Pour contrer le scepticisme au sujet de la connaissance des valeurs, la plupart soutiennent avec John Rawls qu’une croyance comme celle qu’une action est bonne est justifiée dans la mesure où elle appartient à un ensemble de croyances cohérent, ayant atteint un équilibre réfléchi. Christine Tappolet s’inspire des travaux de Max Scheler et d’Alexius von Meinong pour défendre une conception opposée au cohérentisme. La connaissance des valeurs est affirmée dépendre de nos émotions, ces dernières étant conçues comme des perceptions des (...) valeurs. (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.

Several philosophers think there are important analogies between emotions and perceptual states. Furthermore, considerations about the rational assessibility of emotions have led philosophers—in some cases, the very same philosophers—to think that the content of emotions must be propositional content. If one finds it plausible that perceptual states have propositional contents, then there is no obvious tension between these views. However, this view of perception has recently been attacked by philosophers who hold that the content of perception is object-like. I shall (...) argue for a view about the content of emotions and perceptual states which will enable us to hold both that emotional content is analogous to perceptual content and that both emotions and perceptual states can have propositional contents. This will involve arguing for a pluralist view of perceptual content, on which perceptual states can have both contents which are proposition-like and contents which are object-like. I shall also address two significant objections to the claim that emotions can have proposition-like contents. Meeting one of these objections will involve taking on a further commitment: the pluralist account of perceptual content will have to be one on which the contents of perception can be non-conceptual. (shrink)

We must rethink the status of Hume’s science of emotions. Contemporary philosophers typically dismiss Hume’s account on the grounds that he mistakenly identifies emotions with feelings. But the traditional objections to Hume’s feeling theory are not as strong as commonly thought. Hume makes several important contributions, moreover, to our understanding of the operations of the emotions. His claims about the causal antecedents of the indirect passions receive support from studies in appraisal theory, for example, and his suggestions concerning the social (...) dimensions of self-conscious emotions can help guide future research in this field. His dual-component hypothesis concerning the processing of emotions, furthermore, suggests a compromise solution to a recalcitrant debate in cognitive science. Finally, Hume’s proposals concerning the motivational influences of pride, and the conventional nature of emotional display rules, are vindicated by recent work in social psychology. (shrink)

In a series of recent works, Julian Savulescu and Ingmar Persson insist that, given the ease by which irreversible destruction is achievable by a morally wicked minority, (i) strictly cognitive bio-enhancement is currently too risky, while (ii) moral bio-enhancement is plausibly morally mandatory (and urgently so). This article aims to show that the proposal Savulescu and Persson advance relies on several problematic assumptions about the separability of cognitive and moral enhancement as distinct aims. Specifically, we propose that the underpinnings of (...) Savulescu's and Persson's normative argument unravel once it is suitably clear how aiming to cognitively enhance an individual will in part require that one aim to bring about certain moral goods we show to be essential to cognitive flourishing; conversely, aiming to bring about moral enhancement in an individual must involve aiming to improve certain cognitive capacities we show to be essential to moral flourishing. After developing these points in some detail, and their implication for Savulescu's & Persson's proposal, we conclude by outlining some positive suggestions. (shrink)

In this paper, I articulate Heidegger’s notion of Befindlichkeit and show that his phenomenological account of affective existence can be understood in terms of contemporary work on emotions. By examining Heidegger’s account alongside contemporary accounts of emotions, I not only demonstrate the ways in which key aspects of the former are present in the latter; I also explicate in detail the ways in which our understanding of Befindlichkeit and its relationship to moods and emotions can benefit from an empirically-informed study (...) of emotions. (shrink)

Cognitive theory (CT) is currently the most widely acknowledged framework used to describe the psychological processes in affective disorders like depression. The purpose of this paper is to assess the philosophical assumptions upon which CT rests. It is argued that CT must be revised due to significant flaws in many of these philosophical assumptions. The paper contains suggestions as to how these problems could be overcome in a manner that would secure philosophical accuracy, while also providing an account that is (...) better suited to explaining some of the cognitive, emotional, and bodily manifestations of affective disorders. (shrink)

