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Adapting: A Chinese Philosophy of Action

Mercedes Valmisa

Philosophy of action in the context of Classical China is radically different from its counterpart in the contemporary Western philosophical narrative. Classical Chinese philosophers began from the ... More

Philosophy of action in the context of Classical China is radically different from its counterpart in the contemporary Western philosophical narrative. Classical Chinese philosophers began from the assumption that relations are primary to the constitution of the person, hence acting in the early Chinese context necessarily is interacting and co-acting along with others—human and nonhuman actors. This book is the first monograph dedicated to the exploration and rigorous reconstruction of an extraordinary strategy for efficacious relational action devised by Classical Chinese philosophers in order to account for the interdependent and embedded character of human agency—what the author has denominated “adapting” or “adaptive agency” (yin因‎). As opposed to more unilateral approaches to action also conceptualized in the Classical Chinese corpus, such as forceful and prescriptive agency, adapting requires great capacity of self- and other-awareness, equanimity, flexibility, creativity, and response, which allows the agent to co-raise courses of action ad hoc: unique and temporary solutions to specific, nonpermanent, and nongeneralizable life problems. Adapting is one of the world’s oldest philosophies of action, and yet it is shockingly new for contemporary audiences, who will find in it an unlikely source of inspiration to deal with our current global problems. This book explores the core conception of adapting both on autochthonous terms and by cross-cultural comparison, drawing on the European and Analytic philosophical traditions as well as on scholarship from other disciplines, thus opening a brand new topic in Chinese and comparative philosophy.Less

Affect and Attention After Deleuze and Whitehead: Ecological Attunement

Russell J. Duvernoy

The book develops a process metaphysical conception of subjectivity from the work of Gilles Deleuze and Alfred North Whitehead. This alters existential orientations towards affect and attention in ... More

The book develops a process metaphysical conception of subjectivity from the work of Gilles Deleuze and Alfred North Whitehead. This alters existential orientations towards affect and attention in ways described as ecological attunement. The study is guided by two methodological commitments: (i) demonstrating the importance and relevance of responsible speculative thinking and (ii) translating metaphysical ideas into their existential implications. Both commitments are motivated by a contemporary context of ecological crisis and paradigm transformation. In the course of its argument, the book relates the work of Deleuze and Whitehead to other speculative trends in recent philosophy, particularly posthumanisms and speculative realisms. Deleuze and Whitehead are read in a shared lineage of radical empiricism that emphasizes processes and events as metaphysically primary. A key theme is understanding subjectivity through dynamic processes of individuation at variable scales where feeling/affect and attention acquire metaphysical rather than psychological scope and status. Whitehead’s analysis of “feeling” as metaphysical operation is explored in relation to Deleuze and Guattari's Spinozist-inspired deployment of affect. Attending participates as a crucial bridge between the metaphysical and the existential in processes of consolidation of present real actual occasions. The book develops existential implications of these claims in the context of an expanded philosophical conception of ecology. These implications challenge dominant modes of subjectification under what Guattari calls “Integrated World Capitalism” (IWC). The book concludes with discussion of how speculative philosophy may contribute to alternative futures.Less

The Architectonic of Reason: Purposiveness and Systematic Unity in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason

Lea Ypi

The Architectonic of Pure Reason, one of the most important sections of Kant’s first Critique, raises three fundamental questions. What can I know? What should I do? What may I hope? Taken together ... More

