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800Affect without object: moods and objectless emotionsEuropean Journal of Analytic Philosophy 2 (1): 49-68. 2006.Should moods be regarded as intentional states, and, if so, what kind of intentional content do they have? I focus on irritability and apprehension, which I examine from the perspective of a teleosemantic theory of content. Eric Lormand has argued that moods are non-intentional states, distinct from emotions; Robert Solomon and Peter Goldie argue that moods are generalised emotions and that they have intentional content of a correspondingly general kind. I present a third model, on which moods a…Read more
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213The Rationality of GriefInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 53 (1): 20-40. 2010.Donald Gustafson has argued that grief centres on a combination of belief and desire:The belief that the subject has suffered an irreparable loss.The desire that this should not be the case.And yet, as Gustafson points out, if the belief is true, the desire cannot be satisfied. Gustafson takes this to show that grief inevitably implies an irrational conflict between belief and desire.I offer a partial defence of grief against Gustafson's charge of irrationality. My defence rests on two elements.…Read more
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113The Moral Psychology of Compassion (edited book)Springer. 2018.Compassion is widely regarded as an important moral emotion – a fitting response to various cases of suffering and misfortune. Yet contemporary theorists have rarely given it sustained attention. This volume aims to fill this gap by offering answers to a number of questions surrounding this emotion.
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107Emotional Insight: The Epistemic Role of Emotional Experience, by Michael S. Brady (review)Mind 124 (496): 1240-1244. 2015.A review of Michael Brady's book Emotional Insight.
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102Rationality, biology and optimalityBiology and Philosophy 17 (5): 613-634. 2002.A historical theory of rational norms claims that, if we are supposed to think rationally, this is because it is biologically normal for us to do so. The historical theorist is committed to the view that we are supposed to think rationally only if, in the past, adult humans sometimes thought rationally. I consider whether there is any plausible model of rational norms that can be adopted by the historical theorist that is compatible with the claim that adult human beings are subject to rational …Read more
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92The Problem of Emotional SignificanceActa Analytica 28 (2): 189-206. 2013.What does it mean to say that an emotional response fits the situation? This question cannot be answered simply by specifying the core relational theme (loss or risk, say) associated with each emotion: we must also explain what constitutes an emotionally significant loss or risk. It is sometimes suggested that emotionally significant situations are those that bear on the subject’s interests or concerns. I accept that this claim is plausible for some emotional responses, and I propose a particula…Read more
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88Reviews the pursuit of unhappiness: The elusive psychology of well-being by Daniel M. Haybron. Oxford university press, 2008. XV+357 pp. £30 (review)Philosophy 84 (4): 624-629. 2009.
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87Functions in Mind: A Theory of Intentional ContentOxford University Press. 2001.In this adventurous contribution to the project of combining philosophy and biology to understand the mind, Carolyn Price investigates what it means to say that mental states--like thoughts, wishes, and perceptual experiences--are about things in the natural world. Her insight into this deep philosophical problem offers a novel teleological account of intentional content, grounded in and shaped by a carefully constructed theory of functions. Along the way she defends her view from recent objecti…Read more
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78Teleosemantics re-examined: content, explanation and norms: Dan Ryder, Justine Kingsbury and Kenneth Williford : Millikan and Her critics. Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester, 2013, 297 ppBiology and Philosophy 29 (4): 587-596. 2014.This essay reviews a collection of thirteen critical essays on the work of Ruth Millikan. The collection covers a broad range of her work, focusing in particular on her account of simple intentionality, her theory of concepts and her metaphysical views. I highlight and briefly discuss three issues that crop up repeatedly though the collection: (1) Millikan’s externalism (and in particular, her emphasis on how intentional states are used, rather than how they are produced); (2) the nature of inte…Read more
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77Teleological Realism: Mind, Agency, and ExplanationPhilosophical Quarterly 57 (228): 501-503. 2007.
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76Doing without emotionsPacific Philosophical Quarterly 93 (3): 317-337. 2012.This article considers a central question in the philosophy of emotion: what is an emotion? This is a highly controversial question, which has attracted numerous answers. I argue that a good answer to this question may prove very hard to find. The difficulty, I suggest, can be traced back to three features of emotional phenomena: their diversity, their complexity and their coherence. I end by suggesting that we should not be disturbed by this result, as we do not need to know what an instance of…Read more
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73Embodiment, Emotion and Cognition. By Michelle Maiese. (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011. Pp. xi + 260. Price £55.00)Philosophical Quarterly 62 (246): 202-204. 2012.
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60General-purpose contentInternational Studies in the Philosophy of Science 14 (2): 123-133. 2000.In this paper, I consider the objection, raised by Radu Bogdan, that a teleological theory of content is unable to ascribe content to a general-purpose, doxastic system. I begin by giving some attention to the notion of general-purpose representation, and suggest that this notion can best be understood as what I term "interest-independent" representation. I then outline Bogdan's objection in what I take to be its simplest form. I attempt to counter the objection by explaining how a teleologist m…Read more
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52Functional explanations and natural normsRatio 8 (2): 143-160. 1995.In this paper, I try to develop an account of functions which might be of use to a biologist engaged in classifying and explaining natural phenomena. The most pressing difficulty facing such an account is the need to reconcile the normativity of function statements with their explanatory force. I consider two familiar accounts of function statements, offered by Andrew Woodfield and Larry Wright . I examine both accounts in search of the strongest possible formulation of each type of theory. I fa…Read more
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1Functions in Mind: A Theory of Intentional ContentPhilosophical Quarterly 53 (210): 129-132. 2003.
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Open University (UK)Department of Philosophy
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Action |
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Biology |