How Emotions do not Provide Reasons to Act

If emotions provide reasons for action through their intentional content, as is often argued, where does this leave the role of the affective element of an emotion? Can it be more than a motivator and have significant bearing of its own on our emotional actions, as actions done for reasons? One way it can is through reinforcing other reasons that we might have, as Greenspan (2011) argues. Central to Greenspan’s account is the claim that the affective discomfort of an emotion, as a fact about the agent’s state of being, provides an additional normative reason to act to alleviate the state. This, I argue, is not correct, nor is it the best way to understand emotions as reason-reinforcers. In this paper, I thus do two things: I provide an examination of how and why the affect of emotion could provide reasons to act to alleviate it and I propose that the real way emotions reinforce reasons is through the way they orient our attention onto things that matter, registering them as salient.     

Acting with Feeling from Duty

A central claim in Kantian ethics is that an agent is properly morally motivated just in case she acts from duty alone. Bernard Williams, Michael Stocker, and Justin Oakley claim that certain emotionally infused actions, such as lending a compassionate helping hand, can only be done from compassion and not from duty. I argue that these critics have overlooked a distinction between an action's manner, how an action is done, and its motive, the agent's reason for acting. Through a range of examples I demonstrate how an emotion can determine an action's manner without also serving as the motive. Thus, it is possible for an agent to act compassionately from duty alone. This distinction between the manner and the motive of an action not only restores a central claim in Kantian ethics but it also allows for an expanded role of emotions in moral action.     

Plural Agents

Genuine agents are able to engage in activity because they find it worth pursuing—because they care about it. In this respect, they differ from what might be called “mere intentional systems”: systems like chess‐playing computers that exhibit merely goal‐directed behavior mediated by instrumental rationality, without caring. A parallel distinction can be made in the domain of social activity: plural agents must be distinguished from plural intentional systems in that plural agents have cares and engage in activity because of those cares. In this paper, I sketch an account of what it is for an individual to care about things in terms of her exhibiting a certain pattern of emotions. After extending this account to make sense of an individual's caring about other agents, I then show how a certain sort of emotional connectedness among a group of people can make intelligible the group's having cares and thereby constitute that group as a plural agent. Alternative accounts of social action, by ignoring the difference between mere intentional systems and genuine agents, and so by leaving out these emotional entanglements from their accounts of social action, thereby fail to capture a whole range of social phenomena involving plural agents.     

Mapping Moral Motivation

In this paper we defend a version of moral internalism and a cognitivist account of motivation against recent criticisms. The internalist thesis we espouse claims that, if an agent believes she has reason to A, then she is motivated to A. Discussion of counter-examples has been clouded by the absence of a clear account of the nature of motivation. While we can only begin to provide such an account in this paper, we do enough to show that our version of internalism can be defended against putative counter-examples. All theories of motivation which take what motivates to be a psychological state run foul of the following plausible constraint: the reason why you ought to do an action and the reason why you do it can be the same. In our view, however, while what motivates is a reason (which is a fact) the state of being motivated is a cognitive stage, viz. the belief that one has reason to act. In cases where the agent's relevant beliefs are false, then she has no reason to act, but nontheless her action can be explained in other ways.     

Activity,Passivity, and Normative Avowal

The idea that agents can be active with respect to some of their actions, and passive with respect to others, is a widely held assumption within moral philosophy. But exactly how to characterize these notions is controversial. I argue that an agent is active just in case (A) her action is one whose motive she can truly avow as reason‐giving, or (B) her action is one whose motive she can disavow, provided her disavowal effects appropriate modifications in her future motives. This view maintains a link between activity, reason‐responsiveness, and answerability, while avoiding commitments to an implausible theory of motivation.     

How is Recalcitrant Emotion Possible?

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.     