The Architectonic of Pure Reason, one of the most important sections of Kant’s first Critique, raises three fundamental questions. What can I know? What should I do? What may I hope? Taken together these questions converge on a fourth one, which is at the centre of philosophy as a whole: what is the human being? This book suggests that the answer to this question is tied to a particular account of the unity of reason—one that stresses its purposive character. By focusing on the sources, evolution, and function of Kant’s concept of purposiveness, the book shows that the idea of purposiveness that Kant endorses in the Critiqueof Pure Reason is a concept of purposiveness as intelligent design, quite different from the concept of purposiveness as normativity that will become central to his later works. wIn the case of purposiveness as normativity, it is anchored to the concept of reflexive judgment, and grounded on transcendental freedom. Understanding this shift has important implications for some of the most difficult questions that confront the Kantian system: the passage from the system of nature to that of freedom, the relation between faith and knowledge, the philosophical defence of progress in history, and the role of religion. It is also crucial to shed light on the way in which Kant’s critique has shaped the successive German philosophical tradition.Less

Aristotle's Empiricism

Marc Gasser-Wingate

Aristotle is famous for thinking that all our knowledge comes from perception. But it’s not immediately clear what this view is meant to entail. For it’s not clear what perception is supposed to ... More

Aristotle is famous for thinking that all our knowledge comes from perception. But it’s not immediately clear what this view is meant to entail. For it’s not clear what perception is supposed to contribute to the more advanced forms of knowledge that derive from it, or indeed how we should understand the nature of its contribution—what it might mean to say that these more advanced forms of knowledge are “derived from” or “based on” what we perceive. Aristotle is often thought to have disappointingly little to say on these matters. I argue here that this thought is mistaken: a coherent and philosophically attractive view of perceptual knowledge can be found in the various texts in which Aristotle discusses perception’s role in animal life, the cognitive resources on which it does and does not depend, and the relation it bears to practical and theoretical modes of understanding. What emerges from these discussions is a moderate form of empiricism—an empiricism on which we can develop sophisticated forms of knowledge by broadly perceptual means, but nonetheless rely on our intellectual powers for more advanced forms of understanding. I consider the role this empiricism plays in Aristotle’s account of our learning, and its implications for his views about practical wisdom and the cognitive lives of nonrational animals.Less

The Ascetic Ideal: Genealogies of Life-Denial in Religion, Morality, Art, Science, and Philosophy

Stephen Mulhall

This book develops a reading of Nietzsche’s concept of ‘the ascetic ideal’, through which he tracks the evolution, mutation, and expansion of the system of slave moral values that he associates ... More

This book develops a reading of Nietzsche’s concept of ‘the ascetic ideal’, through which he tracks the evolution, mutation, and expansion of the system of slave moral values that he associates primarily with Judaeo-Christian religious belief through diverse fields of Western European culture—not just religion and morality, but aesthetics, science, and philosophy. The work of Stanley Cavell and Michael Fried, and its impact in the philosophy of film and literature, is central here, as is J. M.Coetzee’s on the philosophy of autobiography; Martin Heidegger’s critique of science and technology is also addressed. In so doing it also offers an interpretation of his genealogical method that aims to rebut standard criticisms of its nature, and to emphasize its potential for enhancing philosophical understanding more generally. The focus throughout is on developments in those fields which occurred after the end of Nietzsche’s intellectual career, and in particular on influential modes of thought and practice that have a contemporary significance. However, the goal is not simply to argue that Nietzsche’s diagnosis and critique retain considerable merit. It is also to show that Nietzsche is himself significantly indebted to the ideals he criticizes; and that this opens up a possibility of synthesizing elements of his approach with those drawn from its target. Hence, the book also tracks various ways in which the object of Nietzsche’s criticism has further mutated (just as his genealogical method would suggest), and in doing so has generated ways of pursuing the values central to asceticism that avoid Nietzsche’s criticisms.Less

Attachment and Character: Attachment Theory, Ethics, and the Developmental Psychology of Vice and Virtue

Edward Harcourt (ed.)

