James Giles | |
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Born | 1958 Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada |
Alma mater | University of British Columbia University of Edinburgh |
Era | Contemporary philosophy |
Region | Western and Eastern philosophy |
School | Analytic philosophy |
Main interests | Metaphysics, Philosophy of mind, Philosophy of sex, Philosophy of love, Existential phenomenology, Evolutionary theory, Buddhist philosophy, Taoist philosophy, Social psychology |
Notable ideas | Constructed self-image, Vulnerability and care theory of love, Naked love theory of human evolution, Sexual desire as an existential need |
Website | james-giles |
James Giles (born 1958) is a Canadian philosopher and psychologist. He has written about the philosophy of perception, [1] personal identity and the self, [2] mindfulness, [3] Buddhist [4] and Taoist philosophy, [5] and has published theories of the evolution of human hairlessness, [6] the nature of sexual desire, [7] sexual attraction, [8] and gender. [9] His wide range of academic interests and often controversial views have earned him the title of an "interdisciplinary maverick." [10]
Giles was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, grew up in West Point Grey, and graduated from Point Grey Secondary School. [11] He studied at the University of British Columbia (BA Hons, MA) and at the University of Edinburgh (PhD). In addition to teaching at UBC and Edinburgh, he has also taught at the University of Aalborg, the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, Hawaii College of Kansai University, Japan, the University of Guam, and La Trobe University, Australia. [12] As of 2021 [update] Giles is a Panel Tutor in Philosophy at the Institute of Continuing Education, University of Cambridge. [13]
In addition to his academic research, Giles has also written for several media, including Monitor on Psychology, The Copenhagen Post, The Ottawa Citizen, Science of Relationships, The Vancouver Sun, Daily Pacific News, and The Conversation, among others. [14]
Giles takes David Hume's notion of personal identity being a fiction and develops it in terms of Buddhist accounts of no-self and theories of language. Giles points out that many theories of personal identity are reductive theories. They try to reduce the idea of personal identity to elements such as memory, personality, or bodily continuity. The no-self theory, however, is an eliminative theory. That is, it eliminates the idea of personal identity altogether. He allows that we are sometimes aware of psychological and emotional states that seem to give immediate awareness of self. He argues, however, that what we are aware of at these times is not an persisting self, but rather a "constructed or condensed self-image", namely "a composite of related images and meanings referring to how I see myself at that moment". [15] These moments, however, make only rare appearances in consciousness. Giles is a major proponent of the no-self theory. His contributions have been anthologized, [16] received extensive discussion in such diverse fields as philosophy, [17] [18] [19] [20] psychology, [21] history, [22] and communication, [23] and called one of the best comparative studies of Hume and Buddhist philosophy. [24] Giles has also argued for the role of the no-self theory in contemporary mindfulness-based interventions. [25] His original account of the place of the no-self theory here has been widely cited and discussed. [26] [27] [28]
In a radical interpretation of early Taoist philosophy, Giles argues that the Tao has little to do with mysticism or cosmology. Rather, it refers to human awareness. [29] The Taoist accounts of return and non-action, says Giles, provide us with insights into the nature of awareness and how meditative states can co-exist within and thus underpin everyday awareness. [30] This works through what he calls the double return, or a back and forth of stillness and constant flow of awareness. Giles compares this view of awareness with ancient Greek, Buddhist, existentialist, and analytic accounts of philosophy of mind in an "extension of the global philosophical palette". [31] [32]
Giles first published his theory of sexual desire in an article entitled "A Theory of Love and Sexual Desire" in 1994. [33] This theory was developed in The Nature of Sexual Desire in 2004/2008. [34] Sexologists usually account for sexual desire either in terms of social constructionism or as a biological characteristic essential to reproduction. Giles rejects both these views, and attempts to show by a phenomenological approach that sexual desire is an existential need rooted in the human condition, based on a feeling of incompleteness from the experience of one's own gender as a form of disequilibrium. The desired person's gender, whether the same or different from one's own gender, is seen as completing one's own gender. As Crockett says, "The core of Giles' argument with regard to the relationship between gender and sexuality is that (gendered) sexual orientation is essential to the experience of sexual desire." [35] Although the theory shows similarities to earlier theories such as those of Thomas Nagel on sexual perversion, or of Aristophanes on romantic love in Plato's Symposium , Giles' core thesis is quite distinct. This is the idea that sexual desire is just the desire for mutual vulnerability and care in the form of baring and caressing. Mutual Baring and caressing are thus the true objects of sexual desire. [36] On Giles' account, says Palm,
