In this essay I will put forward an account of the emotion of shame that draws from Bernard Williams’ groundbreaking work on Shame and Necessity. The main novelty will be a distinction between two senses of shame, “basic shame” and “complex shame”. Basic shame is related to what Williams refers to as a “loss of power” in relation to others that can be real or imaginary spectators and is a sense of diminishment towards those others. Complex shame, in turn, appears (...) when this diminishment is felt in relation to an “internalised other” that embodies the values she recognises as her own as well as other values she respects. Borrowing a page from Cheshire Calhoun, I argue that many accounts of shame face what I call the “challenge of unrespected judgments”: people are vulnerable to shame even when they do not endorse or respect the judgments of those shaming them. I claim that the proposed Williamsian account of the emotion can dissolve the challenge, because for one to feel basic shame there is no need for any further attitude of the ashamed person towards the shamer besides a sense of diminishment caused by the perception of loss of power. In addition to that, oppression can influence the internalised other of marginalised people in a way that makes them vulnerable to complex shame. I will conclude with some brief remarks about how moral education in the Aristotelian sense can help us to deal with the morally problematic instances of shame. (shrink)

Emotions cannot be fully understood in purely cognitive terms. Nor can they be fully understood as mere feelings with no content. But it has not been easy to give an account of the relation of affect and cognition in a way that preserves the perceived unity of emotional experience. Consequently, emotion theories tend to lean either toward cognitivism, or, alternatively, the view that emotions are basically non-cognitive affairs. The aim of this paper is to argue for an account of emotion (...) as a unity of affect and cognition. Emotions, it will be suggested, do not combine, blend, add, or causally relate cognition to affect, or affect to cognition, but are rather original unities which should be viewed as coordinate with, rather than subordinate to, either cognition, perception, feeling, or any other basic mental category. (shrink)

In the current context of widespread environmental collapse, ecological grief—the sense of loss that arises from experiencing environmental destruction—has become a burgeoning topic of inquiry across psychology, geography, and anthropology. The central challenge in the study of ecological grief is that its theoretical foundations remain underdeveloped. Recent discussions in philosophy of emotions elucidate that a central element in this theoretical challenge is determining what the object of ecological grief is. In turn, our understanding of the object of ecological grief goes (...) hand in hand with our understanding of the nature of ecological grief. This paper develops a phenomenological analysis of cross‐cultural subjective reports that identifies crucial themes in the experience of ecological grief. This phenomenological analysis reveals the object of ecological grief as the loss of the life possibilities that are sustained by dwelling. The resulting view is that ecological grief corresponds to a crisis in dwelling—a disturbance in the very way we inhabit our home environment. (shrink)

If someone commits the mereological fallacy, then he ascribes psychological predicates to parts of an animal that apply only to the (behaving) animal as a whole. This incoherence is not strictly speaking a fallacy, i.e. an invalid argument, since it is not an argument but an illicit predication. However, it leads to invalid inferences and arguments, and so can loosely be called a fallacy. However, discussions of this particular illicit predication, the mereological fallacy, show that it is often misunderstood. Many (...) misunderstandings concern the use of this illicit predication in the course of discussions of understanding the mind/body problem. Our aim here is to provide an accessible overview through discussing common misconceptions of the fallacy. We also discuss how conceptual investigations of the relation between living organisms and their parts fit within the framework of modern evolutionary theory, i.e. inclusive fitness theory. (shrink)

In this paper, we develop an impure somatic theory of emotion, according to which emotions are constituted by the integration of bodily perceptions with representations of external objects, events, or states of affairs. We put forward our theory by contrasting it with Prinz's pure somatic theory, according to which emotions are entirely constituted by bodily perceptions. After illustrating Prinz's theory and discussing the evidence in its favor, we show that it is beset by serious problems—i.e., it gets the neural correlates (...) of emotion wrong, it isn't able to distinguish emotions from bodily perceptions that aren't emotions, it cannot account for emotions being directed towards particular objects, and it mischaracterizes emotion phenomenology. We argue that our theory accounts for the empirical evidence considered by Prinz and solves the problems faced by his theory. In particular, we maintain that our theory gives a unified and principled account of the relation between emotions and bodily perceptions, the intentionality of emotions, and emotion phenomenology. (shrink)