There are many exciting points of contact between the questions pursued by attachment theory and those first raised by Aristotle’s ethics, and which continue to preoccupy moral philosophers today. ... More

There are many exciting points of contact between the questions pursued by attachment theory and those first raised by Aristotle’s ethics, and which continue to preoccupy moral philosophers today. For the first time this volume brings experts from ethics and from attachment theory together to explore them, in order to show philosophers working in moral psychology or in ‘virtue ethics’ that they both have more to learn from, and more to teach, developmental psychology in the attachment paradigm than has been thought to date. Attachment theory is a theory of psychological development. The characteristics attachment theory is a developmental theory of are evaluatively inflected: to be securely attached to a parent is to have a kind of attachment that makes for a good intimate relationship. But obviously the classification of human character in terms of the virtues and vices is evaluatively inflected too. This collection of chapters explores the latest empirical findings on the relationship between attachment and the vices and virtues, and the relative importance of attachment status as against other determinants of prosocial behaviour. It also probes the concept of the prosocial itself, and the connections between prosocial behaviour, virtue, and the quality of the social environment; explores whether what we know about these connections casts light on whether there are even such things as stable character traits; and whether attachment theory, in locating the origins of virtue in secure attachment, and attachment dispositions in human evolutionary history, gives support to ethical naturalism, in any of the many meanings of that expression.Less

Belief, Inference, and the Self-Conscious Mind

Eric Marcus

It is impossible to hold patently contradictory beliefs in mind together at once. Why? Because we know that it is impossible for both to be true. This impossibility is a species of rational ... More

It is impossible to hold patently contradictory beliefs in mind together at once. Why? Because we know that it is impossible for both to be true. This impossibility is a species of rational necessity, a phenomenon that uniquely characterizes the relation between one person’s beliefs. I argue that the unity of the rational mind—what makes it one mind—is what explains why, given what we already believe, we can’t believe certain things and must believe certain others in this special sense. And what explains this is that beliefs and the inferences by which we acquire them are constituted by a particular kind of endorsement of those very states and acts. This, in turn, entails that belief and inference are essentially self-conscious: to hold a belief or to make an inference is at the same time to know that one does. An examination of the nature of belief and inference, in light of the phenomenon of rational necessity, reveals how the unity of the rational mind is a function of our knowledge of ourselves as bound to believe the true. Rational self-consciousness is the form of mental togetherness.Less

Black Boxes: How Science Turns Ignorance Into Knowledge

Marco J. Nathan

Textbooks and other popular venues commonly present science as a progressive “brick-by-brick” accumulation of knowledge and facts. Despite its hallowed history and familiar ring, this depiction is ... More

Textbooks and other popular venues commonly present science as a progressive “brick-by-brick” accumulation of knowledge and facts. Despite its hallowed history and familiar ring, this depiction is nowadays rejected by most specialists. Then why are books and articles, written by these same experts, actively promoting such a distorted characterization? The short answer is that no better alternative is available. There currently are two competing models of the scientific enterprise: reductionism and antireductionism. Neither provides an accurate depiction of the productive interaction between knowledge and ignorance, supplanting the old metaphor of the “wall” of knowledge. This book explores an original conception of the nature and advancement of science. The proposed shift brings attention to a prominent, albeit often neglected, construct—the black box—which underlies a well-oiled technique for incorporating a productive role of ignorance and failure into the acquisition of empirical knowledge. What is a black box? How does it work? How is it constructed? How does one determine what to include and what to leave out? What role do boxes play in contemporary scientific practice? By detailing some fascinating episodes in the history of biology, psychology, and economics, Nathan revisits foundational questions about causation, explanation, emergence, and progress, showing how the insights of both reductionism and antireductionism can be reconciled into a fresh and exciting approach to science.Less

The Case for Rage: Why Anger Is Essential to Anti-Racist Struggle

Myisha Cherry

The Case for Rage is a philosophical defense of anger, particularly anger at racial injustice. Crossing the terrain of moral psychology, ethics, philosophy of race, and social and political ... More

