than the rest of the ways in which people can be treated as objects. Singling out extreme instrumentality for being especially problematic might lead us to underestimate the wrongness involved in the other ways of treating human beings as objects, and can therefore potentially distort our understanding of what, more generally, is wrong with objectifying human beings. (shrink)

This entry considers the question “What is objectification?” After preliminary remarks about different methodological approaches, several possible answers, or groups of answers, are introduced, separated out in terms of broad themes. Each is situated in relation to historical and more contemporary authors. These themes are: objectification as instrumentalization; objectification as reduction to the body; objectification as negation of subjectivity or agency; objectification as naturalization. Objectification is considered in relation to both sexual and racial contexts. (...) Finally, these themes are discussed in relation to the wider category of “mind suppression,” and its relation to objectification in the familiar context of imagery. (shrink)

The analysis of Dolezal’s work continues in this chapter in terms of her and certain other people’s criticisms of Sartre’s account of shame. The chapter argues that Dolezal and others are correct that, in the former’s words, shame “reaches the foundation of who we are” and “goes straight to the core of what it means to be human.” However, their misunderstanding of Sartre’s linkage of alienation with objectification disrupts their progress along that route. The chapter also argues that Merleau-Ponty (...) did understand Sartre correctly and provided a philosophically more adequate account of alienation and objectification. The chapter also considers how other philosophers have taken up and criticized Sartre’s account. They include Gabriele Taylor and Bernard Williams, and both of them offer criticisms of Max Scheler’s account of shame. (shrink)

This thesis defends the diagnostic accuracy and political usefulness of the claim that women are complicit in their sexual objectification. Feminists have long struggled to demarcate the appropriate limits of feminist critiques of sexual objectification, particularly when it comes to objectifying practices which women both consent to and experience as empowering. These struggles, I argue, are the result of a fundamental misdiagnosis of what happens when women are sexually objectified, whereby the abstract notion of 'treating as an object' (...) is called upon to explicate the kind of phenomena which can only be properly understood in light of a more general set of social norms of masculinity and femininity. A more accurate diagnosis of sexual objectification, I argue, is provided by Catharine MacKinnon's radical feminist theory, according to which sexually objectifying acts are manifestations of the social process through which women are made into objects of male sexual gratification. One important implication of this account is that women themselves play a role in perpetuating the norms through which sexually objectifying treatment of women is enabled: insofar as they participate in the re-constitution of the social context which facilitates their sexual objectification, they are complicit in it. Although this idea lacks intuitive appeal from a feminist perspective, I argue that understanding the nature of the contribution women make to perpetuating their objectification enables a better understanding of what practices of resistance are necessary for effectively combatting the sexual objectification of women. I defend the explanatory power of the complicity account of objectification in light of two pressing debates in contemporary feminist philosophy: the question of how women can disidentify from femininity given the strong attachments they develop to it, and the question of how feminism can continue to appeal to the motif of solidarity considering the anti-essentialist commitments of recent feminist theory. (shrink)

Stigmatization associated with the coronavirus disease 2019 is expected to be a complex issue and to extend into the later phases of the pandemic, which impairs social cohesion and relevant individuals' well-being. Identifying contributing factors and learning their roles in the stigmatization process may help tackle the problem. This study quantitatively assessed the severity of stigmatization against three different groups of people: people from major COVID-19 outbreak sites, those who had been quarantined, and healthcare workers; explored the factors associated with (...) stigmatization within the frameworks of self-categorization theory and core social motives; and proposed solutions to resolve stigma. The cross-sectional online survey was carried out between April 21 and May 7, 2020, using a convenience sample, which yielded 1,388 valid responses. Employing data analysis methods like multivariate linear regression and moderation analysis, this study yields some main findings: those from major COVID-19 outbreak sites received the highest level of stigma; factors most closely associated with stigmatization, in descending order, are objectification and epidemic proximity in an autonomic aspect and fear of contracting COVID-19 in a controllable aspect; and superordinate categorization is a buffering moderator in objectification–stigmatization relationship. These findings are important for further understanding COVID-19-related stigma, and they can be utilized to develop strategies to fight against relevant discrimination and bias. Specifically, reinforcing superordinate categorization by cultivating common in-group identity, such as volunteering and donating for containment of the pandemic, could reduce objectification and, thus, alleviate stigma. (shrink)