A recalcitrant emotion is an emotion that we experience despite a judgment that seems to conflict with it. Having been bitten by a dog in her childhood, Jane cannot shake her fear of dogs, including Fido, the cute little puppy that she knows to be in no way dangerous. There is something puzzling about recalcitrant emotions, which appear to defy the putatively robust connection between emotions and judgments. If Jane really believes that Fido cannot harm her, what is she afraid (...) of? This article seeks to show how recalcitrant emotion is possible. I argue that reductive theories that identify emotions with judgments, desires, or some combination thereof, cannot explain the possibility of emotional irrationality without contradiction. I then show that the appeal to sui generis attitudes also fails to solve the puzzle of recalcitrant emotions, and diagnose this failure as stemming from a misleading analogy between emotions and perceptions, and in particular, between recalcitrant emotions and perceptual illusions. The solution can be found in a different analogy: between emotions and actions; more specifically, between recalcitrant emotions and weakness of the will, akrasia. Like akratic actions, recalcitrant emotions entail responding to reasons, but to inferior reasons. Irrational but non-contradictory emotions are possible just as weakness of will is possible. (shrink)

According to the old feeling theory of emotion, an emotion is just a feeling: a conscious experience with a characteristic phenomenal character. This theory is widely dismissed in contemporary discussions of emotion as hopelessly naïve. In particular, it is thought to suffer from two fatal drawbacks: its inability to account for the cognitive dimension of emotion (which is thought to go beyond the phenomenal dimension), and its inability to accommodate unconscious emotions (which, of course, lack any phenomenal character). In this (...) paper, I argue that the old feeling theory is in reality only a pair of modifications removed from a highly plausible account of the nature of emotion that retains the essential connection between emotion and feeling. These modifications are, moreover, motivated by recent developments in work on phenomenal consciousness. The first development is the rising recognition of a phenomenal character proper to cognition—so-called cognitive phenomenology. The second is the gathering momentum behind various ‘connection principles’ that specify some connection that a given state must bear to phenomenally conscious states in order to qualify as mental. These developments make it possible to formulate a new feeling theory of emotion, which would overcome the two fatal drawbacks of the old feeling theory. According to the new feeling theory, an emotion is a mental state that bears the right connection to conscious experiences with the right phenomenal character (involving, among other elements, a cognitive phenomenology). (shrink)

Philosophical cognitivists have argued for more than four decades that emotions are special types of judgments. Anti-cognitivists have provided a series of counterexamples aiming to show that identifying emotions with judgments overintellectualizes the emotions. I provide a novel counterexample that makes the overintellectualization charge especially vivid. I discuss neurophysiological evidence to the effect that the fear system can be activated by stimuli the subject is unaware of seeing. To emphasize the analogy with blind sight , I call this phenomenon blind (...) fright . Cognitivists may reply that blindfright is nothing but an unconscious judgment subcortically elicited. This reply is in line with the strategy commonly employed by cognitivists against their critics. I call it the Elastic Strategy, because it consists of ‘stretching’ the notion of judgment in order to accommodate counterexamples. This strategy, I argue, turns cognitivism into a theory that is at worst unfalsifiable and at best trivially true. The final portion of my article aims to rescue cognitivism from the damage done by the Elastic Strategy. I distinguish three varieties of cognitivism, one concerned with what emotions essentially are (Constitutive Cognitivism), one concerned with what causes emotions (Etiological Cognitivism) and one concerned with what emotions represent (Representational Cognitivism). I conclude that what cognitivism has to offer to emotion theory are primarily insights concerning the causes and representational content of emotions. The constitutive identification of emotions with judgments, on the other hand, does more harm than good. (shrink)

The phenomenology of emotions has traditionally been understood in terms of bodily sensations they involve. This is a mistake. We should instead understand their phenomenology in terms of their distinctively evaluative intentionality. Emotions are essentially affective modes of response to the ways our circumstances come to matter to us, and so they are ways of being pleased or pained by those circumstances. Making sense of the intentionality and phenomenology of emotions in this way requires rejecting traditional understandings of intentionality and (...) so coming to see emotions as a distinctive and irreducible class of mental states lying at the intersection of intentionality, phenomenology, and motivation. (shrink)

