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36Reply to Kurth, Crosby, and Basse’s review of Emotions, Values, and AgencyPhilosophical Psychology 31 (4): 500-504. 2018.In this reply, I argue that the worries raised by Kurth and this coauthors are not fatal for the perceptual theory of emotions. A first point to keep in mind in discussing the analogy argument in favor of that account is that what counts is the overall balance of similarities and differences, given their respective weight. In any case, I argue that none of the alleged differences between sensory perceptual experiences and emotions are such as to rule out that emotions are a kind of perceptual ex…Read more
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4Introduction : Les vertus de l’imaginationLes Ateliers de L’Ethique 5 (1): 23-25. 2010.Introduction to the dossier on Imagination and Moral Reasoning.
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150Through thick and thin: good and its determinatesDialectica 58 (2): 207-221. 2004.What is the relation between the concept good and more specific or ‘thick’ concepts such as admirable or courageous? I argue that good or more precisely good pro tanto is a general concept, but that the relation between good pro tanto and the more specific concepts is not that of a genus to its species. The relation of an important class of specific evaluative concepts, which I call ‘affective concepts’, to good pro tanto is better understood as one between a determinable and its determinates, w…Read more
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132Truth as One and Many, by Michael P. Lynch.: Book Reviews (review)Mind 119 (476): 1193-1198. 2010.For someone who is inclined towards truth monism and moral realism, reading this book is like journeying through a foreign country: somewhat disconcerting, but nonetheless enjoyable. Michael Lynch’s world is a stoutly naturalistic world, in which representation is conceived in terms of causal or teleological relations. This is a world in which it is hard to fit normative facts. Thus, the reader is told that there are good reasons to think that ‘moral properties, should they exist, would not be t…Read more
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26Response-DependenceEuropean Review of Philosophy 3 227. 1998.Some concepts, such as colour concepts or value concepts, seem to bear traces of the mind's own make-up. For instance, the character of perceptually-determined colour concepts seems in some sense derivative from the character of the visual system. Thus, it has seemed plausible to claim that the corresponding colour properties are dispositions to elicit certain visual experiences in normal observers under suitable conditions. Much the same has been suggested for value concepts. An extreme positio…Read more
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46Long-term emotions and emotional experiences in the explanation of actionsEuropean Review of Philosophy 5 151-161. 2002.This paper consists in a critical review of Peter Goldie's book, The Emotion. A Philosophical Exploration (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). Goldie is right to distinguish between long-term emotions and emotional experiences. And he is also right to reject the view that emotions are reducible to 'feelingless' states plus some extra feelings. However, Goldie's own account in terms of "feeling towards" is problematic. Goldie would have been better advised to claim that emotional experiences …Read more
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2Emotions and Motivation: The Case of FearIn Peter Goldie (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Emotion, Oxford University Press. 2009.
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54Faiblesse de la raison ou faiblesse de volonté: peut-on choisir?Dialogue 42 (4): 627-. 2003.This introduction consists in a historical overview of the debate about practical irrationality, as illustrated by weakness of will. After a brief reminder of the discussions after Davidson, we consider three important moments of the debate: the ancient debate from Socrates to Xenophon, the medieval debate from Augustine to Buridan, and the modern debate after Descartes. We suggest that it is useful to distinguish weakness of will (a failure to act as one wills) from so-called strict akrasia (a …Read more
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81Procrastination and personal identityIn Andreou Chrisoula & Marck D. White (eds.), The Thief of Time. Philosophical Essays on Procrastination, Oxford University Press. pp. 115-29. 2010.The special concern we have for our future selves is often seen as making for a problem for psychological continuity theories, such as Derek Parfit's. On the basis of an account of the various kinds of procrastination, and of the ways imprudent procrastination involves harm to future selves, the paper argues that procrastinators often impose an uncompensated burden on their future selves, something that is best explained by a lack of concern for their future selves. Given this, the objections to…Read more
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1171What is Value? Where Does it Come From? A Philosophical PerspectiveIn Tobias Brosch & David Sander (eds.), The Value Handbook: The Affective Sciences of Values and Valuation, . pp. 3-22. 2015.Are values objective or subjective? To clarify this question we start with an overview of the main concepts and debates in the philosophy of values. We then discuss the arguments for and against value realism, the thesis that there are objective evaluative facts. By contrast with value anti-realism, which is generally associated with sentimentalism, according to which evaluative judgements are grounded in sentiments, value realism is commonly coupled with rationalism. Against this common view, w…Read more
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1011Self-control and AkrasiaIn Kevin Timpe, Meghan Griffith & Neil Levy (eds.), Routledge Companion to Free Will., Routledge. 2017.Akratic actions are often being thought to instantiate a paradigmatic self-control failure. . If we suppose that akrasia is opposed to self-control, the question is how akratic actions could be free and intentional. After all, it would seem that it is only if an action manifests self-control that it can count as free. My plan is to explore the relation between akrasia and self-control. The first section presents what I shall call the standard conception, according to which akrasia and self-contr…Read more
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100La philosophie de la normativité ou comment tenter de faire un peu d’ordreDialogue 50 (2): 239-246. 2011.Cette introduction à une collection d'articles sur la normativité propose d'adopter les divisions trouvées habituellement en éthique pour aborder la normativité. Ainsi, il semble utile de diviser les questions en cinq groupes: l'ontologie normative, la sémantique normative, l'épistémologie normative, la psychologie normative, et finalement, les questions normatives substantielles.
