Existentialism is compatible with a broadly biological vision of who we are. This thesis is grounded in an analysis of “concrete” or “individual” possibility, which differs from standard conceptions of possibility in that it allows for possibilities to come into being or disappear through time. Concrete possibilities are introduced both in individual life and by major transitions in evolution. In particular, the advent of ultrasociality and of language has enabled human goals to be formulated in partial independence from the vestigial (...) “goal” of biological replication. The existentialist stance is validated by the necessity of choice grounded in emotion, in a way that does not require a commitment to a Kantian Will. (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)

Robert Solomon’s philosophy of emotion should be understood in the light of his lifelong commitment to existentialism and his advocacy of “the passionate life” as a means of creating value. Although he developed his views in the framework of the “cognitive theory” of emotions, closer examination reveals many themes in common with a socially situated, transactionalist view of emotions.

Most moral theorists agree that it is one thing to believe that someone has slighted you and another to resent her for the insult; one thing to believe that someone did you a favor and another to feel gratitude toward her for her kindness. While all of these ways of responding to another's conduct are forms of moral appraisal, the reactive attitudes are said to 'go beyond' beliefs in some way. We think this claim is adequately explained only when we (...) take seriously the fact that reactive attitudes are emotions. In this paper, we appeal to insights of the emotions literature to highlight one key way in which reactive attitudes go beyond beliefs: beliefs about a person and her morally significant conduct merely ascribe to the person the property of having performed a morally significant action, while reactive attitudes are ways of experiencing that person as having performed a morally significant action. We then suggest that appreciating this is a crucial first step toward understanding why reactive emotions play roles in our practices around responsibility that beliefs do not. (shrink)

After many years of neglect, philosophers are increasingly turning their attention to the emotions, and recently we have seen a number of different accounts of emotion. In this article, we will first consider what facts an account of emotion needs to accommodate if it is going to be acceptable. Having done that, we will then consider some of the leading accounts and see how they fare in accommodating the facts. Two things in particular will emerge. First, an adequate account of (...) emotion cannot be provided without taking into account a wide range of issues in philosophy of mind that extend beyond the emotions in particular. Secondly, the diversity of emotional phenomena makes it especially hard to provide anything like a comprehensive account of emotion; philosophers not only disagree over what are the essential properties of emotion, but also over what are central cases. (shrink)

Theories of practical reason must meet a psychological requirement: they must explain how normative practical reasons can be motivationally efficacious. It would be pointless to claim that we are subject to normative demands of reason, if we were in fact unable to meet those demands. Concerning this requirement to account for the possibility of rational motivation, internalist approaches are distinguished from externalist ones. I defend internalism, whilst rejecting both ways in which the belief‐desire model can be instantiated. Both the Humean (...) and the Kantian instantiation of that model fail to account for the internal connection between normative and motivating reasons required by internalism. The two classes of reasons rather come to be seen as mutually exclusive. Opposing the belief‐desire model, I argue that rational motivation can only be established by reference to emotion. Emotions are affective perceptions. They have motivational force so that they can contribute to the explanation of action. At the same time they can rationalise actions because they have an intentional content which resembles the content of sensory perception in being representational. Because of this, the emotions can noninferentially justify judgements, which in turn can justify actions. I conclude by outlining the Aristotelian account of practical reason and ethics that emerges from integrating the emotions into practical reasoning. Doing the right thing is much more a matter of seeing things right than of drawing the right inferences. Seeing things right, in its turn, is not only to justify an action: it necessarily implies to be motivated to act accordingly. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that there is a viable simulationist account of emotion attribution. However, I also try to say something specific about the form that this account ought to take. I argue that someone who wants to give by a simulationist account of emotion attribution should focus on similarities between emotions and perceptual judgments.

