Kent Berridge: Pleasure, Desire, and Addiction in the Brain

Mark LeBar: Justice as a Virtue and its Challenges

Mark LeBar is a professor of philosophy at Florida State University [https://philosophy.fsu.edu/person/mark-lebar]. In this episode of CAPEd Conversations LeBar discusses his recent work in ethics, political and social philosophy, and metaethics. LeBar's book, “The Value of Living Well,” (Oxford University Press, 2013) [https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-value-of-living-well-9780199931118?prevSortField=8&resultsPerPage=20&sortField=8&lang=en&cc=us] is a development of contemporary eudaimonist virtue ethical theory. His most recent book, “Just People,” (Oxford University Press 2025) [https://global.oup.com/academic/product/just-people-9780197801475?cc=us&lang=en], extends that account of eudaimonism to questions about the nature and origin of the virtue of justice. In addition, LeBar has edited a collection on justice as a virtue, “Justice,” (Oxford University Press, 2018), and co-edited “Equality and Public Policy,” (Cambridge University Press, 2014). LeBar is the editor of Social Theory and Practice, and has published in journals including Ethics, American Philosophical Quarterly, Philosophical Studies, Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, and Pacific Philosophical Quarterly.

Kent Berridge: Pleasure, Desire, and Addiction in the Brain

Wanting and liking for pleasant rewards usually go together.  But the brain separates wanting and liking mechanisms, creating potential for the two to diverge. Addictive desires can arise even without expectation of pleasure or actual pleasure when reward is received.  I’ll show a laboratory example as 'wanting for what hurts’, which can also create narrowly focused addictions. Counterintuitively, reward ‘wanting’ may also overlap in mechanisms with forms of fear.  These conclusions have been applied to several clinical conditions, ranging from addictions, to anhedonia, to paranoia. Kent Berridge is the James Olds Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Michigan