The Case for Rage is a philosophical defense of anger, particularly anger at racial injustice. Crossing the terrain of moral psychology, ethics, philosophy of race, and social and political philosophy, the book shows anger’s varieties and cautions readers not to paint it in broad strokes. The book shows how a certain kind of anger at racial injustice is a fitting, appropriate, and correct response to racism; can motivate those who are outraged at racism by affecting their beliefs and desires; and can be productive in the fight against racism. It also explains how a person can resist white supremacy with their rage by breaking racial rules. The book also provides suggestions for how the angry might manage their anger—not through eradication or moderation, but through cultivation and community.Less

Causation with a Human Face: Normative Theory and Descriptive Psychology

James Woodward

Causation with a Human Face integrates normative work about causal reasoning coming out of philosophy, computer science, and other disciplines—work that specifies how people ought to reason ... More

Causation with a Human Face integrates normative work about causal reasoning coming out of philosophy, computer science, and other disciplines—work that specifies how people ought to reason causally—with descriptive research from psychology concerning how people in fact reason about causal relationships. It argues that each line of inquiry can beneficially inform the other. Normative ideas can suggest interesting experiments, and descriptive results can suggest normative ideas that are worthy of exploration. Among the normative ideas discussed are proposals about the role of invariant or stable relationships in successful causal reasoning and the notion of proportionality, which has to do with the extent to which causes and effects are specified at the appropriate “grain.” These normative ideas are reflected in the causal judgments that people actually make as a descriptive matter. The overall framework makes use of an interventionist treatment of causation, but many of the normative ideas and much of the empirical research explored will be of interest independently of this framework. The book also discusses the common philosophical practice of appealing to “intuitions” or “judgments about cases” in support of philosophical theses. Properly understood, these are not different in principle from results from psychological studies of causal cognition and hence can serve as a useful source of information. However, there are a number of important questions about both the normative and descriptive sides of causal cognition that cannot be successfully addressed by an intuition-based methodology, so that philosophers need to move beyond reliance on this.Less

City Living: How Urban Spaces and Urban Dwellers Make One Another

Quill R Kukla

This book is about urban spaces, urban dwellers, and how these spaces and people make, shape, and change one another. It is the first systematic philosophical investigation of the nature of city life ... More

This book is about urban spaces, urban dwellers, and how these spaces and people make, shape, and change one another. It is the first systematic philosophical investigation of the nature of city life and city dwellers. It draws on empirical and ethnographic work in geography, anthropology, urban planning, and several other disciplines in order to explore the impact that cities have on their dwellers and that dwellers have on their cities. It begins with a philosophical exploration of spatially embodied agency and of the specific forms of agency and spatiality that are distinctive of city living. It explores how gentrification is enacted and experienced at the level of embodied agency, arguing that gentrifying spaces are contested territories that shape and are shaped by their dwellers. The book then moves to an exploration of repurposed cities, which are cities materially designed to support one sociopolitical order but in which that order collapsed, leaving new dwellers to use the space in new ways. Through a detailed original ethnography of the repurposed cities of Berlin and Johannesburg, the book makes the case that in repurposed cities, we can see vividly how material spaces shape and constrain the agency and experience of dwellers, while dwellers creatively shape the spaces they inhabit in accordance with their needs. The book ends with a reconsideration of the right to the city, asking what would be involved in creating a city that enabled the agency and flourishing of all its diverse inhabitants.Less

Conceiving People: Genetic Knowledge and the Ethics of Sperm and Egg Donation

Daniel Groll

Each year, tens of thousands of children are conceived with donated sperm or eggs, aka donated gametes. By some estimates, there are over 1 million donor-conceived people in the United States and, of ... More