This paper critically examines the philosophical underpinnings of current experimental investigation into animal affect-related decision-making. Animals’ affective states are standardly operationalised by linking positively valenced states with “approach” behaviours and negatively valenced states with “avoidance” behaviours. While this operationalisation has provided a helpful starting point to investigate the ecological role of animals’ internal states, there is extensive evidence that valenced and motivational states do not always neatly align, namely, instances where “liking” does not entail “wanting” (and vice versa). To address (...) this limitation, this paper proposes the (re-)integration of dominance as a dimension of affect. In particular, I argue that dominance, construed as a measure of organisms’ self-assessed behavioural control, can provide the necessary nuance to understand animal affect-related decision-making. Thus, after addressing the theoretical and methodological challenges related to incorporating dominance into a definition of “core affect”, this paper introduces the “Valence-Arousal-Dominance” model of animal affect. This model is explored for its potential applications in two domains. Firstly, in the study of animal affect-related decision-making under predation risk, and secondly, in the study of animal wellbeing. Through these applications, this model aims to bring experimental paradigms of animal affect-related behaviour closer to ecologically relevant scenarios. (shrink)

Dieser Forschungsbericht gibt einen Überblick über die aktuelle Debatte über motivierende Gründe in der Handlungs- und Erkenntnistheorie. Folgende drei Fragen werden schwerpunktmäßig behandelt: a) Was für eine Art von Entität sind motivierende Gründe? b) Welche Beziehung besteht zwischen einer Handlung oder Einstellung und ihren motivierenden Gründen? c) Welche kognitiven Bedingungen gelten für die Zuschreibung motivierender Gründe?

Emoțiile au fost considerate adesea o amenințare pentru moralitate și raționalitate; în tradiția romantică, pasiunile au fost așezate atât în centrul individualității umane cât și al vieții morale. Această ambivalență a dus la o ambiguitate între termenii emoțiilor pentru vicii și virtuți. Epicureismul și stoicii au susținut că emoțiile sunt iraționale. Stoicii considerau că virtutea nu este altceva decât cunoașterea, iar emoțiile sunt în mod esențial credințe iraționale. Scepticii considerau că credințele sunt responsabile de durere, recomandând respingerea opiniilor de orice (...) fel. Aceste școli au subliniat valoarea generală a „ ataraxiei ”, absența perturbării mentale, filosofia fiind privită ca terapie pentru curățarea emoțiilor din suflet. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.25383.29608 . (shrink)

Emoția a fost exclusă din cunoaștere încă din antichitate, când Democrit afirma că „Medicamentul vindecă bolile corpului, înțelepciunea eliberează sufletul de emoții”. O astfel de opinie spune că „rațiunea ar trebui să fie maestrul pasiunii”. Cea mai cunoscută declarație inversată aparține lui Hume, conform căruia rațiunea este și ar trebui să fie sclavul pasiunilor. Emoțiile au fost recunoscute ca amenințări la luarea deciziilor raționale și epistemice, corelându-se emoțiile cu voința sau dorința (emoțiile ar fi un mijloc prin care voința sau (...) dorința pot denatura rațiunea sau percepția sau un proces rațional). DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.11004.69762 . (shrink)

This article derives from the Buddhist Nikāya Suttas the idea that fear has an intentional object that is best analysed in anticipatory terms. Something is feared, I argue, if construed as dangerous, where to construe something as dangerous is to anticipate it will cause certain unwanted effects. To help explain what this means, I appeal to the concept of formal objects in the philosophy of emotions and to predictive processing accounts of perception. I demonstrate how this analysis of fear can (...) do exegetical work in the context of the Nikāya Suttas, and respond to philosophical issues concerning the relation between the intentional and anticipatory dimensions of fear; the relevant anticipated effects of feared objects; and whether fearing subjects necessarily know they anticipate unwanted effects. I also draw an analogy to allostatic sensations to engage issues concering how the anticipatory dimension of fear relates to the motivational. (shrink)

