In this thesis I argue that the affective component of emotional experience plays an essential explanatory role in the acquisition of evaluative knowledge. I call this the notion of affect as a disclosure of value. The thesis is divided into two parts. In the first part I critically assess three contemporary accounts which, I argue, are motivated either implicitly or explicitly by the notion of affect as a disclosure of value. I argue that all three accounts fail due to the (...) theoretical assumptions they inherit from the respective underlying theories of perceptual experience they rely on to theorise the relation between affect and evaluation in emotional experience. Nevertheless, out of the critical assessment I extract three criteria that an account of affect as a disclosure of value ought to satisfy and I clarify the theoretical positions that we ought to avoid. In the second part of the thesis I build on these three criteria to provide an account of affect as a disclosure of value. I argue that at the core of this account is the constitutive thesis that the formation of rationally intelligible motivational states towards an object is constitutive of the disclosure of value. I then argue that a defence of the constitutive thesis commits us to a response-dependent notion of the objectivity of value of the sort defended by David Wiggins and John McDowell. Finally, I rely on the work of John Campbell to clarify both the sort of evaluative knowledge at stake and the role of affect in its acquisition. I argue that the sort of knowledge at stake is the sort that grounds our evaluative concepts and affect provides us with the epistemic access to the evaluative concepts’ semantic value. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to defend, and in so doing clarify, the claim that the affective component of emotional experience plays an essential explanatory role in the acquisition of evaluative knowledge. In particular, it argues that the phenomenally conscious affective component of emotional experience provides the subject with the epistemic access to the semantic value of evaluative concepts. The core argument relies on a comparison with the role played by the phenomenal character of perceptual experience in the acquisition (...) of knowledge of colours. The upshot is that it is a disanalogy with perceptual experience that explains the essential role of affective experience in acquiring evaluative knowledge, namely its motivational component. (shrink)

People share their emotions on social media and evidence suggests that in times of crisis people are especially motivated to post emotional content. The current Coronavirus pandemic is such a crisis. The online sharing of emotional content during the Coronavirus crisis may contribute to societal value change. Emotion sharing via social media could lead to emotional contagion which in turn could facilitate an emotional climate in a society. In turn, the emotional climate of a society can influence society’s value structure. (...) The emotions that spread in the current Coronavirus crisis are predominantly negative, which could result in a negative emotional climate. Based on the dynamic relations of values to each other and the way that emotions relate to values, a negative emotional climate can contribute to societal value change towards values related to security preservation and threat avoidance. As a consequence, a negative emotional climate and the shift in values could lead to a change in political attitudes that has implications for rights, freedom, privacy and moral progress. Considering the impact of social media in terms of emotional contagion and a longer-lasting value change is an important perspective in thinking about the ethical long-term impact of social media technology. (shrink)

This paper explores two ways that emotions can facilitate knowledge. First, emotions can play an evidential role with respect to belief formation. Second, emotions can be knowledge-conducive without being evidential by securing the safety of belief.

The question whether there are reasons for loving particular individuals, and what such reasons might be, has been subject to scrutiny in recent years. On one view, reasons for loving particular individuals are some of their qualities. A problem with crude versions of this view, however, is that they both construe individuals as replaceable in a problematic way and fail to do justice to the selectivity of love. On another view, by contrast, reasons for loving particular individuals have to do (...) with our relationship with them. Even if it might accommodate the selectivity of love, the view—like crude quality views—ultimately faces worries stemming from replaceability. I argue for a view which combines the two views in a way that accommodates both the irreplaceable aspect under which individuals are loved and the fact that love is a selective response to them. On my view, reasons for loving particular individuals are some of their qualities as manifested in the context of a relationship with one. After spelling out the view, I discuss an important challenge facing it: what’s so special about actually being in touch—via a relationship—with certain qualities of an individual that would explain why we have special reasons to love them in particular? I consider inadequate answers to this question before putting forward my own. (shrink)

How do participating in a work of fiction and imagining a fictional world intertwine with the reader’s life? I develop an account that explores the relation between fiction reading and the reader’s narrative identity. Starting with an investigation of Paul Ricoeur’s account of narrative identity and of Kendall Walton’s account of the nature of representations, I develop my own model of fiction reading. My account is based on two starting assumptions: first, that human beings are entangled in stories, and second, (...) that emotions are complex and have a narrative structure. I argue that during the reading process, the fiction reader creates her own narratives which contain not only the story provided by the work of fiction, but also event sequences from their own experiential memories. I investigate the creation and the influence of self-conscious emotions which are generated during the reading process, especially when a reader identifies with a fictional character from within. I consider how and why these fiction-induced emotions can continue after the reading is finished, and how these emotions can motivate the reader to engage in self-reflection and to refigure her self-narrative. My account examines a new topic: the interactive influence of fiction reading and the fiction reader’s narrative identity. (shrink)

This article provides an account of intuitions: Affectivism. Affectivism states that intuitions are emotional experiences. The article proceeds as follows: first, the features that intuitions are typically taken to have are introduced. Then some issues with extant theories are outlined. After that, emotional experiences and their central features are brought into view. This is followed by a comparison of intuitions and emotional experiences, yielding the result that emotional experiences fit and elucidate the feature profile of intuitions. Finally, it is specified (...) what kind of emotional experiences intuitions are: intuitions are typically mild emotional experiences that belong to the subclass of epistemic feelings. (shrink)