Each year, tens of thousands of children are conceived with donated sperm or eggs, aka donated gametes. By some estimates, there are over 1 million donor-conceived people in the United States and, of course, many more the world over. Some know they are donor-conceived. Some don’t. Some know the identity of their donors. Others never will. Conceiving People: Identity, Genetics and Gamete Donation argues that people who plan to create a child with donated gametes should choose a donor whose identity will be made available to the resulting child. This is not because having genetic knowledge is fundamentally important. Rather, it is because donor-conceived people are likely to develop a significant interest in having genetic knowledge and parents must help satisfy their children’s significant interests. In other words: because a donor-conceived person is likely to care about having genetic knowledge, their parents should care too. Questions about what the donor-conceived should know about their genetic progenitors are hugely significant for literally millions of people, including donor-conceived people, their parents, and donors. But the practice of gamete donation also provides a vivid occasion for thinking about questions that matter to everyone. What value, if any, is there in knowing who your genetic progenitors are? To what extent are our identities bound up with knowing where we come from? What obligations do parents have to their children? And what makes someone a parent—the person responsible for lovingly raising a child—in the first place?Less

Contemporary Scientific Realism: The Challenge from the History of Science

Timothy D. Lyons and Peter Vickers (eds)

Scientific realists claim we can justifiably believe that science is getting at the truth. But they have long faced historical challenges: various episodes across history appear to demonstrate that ... More

Scientific realists claim we can justifiably believe that science is getting at the truth. But they have long faced historical challenges: various episodes across history appear to demonstrate that even strongly supported scientific theories can be overturned and left behind. In response, realists have developed new positions and arguments. Specific challenges from the history of science, and realist responses, have generated an ever increasing data set bearing on the (possible) relationship between science and truth. This book introduces new historical cases impacting the debate, and it advances the discussion of cases that have only very recently been introduced. At the same time, shifts in philosophical positions affect the very kind of case study that is relevant. Thus the historical work must proceed hand in hand with philosophical analysis of the different positions and arguments in play. It is with this in mind that the volume is divided into two sections, entitled “Historical Cases for the Debate” and “Contemporary Scientific Realism.” All sides agree that historical cases are informative with regard to how, or whether, science connects with truth. Defying proclamations as early as the 1980s announcing the death knell of the scientific realism debate, here is that rare thing: a philosophical debate making steady and definite progress. Moreover, the progress it is making concerns one of humanity’s most profound and important questions: the relationship between science and truth, or, put more boldly, the epistemic relation between humankind and the reality in which we find ourselves.Less

Critical theory and demagogic populism

Paul K. Jones

Critical theory and demagogic populism provides a detailed analysis of the relevance of the Frankfurt School’s work to understanding contemporary populism. It draws on the research that the Institute ... More

Critical theory and demagogic populism provides a detailed analysis of the relevance of the Frankfurt School’s work to understanding contemporary populism. It draws on the research that the Institute for Social Research conducted concerning domestic demagogues during its period of ‘exile’ in the USA. The book argues that the figure of the demagogue has been neglected in both orthodox ‘populism studies’ and in existing critical approaches to populism such as that of Ernesto Laclau. Demagogic ‘capture’ of populist movements and their legacies is thus a contingent prospect for ‘left’ and ‘right’ populist movements. An account of ‘modern demagogy’ is thus detailed, from the Institute’s own dedicated demagogy studies through to their dialogue with Weber’s work on charismatic leadership, the US liberal critique of demagogy and Freud’s group psychology. The Institute’s linkage of ‘modern demagogy’ to the culture industry speaks to the underestimation in ‘populism studies’ of the significance of two other ‘modern phenomena. The first is ‘cultural populism’ – the appeal to a folkloric understanding of ‘the people’ and/or ‘their culture’. The second is the pivotal role of modern means of communication, not only in the recent prominence of social media but demagogic exploitation of all media since the rise of literacy and the widening of the suffrage in the nineteenth century. The dialectical dimensions of these processes are also highlighted in reconstructing the Institute’s work and in extending these analyses through to the present. The book so concludes by weighing up potential counter-demagogic forces within and beyond the culture industry.Less

Democratic Law

Seana Valentine Shiffrin

Hannah Ginsborg (ed.)