sexual interaction opens up as an arena of exploration of this traumatic instance of both being in control of and being exposed to the other. And the good thing about this sexual arena is that, it seems to situate the interplay between control and vulnerability in an arousing context of care, so that sexual interaction provides a safe form for the exploration of these threatening dimensions of existence. [37]
Giles' book on sexual desire has been extensively discussed and reviewed in journals from an array of different disciplines. [38] Giles is also known for both his critique of the attempt to pathologize high levels of sexual behaviour [39] [40] and his rejection of the idea that sexual orientation is socially constructed. [41] [42] [43]
The vulnerability and care theory of love was put forward by Giles in his article, "A Theory of Love and Sexual Desire" (1994) and later developed in his book The Nature of Sexual Desire (2004/2008). Giles also presents his theory in a TEDx Talk'. [44] According to Giles, romantic love is a complex of reciprocal desires for mutual vulnerability and care. One desires to be vulnerable before the beloved in order that the beloved may show care. At the same time one desires that the beloved be vulnerable before oneself in order that one may care for her or him. Although vulnerability has often been thought to be an unavoidable and perhaps unwanted consequence of love, Giles sees it as being an essential object of the desires of love. It is also because of these desires that being in love implies having sexual desire towards the beloved. For sexual desire is a desire for a type of vulnerability and care, namely, the physical vulnerability of baring and the physical care of caressing. This does not mean, however, that sexual desire must imply being in love. Sexual desire is not so all-encompassing as romantic desire. His theory of romantic love has been reviewed in numerous journals [45] and discussed by scholars Dr. Ruth, in her textbook Human Sexuality: a Psychosocial Perspective (2002), [46] Dr. Barbara Keesling, in her book Sexual Pleasure: Reaching New Heights of Sexual Arousal (2005)., [47] and Natasha McKeever in Romantic Love and Monogamy: A Philosophical Exploration (2014), [48] [49]
In Sexual Attraction: The Psychology of Allure, Giles claims that the experience of sexual attraction has been ignored by scholars or confused with sexual desire. While sexual desire is an urge that is experienced as coming from within, sexual attraction is felt to have its locus in the attractive person. Giles further distinguishes sexual attraction from physical attraction, which can be seen simply as a "subjective experience of positive affect toward a specific individual, based on an assessment of their physical attractiveness" [50] As Zsok et al. point out, this is different from Giles' account of the experience of sexual attraction, which has the following three components:
This shows how sexual attraction can exist independently of any sexual behaviours. This assists in the study of types of sexual attraction that do not necessarily express themselves in sexual behaviour. [52]
Giles published his "naked love theory" of human hairlessness in 2010, [53] [54] He rejects the view that human hairlessness evolved because of the need for thermoregulation when we became hunters and ran after prey. He argues that ancestral women would have been continually pregnant, breast-feeding, or tending to small children and so would not have been commonly running after prey. Yet, it is women who are more hairless than men. This suggests that hairlessness began with women and was passed on to men. [55] Giles postulates that hairlessness in human beings evolved as a result of the pleasure of skin-to-skin contact between mother and child, and thus ultimately as a consequence of bipedalism. [56] With all other primates, the infant clings to the mother's fur with its hands and feet. However, with the advent of bipedalism, ancestral human infants lost the ability to cling to their mothers with their feet, which became adapted for walking rather than grasping. Ancestral mothers who were bipedal could compensate for this by holding their infants with their newly freed arms. But carrying an infant is much work. Anything that motivated the mother to carry her infant would thus have been selected for. Naked skin was one such adaptation. Mothers with a hairless mutation, who passed this on to their infants, would have been motivated to hold the infant by the sensual pleasure of skin-to-skin contact. This is the basis of what Giles calls maternal selection for hairless infants. This selection process would have been further driven by sexual selection for hairless sex partners, sex partners who would remind the individual of the sensual contact of infancy. The naked love theory thus explains why women and children are more hairless that adult males. [57] For hairlessness has its origins in the mother-child relationship. [58] According to Giles, naked skin is a precondition for the appearance of romantic love, [59]
