The HESP Regional Seminar for Excellence in Teaching
The Advancement of University Education in Ethics
The Second Summer School
June 22 - July 12, 2005

Dr. T. Govier (Canada)
Reasoning about emotions

1. Perhaps it makes no sense to reason or dispute our emotions and attitudes because these are not within our control? No: our emotions and attitudes are at least indirectly subject to our control. We can reflect, direct our attention, and choose and direct our conversations and actions. In these ways we can reinforce our emotions and attitudes or amend them.

2. Emotions and attitudes have propositional commitments , which is to say that they presuppose certain beliefs. Suppose that a man is angry with his colleague because the colleague stole money from him. (That the colleague stole the money is a presupposed proposition, and may be called the object of his anger.) Now suppose this man finds the money in the pocket of an old jacket. It is provably false that the colleague stole it. Because of this change, this man's anger at his colleague will go away. (If it does not, he is angry about something else.) Beliefs can be evaluated and amended on the basis of reasoning; since emotions presuppose beliefs, they too can be amended.

3. Emotions are also subject to evaluation as to their appropriacy or reasonableness. If a woman feels sad because her mother has died, that emotion would be judged fitting, or appropriate, in most circumstances. By contrast, suppose that she felt insulted because a friend forgot a casual appointment. In such a case, the feeling is arguably exaggerated and unreasonable.

4. In all of this, we must recall that there is a distinction between having an emotion, E; talking about it, and acting on it.

References:

  • Justin D'Arms and David Jacobson, “The Moralistic Fallacy: On the Appropriateness of Emotion,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 60 (2000), 65 – 90.
  • George Graham, “Melancholic Epistemology,” Synthese 54 (1990), 399 – 422.
  • Martha Nussbaum, Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law . (Princeton N.J.: Princeton University Press 2004). Chapter 1.
  • Irving Thalberg, “Emotion and Thought,” American Philosophical Quarterly 1 (1964), 45 – 65.

Updated: 11.06.2005.