Abstract4E approaches to affective technology tend to focus on how ‘users’ manage their situated affectivity, analogously to how they help themselves cognitively through epistemic actions or using artefacts and scaffolding. Here I focus on cases where the function of affective technology is to exploit or manipulate the agent engaging with it. My opening example is the cigarette, where technological refinements have harmfully transformed the affective process of consuming nicotine. I proceed to develop case studies of two very different but also (...) harmful affective technologies. Casinos and electronic gambling machines deploy computationally intensive scaffolding to shape the onset and continuation of gambling episodes. High-heeled shoes affectively engineer wearers’ relationships to their own embodied capacities and are predominantly expected to be worn by women. I conclude with a discussion of the need for study of affective technology to focus other-directed applications, some of which will serve competing or antagonistic interests. (shrink)

In this article I argue that characterizations of anger as a hostile emotion may be mistaken. My project is empirically informed and is partly descriptive, partly diagnostic. It is descriptive in that I am concerned with what anger is, and how it tends to manifest, rather than with what anger should be or how moral anger is manifested. The orthodox view on anger takes it to be, descriptively, an emotion that aims for retribution. This view fits well with anger being (...) a hostile emotion, as retribution is punitive. I will argue that a different view of anger deserves our attention. On this alternative view, anger aims for recognition of harms done, rather than for the punishment of those who have committed them. I argue that we have reason to favour a strong view that excludes retribution from anger’s main aims. In addition, I offer a diagnosis of the reasons that led the retributive view of anger to become, and remain, orthodoxy. This diagnosis provides indirect reason to give my descriptive proposal serious consideration, for it highlights that the orthodox view has dominated folk and philosophical conceptions of anger for reasons that do not speak in favour of the view’s veracity. The view that anger is a hostile emotion will therefore emerge as in need of serious scrutiny. (shrink)

The philosophy of hope centers on two interlocking sets of questions. The first concerns the nature of hope. Specific questions here include how to analyze hope, how hope motivates us, and whether there is only one type of hope. The second set concerns the value of hope. Key questions here include whether and when it is good to hope and whether there is a virtue of hope. Philosophers of hope tend to proceed from the first set of questions to the (...) second. This is a natural approach, for one might expect that you must develop a basic understanding of what hope is before you can determine its value. The structure of this chapter thus follows this approach. But readers should not be misled: there is in fact a good deal of feedback between the two sets of questions. A theory of hope is more plausible to the extent that it fits well with plausible ideas about the value of hope. So the movement from hope’s nature to its value is one of emphasis rather than a strict, step-wise process. (shrink)

In this paper, we consider the question of whether there exists an essential relation between emotions and wellbeing. We distinguish three ways in which emotions and wellbeing might be essentially related: constitutive, causal, and epistemic. We argue that, while there is some room for holding that emotions are constitutive ingredients of an individual’s wellbeing, all the attempts to characterise the causal and epistemic relations in an essentialist way are vulnerable to some important objections. We conclude that the causal and epistemic (...) relation between emotions and wellbeing is much less strong than is commonly thought. (shrink)

This chapter examines two premises of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) - that emotions are caused by beliefs and that those beliefs are represented in the mind as words or images. Being a philosophical examination, the chapter also seeks to demonstrate that these two premises essentially are philosophical premises. The chapter begins with a brief methodological suggestion of how to properly evaluate the theory of CBT. From there it works it way from examining the therapeutic practice of capturing the mental representations that (...) supposedly elicit emotional reactions to examining the assumption that emotions are caused by beliefs. The chapter ends by briefly pointing to some consequences of what has been said to the practice of CBT. (shrink)

Claims concerning processes, claims of the form “xisφing”, have been the subject of renewed interest in recent years in the philosophy of action. However, this interest has frequently limited itself to noting certain formal features such claims have, and has not extended to a discussion of when they are true. This article argues that a claim of the form “xisφing” is true when what is happening withxis such that, if it is not interrupted, a φing will occur. It then applies (...) itself more directly to the case of action, arguing that when “xisφing” describesx's intentional action, it is true iffxis acting from a method she knows to be sufficient to φ, in the sense that if she is not interrupted in carrying out this method, she will φ. I use this criterion to argue that the carbon‐copier example Donald Davidson gives in “Intending” fails to refute Elizabeth Anscombe's claim that an agent who is φing intentionally knows that she is, because the agent in Davidson's example is not intentionally making the copies. (shrink)

