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Basic Desert Of Reactive Emotions, Zac Cogley

Publication

In this paper, I explore the idea that someone can deserve resentment or other reactive emotions for what she does by attention to three psychological functions of such emotions – appraisal, communication, and sanction – that I argue ground claims of their desert. I argue that attention to these functions helps to elucidate the moral aims of reactive emotions and to distinguish the distinct claims of desert, as opposed to other moral considerations.

Self-Love And Neighbor-Love In Kierkegaard's Ethics, Antony Aumann

Book Sections/Chapters

No abstract provided.

The Three-Fold Significance Of The Blaming Emotions, Zac Cogley

Book Sections/Chapters

Many philosophers working on moral responsibility understand that concept in a Strawsonian way; they follow P.F. Strawson in thinking that we should understand claims about someone’s moral responsibility in terms of the appropriateness of a certain class of emotions. In this paper, I use recent work in psychology of emotion to direct attention to the reasons why emotions are so tightly connected to our moral responsibility practices. Using the blaming emotions (anger, indignation, and resentment) as a model, I identify three different functions that emotions serve: motivation, appraisal and communication. Identifying discrete functions that the blaming emotions serve then allows …

Basic Desert And Reactive Emotions, Zac Cogley

Publication

It is common for philosophers to invoke the idea that someone deserves an emotion like anger because she has done something morally wrong. While appeals to this notion of desert are common in the literature, such references aren’t thoroughly examined. For example, what do we mean when we say that someone deserves anger because she wronged us? This question is important because it is common for one philosopher to claim that someone deserves anger for a moral wrong while another denies it. Without an account of desert claims it is difficult to evaluate which position is more plausible.

We can …