Many think that love would be a casualty of free will skepticism. I disagree. I argue that love would be largely unaffected if we came to deny free will, not simply because we cannot shake the attitude, but because love is not chosen, nor do we want it to be. Here, I am not alone; others have reached similar conclusions. But a few important distinctions have been overlooked. Even if hard incompatibilism is true, not all love is equal. Although we (...) have only minimal control over love, it can be more or less authentic. I develop my position by considering the fictional trope of love potions and the implications of a futuristic psychotropic, Lovezac—Viagra for the heart. But I am not as optimistic as some. Even though free will skepticism would not jeopardize love-the-feeling, there are reasons to think that loving relationships might not be immune. (shrink)

Mixed or ambivalent emotions have long intrigued philosophers. I dissect various putative cases of emotional ambivalence and conclude that the alleged 'psychological problem' surrounding them admits of a solution. That problem has, however, often been conflated with 'moral problem' - of how one should react morally to such ambivalence — which remains active even after the psychological one has been solved. I discuss how the moral problem hits hardest at virtue ethics, old and new. I distinguish between particularist and generalist (...) (Aristotelian) virtue ethics, and pay special attention to the latter. After discussing critically previous attempts at an Aristotelian solution of the 'moral problem' by McDowell, Stark and Carr, I pay special attention to the role of phronesis as a second-order meta-emotion and mediator, and consider how that may offer a way out of the impasse. I finally present some concluding remarks about the idea of a constructive dividedness of mind. (shrink)

Contemporary accounts on fictional emotions, i.e., emotions experienced towards objects we know to be fictional, are mainly concerned with explaining their rationality or lack thereof. In this context dominated by an interest in the role of belief, questions regarding their phenomenal quality have received far less attention: it is often assumed that they feel “similar” to emotions that target real objects. Against this background, this paper focuses on the possible specificities of fictional emotions’ qualitative feel. It starts by presenting what (...) I call the “phenomenological question” about the qualitative feel of fictional emotions (section 1) and by showing that this is irreducible to questions about their cognitive, intentional, evaluative, and embodied nature (section 2). Drawing on some insights from early phenomenologists, the next two sections elaborate criteria to distinguish between real and sham emotions on the one side (section 3) and between genuine and non-genuine emotions on the other (section 4). Finally, I apply this orthogonal distinction to the particular case of fictional emotions (section 5). The paper argues that fictional emotions are neither sham emotions nor quasi-emotions, but full-fledged emotional experiences, despite them displaying the distinctive phenomenology of emotions experienced as non-genuine. In the particular case of fictional emotions, they are non-genuine because our psychology is in fact in a state dominated by aesthetic enjoyment. (shrink)

Recent work in the business ethics field has called attention to the promise inherent in the concept of authenticity for enriching the ways we think about core issues at the intersection of management ethics and practice, like moral character, ethical choices, leadership, and corporate social responsibility [Driver, 2006; Jackson, 2005; Ladkin, 2006]. In this paper, I aim to extend these contributions by focusing on authenticity in relation to a set of organizational processes related to strategy making; most specifically an organization’s (...) strategic intent, arguing that these provide an ideal venue for particularising this exploration, as they represent the key processes through which an organization defines the self it aspires to be. In order to do this, I examine specifically what a shift from “business as usual” to the search for the creation of a more authentic corporate self might look like in practice, contending that such a shift offers the possibility for improving both the moral good and the business outcomes of an institution simultaneously. I conclude with assessment of the risks inherent in undertaking such a search for more authentic strategic intention in business organizations today. (shrink)

This article will examine how the notion of emotional authenticity is intertwined with the notions of naturalness and artificiality in the context of the recent debates about ‘neuro-enhancement’ and ‘neuro-psychopharmacology.’ In the philosophy of mind, the concept of authenticity plays a key role in the discussion of the emotions. There is a widely held intuition that an artificial means will always lead to an inauthentic result. This article, however, proposes that artificial substances do not necessarily result in inauthentic emotions. The (...) literature provided by the philosophy of mind on this subject usually resorts to thought experiments. On the other hand, the recent literature in applied ethics on ‘enhancement’ provides good reasons to include real world examples. Such case studies reveal that some psychotropic drugs such as antidepressants actually cause people to undergo experiences of authenticity, making them feel ‘like themselves’ for the first time in their lives. Beginning with these accounts, this article suggests three non-naturalist standards for emotions: the authenticity standard, the rationality standard, and the coherence standard. It argues that the authenticity standard is not always the only valid one, but that the other two ways of assessing emotions are also valid, and that they can even have repercussions on the felt authenticity of emotions. In conclusion, it sketches some of the normative implications if not ethical intricacies that accompany the enhancement of emotions. (shrink)

abstract In this paper, we examine issues raised by the possibility of regulating emotions through pharmacological means. We argue that emotions induced through these means can be authentic phenomenologically, and that the manner of inducing them need not make them any less our own than emotions arising 'naturally'. We recognize that in taking drugs to induce emotions, one may lose opportunities for self-knowledge; act narcissistically; or treat oneself as a mere means. But we propose that there are circumstances in which (...) none of these concerns arise. Finally, we consider how the possibility of drug-regulation might affect duties to feel emotions. (shrink)

Philosophers widely agree that emotions may have or lack appropriateness or fittingness, which in the emotional domain is an analogue of truth. I defend de Sousa's account of emotional truth by arguing that emotions have cognitive content as digitalized evaluative perceptions of the particular object of emotion, in terms of the relevant formal property. I argue that an emotion is true if and only if there is an actual fit between the particular and the formal objects of emotion, and the (...) emotion's propositional content is semantically satisfied, or the target of the emotion exists. Emotions meet the syntactic and disciplinary requirements of minimally truth-apt states. Appropriate fit occurs when lower-level properties of particular objects of emotion provide sufficient warrant to make ascription of the relevant formal properties superassertable. (shrink)

This article discusses the importance of metaemotions (emotions about emotions), showing their undeniable existence and how they are a critical and essential part of emotion life. The article begins by placing reflexivity of emotions within the general reflexivity of human beings. Then, the article presents the literature on metaemotion, showing some of the problems that surround them, which ultimately will lead to ask if the concept of metaemotion is really necessary. The second part of the article argues for the usefulness (...) of the concept, pointing out its role in establishing distinctions among emotional states as well as further clarifying the nature of emotion, and concludes on pointing out some of the directions for future research on metaemotions. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to outline the missionary self-perception that is mediated in meaningful stories about activities and experiences of Protestants while serving as missionaries abroad. Research is based on a model of narrative identity that aids for understanding the dilemmatic aspects of identity: continuity/change, sameness/difference, agency/non-agency. Findings of a cultural psychological analysis of missionaries’ autobiographical narratives are presented in form of these three types of identity dilemmas and discussed with respect to their implications for cultural psychology of (...) religion. In utilizing qualitative research, the present study enlarges the understanding of the diversity of cross-cultural experiences in mission. (shrink)