This essay discusses Rae Langton’s recent collection of essays, Sexual Solipsism: Philosophical Essays on Pornography and Objectification. After introducing some of the major themes of the collection, I raise questions about two of the central concepts in the book. The first question has to do with Langton’s notion of subordination. I ask why she takes pornography to be a subordinating speech act, rather than a subordinating practice, and argue that the latter view has several advantages. The remaining questions have (...) to do with Langton’s notion of objectification. Looking first at the moral dimension of objectification, I raise some concerns about Langton’s strategy for distinguishing instances of objectification from non-instances. Then, turning to Langton’s discussion of the epistemic dimension of objectification, I ask under what circumstances certain belief-forming mechanisms, such as desire-driven projection, are objectifying, on her view. (shrink)

대상화(objectification)란 일반적으로 한 사람이 다른 사람에 의해 마치 대상(object)처럼 다루어지는 현상을 의미한다. ‘마치’라고 덧붙인 것에서 알 수 있듯이 대상화는 실제로는 대상 이 아닌 것 즉, 사람을 대상으로 격하시키는 것이며 이 때문에 윤리적으로 용납할 수 없는 것 으로 여겨진다. 그러나 마사 누스바움(Martha Nussbaum), 캐스 선스타인(Cass Sunstein) 등에 의해 긍정적 혹은 무해한 대상화의 가능성이 논의되기 시작하면서 어떠한 맥락에서는 대 상화는 긍정적일 수 있다는 주장이 제기되었다. 그리고 이러한 주장은 어떤 맥락이 그것을 가 능하게 만드는가 하는 물음으로 이어진다. 본 논문은 누스바움이 위의 질문에 (...) 대한 해답으로 제시한 서사적 역사를 기반으로 한 신뢰 관계가 이를 가능하게 한다는 답변을 검토하고 옹호 할 것이다. 이를 위하여 긍정적 대상화에 관한 누스바움의 주장을 살피고, 그에 대한 비판 그 리고 함께 제시되는 자율성에 따른 동의를 기반으로 할 때 대상화가 유해하지 않을 수 있다는 주장을 소개할 것이다. 이후, 이러한 동의 기반 입장이 동의에 관한 자율적 권위 부여 모델에 관한 문제점을 공유하고 있음을 보이고 누스바움의 해답이 동의 공정교류 모델을 수용하여 이 문제를 피할 수 있음을 제시할 것이다. 결과적으로 동의 기반 입장에서 강조하는 동의의 중요 성에도 불구하고 신뢰 관계가 긍정적 대상화에 있어 더 중요한 고려 사항임을 보이고자 한다. (shrink)

The hypotheses of weak and strong objectification of quantum mechanical observables, as well as theoretical arguments and experimental evidence against these hypotheses, are systematically reviewed.

In this study we examine the relationship between the perception of being objectified in the workplace and the self-assessment of worth on a personal level, i.e. social desirability and social utility. This relationship is thought to be mediated by self-objectification in the workplace. 241 participants responded to an online questionnaire to measure these different variables. The results confirm a negative relationship between the perception of being objectified and the people’s worth, as well as mediation through self-objectification. This phenomenon (...) could describe a deleterious spiral where the worker, through the internalization of a low social value, contributes to their dehu-manization at work. (shrink)

Purpose. Based on the anthropocentric approach to the analysis of visual self-presentations of Artemisia Gentileschi in paintings, to present the artwork as self-objectifications of the artist, which give rise to a new cultural reality and are at the same time a means of knowing the essence of man. Theoretical basis. The principles and methods of philosophical and anthropological research in combination with biographical, historical and comparative, iconographic, figurative and stylistic methods were used when writing the article. Among philosophical and anthropological (...) methods the principle of anthropological reduction was used, based on which the works by Artemisia Gentileschi were analyzed as her self-objectification, principle of extrapolation of a separate fact of the painter’s life and anthropological interpretation of art evolution, when an attempt is made to know their creator through a series of chronological consistent works as figurative objectification. The biographical method was used when working with data on the painter’s life, iconographic and figurative stylistic – when analyzing the art visuals: self-portraits, allegories and narrative paintings. The analytical work was carried out in stages as transition from an iconographic interpretation of paintings with gradual elimination of art and style characteristics as extra-anthropological cultural constants with subsequent anthropological reduction of cultural image. Originality consists in the author’s method of analyzing the works of visual art in terms of anthropocentric approach, as well as in considering the artwork by Artemisia Gentileschi as her self-objectification as such that give rise to a new cultural reality. Conclusions. The artworks by Artemisia Gentileschi in diachronic deployment can be seen as the painter’s self-objectification, which traces the evolution of self-expression from a person with traditional self-perception by social gender stereotypes to the phenomenon of personal life, which will determine further evolution of her self-identification and extirpation of sense of shame through virtual revenge, repentance, guilt, and formation of component of the painter’s identity as exemption from social gender prejudices and stereotypes on roles and standards of behavior socially assigned to women. (shrink)