In this book, based on her 2017 Berkeley Tanner Lectures, the author offers an original, deontological account of democracy, law, and their interrelation. Her central thesis is that democracy and ... More

In this book, based on her 2017 Berkeley Tanner Lectures, the author offers an original, deontological account of democracy, law, and their interrelation. Her central thesis is that democracy and democratic law have intrinsically valuable, interconnected communicative functions. Democracy and democratic law together allow us to fulfill our fundamental duties to convey to each another messages of equal respect by fashioning the sorts of public joint commitments to act that a sincere message of equal respect requires. Law and democracy are essential to each other: the aspirations of democracy cannot be realized except through a legal system, and, conversely, law can fulfill its primary function only in a democratic context. After defending these theses, she explores two doctrinal examples to illustrate how a communicative conception of democratic law would yield concrete implications. First, articulating the special democratic character of judicially articulated common law, she resists instrumental, outcome-oriented conceptions of law and defends the essential importance of the common law duty of good faith in contracts. Second, appealing to the need for law to articulate a coherent set of moral commitments, she criticizes the US Supreme Court’s approach to constitutional balancing. In a set of commentaries, Niko Kolodny, Richard R. W. Brooks, and Anna Stilz offer illuminating and sometimes provocative discussion of both the philosophical and legal aspects of Shiffrin’s discussion. The author’s responses expand on themes concerning legal compliance, commitments, communication, dissent, political participation, and the permissible range of state interests.Less

Depicting Deity: A Metatheological Approach

Jonathan L. Kvanvig

A theology aims to explicate what God is like, and a metatheology investigates more fundamental issues concerning how to structure such a project and where it should begin. Approaches that ignore ... More

A theology aims to explicate what God is like, and a metatheology investigates more fundamental issues concerning how to structure such a project and where it should begin. Approaches that ignore this more fundamental investigation risk presupposing stances that do not withstand scrutiny and perhaps would never have been endorsed if considered directly. In addition, approaches that ignore the issue of fundamentality often switch from one set of assumptions to another without noticing the change in perspective that results, giving rise to a chance of incoherence and to an approach that is theoretically disorderly and thus failing to as systematic and elegant as we would like. This work begins with the more basic question of where to begin thinking about God, where it is best to start the project of theology, in a way that offers some hope of a defensible metatheory, from which a complete theology, displaying the kind of theoretical elegance and structure we find in our best scientific and philosophical theories, can be developed.Less

Determinism, Freedom, and Moral Responsibility: Essays in Ancient Philosophy

Susanne Bobzien

This volume assembles nine of the author’s essays on determinism, freedom, and moral responsibility in Western antiquity, ranging from Aristotle via the Epicureans and Stoics to the third century. It ... More

This volume assembles nine of the author’s essays on determinism, freedom, and moral responsibility in Western antiquity, ranging from Aristotle via the Epicureans and Stoics to the third century. It is representative of the author’s overall scholarship on the topic, much of which emphasizes that what commonly counts as ‘the problem of free will and determinism’ is noticeably distinct from the issues the ancients discussed. It is true that one main component of the ancient discourse concerned the question how moral accountability can be consistently combined with certain causal factors that impact human behaviour. However, it is not true that the ancient problems involved the questions of the compatibility of causal determinism with our ability to do otherwise or with free will. Instead, we encounter questions about human rational and autonomous agency and their compatibility with preceding causes, external or internal; with external impediments; with divine predetermination and theological questions; with physical theories like atomism and continuum theory, and with sciences more generally; with elements that determine character development from childhood, such as nature and nurture; with epistemic features such as ignorance of circumstances; with necessity and modal theories generally; with folk theories of fatalism; and also with questions of how human autonomous agency is related to moral development, to virtue and wisdom, to blame and praise. In Classical and Hellenistic philosophy, these questions were all debated without reference to freedom to do otherwise or free will—. This volume considers all of these questions to some extent.Less