Psychopaths and Filthy Desks

Philosophical and empirical moral psychologists claim that emotions are both necessary and sufficient for moral judgment. The aim of this paper is to assess the evidence in favor of both claims and to show how a moderate rationalist position about moral judgment can be defended nonetheless. The experimental evidence for both the necessity- and the sufficiency-thesis concerning the connection between emotional reactions and moral judgment is presented. I argue that a rationalist about moral judgment can be happy to accept the necessity-thesis. My argument draws on the idea that emotions play the same role for moral judgment that perceptions play for ordinary judgments about the external world. I develop a rationalist interpretation of the sufficiency-thesis and show that it can successfully account for the available empirical evidence. The general idea is that the rationalist can accept the claim that emotional reactions are sufficient for moral judgment just in case a subject’s emotional reaction towards an action in question causes the judgment in a way that can be reflectively endorsed under conditions of full information and rationality. This idea is spelled out in some detail and it is argued that a moral agent is entitled to her endorsement if the way she arrives at her judgment reliably leads to correct moral beliefs, and that this reliability can be established if the subject’s emotional reaction picks up on the morally relevant aspects of the situation.     

Reasons in Action

Abstract

When an agent performs an action because she takes something as a reason to do so, does she take it as a normative reason for the action or as an explanatory reason? In Reasons Without Rationalism, Setiya criticizes the normative view and advances a version of the explanatory view. I defend a version of the normative view against Setiya's criticisms and show that Setiya's explanatory account has two major flaws: it raises questions that it cannot answer about the occurrence of one motivational ‘because’ within the scope of another; and it cannot accommodate the fact that, if an agent can φ for the reason that p, then she could take p as a reason to φ without φ-ing.     

Theories of Practical Reason

Leading theories of practical reason can be grouped into one of four families: psychologism, realism, compatibilism, and Aristotelianism. Although there are many differences among the theories within each family, I ignore these in order to ask which family is most likely to deliver a satisfactory philosophical account of reasons for action. I articulate three requirements we should expect any adequate theory of practical reason to meet: it should account for (1) how reasons explain action, (2) how reasons justify action, and (3) how an agent can act for the reason that justifies her action. Only the Aristotelian theory, however, can meet all three requirements. It avoids the problems that plague the other theories by grounding reasons neither in psychological states nor in facts totally independent of the agent in question, but in the nature of the kind of creature the agent is. Our explanations of action need descend to the biographical only when explaining why a human being does not act in ways characteristic of her kind. The Aristotelian view of practical reason, then, appears to be the most promising program for future work.     

SHOULD A B‐THEORETIC ATHEIST FEAR DEATH?

This article discusses Robin Le Poidevin's proposal that a commitment to the B‐theory of time provides atheists with a reason to relinquish the fear of death. For the purposes of the article, I grant Le Poidevin's assertion that the B‐theory gives us a sense in which our lives are ‘eternally real’; but I deny that the B‐theorist is entitled to regard this as sufficient to furnish a reason to cease fearing death. This is because, according to the most prevalent B‐theoretic conception of our emotional attitudes, A‐theoretic (and not B‐theoretic) beliefs are sufficient to ground these attitudes. I discuss this B‐theoretic account of our emotions, which I call the Mellor–MacBeath model, and explain how it relates to the fear of death. I argue that, according to this model, the fear of death – in so far as it is a fear of one's personal annihilation – is warranted, and hence that, if Le Poidevin's proposal is to stand, then we must be given either a new B‐theoretic account of the connection between beliefs and emotions, or an account of why the fear of death is unlike other emotional attitudes.     

Acting and Believing Under the Guise of Normative Reasons

In this paper, I defend an account of the reasons for which we act, believe, and so on for any Ф such that there can be reasons for which we Ф. Such reasons are standardly called motivating reasons. I argue that three dominant views of motivating reasons (psychologism, factualism and disjunctivism) all fail to capture the ordinary concept of a motivating reason. I show this by drawing out three constraints on what motivating reasons must be, and demonstrating how each view fails to satisfy at least one of these constraints. I then propose and defend my own account of motivating reasons, which I call the Guise of Normative Reasons Account. On the account I defend, motivating reasons are propositions. A proposition is the reason for which someone Ф‐s when (a) she represents that proposition as a normative reason to Ф, and (b) her representation explains, in the right way, her Ф‐ing. As I argue, the Guise of Normative Reasons Account satisfies all three constraints on what motivating reasons must be, and weathers several objections that might be leveled against propositionalist views.     

