The Rationalities of Emotion (original) (raw)

Consistent with what seems to be common parlance, philosophers like Amélie O. Rorty and Jesse J. Prinz have argued that emotions are not, strictly speaking, rational in-themselves. I argue that emotions can be understood not only as being rational in-themselves, i.e., intrinsically rational, strictly speaking, but also as being instrumentally rational, epistemically rational, and evaluatively rational. I begin with a discussion of what it means for emotions to be rational or irrational in-themselves, which includes the derivation of a criterion for the ontological rationality of emotions (CORe): For every emotion or emotion-type there exists some normative standard, given by what emotions are or what an emotion-type is, against which our emotional responses can be judged or evaluated, in light of the fact that our emotions manifest our rationality. I then distinguish what it means for emotions to be rational in-themselves from what it means for emotions to be instrumentally rational, epistemically rational, and evaluatively rational. Finally, I bring my argument to a close by providing a sketch of an account of what emotions are—emotions as superordinate inference rules—that fulfills the CORe, and I conclude with a brief discussion of the implications of this account of emotions on claims of knowledge, and how we understand the rationality of infants, some people with disabilities, and emotional animals.