Direction, Causation, and Appraisal Theories of Emotion (forthcoming in Philosophical Psychology)
Appraisal theories of emotion tend to accept the relatively uncontroversial view that emotions are "directed at" objects, events or situations. However, they also tend to presuppose that emotions are normally directed at the contents of the mental representations that triggered them, the corollary being that one need only retrace an emotion's triggering process to determine its direction. I argue that this "retracing view" is too narrow, and that appraisal theorists should consider the contrary thesis that emotional direction is the product of two functionally distinct sub-processes. The first ("affect-causation") produces states with motivational - and perhaps representational - properties on the basis of certain triggering representations. The second ("affect-direction") usefully guides those motivational properties by associating them with representations whose contents might be quite dissimilar from that of the triggering representations'. By provisionally adopting this "independence thesis" and empirically investigating affect-direction as closely as they have investigated affect-causation, appraisal theorists could open up a promising new field of research.
Constitutivism, Belief, and Emotion (forthcoming in dialectica 62:4 December 2008)
Constitutivists about one's cognitive access to one's mental states often hold that for any rational subject S and mental state M falling into a specified range of types, if S believes that she has M, then S has M. Some argue that such a principle applies to beliefs about all types of mental state. Others are more cautious, but neither clearly delineate the principle's range, nor explain why it should be restricted at all. In this paper I argue that the principle is plausible when M is a belief, but not when M is an emotion, leaving open the issue of whether it applies to other mental state types. I account for the asymmetry between belief and emotion by focusing on differences in the commitments they conceptually involve, and then briefly sketch out a psychological explanation of those differences. I conclude that one can reasonably split one's epistemological loyalties between constitutivism regarding meta-beliefs and non-constitutivism regarding beliefs about one's emotions.
An early, edited version of this paper, entitled "Constitutivism and Knowing One's Emotional State", was presented at the 2005 Pacific Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association.
Genetic Enhancement and Parental Obligation (Philosophy in the Contemporary World 14:2 Fall 2007)
In From Chance To Choice (2000), Buchanan, Brock, Daniels, and Wikler argue that parents can be morally obligated to procure genetic treatments for their intended child, but stop short of arguing that they are ever obligated to procure genetic enhancements for it, even though some enhancements might be permissible. By contrast, Heyd argues in Genethics (1992) that while parents can be obligated to procure enhancements (as well as treatments) for their intended child, they are so obligated only if the intervention would not alter the child's personal identity. In this paper I take the case for enhancement a step further by arguing on deontological principles that parents can be morally obligated to procure genetic enhancements for their intended child, regardless of whether the intervention would alter the child's personal identity.
An edited version of this paper, entitled "A Parental Obligation to Genetically Enhance Intended Children in 'Same Number' Cases", was presented at the 2007 Wisconsin Philosophical Association annual meeting at St. Norbert's College.
Emotion, Perception, and Rationality (under submission)
This paper explores the relationship between three provocative ideas: Greenspan's view that emotional feelings can be practically rational in a direct, externalist sense; Millikan's view that sense perceptions can be practically rational in a similar sense; and Prinz's view that emotional feelings are perceptions much like sense perceptions. This triad might encourage one to think that, if all three views are correct, the practical rationality of emotional feelings is basically the same as that of sense perceptions. However, I argue that even if all three views are correct, the ways in which emotional feelings and sense perceptions can be practically rational are different enough to ensure that relatively few of the latter can be evaluated according to the criteria of the former. The practical rationality of emotional feelings remains quite distinctive.
An early, edited version of this paper, entitled "A Puzzle About Emotion, Perception, and Rationality", was presented at the 2007 Pacific Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association.