I shall conclude with a methodological moral. I have tried to show that there are several fundamentally different kinds of fear. One is a pure propositional attitude, one is partially a bodily state, and one is a relation between a person and a nonpropositional object. Other emotions come in similar varieties, such as hope and happiness, but with significant differences. The state of happiness, for example, does not entail any particular bodily state or feeling. So one lesson is this: it (...) is hard to generalize about “the emotions.” Further detailed, analytical studies of particular emotions are needed before a “general theory of the emotions” can be fruitfully attempted. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to propose a systematic classification of emotions which can also characterize their nature. The first challenge we address is the submission of clear criteria for a theory of emotions that determine which mental phenomena are emotions and which are not. We suggest that emotions as a subclass of mental states are determined by their functional roles. The second and main challenge is the presentation of a classification and theory of emotions that can account for (...) all existing varieties. We argue that we must classify emotions according to four developmental stages: 1. pre-emotions as unfocussed expressive emotion states, 2. basic emotions, 3. primary cognitive emotions, and 4. secondary cognitive emotions. We suggest four types of basic emotions (fear, anger, joy and sadness) which are systematically differentiated into a diversity of more complex emotions during emotional development. The classification distinguishes between basic and non-basic emotions and our multi-factorial account considers cognitive, experiential, physiological and behavioral parameters as relevant for constituting an emotion. However, each emotion type is constituted by a typical pattern according to which some features may be more significant than others. Emotions differ strongly where these patterns of features are concerned, while their essential functional roles are the same. We argue that emotions form a unified ontological category that is coherent and can be well defined by their characteristic functional roles. Our account of emotions is supported by data from developmental psychology, neurobiology, evolutionary biology and sociology. (shrink)

The type of cognitive theory of emotion traditionally espoused by philosophers of mind makes two central claims. First, that the occurrence of propositional attitudes is essential to the occurrence of emotions. Second, that the identity of a particular emotional state depends upon the propositional attitudes that it involves. In this paper I try to show that there is little hope of developing a theory of emotion which makes these claims true. I examine the underlying defects of the programme, and show (...) that several recent variants fail to repair these defects. Furthermore, even if such a theory could be developed, it would not achieve many of the things that we look to a theory of emotion for. I argue that philosophers should turn their attention to new and more promising approaches. These have been developed by various of the special sciences, while philosophy has remained enthralled by traditional, propositional attitude psychology. (shrink)

Emotions have long been of interest to philosophers and have deep historical roots going back to the Ancients. They have also become one of the most exciting areas of current research in philosophy, the cognitive sciences, and beyond. -/- This book explains the philosophy of the emotions, structuring the investigation around seven fundamental questions: What are emotions? Are emotions natural kinds? Do animals have emotions? Are emotions epistemically valuable? Are emotions the foundation for value and morality? Are emotions the basis (...) for responsibility? Do emotions make us better people? -/- In the course of exploring these questions, the book also discusses cutting-edge empirical research on emotion, feminist approaches to emotions and their value, and methodological questions on how to theorize about the emotions. The book also contains in-depth discussions of specific emotions like compassion, disgust, anxiety, and curiosity. It also highlights emerging trends in emotion research. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ. Cet article examine plusieurs façons de comprendre les émotions comme des réactions évaluatives. Il existe un consensus dans les sciences affectives qui veut que les émotions paradigmatiques soient faites de quatre composants : catégorisation du stimulus, tendances à l’action, changements corporels et aspect phénoménal. L’article expose les quatre principales théories dans la philosophie contemporaine des émotions et montre qu’elles ont tendance à se focaliser sur l’un ou l’autre des quatre composants des émotions pour expliquer leur nature évaluative. La conclusion (...) est qu’il est possible de rendre compte des émotions comme réactions évaluatives à ces quatre niveaux et que, pour cette raison, les conceptions présentées sont plus complémentaires qu’on ne le suppose généralement. ABSTRACT. This article examines several ways of understanding emotions as evaluative reactions. There is a consensus in affective sciences that paradigmatic emotions are made up of four components: appraisal process, action tendencies, bodily changes, and phenomenal character. The article outlines the four main theories in contemporary philosophy of emotions and shows that they tend to focus on one of the four components of emotions to explain their evaluative nature. The conclusion is that it is possible to account for emotions as evaluative reactions through the four components and that, for this reason, the theories presented are more complementary than is generally assumed. (shrink)

