Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2014, Philosophy

Although the idea that emotions can be rational has come to be widely accepted by philosophers, theories of emotional rationality are generally wedded to particular theories about the nature of emotions. In contrast, I develop a theory of emotional rationality that is applicable to a broad range of theories of emotions in both psychology and philosophy. Emotional rationality is excellence in exercising one's emotional capacities in one's practical endeavors. From this definition of emotional rationality, I develop some rationality assessments of agents with respect to their emotions. The project is organized around three assessments: warrant, imprudence, and acumen. Emotion theorists commonly discuss three distinct static emotion assessments (fit, warrant, and benefit); I call this group, the traditional assessments. For each of these assessments, emotion theorists have claimed that it is an assessment of rationality. Roughly, an agent's emotion is (i) fitting in a certain situation if the emotion corresponds to the relevant features of her situation, (ii) warranted in a certain situation if she has evidence that for the fittingness of the emotion, and (iii) beneficial in a certain situation if the emotion contributes to her well-being. I argue that none of the traditional assessments, as commonly understood, count as a rationality assessment. One problem with thinking that warranted emotions are rational is that an agent's emotion may be accidentally warranted. In response, I introduce warrant*; roughly, an agent's emotion is warranted* if the agent has evidence for the fittingness of the emotion and the emotion is grounded in that evidence in the right way. I introduce the assessment of imprudence in Chapter Three. An agent is imprudent with respect to a pattern of emotion tokens of the same emotion type felt in similar situations roughly if the agent fails to take steps to regulate her emotion tokens properly in light of actual relevant feedback providing e (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Justin D'Arms (Advisor); William Cunningham (Committee Member); Richard Samuels (Committee Member); Sigrun Svavarsdottir (Committee Member) Subjects: Philosophy