Beneficence and procreation

Consider a duty of beneficence towards a particular individual, S, and call a reason that is grounded in that duty a “beneficence reason towards S.” Call a person who will be brought into existence by an act of procreation the “resultant person.” Is there ever a beneficence reason towards the resultant person for an agent to procreate? In this paper, I argue for such a reason by appealing to two main premises. First, we owe a pro tanto duty of beneficence to future persons; and second, some of us can benefit some of those persons by procreating. In support of the first premise I reject the presentist account of time in favor of the view that future persons are just as real as presently existing persons. I then argue that future persons are like us in all the morally relevant ways, and since we owe duties of beneficence to each other, we also owe duties of beneficence to future persons. In support of the second premise I offer an account of benefiting according to which an individual can be benefited by an action even if it makes her no better off than she would have been, had the action not been performed. This account of benefiting solves what I call the “non-identity benefit problem.” Finally, I argue that having a life worth living is a benefit, and some of us can cause some persons that benefit by causing them to exist.     

Thinking,Acting, Considering

According to a familiar (alleged) requirement on practical reason, one must believe a proposition if one is to take it for granted in reasoning about what to do. This paper explores a related requirement, not on thinking but on acting—that one must accept a goal if one is to count as acting for its sake. This is the acceptance requirement. Although it is endorsed by writers as diverse as Christine Korsgaard, Donald Davidson, and Talbot Brewer, I argue that it is vulnerable to counterexamples, in which agents act in light of ends that they do not accept but are still merely considering. For instance, a young professional may keep a job option open not because she definitely wants or intends to take it, but just because she is considering taking it. I try to show (1) that such examples are not easily resisted; (2) that they present challenges specifically for Brewer, Davidson, and especially Korsgaard; and (3) that the examples also raise fresh, non-partisan questions in action theory. What is considering, exactly? How could it fall short of acceptance while still guiding behaviour? How can we act for an end before thinking it through?     

How to Do Things with Emotional Expressions: The Theory of Affective Pragmatics

It is widely accepted that emotional expressions can be rich communicative devices. We can learn much from the tears of a grieving friend, the smiles of an affable stranger, or the slamming of a door by a disgruntled lover. So far, a systematic analysis of what can be communicated by emotional expressions of different kinds and of exactly how such communication takes place has been missing. The aim of this article is to introduce a new framework for the study of emotional expressions that I call the theory of affective pragmatics (TAP). As linguistic pragmatics focuses on what utterances mean in a context, affective pragmatics focuses on what emotional expressions mean in a context. TAP develops and connects two principal insights. The first is the insight that emotional expressions do much more than simply expressing emotions. As proponents of the Behavioral Ecology View of facial movements have long emphasized, bodily displays are sophisticated social tools that can communicate the signaler's intentions and requests. Proponents of the Basic Emotion View of emotional expressions have acknowledged this fact, but they have failed to emphasize its importance, in part because they have been in the grip of a mistaken theory of emotional expressions as involuntary readouts of emotions. The second insight that TAP aims to articulate and apply to emotional expressions is that it is possible to engage in analogs of speech acts without using language at all. I argue that there are important and so far largely unexplored similarities between what we can “do” with words and what we can “do” with emotional expressions. In particular, the core tenet of TAP is that emotional expressions are a means not only of expressing what's inside but also of directing other people's behavior, of representing what the world is like and of committing to future courses of action. Because these are some of the main things we can do with language, the take home message of my analysis is that, from a communicative point of view, much of what we can do with language we can also do with non-verbal emotional expressions. I conclude by exploring some reasons why, despite the analogies I have highlighted, emotional expressions are much less powerful communicative tools than speech acts.     

Enkratic Agency

An enkratic agent is someone who intends to do A because she believes she should do A. Being enkratic is usually understood as something rationality requires of you. However, we must distinguish between different conceptions of enkratic rationality. According to a fairly common view, enkratic rationality is solely a normative requirement on agency: it tells us how agents should think and act. However, I shall argue that this normativist conception of enkratic rationality faces serious difficulties: it makes it a mystery how an agent's thinking and acting can be guided by the enkratic requirement, which, as I shall further argue, is something that an adequate conception of enkratic rationality must be able to explain. This, I suggest, motivates exploring a different account of enkratic rationality. On this view, enkratic rationality is primarily a constitutive requirement on agency: it is a standard internal to agency, i.e., a standard that partly spells out what it is to exercise one's agential powers well.     

Volatile Reasons

I argue for the existence of a category of practical reasons which I call ‘Deliberation-Volatile Reasons’ or ‘DVRs’. DVRs have the distinguishing feature that their status as reasons for action is diminished when they are weighed in deliberation by the agent. I argue that DVRs are evidence of ‘deliberative blind spots’. I submit that an agent manifests a peculiar kind of practical irrationality in so far as she endeavours to find a deliberative path to what she has reason to do, when the discovery of such a path renders the destination inaccessible.     

