According to Bob Solomon, love is a human emotion, with a complex intentional structure, having its own kind of reasons. I will examine this account, which, in certain respects, tends to mask the deep and important differences between love and other emotions.

The question is whether Urmson's account depicts Austin's method needs a qualified answer. Roughly, the answer is that what it presents is not Austin's method because it is not the whole of Austin's method. Urmson confines his attention to aspects of the inner structure of the method and leaves out the question of its motivation and possible aims.

There is a frequently asked philosophical question about our ability to grasp and to predict the thoughts and feelings of other people, an ability that is these days sometimes given the unfortunate name of ‘mentalising’ or ‘mind-reading’–I say ‘unfortunate’ because it makes appear mysterious what is not mysterious. Some philosophers and psychologists argue that this ability is grounded in possession of some kind of theory or body of knowledge about how minds work. Others argue that it is grounded in our (...) capacity to take on in imagination the perspective of others; sometimes called simulating or centrally imagining another person, we entertain in our minds what the other person is thinking about and feeling: if he is thinking ‘p’ and ‘if p then q’, then we think ‘p’ and ‘if p then q’, and if he is feeling angry with someone, then we imagine feeling angry with that person. We thus recreate as well as we can in our imagination his mental life as it is ‘from the inside’. We can do this in two different ways: I can put myself in the other's shoes, simply imagining what I would do were I in his situation, or I can empathise with him, imagining being him, taking on in imagination his relevant traits and other mental dispositions; I will from now on use the term perspective-shifting to cover both of these imaginative activities. (shrink)

I argue that emotional feelings are not just bodily feelings, but also feelings directed towards things in the world beyond the bounds of the body, and that these feelings (feelings towards) are bound up with the way we take in the world in emotional experience.

This thesis is about moods in works of art, and how moods expressed in art can change how we view the world. Among those who speak of the value of discussing moods in philosophical aesthetics, it is normally assumed that the value of moods is in the way they are induced in the viewer of the work. In this thesis, I will argue that such an argument is not the best. Those who think moods are not relevant to aesthetics have (...) only to argue either that being induced with emotions is not an ideal way of approaching art, or that such reactions as being induced with mood belong to the more rare cases of approaching art. Therefore, focusing on how moods are induced hinders the potential of discussing moods in art. Instead I argue that the value of moods is in the way they are expressed. I argue that moods can be understood as a form of symbolic schemas. They affect how the world appears, and how one sorts and organizes things in the world. One can therefore use moods as resources for getting knowledge about the world. Because some works of art express moods, where expression is understood as metaphorical exemplification, they make the viewer epistemically aware of the mood. Thus one can imagine being in the mood expressed. Thereby moods can lead to knowledge, also in cases where they are not literally induced. When one succesfully imagines being in an expressed mood, parts of the world are sorted and organized differently as in accordance with the mood. (shrink)

This paper assesses Michael Brady’s claim that the ‘capture and consumption of attention’ in an emotion facilitates evaluative understanding. It argues that emotional attention is epistemically deleterious on its own, even though it can be beneficial in conjunction with the right epistemic skills and motivations. The paper considers Sartre’s and Solomon’s claim that emotions have purposes, respectively, to circumvent difficulty or maximize self-esteem. While this appeal to purposes is problematic, it suggests a promising alternative conception of how emotions can be (...) teleological. The fact that emotional attention manifests dispositions, which have been habituated by repeated association with pleasure or relief, explains how the emotion can acquire the function of producing pleasure or relief. Hence, the emotion can have ‘non-cognitive function,’ in which its patterns of attention reliably produce beliefs that disregard or distort the truth. Not only is non-cognitive function the default condition of emotion prior to any training, but even those who have successfully trained their emotions often revert back to non-cognitive function when faced with trauma or stress. (shrink)