Emotions normally include elements of feeling, motivation, and also intentionality; but the argument of this essay is that there can be emotion without feeling, emotion without corresponding motivation, and emotion without an intentional relation to an object such that the emotion is (among other things) a belief about or construal of it. Many recent writers have claimed that some form of intentionality is essential to emotion, and then have created lines of defence for this thesis. Thus, what look like troublesome (...) cases of emotions can be regarded as having a global intentionality or as being “mood-like”. Alternatively surges of non-intentional joy or ecstasy can be regarded as merely feelings rather than as emotions, and what people experience in response to absolute music can be treated similarly. A clear view of how we normally talk about moods, emotions, and feelings however undermines these defences; and in particular we can understand the role of emotions in relation to absolute music once we become clear about the way in which musical content stands in for intentional objects. (shrink)

Moods, orthodoxy holds, exist outside the space of reasons. A depressed subject may change their thoughts and behaviors as a result of their depression. But, according to this view, their mood gives them no genuine reason to do so. Instead, moods are mere causal influences on cognition. The issue is that moods, with their diffuse phenomenology, appear to lack intentionality (Directionlessness). But intentionality appears to be a necessary condition on rationality (The Content Constraint). Together, these principles conflict with the idea (...) that moods are rational states of mind (Mood Rationality). The inconsistency of these three principles is the Puzzle of Mood Rationality. Now to many, this puzzle is hardly vexing: we should reject Mood Rationality. But, I argue, Mood Rationality is true despite its unpopularity. Thus, we need another way of resolving the puzzle. To do so, I distinguish intentionality as a first‐personal, phenomenological notion from representation as a third‐personal, cognitive scientific notion. I then argue that moods satisfy a revised version of the Content Constraint and sketch an account of moods as representational but non‐intentional mental states, drawing on the Valuationist paradigm in affective neuroscience. I end by showing how this account enables us to explain moods’ rationality. (shrink)

Although some still advance reductive accounts of emotions—according to which they fall under a more familiar type of mental state—contemporary philosophers tend to agree that emotions probably constitute their own kind of mental state. Agreeing with this claim, however, is compatible with attempting to find commonalities between emotions and better understood things. According to the advocates of the so-called ‘perceptual analogy’, thinking of emotion in terms of perception can fruitfully advance our understanding even though emotion may not be reducible to (...) ordinary perception. In this paper, I spell out and motivate a different analogy—that between emotion and action—an analogy which I think can do some important theoretical work. In particular, it constitutes a theoretically fruitful way to think about core aspects of emotions and might in fact be employed to provide a better account of certain aspects of emotions than the one based on the perceptual analogy. Emotions might not be a matter of seeing the world a certain way, but a matter of behaving internally in response to it. In a slogan form: Emotion is the inward counterpart of bodily movement. (shrink)

Emotion theorists in contemporary discussion have divided into two camps. The one claims that emotions are reducible to bodily feelings; the other holds that emotions are reducible to belief, desire or evaluative judgement. In an effort to avoid such reductionist view, Goldie suggests that emotions involve two kinds of feelings: bodily feel­ings and feeling towards. In spite of Goldie’s efforts, I argue that ex­plaining our emotional disposition in terms of ‘feeling toward’ re­mains distinctly unsatisfactory. Furthermore, though sympathetic to his project, (...) I give reasons for doubting that there are two such distinct kinds of feeling, one of which has only borrowed intentionality, while the other has intentionality intrinsically. (shrink)

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)

After three decades of concentrated effort, commentators still seem to disagree about Kant's understanding of the nature of emotions. I argue that the appearance is misleading because the disagreement depends on different assumptions that are independent of Kant. I then propose a way out of this deadlock by pointing to the fact that, although the Kantian phenomena commonly understood as emotions originate in two different faculties, they all involve pleasure. This account provides the necessary yet insufficient conditions on a Kantian (...) phenomenon's being an emotion, but it allows us to mitigate the conflicting needs of historical accuracy and contemporary interest. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to argue that the normative significance of the inner aspects of filial piety – in particular, filial love – is better captured when we understand filial love as part of the virtue of filial piety rather than as an object of duty. After briefly introducing the value of filial love, I argue that the idea of a duty to love one's loving parents faces serious difficulties in making sense of the normative significance of filial (...) love. Then I show why the virtue-ethical approach to filial love, which views filial love as a constitutive part of the virtue of filial piety, can do justice to its normative significance while avoiding the difficulties. (shrink)