It might be thought that a problem with this theory concerns the division of labor in prehistoric society [60] as well as modern hunter-gatherer societies. [61] Male and female hunters, for example, are known to have contributed to hunting (including large animals) more than traditionally believed. Nevertheless, pregnant or nursing ancestral women with engorged breasts (and no sports bras) would still have been incapable of running over long distances. Further, sports and running injuries are far more prevalent among women than men, even if a woman is not pregnant or nursing. Ankle sprain, shoulder troubles, knee injuries, stress fractures, plantar fasciitis, and a higher susceptibility to concussions, to name but a few, are much more common in women athletes than in men. [62] [63] [64] The ACL knee injury, for example, is six times more common in women. [65] In addition, the higher rate of injuries in women seems due to the basic differences between men and women's bodies. [66] Because all this, it is unlikely that ancestral women lost their body hair, and did so to higher degree than men, because of the requirements for aerobic endurance
Love encompasses a range of strong and positive emotional and mental states, from the most sublime virtue or good habit, or the deepest interpersonal affection, to the simplest pleasure. An example of this range of meanings is that the love of a mother differs from the love of a spouse, which differs from the love of food. Most commonly, love refers to a feeling of strong attraction and emotional attachment.
In psychology, libido is psychic drive or energy, usually conceived of as sexual in nature, but sometimes conceived of as including other forms of desire. The term libido was originally developed by Sigmund Freud, the pioneering originator of psychoanalysis. With direct reference to Plato's Eros, the term initially referred only to specific sexual desire, later expanded to the concept of a universal psychic energy that drives all instincts and whose great reservoir is the id. The libido - in its abstract core differentiated partly according to its synthesising, partly to its analytical aspect called life- and death-drive - thus becomes the source of all natural forms of expression: the behaviour of sexuality as well as striving for social commitment, skin pleasure, food, knowledge and victory in the areas of species- and self-preservation.
Pansexuality is sexual, romantic, or emotional attraction towards people of all genders, or regardless of their sex or gender identity. Pansexual people may refer to themselves as gender-blind, asserting that gender and sex are not determining factors in their romantic or sexual attraction to others.
Sexual objectification is the act of treating a person solely as an object of sexual desire. Objectification more broadly means treating a person as a commodity or an object without regard to their personality or dignity. Objectification is most commonly examined at the level of a society (sociology), but can also refer to the behavior of individuals (psychology), and is a type of dehumanization.
Sexual attraction is attraction on the basis of sexual desire or the quality of arousing such interest. Sexual attractiveness or sex appeal is an individual's ability to attract other people sexually, and is a factor in sexual selection or mate choice. The attraction can be to the physical or other qualities or traits of a person, or to such qualities in the context where they appear. The attraction may be to a person's aesthetics, movements, voice, among other things. The attraction may be enhanced by a person's body odor, sex pheromones, adornments, clothing, perfume or hair style. It can be influenced by individual genetic, psychological, or cultural factors, or to other, more amorphous qualities. Sexual attraction is also a response to another person that depends on a combination of the person possessing the traits and on the criteria of the person who is attracted.
In sexuality, seduction means enticing someone else into sexual intercourse or other sexual activity. Strategies of seduction include conversation and sexual scripts, paralingual features, non-verbal communication, and short-term behavioural strategies.
Sexual desire is an emotion and motivational state characterized by an interest in sexual objects or activities, or by a drive to seek out sexual objects or to engage in sexual activities. It is an aspect of sexuality, which varies significantly from one person to another and also fluctuates depending on circumstances.
