Peter Goldie

_In real life, emotions can distort practical reasoning, typically in ways that it is_ _difficult to realise at the time, or to envisage and plan for in advance. This fea-_ _ture of real life emotional experience raises difficulties for imagining such expe-_ _riences through centrally imagining, or imagining ‘from the inside’. I argue_ _instead for the important psychological role played by another kind of imagin-_ _ing: imagining from an external perspective. This external perspective can draw_ _on the dramatic irony involved in imagining these typical cases, where one_ _knows outside the scope of the imagining what one does not know as part of the_ _content of what one imagines: namely, that the imagined emotion is distorting_ _one’s reasoning. Moreover, imagining from an external perspective allows one_ _to evaluate the imagined events in a way that imagining from the inside does not._

The idea that there is an important place in philosophical aesthetics for virtues of art is not new, but it is now undergoing a serious re‐examination. Why might this be? What are the principles behind virtue aesthetics? Are there any good arguments for the theory? (I will take virtue aesthetics to be the theory that there is a central place for virtues of art.) What problems does virtue aesthetics face? And what might the implications be of virtue aesthetics both in philosophy and in related disciplines?

I argue that it is possible, in the right circumstances, to see what the kind thing is to do: in the right circumstances, we can, literally, see deontic facts, as well as facts about others’ emotional states, and evaluative facts. In arguing for this, I will deploy a notion of non‐inferential perceptual belief or judgement according to which the belief or judgement is arrived at non‐inferentially in the phenomenological sense and yet is inferential in the epistemic sense. The ability to arrive at these kinds of beliefs and judgements is part of virtue, and is also part of what it is to grasp thick ethical concepts in an engaged way. When we come to thinner evaluative and deontic facts and thinner ethical concepts, however, the requirements for non‐inferential perceptual belief and judgement are less easily met. Seeing what is the kind thing to do is one matter; seeing what is the right thing to do is another

Empathy has for a long time, at least since the eighteenth century, been seen as centrally important in relation to our capacity to gain a grasp of the content of other people's minds, and predict and explain what they will think, feel, and do; and in relation to our capacity to respond to others ethically. In addition, empathy is seen as having a central role in aesthetics, in the understanding of our engagement with works of art and with fictional characters. A fuller understanding of empathy is now offered by the interaction of research in science and the humanities. This volume draws together nineteen original chapters by leading researchers across several disciplines, together with an extensive Introduction by the editors. The individual chapters reveal how important it is, in a wide range of fields of enquiry, to bring to bear an understanding of the role of empathy in its various guises. It offers the ideal starting-point for the exploration of this intriguing aspect of human life.

Abstract Narrative thinking has a very important role in our ordinary everyday lives?in our thinking about fiction, about the historical past, about how things might have been, and about our own past and our plans for the future. In this paper, which is part of a larger project, I will be focusing on just one kind of narrative thinking: the kind that we sometimes engage in when we think about, evaluate, and respond emotionally to, our own past lives from a perspective that is external to the remembered events. Being able to do this is an essential part of what it is to have a narrative sense of self. Sometimes, I will suggest, we fail to have such responses?we are not able to think and feel as we should about an episode in our lives. On such occasions, there is a gap in our narrative sense of self?a gap which opens up especially where the past is in some sense tragic or traumatic. The desire to close this gap is what I will call a desire for emotional closure

Grief is not a kind of feeling, or a kind of judgement, or a kind of perception, or any kind of mental state or event the identity of which can be adequately captured at a moment in time. Instead, grief is a kind of process; more specifically, it is a complex pattern of activity and passivity, inner and outer, which unfolds over time, and the unfolding pattern over time is explanatorily prior to what is the case at any particular time. The pattern of a particular grieving is best understood and explained through a narrative account, and not merely through a causal account, for narrative accounts in such cases have powerful explanatory, revelatory, and expressive powers which causal accounts lack. Although I will not argue for it here, I believe that this view of grief can be generalised to other kinds of emotion. If this is so, then many philosophical accounts of emotion are at fault in identifying emotion with a kind of mental state or event