Der Artikel hinterfragt neuere Entwicklungen in kognitiven Emotionstheorien und versucht von diesem Ansatz ausgehend eine originelle Theorie zu entwickeln. Es wird insbesondere der Kritizismus in Erwägung gezogen, der Theorien überintellektualisierter Emotionen reduziert auf Einstellungen zu Propositionen und Gefühle ausschließt. Ich bin der Ansicht, dass nur einige wenige Kognitionswissenschaftler die genannte Theorie vertraten, sodass man behaupten kann, dass Emotionen teilweise aus Gefühlen konstituiert sind und dabei im Rahmen der Parameter der kognitiven Theorie bleiben. Dies ist möglich aufgrund der Tatsache, dass Kognitivisten (...) die Meinung vertreten, dass Emotionen aus intentionalen Einstellungen bestehen. Wenn wir das Gefühl als Perzeption der Einstellung zu jemandes Körper definieren, dann kann das Gefühl als eine der intentionalen Einstellungen verstanden werden, neben der Überzeugung, dass die Urteilskraft teilweise jede Emotion konstituiert. Diese Position bezeichne ich als „komplexen Kognitivismus”. (shrink)

This article defends a new model of personal privacy. Privacy should be understood as demarcating culturally defined aspects of an individual's life in which he or she is granted immunity from the judgment of others. Such an analysis is preferable to either of the two favorite models of privacy in the current literature. The judgment of others model preserves all of the insights of the liberty and information models of privacy, But avoids the obvious problems and counterexamples. In addition, This (...) model allows us to better see the normative importance of privacy. A final section discusses the notion of sexual privacy in connection to the proposed model. (shrink)

There are many types of political culture as well as many elements to be found in each type of political culture. The present study will be limited in two ways. Firstly, we shall not deal with all the elements of political culture. We shall focus on what has been called the "Affective Attitudes" element, which we take to include feelings and emotional proclivities, which to us, are inseparable from values and evaluations. Secondly, we shall not focus on all types of (...) political cultures, but rather on democratic political culture. We plan to study one particular conceptual relation between (democratic) political culture and (democratic) political system. This is the relation of congruence. This relation is less controversial than causal relation which some theorists propose as holding between political culture and political system. However, it does suggest concepts that can be used in formulating causal hypotheses that can be empirically tested. مناقشة لطبيعة الثقافة السياسية التي تتوائم مع تتوائم مع النظام السياسي الديمقراطي. سوف يجري التركيز على التوجهات الانفعالية (المشاعر العواطف والقيم) التي تشكل جزءا هاما من الثقافة السياسية -/- . (shrink)

Le texte examine les recherches récentes et le développement de la théorie cognitive des émotions, et cherche à développer une théorie originale dans le cadre de cette approche. L e texte s’oriente particulièrement sur la critique qui réduit ces théories des émotions trop intellectualisées à des attitudes selon des propositions et exclue les sentiments. Je tiens que quelques cognitivistes seulement ont représenté ladite théorie, et qu’il est possible d’affirmer que les émotions sont partiellement constituées de sentiments et qu’elles restent à (...) l’intérieur des paramètres de la théorie cognitive. Cela est possible si les cognitivistes considèrent que les émotions soient constituées d’attitudes intentionnelles. Si l’on définit le sentiment comme la perception d’une attitude envers le corps de quelqu’un, alors on peut entendre le sentiment comme l’une des attitudes intentionnelles, tout comme la conviction de discernement qui constitue partiellement toute émotion. Je nomme cette position le « cognitivisme complexe ». (shrink)