A definition of emotion common to the affective sciences is an urgent desideratum. Lack of such a definition is a constant source of numerous misunderstandings and a series of mostly fruitless debates. There is little hope that there ever will be agreement on a common definition of emotion, given the sacred traditions of the disciplines involved and the egos of the scholars working in these disciplines. Our aim here is more modest. We propose a list of elements for a working (...) definition of emotion and discuss the justification for the inclusion of elements from our respective perspectives (philosophy and psychology). This working partial definition may at least serve as a litmus test to examine theories of emotion, old and new, across disciplinary boundaries. (shrink)

The standard view of ignorance is that it consists in the mere lack of knowledge or true belief. Duncan Pritchard has recently argued, against the standard view, that ignorance is the lack of knowledge/true belief that is due to an improper inquiry. I shall call, Pritchard’s alternative account the Normative Account. The purpose of this article is to strengthen the Normative Account by providing an independent vargument supporting it.

Several authors have recently studied Aristotelian diagrams for various metatheoretical notions from logic, such as tautology, satisfiability, and the Aristotelian relations themselves. However, all these metalogical Aristotelian diagrams focus on the semantic (model-theoretical) perspective on logical consequence, thus ignoring the complementary, and equally important, syntactic (proof-theoretical) perspective. In this paper, I propose an explanation for this discrepancy, by arguing that the metalogical square of opposition for semantic consequence exhibits a natural analogy to the well-known square of opposition for the categorical (...) statements from syllogistics, but that this analogy breaks down once we move from semantic to syntactic consequence. I then show that despite this difficulty, one can indeed construct metalogical Aristotelian diagrams from a syntactic perspective, which have their own, equally elegant characterization in terms of the categorical statements. Finally, I construct several metalogical Aristotelian diagrams that incorporate both semantic and syntactic consequence (and their interaction), and study how they are influenced by the underlying logical system’s soundness and/or completeness. All of this provides further support for the methodological/heuristic perspective on Aristotelian diagrams, which holds that the main use of these diagrams lies in facilitating analogies and comparisons between prima facie unrelated domains of investigation. (shrink)

This paper explores the nature of ourexperiences of values– ourvalueceptions. In the recent literature, two main standpoints have emerged. On the one hand, the ‘Meinongian’ side claims that axiological properties are experienced exclusively in emotions. On the other hand, the ‘Hildebrandian’ side contends that since valueceptions can be ‘cold’, they are not accomplished in emotions but rather reside in ‘value-feelings’ – emotions, in this framework, being conceived of asreactionsto the values thus revealed. The aim of the paper is to argue (...) that theHusserlianphenomenology of affectivity, especially as it is developed during his Göttingen period, can help to overcome these two accounts. I start by pointing out that, contrary to what most scholars have assumed so far, Husserl’s theory of valueception is not tantamount to Meinong’s, as it is very sensitive to ‘Hildebrandian’ arguments (Part 2). The core of the paper is then devoted to a systematic reconstruction of Husserl’s solution to this controversy. Drawing on the analogy between thing-perceptions and value-perceptions (Part 3), I show, first, that ‘cold’ valueceptions are to be identified with empty apprehensions (Auffassungen) of value, in which an emotion is notactually experiencedbut isanticipatedin such-and-such kinaesthetic circumstances (Part 4); second, that the realization of this anticipation amounts to thefulfillmentof the valueception (Part 5). As a result, Husserl acknowledges the relevance of ‘value-feelings’, yet his account appears more satisfactory than traditional ‘Hildebrandian’ theories in that it demystifies these ‘value-feelings’ by reducing them topotential emotions. (shrink)

