It is generally recognized that emotional states induce impatience, in the sense of a heightened preference for early rewards over later rewards. In this article I argue that they also induce urgency, in the sense of a preference for early action over later action. I adduce scattered evidence for the existence of the phenomenon and sketch a possible experiment that might demonstrate it, while also noting that it may be hard to distinguish urgency-based action from action based on the anticipation (...) of the decay of emotion. (shrink)

Se plantea la cuestión de los lazos entre la teoría ética y las ciencias empíricas del comportamiento. En particular a modo de estudios de caso se pasa revista a la relevancia de ciertos descubrimientos sobre el comportamiento en la formulación de teorías sobre la virtud, el carácter o la voluntad. Desde ahí se pretende esbozar un procedimiento general de cambio progresivo y parcial de términos teóricos, descriptivos y normativos, de la teoría ética por nuevos términos apoyados en el aumento de (...) nuestro conocimiento. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that ordinary cases of self-deception and akrasia derive from the phenomenon of motivated irrationality. According to the ‘motivational’ account, self-deception is typically induced by the influence that desires and emotions exert upon our cognitive faculties, and thereby upon the process of belief formation. Crucially, I show that this hypothesis is consistent with the empirical research carried out by social psychologists, and that it avoids a number of paradoxes that undermine the ‘intentionalist’ account. But motivated irrationality (...) also seems to account for most cases of akrasia, insofar as desires are equally liable to affect the evaluative judgments through which we assess feasible options. This analysis thus set the premises for a unified account of irrationality. (shrink)