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XI. Emotion, Weakness of Will, and the Normative Conception of Agency1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2010

Karen Jones
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Extract

Empirical work on and common observation of the emotions tells us that our emotions sometimes key us to the presence of real and important reason-giving considerations without necessarily presenting that information to us in a way susceptible of conscious articulation and, sometimes, even despite our consciously held and internally justified judgment that the situation contains no such reasons. In this paper, I want to explore the implications of the fact that emotions show varying degrees of integration with our conscious agency—from none at all to quite substantial—for our understanding of our rationality, and in particular for the traditional assumption that weakness of the will is necessarily irrational.

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Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 52 , March 2003 , pp. 181 - 200
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2003

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