Heidegger’s view of attunement, and evolutionary theories of emotion, would appear to be wholly independent accounts of affects. This paper argues that we can understand the phenomenology of attunement and the evolutionary functionalist theory of emotions as distinct perspectives on those same emotions. The reason that the two perspectives are distinct is that some affects can act as commitment mechanisms, and this requires them to be experienced in a way that obscures their ultimate functional role. These perspectives are potentially mutually (...) consistent, however, and being aware of both may provide insight for productive research programs. Although there are conflicts between the methods and background assumptions of these two approaches, I argue that we should allow these conflicts to stand if the outcome of interaction is productive. (shrink)

Kit Fine distinguishes between inexact and exact truthmaking. He argues that the former can be defined from the latter, but not vice versa, and so concludes that truthmaker semanticists should treat the exact variety of truthmaking as primitive. I argue that this gets things backwards. We can define exact truthmaking in terms of inexact truthmaking and we can’t define inexact truthmaking in terms of exact truthmaking. I conclude that it’s inexact truthmaking, rather than exact truthmaking, that truthmaker semanticists should treat (...) as the primitive semantic relation. (shrink)

According to "the argument from discernment", sympathetic motivation is morally faulty, because it is morally undiscriminating. Sympathy can incline you to do the right thing, but it can also incline you to do the wrong thing. And if so, it is no better as a reason for doing something than any other morally arbitrary consideration. The only truly morally good form of motivation--because the only morally non-arbitrary one--involves treating an action's rightness as your reason for performing it. This paper attacks (...) the argument from discernment and argues against its conclusion. (shrink)

There has been relatively little discussion, in contemporary philosophy of mind, of the active aspects of perceptual processes. This essay presents and offers some preliminary development of a view about what it is for an agent to watch a particular material object throughout a period of time. On this view, watching is a kind of perceptual activity distinguished by a distinctive epistemic role. The essay presents a puzzle about watching an object that arises through elementary reflection on the consequences of (...) two apparent truths about watching an object throughout a period of time. It proposes that the puzzle can be resolved by a view according to which for an agent to watch an object throughout a period of time is for that agent to maintain visual awareness of that object with the aim of perceptually knowing what that object is doing. The essay goes on to make some further suggestions about how the apparatus developed in connection with the notion of watching may enable us to offer related explanations of other kinds of perceptual activity. It proposes that a useful distinction can be drawn between perceptual activities like watching which have as their aim knowledge of what an object is doing and activities like looking or visually scrutinizing which have as their aims knowledge of the states or conditions of the objects of perceptual awareness. (shrink)

I show the incompatibility of two theses: (a) to desire the truth of p amounts to believing a certain proposition about the value of p’s truth; (b) one cannot be said to desire the truth of p if one believes that p is true. Thesis (a), the Desire-As-Belief Thesis, has received much attention since the late 1980s. Thesis (b) is an epistemic variant of Socrates’ remark in the Symposium that one cannot desire what one already has. It turns out that (...) (a) and (b) cannot both be true if it is possible for there to exist an agent who has a desire initially, say the desire for the truth of p, and then expands the corpus of propositions she believes to include p. This result provides a new route to the denial of (a). (shrink)

When I raise my arm, what makes it the case that my arm's going up is an instance of my raising my arm? In this paper, I discuss Aristotle's answer to this question. His view, I argue, is that my arm's going up counts as my raising my arm just in case it is an exercise of a certain kind of causal power of mine. I show that this view differs in an interesting way both from the Davidsonian ‘standard causal (...) account’ of action and from accounts put forward by recent critics of Davidson, such as Hornsby, Alvarez and Hyman. (shrink)

When I raise my arm, what makes it the case that my arm's going up is an instance of my raising my arm? In this paper, I discuss Aristotle's answer to this question. His view, I argue, is that my arm's going up counts as my raising my arm just in case it is an exercise of a certain kind of causal power of mine. I show that this view differs in an interesting way both from the Davidsonian ‘standard causal (...) account’ of action and from accounts put forward by recent critics of Davidson, such as Hornsby, Alvarez and Hyman. (shrink)