Emotions seem to be epistemically assessable: fear of an onrushing truck is epistemically justified whereas, mutatis mutandis, fear of a peanut rolling on the floor is not. But there is a difficulty in understanding why emotions are epistemically assessable. It is clear why beliefs, for instance, are epistemically assessable: epistemic assessability is, arguably, assessability with respect to likely truth, and belief is by its nature concerned with truth; truth is, we might say, belief’s “formal object.” Emotions, however, have formal objects (...) different from truth: the formal object of fear is danger, the formal object of indignation is injustice, and so on. Why, then, are emotions epistemically assessable too? Here we make a negative claim and a positive claim. On the negative side, we consider how cognitivist and perceptualist accounts of emotion may respond to this challenge, and argue against those responses. On the positive side, we develop an alternative picture of the domain of the epistemically evaluable, according to which any mental state which is constitutively evidence-responsive is epistemically assessable, regardless of whether its formal object is truth. (shrink)

T.M. Scanlon’s ‘reasons fundamentalism’ is thought to face difficulties answering the normative question—that is, explaining why it’s irrational to not do what you judge yourself to have most reason to do (e.g., Dreier 2014a). I argue that this difficulty results from Scanlon’s failure to provide a theory of mind that can give substance to his account of normative judgment and its tie to motivation. A central aim of this paper is to address this deficiency. To do this, I draw on (...) broadly cognitivist theories of emotion (e.g., Nussbaum 2001, Roberts 2013). These theories are interesting because they view emotions as cognitive states from which motivation emerges. Thus, they provide a model Scanlon can use to develop a richer account of both the judgment-motivation connection and the irrationality of not doing what you judge yourself to have most reason to do. However, the success is only partial—even this more developed proposal fails to give a satisfactory answer to the normative question. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue against the view that the representational structure of the implicit attitudes responsible for implicitly biased behaviour is propositional—as opposed to associationist. The proposal under criticism moves from the claim that implicit biased behaviour can occasionally be modulated by logical and evidential considerations to the view that the structure of the implicit attitudes responsible for such biased behaviour is propositional. I argue, in particular, against the truth of this conditional. Sensitivity to logical and evidential considerations, I (...) contend, proves to be an inadequate criterion for establishing the true representational structure of implicit attitudes. Considerations of a different kind, which emphasize the challenges posed by the structural social injustice that implicit attitudes reflect, offer, I conclude, better support for deciding this issue in favour of an associationist view. (shrink)

What kind of mental phenomenon is romantic love? Many philosophers, psychologists, and ordinary folk treat it as an emotion. This chapter argues the category of emotion is inadequate to account for romantic love. It examines major emotion theories in philosophy and psychology and shows that they fail to illustrate that romantic love is an emotion. It considers the categories of basic emotions and emotion complexes, and demonstrates they too come short in accounting for romantic love. It assesses the roles of (...) culture and evolution in shaping the romantic love phenomenon and evaluates the ways in which the norms of rationality that are applied to standard emotions fail to apply to love. It considers the category of sentiments and argue that despite coming close, it does not adequately capture the nature of romantic love. Finally, the chapter makes a case for love being best characterized as a syndrome. (shrink)

Some philosophers have claimed that emotions are states of mind where an object is taken seriously. Seriousness, as this paper understands it, involves both a phenomenological change in attention and non-indifference towards an object. The paper investigates how contemporary theories of emotion can explain the seriousness of emotion. After rejecting explanations based on feeling, desire, and concern, the paper argues that the seriousness of an emotion can be explained as the manifestation of a concern in an outwardly directed feeling. Given (...) the lack of competing explanations, seriousness probably must be explained this way. This argument shows how emotional feelings constitutively depend on desires, and why desires are essential ingredients to emotion. (shrink)