'Understanding Emotions' presents eight original essays on the emotions from leading contemporary philosophers in North America and the U.K - Simon Blackburn, Bill Brewer, Peter Goldie, Dan Hutto, Adam Morton, Michael Stocker, Barry Smith, and Finn Spicer. Goldie and Spicer's introductory chapter sets out the key themes of the ensuing chapters - surveying contemporary philosophical thinking about the emotions, and raising challenges to a number of prejudices that are sometimes brought to the topic from elsewhere in the philosophy of mind and moral philosophy. Brewer, Hutto, Goldie and Smith explore the conceptual and epistemological problems of other minds that the emotions raise, and how the emotions can be a source of knowledge of the world around us. The chapters by Stocker, Blackburn and Morton are broadly concerned with issues in morality - Stocker argues for the traditional Aristotelian view that emotions reveal value and are constitutive of value; Blackburn, from a more Augustinian perspective, argues that the virtuous person, like the rest of us, will be emotional but he or she will have the right emotions towards the right objects; Morton questions the idea of emotions and narrative as sources of self-understanding. An extensive bibliography completes the book. Drawing together the arguments of leading contemporary philosophers, focusing on issues in the philosophy of mind, epistemology and moral philosophy, this book offers a wide and deep understanding of the emotions, and will be of interest across the philosophical spectrum to students and researchers of this fascinating and important topic.

The question is how to explain expressions of emotion. It is argued that not all expressions of emotion are open to the same sort of explanation. Those expressions which are actions can be explained, like other sorts of action, by reference to a belief and a desire; however, no genuine expression of emotion is done as a means to some further end. Certain expressions of emotion which are actions can also be given a deeper explanation as being expressive of a wish. Expressions of emotion which are not actions cannot be given a belief-desire explanation: no belief is involved, and a desire is involved only in an honorific sense of 'desire'. The distinction amongst expressions of emotion between those which are actions and those which are not is not a precise one, and the paper concludes with some speculative remarks about borderline cases such as jumping for joy.

Peter Goldie opens the path to a deeper understanding of our emotional lives through a lucid philosophical exploration of this surprisingly neglected topic. Drawing on philosophy, literature and science, Goldie considers the roles of culture and evolution in the development of our emotional capabilities. He examines the links between emotion, mood, and character, and places the emotions in the context of consciousness, thought, feeling, and imagination. He explains how it is that we are able to make sense of our own and other people's emotions, and how we can explain the very human things which emotions lead us to do. He argues that it is only from the personal point of view that thoughts, reasons, feelings, and actions come into view. This fascinating book gives an accessible but penetrating exploration of an important but mysterious subject. Any reader interested in emotion and its role in understanding our lives will find much to think about here.

What is the best model of emotion if we are to reach a good understanding of the role of emotion in religious life? I begin by setting out a simple model of emotion, based on a paradigm emotional experience of fear of an immediate threat in one’s environment. I argue that the simple model neglects many of the complexities of our emotional lives, including in particular the complexities that one finds with the intellectual emotions. I then discuss how our dispositions to have these kinds of emotions, which are part of what it is to be a virtuous intellectual enquirer, are subject to vicissitudes, in particular brought about by depression, apathy and other damaging changes to our psychic economy. These changes can flatten affect, so that one’s intellectual life goes cold on one. Finally, I commend the idea of applying this model of intellectual emotion onto religious emotion.

There is a frequently asked philosophical question about our ability to grasp and to predict the thoughts and feelings of other people, an ability that is these days sometimes given the unfortunate name of ‘mentalising’ or ‘mind-reading’–I say ‘unfortunate’ because it makes appear mysterious what is not mysterious. Some philosophers and psychologists argue that this ability is grounded in possession of some kind of theory or body of knowledge about how minds work. Others argue that it is grounded in our capacity to take on in imagination the perspective of others; sometimes called simulating or centrally imagining another person, we entertain in our minds what the other person is thinking about and feeling: if he is thinking ‘p’ and ‘if p then q’, then we think ‘p’ and ‘if p then q’, and if he is feeling angry with someone, then we imagine feeling angry with that person. We thus recreate as well as we can in our imagination his mental life as it is ‘from the inside’. We can do this in two different ways: I can put myself in the other's shoes, simply imagining what I would do were I in his situation, or I can empathise with him, imagining being him, taking on in imagination his relevant traits and other mental dispositions; I will from now on use the term perspective-shifting to cover both of these imaginative activities.