Spanish verbs display two past-tense forms, the pret´rito and the imperfecto. We offer an account of the semantics of these forms within a situation semantics, addressing a number of theoretically interesting questions about how to realize a semantics for tense and events in that type of framework. We argue that each of these forms is unambiguous, and that the apparent variety of readings attested for them derives from interaction with other factors in the course of interpretation. The meaning of the (...) imperfecto is constrained to always reflect atelic aktionsart. In addition, it contains a modal element, and a contextually-given accessibility relation over situations constrains the interpretation of the modal in ways that give rise to all the attested readings. The pret´rito is indeterminate with respect to aktionsart, neither telic nor atelic. One or the other aktionsart may be forced by other factors in the clause in which the pret´rito occurs, as well as by pragmatic contrast with the possibility of using the imperfecto. (shrink)

The distinction between cognitive and perceptual theories of emotion is entrenched in the literature on emotion and is openly used by individual emotion theorists when classifying their own theories and those of others. In this paper, I argue that the distinction between cognitive and perceptual theories of emotion is more pernicious than it is helpful, while at the same time insisting that there are nonetheless important perceptual and cognitive factors in emotion that need to be distinguished. A general representational metatheoretical (...) framework for reconciling cognitive and perceptual theories is proposed. This is the Representational Theory of Emotion (RTE). A detailed case study of Antonio Damasio's important new contribution to emotion theory is presented in defense of the RTE. The paper is intended for readers interested in the foundations of emotion theory and cognitive science. (shrink)

Aristotelian virtue ethics invests emotions and feelings with much moral significance. However, the moral and other conflicts that inevitably beset human life often give rise to states of emotional division and ambivalence with problematic implications for any understanding of virtue as complete psychic unity of character and conduct. For one thing, any admission that the virtuous are prey to conflicting passions and desires may seem to threaten the crucial virtue ethical distinction between the virtuous and the continent. One recent attempt (...) to sustain this distinction -- considered in this paper -- maintains that the contrary-to-virtue emotions and desires of the virtuous (by contrast with those of the continent) must relinquish their motive power as reasons for action. Following some attention to the psychological status of feelings and emotions -- in particular their complex relations with cognition and reason -- this paper rejects this solution in favour of a more constructive view of emotional conflict. (shrink)

Abstract. The modern concept of the inner self containing a private inner world has ancient philosophical and religious roots. These begin with Plato's intelligible world of ideas. In Plotinus, the intelligible world becomes the inner world of the divine Mind and its ideas, which the soul sees by turning “into the inside.” Augustine made the inner world into something merely human, not a world of divine ideas, so that the soul seeking for God must turn in, then up: entering into (...) itself and then looking above itself at the intelligible light of God. In modernity, “ideas” become the immediate object of every act of mental perception, the essential inner objects of the mind's eye. Locke makes the inner space inescapably private, excluding the divine inner light. Postmodern attempts to reconceive the relation of mind and world, rejecting the modern conception of a private inner self, will need to deal with lingering Platonist intuitions about the immediacy of the mind's vision. (shrink)

From some perspectives, it seems obvious that emotions and feelings must be both reasonable and morally significant: from others, it may seem as obvious that they cannot be. This paper seeks to advance discussion of ethical implications of the currently contested issue of the relationship of reason to feeling and emotion via reflection upon various examples of affectively charged moral dilemma. This discussion also proceeds by way of critical consideration of recent empirical enquiry into these issues in the literature of (...) so-called emotional intelligence. In this regard, despite ambiguities in their accounts of the relationship of reason to emotion, advocates of emotional intelligence generally incline to therapeutic conceptions of emotional health which are not inconsistent with currently fashionable cognitivist accounts of feeling and emotion. All the same, it is arguable that therapeutic or other strategies which overplay the possibility of cognitive or other resolution of emotional conflict are prey to certain difficulties. First, they underemphasise those passive but identity-constitutive aspects of affect which are not obviously rationally accountable. Secondly, they insufficiently recognise the extent to which emotional conflicts can be significantly implicated in moral diversity. In view of either or both of these points, they may fail to appreciate the moral inappropriateness of attempts to resolve certain forms of emotional conflict or tension. (shrink)

Recent thinking within philosophy of mind about the ways cognition can extend has yet to be integrated with philosophical theories of emotion, which give cognition a central role. We carve out new ground at the intersection of these areas and, in doing so, defend what we call the extended emotion thesis: the claim that some emotions can extend beyond skin and skull to parts of the external world.