It is now a commonplace that emotions are not mere sensations but, rather, conceptually contentful states. In trying to expand on this insight, however, most theoretical approaches to emotions neglect central intuitions about what emotions are like. We therefore need a methodological shift in our thinking about emotions away from the standard accounts' attempts to reduce them to other mental states and toward an exploration of the distinctive work emotions do. I show that emotions' distinctive function is to engage us (...) with both objective and personal values. Attention to emotions' work reveals that it is precisely their “unruliness” that allows them to play meaningful roles in our lives. (shrink)

Religions don’t simply make claims about the world; they also offer existential resources, resources for dealing with basic human problems, such as the need for meaning, love, identity, and personal growth. For instance, a Buddhist’s resources for addressing these existential needs are different than a Christian’s. Now, imagine someone who is agnostic but who is deciding whether to put faith in religion A or religion B. Suppose she thinks A and B are evidentially on par, but she regards A as (...) offering much more by way of existential resources. Is it epistemically rational for her to put her faith in A rather than B on this basis? It is natural to answer No. After all, what do the existential resources of a religion have to do with its truth? However, I argue that this attitude is mistaken. My thesis is that the extent to which it is good for a certain religion to be true is relevant to the epistemic rationality of faith in that religion. This is plausible, I’ll argue, on the correct account of the nature of faith, including the ways that emotion and desire can figure into faith and contribute to its epistemic rationality. (shrink)

A prominent view of phenomenal consciousness combines two claims: (i) the identity conditions of phenomenally conscious states can be fully accounted for in terms of these states’ representational content; (ii) this representational content can be fully accounted for in non-phenomenal terms. This paper presents an argument against this view. The core idea is that the identity conditions of phenomenally conscious states are not fixed entirely by what these states represent (their representational contents), but depend in part on how they represent (...) (their representational attitudes or modes). The argument highlights the myriad liabilities and difficulties one must accrue when one tries to appeal only to what phenomenally conscious states represent in accounting for their phenomenal individuation. (shrink)

According to the view we may term “strong cognitivism”, all reasons for action are rooted in normative features that the motivated subject takes objects to have independently of her attitudes towards these objects. The main concern of this paper is to argue against strong cognitivism, that is, to establish the view that conative attitudes do provide subjects with reasons for action. The central argument to this effect is a top-down argument: it proceeds by an analysis of the complex phenomenon of (...) love and derives a conclusion regarding the nature of more basic mental phenomena—particular desires. More specifically, its starting point is the crude intuition that the significance conferred by love upon its objects is of a distinctively personal kind—an intuition that is expressed by the apparent non-substitutability of two similar subjects only one of whom is loved with respect to their importance for the lover. I argue that the initial notion of non-substitutability can be refined and modified so as to form a real challenge to all versions of strong cognitivism and to establish the existence of attitude-dependent reasons. (shrink)

Neo-pragmatists propose that content is determined by social convention. A convention is a coordination problem in which each agent prefers any solution to none, yet has no preference amongst the alternative solutions. This paper argues that the best known theory of convention, David Lewis’, cannot yield a theory of content because it appeals to beliefs and other states that themselves have content. The question then arises whether a theory of convention that does not appeal to states with content can be (...) developed. The idea that a radical enactivist approach to convention based on basic emotions is then tentatively proposed. (shrink)

There is a distinction between being afraid and being afraid that something is the case. Kathy may be afraid that it will rain without being afraid, and may be afraid without being afraid that it will rain. We shall say that the distinction is between experiential and propositional fear. To be afraid is to experience fear, to be in a state of fear. The state takes many forms, such as fright, terror, and dread. To be afraid that something is the (...) case is to have a certain propositional attitude. We may have reasons for fearing, or being fearful, that it is. My goal is to explain what it means to experience fear. I shall argue that experiential fear can be defined in terms of propositional fear. The basic idea is that fear is experienced when an occurrent propositional fear of harm causes involuntary arousal and unhappiness in a direct way. The degree of fear experienced is the extent of involuntary arousal attributable to the subject's propositional fear. We shall see how this definition accounts for the similarities and differences between fear and the related concepts of hope and anxiety. (shrink)