The Disappearance of the Soul and the Turn against Metaphysics: Austrian Philosophy 1874-1918

Mark Textor

The book traces the anti-metaphysical orientation of (much of) analytic philosophy back to discussions in Austro-German philosophy in the second half of the nineteenth century. The starting-point of ... More

The book traces the anti-metaphysical orientation of (much of) analytic philosophy back to discussions in Austro-German philosophy in the second half of the nineteenth century. The starting-point of the book is the debate over the relation between empirical science (here: psychology) and metaphysics: does psychology need a metaphysics of mental substances? The negative answer informed Austrian philosophy in the second half of the nineteenth century and provided a model for ontologies that dispense with substances. The book introduces Brentano’s Intentionalism and Mach’s Neutral Monism as two anti-metaphysical views in the study of mental phenomena. It goes on to use the Austrian ‘psychology without a soul’ view as a vantage point from which to reconstruct and assess the immediate prehistory and formation of analytic philosophy (Ward, Stout, Moore, Russell). While Austrian philosophers retired the soul, early analytic philosophers were happy to introduce a successor, the subject, and conceive of the mental as constituted by subject–object relations. The final part of the book returns to the theme of anti-metaphysics from a different perspective. It focuses on Moritz Schlick’s arguments for the conclusion that metaphysics lies beyond the limits of knowledge, arguments that are rooted in the philosophy of mind discussed in previous parts.Less

Drawing the Line: What to Do with the Work of Immoral Artists from Museums to the Movies

Erich Hatala Matthes

What should we do, think, and feel when artists whom we love do terrible things? Recent years have been punctuated by revelations and reminders that popular artists (musicians, directors, actors, ... More

What should we do, think, and feel when artists whom we love do terrible things? Recent years have been punctuated by revelations and reminders that popular artists (musicians, directors, actors, comedians, painters) have committed a range of morally condemnable acts. How should we respond to the immorality of great artists? Does it affect the aesthetic quality of the work these artists have produced? Is it morally permissible for us to engage with or enjoy that work? Should such work even be available for consumption, or should it be “canceled”? In short, can we separate the art from the artist? Drawing the Line argues that it doesn’t matter whether we can separate the art from the artist, because we shouldn’t. Taking both art and morality seriously requires grappling with them together. Recognizing the moral and aesthetic relationships between art and artist is essential to determining when and where we should draw the line when good artists do bad things.Less

Emotion as Feeling Towards Value: A Theory of Emotional Experience

Jonathan Mitchell

This book proposes and defends a new theory of emotional experience. Drawing on recent developments in the philosophy of emotion, with links to contemporary philosophy of mind, it argues that ... More

This book proposes and defends a new theory of emotional experience. Drawing on recent developments in the philosophy of emotion, with links to contemporary philosophy of mind, it argues that emotional experiences are sui generis states, not to be modelled after other mental states—such as perceptions, judgements, or bodily feelings—but given their own analysis and place within our mental economy. More specifically, emotional experiences are claimed to be feelings-towards-values. Central to the theory is the claim that emotional experiences include (non-bodily) felt attitudes which represent evaluative properties of the particular objects of those experiences. It is in this sense that emotional experiences are feelings-towards-values. After setting out a framework for theorizing about experiences and their contents, the book argues that the content of emotional experience is evaluative, doing so in more detail than in the previous literature. It then explains the best way of marrying the former claim with the presence of specific kinds of valenced attitudinal components in emotional experience and critical aspects of emotional phenomenology. It is argued that we should appeal to felt valenced attitudes of favour and disfavour, resulting in the feeling-towards-value view. Building on this, a distinctive role for bodily feelings is then introduced, by way of a somatic enrichment of these felt valenced attitudes. Finally, issues pertaining to the intelligibility of emotions are considered. It is shown how the feeling-towards-value view can account for the way in which emotional experiences often make sense in a first-person way.Less