Emotions, value, and agency / Christine Tappolet.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Tappolet, Christine, author.

Standardized Title:

Emotions et valeurs

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Emotions (Philosophy).

Values.

Physical Description:

xvi, 228 pages ; 22 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2016.

Summary:

The emotions we experience are crucial to who we are, to what we think, and to what we do. But what are emotions, exactly, and how do they relate to agency? The aim of this book is to spell out an account of emotions that is grounded on analogies between emotions and sensory experiences, and to explore the implications of this account for our understanding of human agency. The central claim is that emotions consist in perceptual experiences of values, such as the fearsome, the disgusting or the admirable. A virtue of this account is that it affords a sound grasp of a variety of interconnected phenomena, such as motivation, values, responsibility, and reason-responsiveness. In the process of exploring the implications of the perceptual theory of emotions, several claims are proposed. First, while emotions normally involve desires that set goals, they can be contemplative in that they can occur without any motivation. Second, evaluative judgments can be understood in terms of appropriate emotions in so far as appropriateness is taken to consist in correct representation. Third, by contrast with what Strawsonian theories bold, the concept of moral responsibility is not response-dependent; rather, the relationship between emotions and moral responsibility is mediated by values. Finally in so far as emotions are perceptions of values, they can be considered to be perceptions of practical reasons, so that on certain conditions acting on the basis of ones emotions can consist in responding to one's reasons. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Emotion and Perception 1

1.1 Sketching the Landscape 1

1.2 Theories of Emotion 8

1.3 The Perceptual Theory 15

1.4 The Disanalogies Between Emotions and Sensory Experiences 24

1.5 The Irrationality of Emotions 31

1.6 Two Further Objections 39

Conclusion 45

2 Emotion and Motivation 47

2.1 Fear and the Fearsome 50

2.2 Motivational Modularity 52

2.3 The Desire Theory 58

2.4 Fearing Fictions 64

2.5 Motivational Egoism 66

2.6 Generalizing the Account 72

2.7 The Direction of Fit Objection 76

Conclusion 78

3 Emotion and Values 79

3.1 The Attractions of Sentimentalism 81

3.2 Two Versions of Neo-Sentimentalism 85

3.3 The Open Question Argument and the Normativity Requirement 90

3.4 Values and the Justification of Action 92

3.5 The Wrong Kind of Reason Objection 95

3.6 Circularity Threats 98

3.7 The Solitary Good Objection and the Distance Problem 103

3.8 Generalizing Representational Neo-Sentimentalism 110

3.9 Sentimental Realism 116

Conclusion 121

4 Emotion and Responsibility 123

4.1 Strawson and Reactive Attitudes 126

4.2 Responsibility Analyzed? 129

4.3 The Asymmetry Problem 133

4.4 Two Further Problems 145

4.5 Bringing Values into the Picture 152

Conclusion 158

5 Emotion and Agency 161

5.1 The Tracking of Practical Reasons 163

5.2 Epistemic Reasons 167

5.3 Reason-Responsiveness 173

5.4 Akratic Actions 179

5.5 Further Objections 184

5.6 Autonomy Theories 190

Conclusion 194.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [197]-217) and index.

ISBN:

0199696519

9780199696512

OCLC:

933584561