Expressivists about normative thought and discourse traditionally deny that there are nondeflationary normative propositions. However, it has recently been suggested that expressivists might avoid a number of problems by providing a theory of normative propositions compatible with expressivism. This paper explores the prospects for developing an expressivist theory of propositions within the framework of cognitive act theories of propositions. First, I argue that the only extant expressivist theory of cognitive propositions—Michael Ridge's ‘ecumenical expressivist’ theory—fails to explain identity conditions for normative (...) propositions. Second, I argue that this failure motivates a general constraint—the ‘unity requirement’—that any expressivist theory of propositions must provide a unified nonrepresentational explanation of that in virtue of which propositional attitudes have the content that they have. Third, I argue that conceptual role accounts of content provide a promising framework in which to develop an expressivist theory of cognitive propositions. (shrink)

Most philosophers, I think, would hold that there is a great deal more to be noticed about moral judgments than any special connections which they may be supposed to have with displays of emotion. I strongly hold this myself. Many philosophers, however—and I am one of them—are inclined to believe that special connections of this kind do exist. Agitation counts in ethics. But just what does it count for? What is to be made of the central fact that the same (...) forms of words to which both ethical and “emotive” meaning is ascribed may sometimes be used when emotions are being manifested and sometimes when they are not? Stevenson acknowledges, “There are emotively active and emotively inactive uses of literally all the ethical terms”. But how, in view of this fact, can it be illuminating to say that some forms of words—taken to be the characteristic forms of words for expressing moral judgments—have anything like a distinctive function of expressing emotions? (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss the inherent temporal orientation of fear, a matter on which philosophers seem to have contrasting opinions. According to some, fear is inherently present-oriented; others instead maintain that it is inherently future-oriented or that it has no inherent temporal orientation at all. Despite the differences, however, all these views seem to understand fear’s temporal orientation as one-dimensional—that is, as uniquely determined by the represented temporal location of the intentional object of fear. By contrast, we present a (...) view that introduces a two-dimensional account of fear’s temporal orientation. On such a view, we can say that fear is inherently future-oriented, independently of its being about something in the present or in the future. (shrink)

A widespread (and often tacit) assumption is that fear is an anticipatory emotion and, as such, inherently future-oriented. Prima facie, such an assumption is threatened by cases where we seem to be afraid of things in the past: if it is possible to fear the past, then fear entertains no special relation with the future—or so some have argued. This seems to force us to choose between an account of fear as an anticipatory emotion (supported by pre-theoretical intuitions as well (...) as empirical research in psychology) and admitting cases of past-oriented fear. In this paper, we argue for a proposal that dissolves this dilemma. Our claim is: with the right account in place, the future-orientation of fear can be made compatible with, and is actually explanatory of, cases where we are genuinely afraid of something in the past. So, there is no need to choose: fear is still future-oriented, even when we are genuinely afraid of things in the past. The key is a correct understanding of what fear’s temporal orientation amounts to, and the framework we offer here provides us with such an understanding. (shrink)

Thomas Aquinas divides the sensory appetite into two powers: the irascible and the concupiscible. The irascible power moves creatures toward arduous goods and away from arduous evils, while the concupiscible power moves creatures toward pleasant goods and away from non-arduous evils. Despite the importance of this distinction, it remains unclear what counts as an arduous good or evil, and why arduousness is the defining feature of the division. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, I argue that an arduous (...) object is one that is difficult and important for the creature. Second, given this proper understanding of arduousness, I highlight the shortcomings of the standard interpretation of Aquinas’s argument for the irascible-concupiscible distinction and suggest an alternative. I argue that Aquinas grounds the distinction in the distinction between useful and pleasant goods. I explain how these distinct goods allow arduousness to be the defining feature of the irascible-concupiscible division. (shrink)

