Can we feel emotions about abstract objects, assuming that abstract objects exist? I argue that at least some emotions can have abstract objects as their intentional objects and discuss why this conclusion is not just trivially true. Through critical engagement with the work of Dacher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt, I devote special attention to awe, an emotion that is particularly well suited to show that some emotions can be about either concrete or abstract objects. In responding to a possible objection, (...) according to which we can only feel emotions about things that we take to matter to our flourishing, and thus cannot feel emotions about causally inefficacious abstract objects, I explore how abstract objects can be relevant to human flourishing and discuss someemotions other than awe that can be about abstract objects. I finish by explaining somereasons why my conclusion matters, including the fact that it presents a challenge to perceptual theories of emotion and causal theories of intentionality. (shrink)

It has been widely held, and still is held to some extent, that emotion and reason tend to be incompatible, that if a person is influenced by emotion to hold the beliefs he does, or perform the actions he does, then they tend to that extent to be unreasonable. This opinion manifests itself in a variety of ways. For example, it is no coincidence that Sherlock Holmes, the archetypal person of reason, is emotionally cold and detached. In a recent philosophical (...) work, Robert Trigg has written of the emotions[They] overwhelm us; we do not choose to adopt them …. They have always been thought to be the enemy of reason rather than its adjunct. A man who acts in anger is acting as he feels he wants to because of something that has happened. He is not necessarily acting as he would think best if he reflected on the matter. His emotion may have clouded his judgment. (shrink)

Emotions, like actions, this paper argues, are typically embodied processes that are responsive to reasons, where these reasons connect closely with the agent’s desires, intentions, or projects. If so, why are emotions, nevertheless, typically passive in a sense in which actions are not; specifically, why are emotions not cases of doing something intentionally? This paper seeks to prepare the ground for answering this question by showing that it cannot be answered within a widely influential framework in the philosophy of action (...) that has been dubbed the Standard Conception of Action, shared by such diverse theorists as G.E.M. Anscombe, Donald Davidson, Jennifer Hornsby, Michael Smith. and Michael Thompson. The Standard Conception approaches agency via the notion of someone’s doing something intentionally, and links the latter notion closely to that of doing something for a reason, so as to imply ‘Anscombe’s Thesis’ that, if someone is doing something for a reason, they are doing it intentionally. The paper shows how emotions, as reason-responsive embodied processes, counterexemplify this claim. Qua processes, they can aptly be described in the progressive, as cases of trembling with fear, exploding with anger, etc. They are a kind of ‘doing’ something, for a reason, yet not intentionally. (shrink)