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777Gloomy duck or cheerful rabbit?Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 19 (1): 21-23. 2012.Reply to Ronald de Sousa and Douglas W. Heinrichs
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2673Emotions, perceptions, and emotional illusionsIn Calabi Clotilde (ed.), The Crooked Oar, the Moon’s Size and the Kanizsa Triangle. Essays on Perceptual Illusions, . pp. 207-24. 2012.Emotions often misfire. We sometimes fear innocuous things, such as spiders or mice, and we do so even if we firmly believe that they are innocuous. This is true of all of us, and not only of phobics, who can be considered to suffer from extreme manifestations of a common tendency. We also feel too little or even sometimes no fear at all with respect to very fearsome things, and we do so even if we believe that they are fearsome. Indeed, instead of shunning fearsome things, we might be attracted…Read more
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1069As common experience confirms, procrastination seems not only possible, but widespread. However, procrastination should not be taken for granted. Often, the procrastinator harms herself knowingly. It thus clearly seems that such a person lacks the self-concern that usually characterises us. After having spelled out what procrastination is, and having explored its main varieties, I consider the relation between procrastination and risk-taking. After this, I discuss the implications of this phenom…Read more
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54Music Alone. Philosophical Reflections on the Purely Musical Experience, by Peter Kivy (review)Mind 102 (406). 1993.A critical review of Peter Kivy's "Music Alone: Philosophical Reflections on the Purely Musical Experience" Cornelle, Cornell University Press, 1990.
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The right to assisted suicide and euthanaisa: a question of respecting the individual's autonomy?Revue Philosophique De Louvain 101 (1): 43-57. 2003.
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140The modularity of emotions (edited book)University of Calgary Press. 2008.Can emotions be rational or are they necessarily irrational? Are emotions universally shared states? Or are they socio-cultural constructions? Are emotions perceptions of some kind? Since the publication of Jerry Fodor’s The Modularity of Mind (1983), a new question about the philosophy of emotions has emerged: are emotions modular? A positive answer to this question would mean, minimally, that emotions are cognitive capacities that can be explained in terms of mental components that are functio…Read more
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96Values and Emotions: Neo-Sentimentalism's ProspectsIn Carla Bagnoli (ed.), Morality and the Emotions, Oxford University Press. 2011.Neo-sentmentalism is the view that to judge that something has an evaluative property is to judge that some affective or emotional response is appropriate with respect to it. The difficulty in assessing neo-sentimentalism is that it allows for radically different versions. My aim is to spell out what I take to be its most plausible version. I distinguish between a normative version, which takes the concepts of appropriateness to be normative, and a descriptive version, which claims that appropri…Read more
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150Reasons and EmotionsIn Daniel Star (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Reasons and Normativity, Oxford University Press. 2018.
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107Evaluative vs. Deontic ConceptsIn Hugh LaFollette (ed.), International Encyclopedia of Ethics, Wiley. pp. 1791-99. 2022.Ethical thought is articulated around normative concepts. Standard examples of normative concepts are good, reason, right, ought, and obligatory. Theorists often treat the normative as an undifferentiated domain. Even so, it is common to distinguish between two kinds of normative concepts: evaluative or axiological concepts, such as good, and deontic concepts, such as ought. This encyclopedia entry discusses the many differences between the two kinds of concepts.
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1146Emotions and the intelligibility of akratic actionIn Sarah Stroud & Christine Tappolet (eds.), Weakness of will and practical irrationality, Oxford University Press. pp. 97--120. 2003.After discussing de Sousa's view of emotion in akrasia, I suggest that emotions be viewed as nonconceptual perceptions of value (see Tappolet 2000). It follows that they can render intelligible actions which are contrary to one's better judgment. An emotion can make one's action intelligible even when that action is opposed by one's all-things-considered judgment. Moreover, an akratic action prompted by an emotion may be more rational than following one's better judgement, for it may be the judg…Read more
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956Emotions and WellbeingTopoi 34 (2): 461-474. 2015.In this paper, we consider the question of whether there exists an essential relation between emotions and wellbeing. We distinguish three ways in which emotions and wellbeing might be essentially related: constitutive, causal, and epistemic. We argue that, while there is some room for holding that emotions are constitutive ingredients of an individual’s wellbeing, all the attempts to characterise the causal and epistemic relations in an essentialist way are vulnerable to some important objectio…Read more
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248Virtue, Happiness, and WellbeingThe Monist 99 (2): 112-127. 2016.What is the relation between virtue and wellbeing? Our claim is that, under certain conditions, virtue necessarily tends to have a positive impact on an individual’s wellbeing. This is so because of the connection between virtue and psychological happiness, on the one hand, and between psychological happiness and wellbeing, on the other hand. In particular we defend three claims: that virtue is constituted by a disposition to experience fitting emotions, that fitting emotions are constituents of…Read more
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1Éthique et mort(s) - Le droit au suicide assisté et à l'euthanasie: une question de respect de l'autonomie?: une question de respect de l'autonomie?Revue Philosophique De Louvain 101 (1): 43-57. 2003.
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5051Weakness of WillIn Hugh LaFollette (ed.), International Encyclopedia of Ethics, Wiley. pp. 4412-21. 2022.One difficulty in understanding recent debates is that not only have many terms been used to refer to weakness of will – “akrasia” and “incontinence” have often been used as synonyms of “weakness of will” – but quite different phenomena have been discussed in the literature. This is why the present entry starts with taxonomic considerations. The second section turns to the question of whether it is possible to freely and intentionally act against one’s better judgment.