Emotional Reason

Abstract

How can we motivate ourselves to do what we think we ought? How can we deliberate about personal values and priorities? Bennett Helm argues that standard philosophical answers to these questions presuppose a sharp distinction between cognition and conation that undermines an adequate understanding of values and their connection to motivation and deliberation. Rejecting this distinction, Helm argues that emotions are fundamental to any account of value and motivation, and he develops a detailed alternative theory both of emotions, desires and evaluative judgements and of their rational interconnections. The result is an innovative theory of practical rationality and of how we can control not only what we do but also what we value and who we are as persons.

Strategy Making and the Search for Authenticity

“…For them, such ''undistorted perception of immediate psychological reality'' serves as the foundation of the authentic (Salmela, 2005). Helm (2001) notes that emotions not only reveal the true self, they drive the behaviors that construct the evolving self. He differentiates between the impact of cognitions (beliefs and judgments) and conations (desires), or what he terms goal-directedness versus desire-directness.…”

Can Emotion be Modelled on Perception?

“…These arguments purport to show that emotion is a kind of perception, or that there are close analogies between emotion and perception even if emotions cannot be regarded literally as perceptions. Jesse Prinz (2004, 2007) and, more tentatively, Sabine Döring (2004, 2007, 2009), make the strong claim, whereas others, including Ronald de Sousa (1987), Louis Charland (1996, 1997), Christine Tappolet (2000), Peter Goldie (2000, 2002, 2004, 2009), Bennett Helm (2001), Robert Roberts (2003) and Julien Deonna (2006) are happy to point out analogies between emotion and perception without committing themselves to strong versions of perceptualism. These latter, weaker versions of perceptualism are less ambitious in their aims and claims, and therefore less open to criticism.…”

“…In his Emotional Reason (2001), Bennett Helm presents an elaborate theory of the rationality of emotions on the basis of Davidson's holism. Helm proposes that emotions are evaluative feelings of import that both constitute and display the value of their focus, a particular object.…”

The depressive situation

“…Thus, experiencing a particular type of evaluative state is equivalent to experiencing significance, to which a particular valence is always integral. This valence dimension has been exemplarily discussed with regard to the emotions, in particular, for its motivating role (e.g., Helm, 2010, 2001, 99ff). These experiences – that something or someone is experienced as having import, is of significance or is experienced as meaningful – are not solely provided by the reflective sphere, e.g., in virtue of self-reflexive processes (e.g., in terms of “caring,” cf.…”

“…This has been the background for claiming that an adequate theory of evaluation in general – and not only theories of emotions – has to explain both, the intentionality and phenomenology of evaluation (cf. Goldie, 2000; Helm, 2001; Döring and Peacocke, 2002; Stephan and Slaby, 2011), and how these form an integrative unity in processes of evaluative self- and world-disclosure , in particular.…”