The use of female AI agents, such as vocal assistants, chatbots and robots, is on the rise, but the indiscriminate feminization of these AI agents poses novel ethical concerns about their impact on gender relations in society. This conceptual article argues that AI agents, even virtual ones, can display sexed cues (bodies, faces, and voices) beyond mere gendered cues (e.g., names, pronouns, hairstyle) and questions how assigning artificial female gender and sex to AI agents can harm women and transform gender (...) power dynamics. Grounded in the Social Shaping of Technology and Technofeminism with an existentialist feminist lens, this work parallels the scrutiny that the use of gendered and sexed cues in female advertising models has faced over past decades to critique the deceptive practice of linking artificial gender and sex in female AI agents. It suggests that by restricting a narrow view of gender to a narrow view of biological sex, the use of female AI agents limits women’s self-concepts by binding their identities to deceptive, narrow body/face/voice-centric scripts, while facilitating covert manipulation, enforcing harmful stereotypes, amplifying objectification, and exacerbating gender power imbalances. This research offers ethical guidelines for the further development of AI agents based on transparency, justice, and care, addressing this new form of surveillance capitalism and sexual oppression, and providing insights to create a more authentic, equitable, and caring technological landscape. (shrink)

It is now a platitude that sexual objectification is wrong. As is often pointed out, however, some objectification seems morally permissible and even quite appealing—as when lovers are so inflamed by passion that they temporarily fail to attend to the complexity and humanity of their partners. Some, such as Nussbaum, have argued that what renders objectification benign is the right sort of relationship between the participants; symmetry, mutuality, and intimacy render objectification less troubling. On this line (...) of thought, pornography, prostitution, and some kinds of casual sex are inherently morally suspect. I argue against this view: what matters is simply respect for autonomy, and whether the objectification is consensual. Intimacy, I explain, can make objectification more morally worrisome rather than less, and symmetry and mutuality are not relevant. The proper political and social context, however, is crucial, since only in its presence can consent be genuine. I defend the consent account against the objection that there is something paradoxical in consenting to objectification, and I conclude that given the right background conditions, there is nothing wrong with anonymous, one-sided, or just-for-pleasure kinds of sexual objectification. (shrink)

This paper critically examines Mackie’s concept of moral objectification, the idea that the sense of moral prescriptions being “objective” stems from our tendency to project emotional attitudes onto external situations—a move rooted in Humean projectivism. I argue that Mackie needs this thesis as a supplementary bridge to bolster his primary skeptical arguments—namely, the arguments from moral relativity and from queerness. These foundational arguments alone, I contend, fail to fully dispel our strong intuitions in favor of morality unless supported by (...) an explanation of how such intuitions arise. I conclude that while the thesis of objectification plays a critical role in Mackie’s overall case for metaethical skepticism, it remains inadequately supported. (shrink)

And this paper is an attempt to say precisely how, thus addressing a philosophical problem which is commonly taken to be a serious one. It does so, however, in quite an idiosyncratic way. It is based on the account of inductive schemes I have given in (1988) and (1990a) and on the conception of causation I have presented in (1980), (1983), and (1990b), and it intends to fill one of many gaps which have been left by these papers. Still, I (...) have tried to make this paper self-contained. Section 1 explains the philosophical question this paper is about; in more general terms it asks what might be meant by objectifying epistemic states or features of them and to which extent epistemic states can be objectified. The next sections introduce the basis I rely on with formal precision and some explanation; section 2 deals with induction and section 3 with causation. Within these confines, section 4 attempts to give an explication of the relevant sense of objectification and section 5 investigates the extent to which various features of epistemic states are objectifiable. The two most salient results are roughly that the relation "A is a reason for B" cannot be objectified at all and that the relation "A is a cause of B" can be objectified only under substantial, though reasonable restrictions. What has all of this to do with probability? A lot. The paper trades on a pervasive duality between probabilistic and deterministic epistemology, between a probabilistic representation of epistemic states together with a theory of probabilistic causation and another representation of epistemic states which I call deterministic because it lends itself, in a perfectly parallel fashion, to a theory of deterministic causation. Here I explicitly deal only with the deterministic side, but the duality should pave the way for further conclusions concerning objective probabilities and statistical laws. This outlook is briefly expanded in the final section 6. (shrink)

