Introduction

Should we let ourselves be guided by our emotions in our ethical and epistemic considerations? In this book, I will give a positive answer to this question. This is not a new proposal. However, this book lays out a novel argument, one that involves positing a kind of mental state that has so far not been attended to in this debate. I will argue that there is a kind of emotion that is not cognitive, and nevertheless object-directed. If I am right, the question of normative guidance must revise its philosophy of mind. In other words, when we ask ourselves which mental states can play roles in normative guidance, we are starting from an account of what mental states there are; if there are more and different mental states than we have so far considered, we have reason to take a fresh look at longstanding questions.

By showing that there is a kind of emotion that is object-directed and yet non-cognitive, I argue that the debate has so far not proceeded on the right assumptions. So far, philosophers have mostly proceeded from the assumption that emotions are in some way already cognitive. Accordingly, even if they do play a role in normative guidance, this role is to be explained by their cognitive dimensions. Other philosophers reject cognitivism about the emotions. On their view, however, assuming that the emotions are indeed not cognitive, it is inconceivable that they could play any role in practical or theoretical guidance. I show that this latter idea stems from the assumption that not to be cognitive necessarily means for the emotions to not be object-directed, that is, to not be able to refer or relate to objects. Hence, I argue, if we can show that non-cognitive emotions can nevertheless be object-directed in some way, it is possible that they play a role in practical and theoretical guidance. This is precisely what I aim to show. Non-cognitive emotions are object-directed in their own way, and can thus be normative guides in a special way.

The way in which non-cognitive emotions can be normative guides, I argue, is by disrupting engrained habits and beliefs.1 This is the second new suggestion I make in this book: that an important aspect in normative guidance has been neglected so far, namely, the importance of being able to reconsider one’s ways. If it is important that at times we stop in our tracks and reconsider our ingrained ways of acting and believing, there is a question of how we achieve such a moment of pause. What makes us pause and question our ways? Philosophers have put a lot of effort into showing how we can have stable commitments and beliefs over time. But not much has been said about how we can break open such commitments and beliefs again if they are not appropriate anymore. I argue that this is a far-reaching omission: we need to ask which mental capacities are involved—and which mental states may be crucial—in enabling reconsideration and adjustments of our ways of life. We live in a constantly changing world,2 and our circumstances demand of us different kinds of habits and beliefs as time goes by. Once we dwell on this, it is indeed surprising that not more work has been done asking how our stable commitments and beliefs over time can also be held flexible enough to be able to change according to these changing demands on us.

Bringing these two hitherto neglected strands of thought together, I argue that non-cognitive emotions play the significant role of disrupting engrained beliefs and habits when necessary, giving the agent a way to see things outside of her regular mindset, and giving her the needed starting-point to reconsider her ways when necessary.

By arguing that non-cognitive emotions play this significant role in normative guidance, I deliberately aim to stay within a modest frame of what I can argue in the scope of a short book. There is a bigger picture, however, and I wish to briefly frame the book by speaking to this bigger picture. I take the argument of this book to be a first step toward the larger hypothesis that, in the practical sphere, how an action feels can per se be an ethically justifying reason to do it or not to do it, no matter what other (prudential or otherwise) advantages this could bring. That is, the larger hypothesis is that feelings should be given a more substantial role in ethical decisions per se. The idea is that there is something to be lost in ethics—or rather, in our lives, and correspondingly, in theories about well-lived human lives—if we do not allow feelings to play this role in our moral decision-making. A defense of this claim would ultimately require a debate about the nature of ethics. That is, it would require me to say more—much more—about what we ask when we pose the question “what should I do?”. Some assume that this question asks what moral principles we should follow. But I would argue that this question aims at the same time at more and at less. It aims at more in the sense that I—qua human being—want to go beyond just following moral principles when I ask what I should do. It aims at less in the sense that moral principles might demand of me to act in a way that goes beyond what one can demand of a human being if it asks me to disregard my feelings. Or so I would argue. But it is too large a theme to re-think the nature of ethics here. So, I cannot and will not argue for this larger hypothesis in this book. Rather than taking this larger point as a demonstrandum, I keep it as a framing hypothesis. My demonstrandum, then, is that non-cognitive emotions help us attain the virtue of flexibility, which makes them important in ethical decision-making.

This larger, framing hypothesis also has its parallel in the theoretical sphere, on the question what “good thinking” (beyond ethical decision-making) is. That is, we can think of the account in this book as a first step toward the larger hypothesis that, in general, feeling-based thinking is per se better than thinking where no such feeling-states are involved, no matter whether this has any epistemic advantages. But I will restrict myself here too not to argue for this larger hypothesis, which would require a debate about the nature of epistemology, and it is too large a theme to re-think the nature of epistemology here. Instead, I will argue—as a first step toward the larger hypothesis—that we need these non-cognitive emotional responses in order to be creative thinkers who can move beyond their current conceptual framework. This will turn out to be the epistemic aspect of the virtue of flexibility.

Since this book makes claims about the nature of emotions, I will also engage with some empirical work in psychology. My main methodology, however, remains within the confines of conceptual analysis and construction of conceptual models to clarify the questions at hand. The main result of the book will be the introduction of a hitherto neglected kind of mental state, the non-cognitive but still object-directed kind of emotions, on the one hand, and the introduction of a hitherto neglected kind of virtue, namely, the virtue of flexibility, on the other.

In the first and in the fourth chapter, I will present my two proposals, respectively, while in the second and in the third chapter, I will take a step back in order to offer the conceptual analysis to corroborate these proposals. In the fifth chapter, I will extend the framework I have developed in the practical sphere of ethical decision-making to the theoretical sphere—asking whether the hitherto neglected mental state we have discovered also plays a role in what it is to think well, beyond decision-making on what to do.

In the first chapter, I will make the proposal that there is a kind of emotion that is not cognitive, but nevertheless object-directed. In the second chapter, I will then defend a framework in the philosophy of mind in order to better understand the distinction between cognitive and feeling states. In Chapter 3, I will offer an account of the relevant notion of normativity; we often, though in my mind too quickly, equate normativity with rationality, which leads to the cognitivist bias I argue against. My argument against this identification of normativity with rationality will then open up the conceptual space to make my second proposal in Chapter 4, the proposal that we need to recognize a virtue that has not been considered so far, the virtue of flexibility. The virtue of flexibility can only be recognized once we allow for the idea that cognitive or rational control over our emotions can also be detrimental. That is, only once we do not equate normativity with rationality or cognitive control anymore, we can see that there is such a thing as a virtue of flexibility that allows us to make changes to our beliefs and commitments over time. Having completed my account with this chapter, I will then ask in the fifth and last chapter whether this account can also be extended to the theoretical sphere of what it is to think well, beyond ethical decision-making. I will argue that the virtue of flexibility is also a virtue in the theoretical sphere. I will hence complete the picture in this last chapter, by showing how we can think of the role of the feeling states in thinking and believing. With the distinctions in mind that I introduced in Chapters 1 – 4, I will argue that if we took “the best way of thinking” to be only done by our cognitive capacities, it would amount to the claim that the best way of thinking is “maximally coherent thinking”. However, as I will argue, the norms of good thinking are not...