Can Virtuous People Emerge from Tragic Dilemmas Having Acted Well?

abstract   A tragic dilemma is thought to arise when an agent, through no fault of her own, finds herself in a situation where she must choose between two courses of action, both of which it would be wrong to undertake. I focus on tragic dilemmas that are resolvable, that is, where a reason can be given in favour of one course of action over another, and my aim is to examine whether Hursthouse's virtue-ethical account of right action succeeds in avoiding two problems presented by tragic dilemmas. The first of these is that they produce the seemingly contradictory conclusion that an agent, in doing what she ought to do, acts wrongly, making it appropriate for her to feel guilt. The second is the paradox of moral luck, which consists in the conflict between the intuition that an agent cannot be held responsible for actions that are not fully voluntary, and the fact that she may nevertheless believe that she has done something morally reprehensible. I argue that if we accept Hursthouse's separation of action guidance and action assessment, her account succeeds in solving the problem of contradiction. However, it does not completely avoid the problem of moral luck. I argue, against Hursthouse, that the virtuous agent can emerge from a tragic dilemma having acted well, and that this is the conclusion we must arrive at if we want to avoid the problem of contradiction and of moral luck.     

Maximalism and Moral Harmony

Maximalism is the view that an agent is permitted to perform a certain type of action (say, baking) if and only if she is permitted to perform some instance of this type (say, baking a pie), where φ‐ing is an instance of ψ‐ing if and only if φ‐ing entails ψ‐ing but not vice versa. Now, the aim of this paper is not to defend maximalism, but to defend a certain account of our options that when combined with maximalism results in a theory that accommodates the idea that a moral theory ought to be morally harmonious—that is, ought to be such that the agents who satisfy the theory, whoever and however numerous they may be, are guaranteed to produce the morally best world that they have the option of producing. I argue that, for something to count as an option for an agent, it must, in the relevant sense, be under her control. And I argue that the relevant sort of control is the sort that we exercise over our reasons‐responsive attitudes (e.g., our beliefs, desires, and intentions) by being both receptive and reactive to reasons. I call this sort of control rational control, and I call the view that φ‐ing is an option for a subject if and only if she has rational control over whether she φs rationalism. When we combine this view with maximalism, we get rationalist maximalism, which I argue is a promising moral theory.     

EMOTIONAL SELF-AWARENESS AND ETHICAL DELIBERATION

How are we to distinguish between appropriate emotional responses that reveal morally salient reasons and inappropriate emotional responses that reflect our prejudices? It is often assumed that reason – considered as distinct from emotion – will make the distinction. I argue that this view is false, and that the process by which emotional responses are vetted involves ‘emotional self‐awareness’. By this, I mean feeling an emotion, being aware of so doing, and feeling some usually subtle emotional response, often of calm or anxiety, to it, together with a general readiness to feel and acknowledge what emotions one has. Registering and exploring feelings of anxiety that arise in emotional self‐awareness helps enable us to detect when emotions and thoughts are inappropriate. Deliberation that is not emotionally open in this way is therefore at an epistemic disadvantage. Furthermore, the attempt to remain unemotional when evaluating one's emotions can be produced or co‐opted by anxiety about one's feelings of precisely the kind that indicates one's emotional responses and thoughts are being distorted.     

Elisabeth of Bohemia's Neo-Peripatetic account of the emotions

ABSTRACT

This article examines Elisabeth of Bohemia's account of the emotions. I argue that Elisabeth's objections against Descartes' ethics, which is often characterized as ‘Neo-Stoic’, show striking similarities to the arguments that the ancient Peripatetics made against classical Stoic approaches. Like the Peripatetics, she challenges the feasibility as well as the desirability of Descartes' ethical injunctions regarding emotional control. In particular, Elisabeth joins the Peripatetics in holding that certain external goods are essential for happiness and that the emotions are necessary for motivating, guiding and correcting action. In aligning Elisabeth's thinking about the emotions with the Aristotelian tradition, I depart from various other interpretations, especially from those who see her position as a precursor of later feminist accounts, or as embodying a distinctively female perspective.