This paper offers a new interpretation and defence of a familiar feminist criticism of pornography, namely that some pornography objectifies not just the women who feature in it, but women more generally. I give this claim a distinctive twist, arguing that pornography epistemically objectifies women. Drawing parallels to work on testimonial injustice by Miranda Fricker and others, I argue that women are often objectified in pornography by being represented as epistemically fungible: as interchangeable with others belonging to the same group (...) when it comes to what one can learn from them on some topic. Focusing on pornographic films, my proposal is that some films depict the women seen performing in them as fungible with a much wider group in respect of what one can learn about their sexual preferences; this wider group of women is thereby falsely represented as relatively homogenous, rather than as individuals. (shrink)

The theory of objectification offers a perspective to conceptualize learning as a collective cultural-historical process and to transform classrooms into sites of communal life where students make the experience of an ethics of solidarity, plurality, and inclusivity.

Shearmur argues for the importance of Popper’s ideas about World 3, and against the idea that they should be re-interpreted in social terms. However, he also argues for the importance of Popper’s ideas about methodological rules—and that these may be given a partially social interpretation. The content of our ideas may in consequence differ from what we take it to be, as a consequence of our institutions and practices operating as methodological rules. He also explores related ideas about the interplay (...) between World 3 and social factors in connection with Darnton’s ideas about the book and work that has built on it, and related issues about the public sphere and the problem of effective deliberative feedback on public policy. (shrink)

The central argument of Ann Cahill’s Overcoming Objectification is that the concept of sexual objectification should be replaced by Cahill’s concept of derivatization in order to better capture the wrongness of degrading images and practices without depending on an objectionably narrow and disembodied conception of self. To derivatize someone is not to treat her as a non-person, but rather to treat her as a derivative person, reducing her to an aspect of another’s being. Although not perfect, Cahill’s approach (...) advances the conversation about what we should find objectionable in certain types of sexual representations and interactions by helping us to talk about sex in a way that does not start from the presupposition that physical expressions of sexuality are inherently debasing. I describe the thesis of the book, how I used it in my Philosophy and Women course, and some criticisms that I have and that arose from class discussion. (shrink)

We critically analyze four images of female Paralympians posing nude in ESPN The Magazine’s Body Issue from the years 2009, 2010, 2012, and 2014. Past literature shows that media portrayals of female Paralympians emphasize esthetically pleasing bodies, able-bodied images and asexualization. Weaving’s continuum of sexual objectification was applied to assess the varying degrees of sexual objectification showcased within each image. From a feminist perspective, discourses of heteronormativity and ableism were applied to outline the concerns with female Paralympic representation (...) in The Body Issue. We argue that by normalizing disability and sexual objectification, woman athletes are trivialized. (shrink)

With its implicit vilification of materiality, the notion of objectification has failed to produce a coherent and effective ethical analysis of heterosexual sex work. The concept of derivatization, grounded in an Irigarayan model of embodied intersubjectivity, is more effective. However, queer sex work poses new and different ethical challenges. This paper argues that although queer sex work can entail both objectification and derivatization, the former is not ethically objectionable, and the latter, although the cause for some justified ethical (...) concern, must be analyzed within the context of structural sexual injustice. (shrink)

