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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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140Through 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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130Truth 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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52Music 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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1022As 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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136The 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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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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95Values 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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146Reasons and EmotionsIn Daniel Star (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Reasons and Normativity, Oxford University Press. 2018.
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1057Emotions 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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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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242Virtue, 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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893Emotions 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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4931Weakness 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.
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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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1364The Normativity of Evaluative ConceptsIn Anne Reboul (ed.), Mind, Values, and Metaphysics. Philosophical Essays in Honor of Kevin Mulligan, Volume 2, . pp. 39-54. 2014.It is generally accepted that there are two kinds of normative concepts : evaluative concepts, such as good, and deontic concepts, such as ought. The question that is raised by this distinction is how it is possible to claim that evaluative concepts are normative. Given that deontic concepts appear to be at the heart of normativity, the bigger the gap between evaluative and deontic concepts, the less it appears plausible to say that evaluative concepts are normative. After having presented the m…Read more
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368Introduction: Les vertus de l’imaginationLes ateliers de l'éthique/The Ethics Forum 5 (1): 23-25. 2010.
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Les mauvaises émotionsIn Fabrice Teroni, Christine Tappolet & Anita Konzelman Ziv (eds.), Les Ombres de l'âme. Penser les émotions négatives, . pp. 37-51. 2011.Emotions have long been accused of all sorts of mischief. In recent years, however, many have argued that far from constituting an obstacle to reason and morality, emotions possess important virtues. According to a plausible conception, emotions would have a crucial cognitive function: they would consist in the perceptual experience of evaluative properties. To fear a dog, for instance, would consist in having the perceptual experience of the dog as fearsome. There has been and still is a lively…Read more
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Emotion and Attention:some (empirically inspires) distinctionsIn Robert Trappl (ed.), Cybernetics and Systems, Austrian Society For Cybernetics Studies. 2002.
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3211Introduction: Modularity and the Nature of EmotionsCanadian Journal of Philosophy 32. 2006.In this introduction, we give a brief overview of the main concepts of modularity that have been offered in recent literature. After this, we turn to a summary of the papers collected in this volume. Our primary aim is to explain how the modularity of emotion question relates to traditional debates in emotion theory.
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1702Valeurs et émotions, les perspectives du néo-sentimentalismeDialogue 51 (1): 7-30. 2012.ABSTRACT: 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 to it, but this view allows for radically different versions. My aim is to spell out what I take to be its most plausible version. Against its normative version, I argue that its descriptive version can best satisfy the normativity requirement that follows from Moore’s Open Question Argument while giving an answer to the Wrong Kind …Read more
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1066Values and EmotionsIn Iwao Hirose & Jonas Olson (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Value Theory, Oxford University Press. pp. 80-95. 2015.Evaluative concepts and emotions appear closely connected. According to a prominent account, this relation can be expressed by propositions of the form ‘something is admirable if and only if feeling admiration is appropriate in response to it’. The first section discusses various interpretations of such ‘Value-Emotion Equivalences’, for example the Fitting Attitude Analysis, and it offers a plausible way to read them. The main virtue of the proposed way to read them is that it is well-supported …Read more
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212Mais où va l'éthique fondamentale ? IntroductionLes ateliers de l'éthique/The Ethics Forum 7 (3): 89-91. 2012.
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1234Rethinking Cognitive Mediation: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and the Perceptual Theory of EmotionPhilosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 19 (1): 1-12. 2012.Empirical assessments of Cognitive Behavioral Theory and theoretical considerations raise questions about the fundamental theoretical tenet that psychological disturbances are mediated by consciously accessible cognitive structures. This paper considers this situation in light of emotion theory in philosophy. We argue that the “perceptual theory” of emotions, which underlines the parallels between emotions and sensory perceptions, suggests a conception of cognitive mediation that can accommodate…Read more
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Les émotions sont-elles mentales ou physiques?Revue de Théologie Et de Philosophie 127 (n/a): 251. 1995.