Weak judgmentalism of emotions posits that emotions necessarily involve judgments. However, a standard critique of weak judgmentalism is that it cannot adequately account for the rationality of recalcitrant emotions, which persist despite the agent holding beliefs that conflict with them. This leads to the seemingly counter-intuitive conclusion that recalcitrant emotions are as irrational as logical mistakes. In response to this critique, I make two arguments. First, I distinguish between low-level and high-level beliefs, and argue that having two beliefs with contrary (...) contents at different levels can be rational to some extent. Therefore, weak judgmentalism can explain why recalcitrant emotions are not as irrational as logical mistakes. Second, I argue that recalcitrant emotions involve mental conflicts, while normal emotions do not. By framing the issue in this way, weak judgmentalism can also explain why recalcitrant emotions are not as rational as normal emotions. (shrink)

Folk and philosophers alike argue whether particular emotions are rational. However, these debates presuppose that emotions are eligible for rationality. Drawing on examples of how we manage our own emotions through strategies such as taking medication, I argue that the general permissibility of such management demonstrates that emotions are ineligible for rationality. It follows that emotions are never irrational or rational. Because neither perception nor emotion is eligible for rationality, this reveals a significant epistemic continuity between them, lending support to (...) perceptual views of emotion. (shrink)

Those arguing for the existence of non-propositional content appeal to emotions for support, although there has been little engagement in those debates with developments in contemporary theory of emotion, specifically in connection with the kind of mental states that emotional experiences are. Relatedly, within emotion theory, one finds claims that emotional experiences per se have non-propositional content without detailed argument. This paper argues that the content of emotional experience is propositional in a weak sense, associated with aspectual experience and correctness (...) conditions. Furthermore, it provides an interpretation of purely-objectual emotional experiences which satisfies this weak view of propositional content. (shrink)

I defend an account of when and why anger is morally virtuous or vicious. Anger often manifests what we care about; a sports fan gets angry when her favorite team loses because she cares about the team doing well. Anger, I argue, is made morally virtuous or vicious by the underlying care or concern. Anger is virtuous when it manifests moral concern and vicious when it manifests moral indifference or ill will. In defending this view, I reject two common views (...) about anger and moral character. First, I respond to several arguments that attempt to show that all anger is vicious. Then I respond to the view that some anger is required to be a virtuous person. Anger, on my view, can be morally virtuous but is not a necessary condition for being a virtuous person. This best accommodates not only morally irrelevant failures to get angry but also allows for emotional variation among virtuous people. (shrink)

This paper offers a neo-pragmatist account of the representational character of the emotions, for those emotions that have such a character. Put most generally, neo-pragmatism is the view that language should not be conceived primarily in terms of a robust relation of reference to or representation of antecedently given objects and properties. Rather, we should view it as a social practice that lets us do various quite different sorts of things. One of those things might be called ‘assessing representational accuracy’, (...) but this need not be thought of in terms of a metaphysically heavyweight relation. In applying neo-pragmatist techniques to the domain of the emotions, the result will be an alternative to currently popular accounts that individuate emotions partly in terms of what they represent. This alternative continues to allow us to use representational language in connection with some emotions. And it also helps to explain the awkwardness of representational talk in connection with other emotions: an awkwardness that was always a liability of monolithic representationalist views. (shrink)

A recalcitrant emotion is one which conflicts with evaluative judgement. (A standard example is where someone is afraid of flying despite believing that it poses little or no danger.) The phenomenon of emotional recalcitrance raises an important problem for theories of emotion, namely to explain the sense in which recalcitrant emotions involve rational conflict. In this paper I argue that existing ‘neojudgementalist’ accounts of emotions fail to provide plausible explanations of the irrationality of recalcitrant emotions, and develop and defend my (...) own neojudgementalist account. On my view, recalcitrant emotions are irrational insofar as they incline the subject to accept an evaluative construal that the subject has already rejected. (shrink)