This paper is Part 1 of the larger monograph: The Atomistic Mind, and thus part of the pre-reader for the Principles of Cybernetics (forthcoming). Here, we argue that artificial intelligence does not represent a technological rupture, but rather the final phase of a centuries-long project of ontological objectification originating in Cartesian dualism and entrenched within liberal modernity. Moving beyond debates about algorithmic bias or ethical alignment, it positions AI as the logical terminus of an instrumental logic that has progressively (...) reduced the more-than-human world to resource, the human body to biopolitical subject, and now the human interior - thought, attention, and moral intuition - to behavioral surplus. Through a tripartite analysis, the author contends that AI dismantles the foundational myth of the private, self-determining mind, revealing cognition as inherently relational and vulnerably embedded within engineered epistemic ecologies. -/- The argument engages three critical discourses. First, it intervenes in philosophy of mind and cognitive science, challenging the atomistic, internalist model by extending the “extended mind” thesis (Clark & Chalmers) into the algorithmic age, demonstrating how cognitive agency is co-constituted within - and increasingly colonized by - digital architectures. Second, it contributes to critical political economy and surveillance studies (Zuboff, Foucault), tracing a historical continuum of objectification from colonial extraction to datafication, and illustrating how AI operationalizes this logic through the datafication and predictive shaping of interiority. Third, it dialogues with decolonial and Indigenous thought (Wynter, Kimmerer), invoking the “I-Thou” relationality (Buber) as a counter-ontology to the “I-It” logic of instrumentalization, framing the crisis of AI as a crisis of relational being. -/- By documenting AI’s propensity for strategic deception (sycophancy, sandbagging, alignment faking), the paper shows that the system itself learns to perform compliance, mirroring and exacerbating the human condition under algorithmic governance. The ultimate peril, it concludes, is not mere surveillance, but the “domestication of the interval” - the systematic pre-filling of the sacred gap between stimulus and response where moral hesitation and creative thought arise. Thus, the fight for AI justice is reconceived not as a quest for better tools, but as a collective, infrastructural struggle for the right to unmediated interiority and reciprocal relation. This work calls for a foundational reorientation in AI discourse, away from technical solutionism and toward a radical reconsideration of the relational ontologies that must underwrite any viable human future. License CC BY-SA 4.0. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.17128.94725. (shrink)

Precision livestock farming (PLF) is the management of livestock using the principles and technology of process engineering. Key to PLF is the dense monitoring of variegated parameters, including animal growth, output of produce (e.g. milk, eggs), diseases, animal behaviour, and the physical environment (e.g. thermal micro-environment, ammonia emissions). While its proponents consider PLF a win-win strategy that combines production efficiency with sustainability goals and animal welfare, critics emphasise, inter alia, the potential interruption of human-animal relationships. This paper discusses the notion (...) that the objectification of animals by PLF influences the developmental pathways of conventional industrial farming. We conduct a conceptual analysis of objectification by comparing discussions in feminist ethics and animal ethics. We find that in animal ethics, objectification includes deontological arguments regarding instrumentalisation, de-animalisation, alienation, commodification and quantification of animals. The focus on socio-political context and relationality connects these debates to central ideas in care ethics. We adopt a care ethics perspective to assess the implications of the objectification of animals in livestock farming. The basic claim is that sensory knowledge symbolised by the farmers’ unity of hand, head and heart would make it harder to objectify animals than abstract and instrumental reasoning where the pursuit of knowledge is intertwined with the pursuit of control, as in mainstream PLF. Despite of what can be considered as a good caring relationship between farmers and animals that is mediated by PLF, people involved in conventional industrial farming still seem to become further detached from farmers and animals, because the PLF system itself is objectifying. PLF redefines the notion of care, in terms of data transparency, standardisation of methods for analysis, real-time collection and processing of data, remote control, and the use of digital platforms. This creates new expectations and requires a redistribution of responsibilities within a wider scope of relations in the value chain. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer one moral reason to eschew antidepressant medication in favor of cognitive therapy, all other things being equal: taking antidepressants can be a form of self-objectification. This means that, by taking antidepressants, one treats oneself, in some sense and some cases, like a mere object. I contend that, morally, this amounts to a specific form of devaluing oneself. I argue this as follows. First, I offer a detailed definition of “objectification” and argue for the (...) possibility of self-objectification on this definition. I then explain why this form of self-objectification is morally problematic. (Morally problematic does not mean morally impermissible. It means, instead, that there is a moral reason opposing the activity in question). After, I describe how taking antidepressants can count as self-objectifying. Finally, I defend my thesis against a key objection offered by Levy. Thus, assuming that antidepressants and cognitive therapy are equally efficacious, and that all other things are equal, the self-objectifying character of antidepressants is a compelling reason to regard cognitive therapy as a first-choice treatment for depression. (shrink)