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49Critical Notice of Robert C. Solomon, The Passions: The Myth and Nature of Human Emotions (review)Canadian Journal of Philosophy 9 (2): 335-350. 1979.
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47Fringe consciousness and the multifariousness of emotionsPSYCHE: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Research On Consciousness 8. 2002.Mangan draws his inspiration from James's account of fringe consciousness, but differs from James in focusing on something non-sensory, necessarily fuzzy, though not necessarily fleeting. A long tradition in philosophy has deemed non-sensory elements of consciousness to be indispensable to thought. But those, chiefly conceptual, forms of non-sensory fringe are not Mangan's focus. What then is Mangan talking about? This commentary envisages a number of possible answers, and tentatively concludes …Read more
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46How to Give a Piece of Your Mind: Or, the Logic of Belief and AssentReview of Metaphysics 25 (1). 1971.Nothing seems to follow strictly from 'X believes that p'. But if we reinterpret it to mean: 'X can consistently be described as consistently believing p'--which roughly renders, I think, Hintikka's notion of "defensibility"--we can get on with the subject, freed from the inhibitions of descriptive adequacy. But defensibility is neither necessary nor sufficient for truth: it tells us little, therefore, about the concept of belief on which it is based. It cannot, in particular, specify necessary …Read more
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45The sociology of sociobiologyInternational Studies in the Philosophy of Science 4 (3). 1990.Abstract This paper turns the tables on the criticisms of sociobiology that stem from a sociological perspective; many of those criticisms lack cogency and coherence in such measure as to demand, in their turn, a psycho?sociological explanation rather than a rational justification. This thesis, after a brief exposition of the main ideas of sociobiology, is argued in terms of four of the most prominent complaints made against it. Far from embodying tired prejudices about the psychological and soc…Read more
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44Against Emotional ModularityCanadian Journal of Philosophy 36 (sup1): 29-50. 2006.How many emotions are there? Should we accept as overwhelming the evidence in favour of regarding emotions as emanating from a relatively small number of modules evolved efficiently to serve us in common life situations? Or can emotions, like colour, be organized in a space of two, three, or more dimensions defining a vast number of discriminable emotions, arranged on a continuum, on the model of the colour cone?There is some evidence that certain emotions are specialized to facilitate certain r…Read more
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44Is Contempt Redeemable?Journal of Philosophy of Emotion 1 (1): 23-43. 2019.In this essay, I will focus on the two main objections that have been adduced against the moral acceptability of contempt: the fact that it embraces a whole person and not merely some deed or aspect of a person’s character, and the way that when addressed to a person in this way, it amounts to a denial of the very personhood of its target.
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43Kinds of kinds: Individuality and biological speciesInternational Studies in the Philosophy of Science 3 (2). 1989.
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42Love: A Very Short IntroductionOxford University Press. 2015.Do we love someone for their virtue, their beauty, or their moral or other qualities? Are love's characteristic desires altruistic or selfish? Are there duties of love? What do the sciences tell us about love? In this Very Short Introduction, Ronald de Sousa explores the different kinds of love, from affections to romantic love.
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42Seizing the Hedgehog by the Tail: Taylor on the Self and AgencyCanadian Journal of Philosophy 18 (3): 421-432. 1988.For those of us who are sympathetic to the research program of cognitive science, it is especially useful to face the deepest and sharpest critic of that program. Charles Taylor, who defines himself as a ‘hedgehog’ whose ‘single rather tightly related agenda’ fits into a very ancient and rather elusive debate between naturalism and anti-naturalism, may well be that critic. My ambition in this paper is to distill Taylor’s central objection to the cognitive science approach to agency and the self …Read more
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40Perversion and DeathThe Monist 86 (1): 90-114. 2003.Philosophers like to warn against fools’ paradises: not places where fools can safely cavort, but rather conditions in which fools mistakenly think themselves happy. The warning presupposes that real and merely apparent happiness can be told apart. Of course that claim is not altogether disinterested, since philosophers have a professional investment in the distinction. Thus they have endorsed this or that attitude to death, holding up promises of ultimate comfort or threats of excruciating regr…Read more
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40Emotion and self-deceptionIn Brian P. McLaughlin & Amelie O. Rorty (eds.), Perspectives on Self-Deception, University of California Press. 1988.
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37Emotional TruthOxford University Press USA. 2011.The word "truth" retains, in common use, traces of origins that link it to trust, truth, and truce, connoting ideas of fidelity, loyalty, and authenticity. The word has become, in contemporary philosophy, encased in a web of technicalities, but we know that a true image is a faithful portrait; a true friend a loyal one. In a novel or a poem, too, we have a feel for what is emotionally true, though we are not concerned with the actuality of events and characters depicted. To have emotions is to c…Read more
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36Valuing Emotions Michael Stocker with Elizabeth Hegeman Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1996, xxviii + 353 pp., US $64.95, US$21.95 paper (review)Dialogue 38 (1): 219-. 1999.
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34Comment: Language and Dimensionality in Appraisal TheoryEmotion Review 5 (2): 171-175. 2013.The proliferation of dimensions of appraisal is both welcome and worrying. The preoccupation with sorting out causes may be somewhat otiose. And the ubiquity of emotions in levels of processing raises intriguing problems about the role of language in identifying and triggering emotions and appraisals
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33Why think?: evolution and the rational mindOxford University Press. 2007.Introduction -- Function and destiny -- What's the good of thinking? -- Rationality, individual and collective -- Irrationality.
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30"Emotion" by William Lyons (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 45 (1): 142-149. 1984.
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30Review of David Pugmire, Sound Sentiments: Integrity in the Emotions (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2006 (3). 2006.
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29The Natural Shiftiness of Natural KindsCanadian Journal of Philosophy 14 (4): 561-580. 1984.The Philosophical search for Natural Kinds is motivated by the hope of finding ontological categories that are independent of our interests. Other requirements, of varying importance, are commonly made of kinds that claim to be natural. But no such categories are to be found. Virtually any kind can be termed ‘natural’ relative to some set of interests and epistemic priorities. Science determines those priorities at any particular stage of its progress, and what kinds are most ‘natural’ in that s…Read more
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28Review of Laurence Thomas: Living morally: a psychology of moral character (review)Ethics 101 (1): 185-187. 1990.