Selon le «cognitivisme fort», toutes les raisons d’une action trouvent leurs sources dans des caractéristiques normatives par lesquelles l’individu motivé (explicitement ou implicitement) prend des objets comme avoir (ou manque), indépendamment de son attitude à l’égard de ces objets. L’objectif majeur de cet article est de contester les arguments du cognitivisme fort, en d’autres termes, de démontrer que toute attitude volitive donne aux individus des raisons pour entreprendre une action. À cette fin, l’argument principal consistera à procéder par le biais (...) de l’analyse du phénomène complexe de la préoccupation, pour en extrapoler une conclusion relative à la nature (incitative et normative) d’un phénomène mental plus fondamental encore : les désirs spécifiques. (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)

Normative standards are often applied to emotions. Are there normative standards that apply to emotions in virtue solely of facts about their nature? I will argue that the answer is no. The psychological, behavioural, and neurological evidence suggests that emotions are representational brain states with various kinds of biological functions. Facts about biological functions are not (and do not by themselves entail) normative facts. Hence, there are no nor- mative standards that apply to emotions just in virtue of their having (...) various kinds of biolog- ical functions. Moreover, the peculiar features of emotions make the view that representational content is essentially normative very implausible. Hence, the representational properties of emotions cannot be seen as entailing normative standards. The conclusion is that there are no normative standards that apply to emotions solely in virtue of their nature. Ó 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. (shrink)

This paper articulates the relationship between knowledge and qing 情 in the Zhuangzi. I argue that Zhuangzi has a twofold view of qing, which is structurally similar to his view of knowledge. I sta...

Hursthouse :57–68, 1991) argues that arational actions—e.g. kicking a door out of anger—cannot be explained by belief–desire pairs. The Humean Response to Hursthouse :25–38, 2000b) defends the Humean model from Hursthouse’s challenge. We argue that the Humean Response fails because belief–desire pairs are neither necessary nor sufficient for causing emotional actions. The Emotionist Response is to embrace Hursthouse’s conclusion that emotions provide an independent source of explanation for intentional actions. We consider Döring’s :214–230, 2003) feeling-based Emotionist account and argue that (...) it fails to explain arational actions. Finally, we develop our own Emotionist account, grounded in the Motivational Theory of Emotions one of us has developed. On our account, arational actions form a non-homogeneous class, some members of which must be understood as instrumental actions and some members of which must be understood as displacement behaviors of the kind animals display when their motivations are thwarted or in conflict. (shrink)

One might imagine that this remark of James was too obvious to be denied, but in fact current philosophical orthodoxy runs against it. Since the renewal of interest in the emotions produced by Anthony Kenny's Action Emotion and Will in 1963, philosophers have focussed primarily on the cognitive aspects of emotions—the judgments, evaluations, beliefs, presuppositions which they contain. Bodily feelings have been, on the whole, slighted. Sometimes they are dismissed outright, as by Robert Solomon: “feelings no more constitute or define (...) the emotion than an army of fleas constitutes a homeless dog. … Feeling is the ornamentation of emotion, not its essence.”; more often, as in Jerome Neu, given only rather slight attention because “thoughts are of greater importance than feelings in the classification and discrimination of emotional states”. (shrink)

I argue that natural realism is the best approach to explaining some emotional actions, and thus is the best candidate to explain the relevant emotions. I take natural realism to be the view that these emotions are motivational states which must be identified by using (not necessarily exclusively) naturalistic discourse which, if not wholly lacking intentional terms, at least does not require reference to belief and desire. The kinds of emotional actions I consider are ones which continue beyond the satisfaction (...) of the desires that could plausibly be said to motivate the agent. As a contrast to a realist position about emotions I examine interpretationist theories of mind, using Dennett and Davidson as examples, and show that the emotional actions in question will fail to be explained by these theories. In conclusion, I provide one weak version of a natural realist view of emotions, and show how it succeeds where interpretationism fails. (shrink)

