The epistemic rationality of emotions: a new defence

The Value of Emotions for Knowledge, ed. L. Candiotto, 2019

The aim of this chapter is to discuss the relevance that emotions can play in our epistemic life considering the state of the art of the philosophical debate on emotions. The strategy is the one of focusing on the three main models on emotions as evaluative judgements, bodily feelings, and perceptions, following the fil rouge of emotion intentionality for rising questions about their epistemic functions. From this examination, a major challenge to mainstream epistemology arises, the one that asks to provide prominence to the epistemic agent and to her affects. This chapter discusses these implications, also providing an overview of the many alternatives available nowadays in epistemology, arguing for an open, comprehensive, and interdisciplinary approach to emotions in knowledge.

Philosophers like Amélie O. Rorty and Jesse J. Prinz have argued that emotions are not, strictly speaking, rational in-themselves. In this paper, I argue that emotions can be understood not only as being rational in-themselves, strictly speaking, but also as being instrumentally rational, epistemically rational, and evaluatively rational. I begin with a discussion of what it means for emotions to be rational or irrational in-themselves, which includes the derivation of a criterion for the ontological rationality of emotions (CORe): For every emotion or emotion-type there exists some normative standard, given by what emotions are or what an emotion-type is, against which our emotional responses can be judged or evaluated, in light of the fact that our emotions manifest our rationality. I then distinguish what it means for emotions to be rational in-themselves from what it means for emotions to be instrumentally rational, epistemically rational, and evaluatively rational. Finally, I bring my argument to a close by providing an account of what emotions are—emotions as superordinate inference rules—which fulfills the CORe, and I conclude that emotions can be understood as being rational in-themselves, qua emotions or qua an emotion-type.

Consistent with what seems to be common parlance, philosophers like Amélie O. Rorty and Jesse J. Prinz have argued that emotions are not, strictly speaking, rational in-themselves. I argue that emotions can be understood not only as being rational in-themselves, i.e., intrinsically rational, strictly speaking, but also as being instrumentally rational, epistemically rational, and evaluatively rational. I begin with a discussion of what it means for emotions to be rational or irrational in-themselves, which includes the derivation of a criterion for the ontological rationality of emotions (CORe): For emotion or any emotion-type there exists some normative standard, given by what emotion is or what an emotion-type is, against which our emotional responses can be judged or evaluated, in light of the fact that our emotions manifest our rationality. I then distinguish what it means for emotions to be rational in-themselves from what it means for emotions to be instrumentally rational, epistemically rational, and evaluatively rational. Finally, I bring my argument to a close by providing a sketch of an account of what emotions are—emotions as superordinate inference rules—that fulfills the CORe, and I conclude with a brief discussion of the implications of this account of emotions on claims of knowledge, and how we understand the rationality of infants, some people with disabilities, and emotional animals.

Consistent with what seems to be common parlance, philosophers like Amélie O. Rorty and Jesse J. Prinz have argued that emotions are not, strictly speaking, rational in-themselves. I argue that emotions can be understood not only as being rational in-themselves, i.e., intrinsically rational, strictly speaking, but also as being instrumentally rational, epistemically rational, and evaluatively rational. I begin with a discussion of what it means for emotions to be rational or irrational in-themselves, which includes the derivation of a criterion for the ontological rationality of emotions (CORe): For every emotion or emotion-type there exists some normative standard, given by what emotions are or what an emotion-type is, against which our emotional responses can be judged or evaluated, in light of the fact that our emotions manifest our rationality. I then distinguish what it means for emotions to be rational in-themselves from what it means for emotions to be instrumentally rational, epistemically rational, and evaluatively rational. Finally, I bring my argument to a close by providing a sketch of an account of what emotions are—emotions as superordinate inference rules—that fulfills the CORe, and I conclude with a brief discussion of the implications of this account of emotions on claims of knowledge, and how we understand the rationality of infants, some people with disabilities, and emotional animals.

2008

this chapter provides an overview of the issues involved in recent debates about the epistemological relevance of emotions. We first survey some key issues in epistemology and the theory of emotions that inform various assessments of emotions’ potential significance in epistemology. We then distinguish five epistemic functions that have been claimed for emotions: motivational force, salience and relevance, access to facts and beliefs, non-propositional contributions to knowledge and understanding, and epistemic efficiency. We identify two core issues in the discussions about such epistemic functions of emotions: First, even though it is plausible that emotions are involved in epistemic processes, it may be doubted whether they really matter for the normative question of what counts as knowledge or justified belief. Second, some of the epistemic functions claimed for emotions in general may only be attributed to some specifically epistemic emotions, which have been present all along ...

Topoi, 2021

Emotions seem to be epistemically assessable: fear of an onrushing truck is epistemically justified whereas, mutatis mutandis, fear of a peanut rolling on the floor is not. But there is a difficulty in understanding why emotions are epistemically assessable. It is clear why beliefs, for instance, are epistemically assessable: epistemic assessability is, arguably, assessability with respect to likely truth, and belief is by its nature concerned with truth; truth is, we might say, belief’s “formal object.” Emotions, however, have formal objects different from truth: the formal object of fear is danger, the formal object of indignation is injustice, and so on. Why, then, are emotions epistemically assessable too? Here we make a negative claim and a positive claim. On the negative side, we consider how cognitivist and perceptualist accounts of emotion may respond to this challenge, and argue against those responses. On the positive side, we develop an alternative picture of the domain o...

Emotion Review (forthcoming), 2022

This is a commentary (penultimate draft) to J. M. Müller (2019): The World-Directedness of Emotional Feeling. On Affect and Intentionality. Palgrave Pivot. Müller's position-taking view of emotions takes issue with the widely endorsed philosophical notion that emotional feelings are a form of consciousness in which we become acquainted with the evaluative properties of objects and events. Müller rejects this perceptual theory of emotions and casts doubt on the idea that it is through emotional feeling that we develop an awareness of value. In so doing, his proposal amounts to a denial of any epistemic function of emotional feeling. Challenging such a radical move, in my commentary, I discuss several affective phenomena in which feelings do seem to serve an epistemic function. These cases pose problems for Müller's version of the position-taking view of emotion, at least in its current form.

2001

Emotions and rationality often are seen as polar opposites. In this seminar, we draw on literature from both economics and psychology to understand whether this view is warranted. As suggested by the title of this seminar announcement, our working hypothesis is that emotions are indeed rational in a sense that will be made precise. The seminar will be conducted in English.

… of the Royal …, 2010

According to a popular view, emotions are perceptual experiences of some kind. A common objection to this view is that, by contrast with perception, emotions are subject to normative reasons. In response, perceptualists have typically maintained that the fact that emotions can be justified does not prevent them from being perception-like in some fundamental way. Given the problems that this move might raise, a neglected alternative strategy is to deny that there are normative reasons for emotions in the first place. The aim of this paper is to offer the first sustained discussion of arguments for skepticism about normative reasons for emotions. I argue that none of the obvious ways to argue against reasons for emotions casts genuine doubt on them, and thus that unless another argument is given an appeal to reasons for emotions continues to constitute a legitimate strategy to assess various theories of emotion.