Sexual identity refers to one's self-perception in terms of romantic or sexual attraction towards others, though not mutually exclusive, and can be different from romantic identity. Sexual identity may also refer to sexual orientation identity, which is when people identify or dis-identify with a sexual orientation or choose not to identify with a sexual orientation. Sexual identity and sexual behavior are closely related to sexual orientation, but they are distinguished, with identity referring to an individual's conception of themselves, behavior referring to actual sexual acts performed by the individual, and sexual orientation referring to romantic or sexual attractions toward persons of the opposite sex or gender, the same sex or gender, to both sexes or more than one gender, or to no one.
Romance or romantic love is a feeling of love for, or a strong attraction towards another person, and the courtship behaviors undertaken by an individual to express those overall feelings and resultant emotions.
In social philosophy, objectification is the act of treating a person as an object or a thing. It is part of dehumanization, the act of disavowing the humanity of others. Sexual objectification, the act of treating a person as a mere object of sexual desire, is a subset of objectification, as is self-objectification, the objectification of one's self. In Marxism, the objectification of social relationships is discussed as "reification".
Falling in love is the development of strong feelings of attachment and love, usually towards another person.
The biology of romantic love has been explored by such biological sciences as evolutionary psychology, evolutionary biology, anthropology and neuroscience. Specific chemical substances such as oxytocin and dopamine are studied in the context of their roles in producing human experiences, emotions and behaviors that are associated with romantic love.
In behavioral science, androphilia and gynephilia are sexual orientations: Androphilia is sexual attraction to men and/or masculinity; gynephilia is sexual attraction to women and/or femininity. Ambiphilia describes the combination of both androphilia and gynephilia in a given individual, or bisexuality. The terms offer an alternative to a gender binary homosexual and heterosexual conceptualization of sexuality.
A cross-sex friendship is a platonic relationship between two unrelated people of differing sexes or gender. There are multiple types of cross-sex friendships, all defined by whether or not each party has a romantic attraction to each other, or perceives that the other is interested. A few theories have been developed to explain the existence of such friendships. Research has been done on why men and women initiate these relationships, how they are perceived by others, implications for children with cross-sex friendships, among others. Cross-sex friendships can also create problems for those involved if either or both have or ever had any romantic feelings for the other.
Roy Frederick Baumeister is an American social psychologist who is known for his work on the self, social rejection, belongingness, sexuality and sex differences, self-control, self-esteem, self-defeating behaviors, motivation, aggression, consciousness, and free will.
Childhood gender nonconformity (CGN) is a phenomenon in which prepubescent children do not conform to expected gender-related sociological or psychological patterns, or identify with the opposite sex/gender. Typical behavior among those who exhibit the phenomenon includes but is not limited to a propensity to cross-dress, refusal to take part in activities conventionally thought suitable for the gender and the exclusive choice of play-mates of the opposite sex.
Buddhism includes an analysis of human psychology, emotion, cognition, behavior and motivation along with therapeutic practices. Buddhist psychology is embedded within the greater Buddhist ethical and philosophical system, and its psychological terminology is colored by ethical overtones. Buddhist psychology has two therapeutic goals: the healthy and virtuous life of a householder and the ultimate goal of nirvana, the total cessation of dissatisfaction and suffering (dukkha).
Mortality salience is the awareness that one's death is inevitable.
In feminist theory, the male gaze is the act of depicting women and the world in the visual arts and in literature from a masculine, heterosexual perspective that presents and represents women as sexual objects for the pleasure of the heterosexual male viewer. The concept was first articulated by British feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey in her 1975 essay, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema". Mulvey's theory draws on historical precedents, such as the depiction of women in European oil paintings from the Renaissance period, where the female form was often idealized and presented from a voyeuristic male perspective. Art historian John Berger, in his work Ways of Seeing (1972), highlighted how traditional Western art positioned women as subjects of male viewers’ gazes, reinforcing a patriarchal visual narrative.
Nakedness and clothing use are characteristics of humans related by evolutionary and social prehistory. The major loss of body hair distinguishes humans from other primates. Current evidence indicates that anatomically modern humans were naked in prehistory for at least 90,000 years before they invented clothing. Today, isolated Indigenous peoples in tropical climates continue to be without clothing in many everyday activities.