Abstract:Aristotle has famously made the claim that having the right emotion at the right time is an essential part of moral virtue. Why might this be the case? I consider five possible relations between emotion and virtue and argue that an adequate answer to this question involves the epistemic status of emotion, that is, whether the perceptual awareness and hence the understanding of the object of emotion is like or unlike the perceptual awareness of an unemotional awareness of the same object. If an emotional awaren… Show more
“…Goldie , 251, fn. 17; Starkey , 432). Moreover, contrary to what Deonna and Teroni suppose, they can be attributed to creatures lacking sophisticated conceptual abilities (Roberts , as well as , chapter 4).…”
Section: Objections To the Epistemic Viewmentioning
It is popular to hold that emotions are evaluative. On the standard account, the evaluative character of emotion is understood in epistemic terms: emotions apprehend or make us aware of value properties. As this account is commonly elaborated, emotions are experiences with evaluative intentional content. In this paper, I am concerned with a recent alternative proposal on how emotions afford awareness of value. This proposal does not ascribe evaluative content to emotions, but instead conceives of them as evaluative at the level of intentional mode or attitude (Deonna and Teroni , , ). I first argue that this proposal fails to make emotions intelligible as value apprehensions. There are reasons to suppose that emotions do not apprehend value to begin with, but are related to values in a different, non‐epistemic sense. I then go on to show that the notion of an evaluative intentional mode can still help elucidate the evaluative character of emotion. I argue that there is a plausible non‐epistemic understanding of the view that emotions are evaluative modes. On this account, emotions are not ways of apprehending values, but ways of acknowledging values.
“…Goldie , 251, fn. 17; Starkey , 432). Moreover, contrary to what Deonna and Teroni suppose, they can be attributed to creatures lacking sophisticated conceptual abilities (Roberts , as well as , chapter 4).…”
Section: Objections To the Epistemic Viewmentioning
It is popular to hold that emotions are evaluative. On the standard account, the evaluative character of emotion is understood in epistemic terms: emotions apprehend or make us aware of value properties. As this account is commonly elaborated, emotions are experiences with evaluative intentional content. In this paper, I am concerned with a recent alternative proposal on how emotions afford awareness of value. This proposal does not ascribe evaluative content to emotions, but instead conceives of them as evaluative at the level of intentional mode or attitude (Deonna and Teroni , , ). I first argue that this proposal fails to make emotions intelligible as value apprehensions. There are reasons to suppose that emotions do not apprehend value to begin with, but are related to values in a different, non‐epistemic sense. I then go on to show that the notion of an evaluative intentional mode can still help elucidate the evaluative character of emotion. I argue that there is a plausible non‐epistemic understanding of the view that emotions are evaluative modes. On this account, emotions are not ways of apprehending values, but ways of acknowledging values.
“…So, emotions are on this account necessary for (full) understanding of moral issues; they are a necessary causal part of full understanding (Starkey, ) or conceptual part of full understanding and awareness (McDowell, ; Wiggins, ). One's emotional awareness of an object say is unique to the emotional state and different from an unemotional awareness of the object (Starkey, ). So, an experience of an event with an accompanying emotion may change the experience of the state of awareness of the event itself and as result of this procedure produce an understanding of the event that is not possible without the emotion.…”
Section: Virtue Ethics and Virtue Theorymentioning
confidence: 99%
“…So, an experience of an event with an accompanying emotion may change the experience of the state of awareness of the event itself and as result of this procedure produce an understanding of the event that is not possible without the emotion. (Starkey, , p. 430)…”
Section: Virtue Ethics and Virtue Theorymentioning
confidence: 99%
“…When trying to avoid subjectivism and relativism, Wiggins labels his account ‘a sensible subjectivism’ (Wiggins, ) and McDowell () relies on a ‘whirl of organism’. Starkey (, p. 440) I think also leaves the problem of relativism hanging when he claims that the criteria of appropriateness include ‘our larger values, interests, concerns and goals (i.e. things that relate to our thriving)’.…”
Section: Virtue Ethics and Virtue Theorymentioning
Within the nursing ethics literature, there has for some time now been a focus on the role and importance of character for nursing. An overarching rationale for this is the need to examine the sort of person one must be if one is to nurse well or be a good nurse. How one should be to live well or live a/the good life and to nurse well or be a good nurse seems to necessitate a focus on an agent's character as well as actions because character is (for the most part) expressed in action (e.g. see Laird). This paper will give an overview of the reasons for the role and importance of character in nursing practice and explain its relation to nursing's frequent use of virtue ethics in order to recommend caution. While the paper agrees that the role of character is important in nursing caution is needed in both how much moral and thus normative, emphasis is being placed on the psychology of character and on the drift to virtue ethics. The psychological which may be explanatory needs to be linked with the normative, and a justification for the normative is needed. A justification as virtue ethics is contested, and nursing practice does not need to take on this explanatory and justificatory burden. A tentative proposal raised but not discussed in depth in this paper is that when an ultimate explanation or explanatory ground is needed, nursing practice leads quite naturally to a form of consequentialism as well as a realist metaethic. On this account, there are two levels of moral thinking, and nursing practice entails the virtues at one level and leads quite naturally to moral thinking at another more critical level of the criterion of what makes something right and good independently of character.
“… One variant on this explanation would be that the emotion somehow involves a grasp of new facts. A related view of emotions is defended by Starkey (). …”
One sometimes believes a proposition without grasping it. For example, a complete achromat might believe that ripe tomatoes are red without grasping this proposition. My aim in this paper is to shed light on the difference between merely believing a proposition and grasping it. I focus on two possible theories of grasping: the inferential theory, which explains grasping in terms of inferential role, and the phenomenal theory, which explains grasping in terms of phenomenal consciousness. I argue that the phenomenal theory is more plausible than the inferential theory.
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