Hichem Naar

© The Authors 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Analysis Trust. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: [email protected] is widely accepted that emotions have something to do with values. The major task of contemporary philosophy of emotion is to say precisely what that something is. How exactly are emotions related to evaluative properties? Unsurprisingly, there are various ways they may be related. First, emotions might themselves be bearers of value. It might be a good thing to be afraid, sad, or joyful in certain circumstances. And of course, there are various ways emotions might be valuable. One way – but probably not the only way – they might be valuable is in providing us with information about the world, and in particular about further values. A second way, therefore, emotions might be related to values, is by helping us apprehend such...

Cet article explore la viabilité de la conjonction de trois thèses : (1) qu’il existe des valeurs objectives ; (2) que certaines émotions ont pour fonction de les représenter ; (3) que de telles émotions représentent ces valeurs de manière fiable. Nous cherchons plus particulièrement à réconcilier la troisième thèse avec l’observation que les émotions ont un aspect subjectif ou personnel qu’il n’est pas possible d’éliminer. This article explores the viability of the conjunction of three claims: (1) that there are objective values; (2) that some emotions have the function of representing them; (3) that such emotions represent these values reliably. In particular, we will be concerned with the project of reconciling (3) with the simple observation that emotions have a subjective or personal aspect that cannot be ignored.

Studying the folk concept of intentional action, Knobe (2003a) discovered a puzzling asymmetry: most people consider some bad side effects as intentional while they consider some good side effects as unintentional. In this study, we extend these findings with new experiments. The first experiment shows that the very same effect can be found in ascriptions of intentionality in the case of means for action. The second and third experiments show that means are nevertheless generally judged more intentional than side effects, and that people do take into account the structure of the action when ascribing intentionality. We then discuss a number of hypotheses that can account for these data, using reactions times from our first experiment