The idea that emotional experience is capable of lending immediate prima facie epistemic justification to evaluative belief has been amassing significant philosophical support in recent years. The proposal that it is my anger, say, that justifies my belief that I’ve been wronged putatively provides us with an intuitive and naturalised explanation as to how we receive immediate and defeasible justification for our evaluative beliefs. With many notable advocates in the literature, this justificatory thesis of emotion is fast becoming a central (...) facet in how we conceive of the emotions’ epistemic role with respect to our everyday lives. Interestingly, however, despite the fact that the justificatory thesis is fundamentally an epistemological proposal, comparatively little of the philosophical literature has been dedicated to exploring the epistemological avenues through which emotions might be capable of delivering such an epistemic yield. Accordingly, the central purpose of this thesis is to provide a novel and thorough analysis of how emotional experience might be capable of playing this justificatory role. Here, I present and evaluate three broad models of emotional justification: emotional dogmatism, emotional reliabilism, and agent-based views. Emotional dogmatist views, I argue, fail in virtue of being vulnerable to over-generalisation worries and problematic commitments to the contents of emotional awareness. Emotional reliabilism, while possessing the resources to avoid some objections, is vulnerable to worrisome clairvoyance-style challenges which establish the insufficiency of emotional reliability for epistemic justification. Finally, having learned our lessons from the shortcomings of these views, I argue that an agent-based theory grounded in the development of learned emotional competences provides the most plausible account of how emotional experience can epistemically justify evaluative belief. This discussion, I believe, will both illuminate contemporary discussions of the justificatory thesis of emotion found in the literature, and provide novel insight into the epistemic capacities of the emotions. (shrink)

In recent decades, there has been a renewed attention to the emotions amongst scientists of different disciplines: psychology, psychiatry, neurobiology, cognitive science, computer science, sociology, economics, and many others. There are many research centers and scientific journals devoted to affective states already existing. However, studies of emotion have a very long history - especially in philosophy. Philosophers first raised many important questions about emotions and their contribution to the discovery of the nature of emotions is very important. The aim of (...) the article is the reconstruction of the views on emotions of particular thinkers in history of philosophy. (shrink)

The Aristotelian Society’s Virtual Issue is a free, online publication, made publically available on the Aristotelian Society website. Each volume is theme-based, collecting together papers from the archives of the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society and the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume that address the chosen theme. This year's Virtual Issue includes a selection of papers from across the Society’s fourteen decades, each accompanied by a specially commissioned present-day response. The aim of the volume is to aid reflection (...) on how to go about doing moral and political philosophy, by bringing together papers that bear on their epistemology and methodology. In some cases this involves pieces whose declared focus is on one of those areas, as is the case with Margaret MacDonald’s 1941 essay ‘The Language of Political Theory’ and Mary Midgley’s 1974 article ‘The Neutrality of the Moral Philosopher’. In other cases the editor, Ben Colburn, selected papers whose primary focus is elsewhere, but which include some interesting epistemological or methodological reflections or implications along the way. The contributions from our present-day commentators vary similarly in how far their explicit attention is methodological. Nevertheless, there is throughout a concern on how to ‘be an honest reasoner’, to borrow a phrase from the late Dudley Knowles. (shrink)

Pragmatists have been eager to employ the method of science in philosophy, which meant, too, that they paid a great deal of attention to the attitudes that regulate the process of scientific or systematic inquiry. At the same time, they, at least in the nonstandard theories of emotion to be found in Charles Sanders Peirce and John Dewey, espoused a cognitivist view of emotion, which resonates with some of the concerns that have been at the forefront of the contemporary philosophy (...) of emotion. In particular, they converge upon the view that something like ‘emotional understanding’ is very important. While COPE, especially in the case of Julien Deonna’s and Fabrice Teroni’s ‘attitudinal theory of emotion’ which has some pragmatist affinities, is focused on showing how emotional understanding is central to moral agency, it is my aim in this paper to offer a pragmatist account of emotional understanding as ‘passionate reasoning’ that goes one step further. By highlighting the way in which emotions ought to be interpreted even in the context of scientific or systematic inquiries it makes a case for moralizing science from within, i.e. without submitting it to values that are alien to inquiry. In particular, passionate reasoning helps addressing three problems of inquiry: the problem of the lack of context, the problem of the problem wrongly put, and the problem of my problem. (shrink)

This paper offers a defence of the Communicative Theory of Punishment against recent criticisms due to Matt Matravers. According to the Communicative Theory, the intentional imposition of suffering by the judiciary is justified because it is intrinsic to the condemnation and censure that an offender deserves as a result of wrongdoing. Matravers raises a number of worries about this idea – grounded in his thought that suffering isn’t necessary for censure, and as a consequence sometimes the imposition of suffering can (...) be unjust. I respond by arguing that the imposition of suffering is an essential part of a suite of emotional responses that wrongdoing merits. As a result, and contrary to what Matravers suggests, words are not enough for censure and condemnation. (shrink)