The thesis brings together philosophical, psychological and neuroscientific theories of affect in developing a dual process account of emotion. Philosophers and psychologists who take a cognitivist view claim that emotions in humans and other mammalian species require intentionality, arising as the product of evaluations which bear upon our survival or wellbeing, whereas neuroscientists conclude from their research that emotion has its foundations in subcortical affect mechanisms by which behaviours may arise as spontaneous responses to valuable stimuli. Parts I and II (...) of the thesis examine these two accounts, which are construed as cognitive-evaluative and primitive emotional processes respectively. It is further proposed that both these manifestations of emotion are to be found in mammalian species. Given that cognitive-evaluative and primitive emotional states can be demonstrated to coexist and function separately in mammalian species, how do we explain cases in which the two processes seem to be non-accidentally associated? To exemplify: how does it come about that an appraisal that I have been unfairly treated is accompanied by aggressive feelings and impulses towards the object of my anger? Cognitivists accept that the somatic changes accompanying emotions are associated with appraisals but argue that such changes play no role in emotion as an evaluative process other than that of marking the appraisal as significant for our wellbeing. In contrast, a dual process model of emotion is proposed for the interaction of primitive emotions and emotional appraisals whereby the appraisal process arouses a primitive emotion through the detection of patterns within complex external contexts which have a significance for an individual’s wellbeing. The neurophysiological changes associated with the primitive emotion when so aroused, will in turn, invest the appraisal with feelings, sensations characteristic of those neurophysiologies. These feelings influence evaluation in ways which are fundamental to the successful performance of everyday mental functions. (shrink)

Emotional responses to fiction are part of our experience with art and media. Some of these responses (“fictional emotions”) seem to be directed towards fictional entities—entities that we believe do not exist. Some philosophers argue that fictional emotions differ in nature from other emotional responses. (cf. Walton in J Philos 75(1):5–27, 1978, Mimesis as make-believe, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1990, Walton, in: Hjort, Laver (ed.) Emotion and the arts, Oxford University, New York, 1997; Currie in The nature of fiction, Cambridge (...) University Press, Cambridge, 1990; Stecker in Br J Aesthet 51(3):295–308, 2011) The claim is supposed to be supported among others by ‘the argument from action.’ In contrast to genuine emotions, proponents of this argument claim, fictional emotions do not motivate their bearers to act. (cf. Yanal in Paradoxes of emotion and fiction, Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, 1999; Lamarque in Br J Aesthet 21(4):291–304, 1981; Carroll in The philosophy of horror: or, paradoxes of the heart, Routledge, London, 1990; Currie 1990; Walton 1978, 1990; Suits in Pac Philos Q 87(3):369–386, 2006; Friend, in: Kind (ed.) The Routledge handbook of philosophy of imagination, Routledge, New York, 2016) This claim grounds in what may appear to be an obvious fact: that viewers and readers of are not led to act by their fictional emotions. It is certainly true that viewers and readers of fiction do not form intentions to perform actions directed towards fictional entities. In contrast to the proponents of the argument from action, I will argue that the lack of any such intentions can be explained only with reference to intending’s doxastic conditions, conditions that are unsatisfied in the fictional scenario. Decisively, this explanation does not refer to the motivational force of the agent’s emotions; indeed, it doesn’t refer to emotions at all. Thus, the lack of intentions to perform actions directed towards fictional objects provides no support for the claim that fictional emotions are no genuine emotions. (shrink)

The dichotomy and mutual exclusiveness of the somatic feeling theory and cognitive theories of emotion has been the most deeply entrenched presupposition of emotion theory throughout the 20th century. In the first part of this paper I give a succinct review of both theoretical strands and of the most influential arguments which have been raised against them. This leads me to diagnose an argumentative stalemate: Both approaches have serious shortcomings which can only be overcome within the framework of the other. (...) In the second part I argue that if one adopts a Representational theory of sensory states and understands occurrent emotional states as complex intentional states of a particular sort, this impasse can be overcome, and both theoretical strands can be reconciled. (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)