Most philosophers of emotion endorse a compound account of the emotions: emotions are wholes made of parts; or, as I prefer to put it, emotions are mental states that supervene on other (mental) states. The goal of this paper is to ascertain how the intentionality of these subvening members relates to the intentionality of the emotions. Towards this end, I proceed as follows. First, I discuss the problems with the account Justin D'Arms and Daniel Jacobson offer of the intentionality of (...) the emotions; I argue their account is fundamentally misguided by virtue of being motivated by a misunderstanding of the nature of propositional attitudes. Second, I argue against Peter Goldie's claim that an affective component of an emotion contributes to its intentionality. Third, I offer my own compound account of emotions. I argue (1) emotions are mental states that supervene on other mental states, (2) the mental states that constitute the subvenience base of emotion can have nonconceptual and/or conceptual representational content, and (3) an emotion's intentionality supervenes on (but is often not identical to) the intentionality of only one of its subvening members, specifically, the evaluative representation. (shrink)

According to orthodoxy, the most fundamental kind of causation involves one event causing another event. I argue against this event‐causal view. Instead, the most fundamental kind of causation is thing causation, which involves a thing causing a thing to do something. Event causation is reducible to thing causation, but thing causation is not reducible to event causation, because event causation cannot accommodate cases of fine‐grained causation. I defend my view from objections, including C. D. Broad's influential “timing” argument, and I (...) conclude with implications for agent‐causal theories of free will. (shrink)

In this paper I describe a specific emotional reaction to the fact that we will cease to exist, namely existential dread, and I argue that the B-theory of time, according to which reality contains a four-dimensional spacetime manifold and the present time is metaphysically on a par with past and future times, cannot accommodate it. Some may see this as an advantage of the B-theory; some may see it as a problem for the view. My aim is not to argue (...) either for or against the B-theory, but merely to show that it is incompatible with a certain common emotion. The paper is split into three sections. I begin by introducing existential dread. Next, I show how existential dread fits into a widely accepted theory of emotion according to which emotions are intentional states susceptible of being both intelligible and correct, where an emotion is intelligible if, roughly, it makes sense; and is correct if, roughly, it fits its object. The core of the paper is the third section: in that section, I introduce the B-theory of time and I argue that it is incompatible with existential dread. (shrink)

Some philosophers claim that emotions are, at best, hindrances to the discovery of evaluative truths, while others omit them entirely from their epistemology of value. I argue, however, that this is a mistake. Drawing an evaluative parallel with Frank Jackson’s Mary case, I show there is a distinctive way in which emotions epistemically enhance evaluative judgment. This is, in fact, a conclusion philosophers of emotion have been eager to endorse. However, after considering several influential proposals—such as the view that emotions (...) generate evaluative concepts, or the view that emotions justify evaluative beliefs on the model of perception—I conclude that the most promising contender is the notion that emotional experience acquaints us with evaluative properties. (shrink)

An integrative explanation proposes that culture and gender interact to produce fundamentally different patterns of association between positive and negative emotions. People in independent-based cultures (e.g. the United States) experience emotions in oppositional (i.e. bipolar) ways, whereas people in interdependent-based cultures (e.g. China) experience emotions in dialectic ways. These patterns are stronger for women than men in both cultures. In support of the theory, Study 1 showed that positive and negative emotions are strongly correlated inversely for American women and weakly (...) correlated inversely for American men, but strongly correlated positively for Chinese women and weakly correlated positively for Chinese men. In Study 2, findings for Koreans, although mixed, were closer to the results for Chinese. (shrink)

This paper defends an account of forgiveness that is sensitive to recent work on anger. Like others, we claim anger involves an appraisal, namely that someone has done something wrong. But, we add, anger has two further functions. First, anger communicates to the wrongdoer that her act has been appraised as wrong and demands she feel guilty. This function enables us to explain why apologies make it reasonable to forgo anger and forgive. Second, anger sanctions the wrongdoer for what she (...) has done. This function allows us to explore the moral status of forgiveness, including why forgiveness is typically elective. (shrink)