•  297
    This paper argues that Deonna and Teroni's attitudinal theory of emotions faces two serious problems. The first is that their master argument fails to establish the central tenet of the theory, namely, that the formal objects of emotions do not feature in the content of emotions. The second is that the attitudinal theory itself is vulnerable to a dilemma. By pointing out these problems, our paper provides indirect support to the main competitor of the attitudinal theory, namely, the perceptual t…Read more
  •  241
    A critical review of Robert C. Roberts' "Emotions: An Essay in Aid of Moral Psychology", Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003.
  •  36
    Reply to Kurth, Crosby, and Basse’s review of Emotions, Values, and Agency
    Philosophical 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
  •  24
    Carolyn Price, Emotion
    Ethics 127 (4): 953-958. 2017.
  •  4
    Introduction : Les vertus de l’imagination
    Les Ateliers de L’Ethique 5 (1): 23-25. 2010.
    Introduction to the dossier on Imagination and Moral Reasoning.
  •  64
    Through thick and thin: good and its determinates
    Dialectica 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
  •  36
    Truth 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
  •  12
    Emotions, Reasons, and Autonomy
    In Andrea Veltman & Mark Piper (eds.), Autonomy, Oppression, and Gender, Oxford University Press Usa. pp. 163-180. 2014.
    Personal autonomy is often taken to consist in self-government or self-determination. Personal autonomy thus seems to require self-control. However, there is reason to think that autonomy is compatible with the absence of self-control. Akratic action, i.e., action performed against the agent’s better judgement, can be free. And it is also plausible to think that free actions require autonomy. It is only when you determine what you do yourself that you act freely. It follows that akratic actions …Read more
  •  79
    In his book Appearances of the Good, Sergio Tenenbaum has offered an impressive new defence of a classical account of practical reason, which marks him as heir to a philosophical tradition going back to Aristotle and Kant or, more recently, to Anscombe and Davidson. This account has come under heavy attack in the past twenty years, and it would be no exaggeration to say that it is now a minority view. This is at least so if one counts the number of living philosophers who deny that strict akrati…Read more
  •  42
    Review: Emotion and Value. Edited by Sabine Roeser and Cain Todd (review)
    Analysis 77 (3): 675-678. 2017.
    © 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 …Read more
  •  69
    Neo-Sentimentalism's Prospects
    In Carla Bagnoli (ed.), Morality and the Emotions, Oxford University Press. pp. 117. 2011.
    Neo-sentimentalism 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 concept of appropriateness to be normative, and a descriptive version, which claims that appropri…Read more
  •  35
    What’s the relation between values and reasons for action ? According to some all reasons are grounded in values. If one adds to this the thought that values themselves depend on non-evaluative or factual features of things, one gets what one can call after Jonathan Dancy the “layer-cake conception”. According to others, we should replace the layer-cake picture by what he calls the “buck-passing account of values” (Scanlon 1998). The main characteristic of this conception is that it denies that …Read more
  •  16
    Review of "Balance and Refinement" (review)
    Mind 107. 1998.
    Review of Michael R. DePaul's "Balance and Refinement"
  •  41
    La normativité des concepts évaluatifs
    Philosophiques 38 (1): 157-176. 2011.
    On admet en général qu’il y a deux sortes de concepts normatifs : les concepts évaluatifs, comme bon, et les concepts déontiques, comme devoir. La question que soulève cette distinction est celle de savoir comment il est possible d’affirmer que les concepts évaluatifs sont normatifs. En effet, comme les concepts déontiques semblent constituer le coeur du domaine normatif, plus le fossé entre les deux sortes de concepts est grand, moins il paraîtra plausible d’affirmer que les concepts évaluatifs…Read more
  • Faiblesse de la volonté et autonomie
    In René Lefebvre & Alonso Tordesillas (eds.), Faiblesse de la volonté et maîtrise de soi, Presses Universitaires De Rennes. pp. 191-203. 2009.
    Autonomy seems to require self-control. It also seems that acratic action results from a lack of self-control. Such actions would thus lack autonomy. However, there are reasons to think that acratic actions can be free. Since it is plausible to think that free actions necessarily are autonomous, one would have to conclude that acratic actions are autonomous. My aim is to evaluate the main solutions to this paradox.
  •  156
    Emotion, motivation and action: The case of fear
    In Peter Goldie (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Emotion, Oxford University Press. pp. 325-45. 2009.
    Consider a typical fear episode. You are strolling down a lonely mountain lane when suddenly a huge wolf leaps towards you. A number of different interconnected elements are involved in the fear you experience. First, there is the visual and auditory perception of the wild animal and its movements. In addition, it is likely that given what you see, you may implicitly and inarticulately appraise the situation as acutely threatening. Then, there are a number of physiological changes, involving a v…Read more
  • Constructivism
    In David Sander & Klaus Scherer (eds.), The Oxford Companion to Emotion and the Affective Sciences, Oxford University Press. 2009.
    Encyclopedia entry for Constructivism.
  •  103
    This paper replies to an argument due to Greenspan (1980) and to Morton (2002) against the view that emotions are perceptions of values. The argument holds that this view cannot make room for ambivalent emotions both of which are appropriate, such as when it is appropriate to feel fear and attraction towards something. This would make for a contradiction, for appropriate emotions are supposed to present things as they are. The problem, I argue, is that this line of thoughts forgets that things c…Read more
  •  916
    The Philosophy of Normativity, or How to Try Clearing Things Up a Little
    with Alan Voizard
    Dialogue 50 (2): 233-238. 2011.
    This introduction to a collection of papers on normativity provides a framework modelled on the division in ethics to approach normative issues. It suggests that is is useful to divide questions about normativity into five groups: normative ontology, normative semantics, normative epistemology, normative psychology, and substantial normative theory.
  •  1027
    Facts and Values in Emotional Plasticity
    In Louis C. Charland & Peter Zachar (eds.), Fact and Value in Emotion, John Benjamins. pp. 101--137. 2008.
    How much can we shape the emotions we experience? Or to put it another way, how plastic are our emotions? It is clear that the exercise of identifying the degree of plasticity of emotion is futile without a prior specification of what can be plastic, so we first propose an analysis of the components of emotions. We will then turn to empirical data that might be used to assess the degree of plasticity of emotions.
  •  326
    In reply to Geach's objection against expressivism, some have claimed that there is a plurality of truth predicates. I raise a difficulty for this claim: valid inferences can involve sentences assessable by any truth predicate, corresponding to 'lightweight' truth as well as to 'heavyweight' truth. To account for this, some unique truth predicate must apply to all sentences that can appear in inferences. Mixed inferences remind us of a central platitude about truth: truth is what is preserved in…Read more
  • Value
    In David Sander & Klaus Scherer (eds.), The Oxford Companion to Emotion and the Affective Sciences, Oxford University Press. 2009.
    This entry specifies the possible relations between values and emotions.
  •  26
    Response-Dependence
    European 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
  •  46
    Long-term emotions and emotional experiences in the explanation of actions
    European 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
  •  2
  •  54
    Faiblesse de la raison ou faiblesse de volonté: peut-on choisir?
    with Fabienne Pironet
    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
  •  81
    Procrastination and personal identity
    In Chrisoula Andreou & Mark 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
  •  1190
    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