Emotional Reason: Deliberation, Motivation, and the Nature of Value

by Bennett W. Helm

• ISBN13: 9780521801102
• ISBN10: 0521801109
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-04-30
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

How can we motivate ourselves to do what we think we ought? How can we deliberate about personal values and priorities? Bennett Helm rejects the standard philosophical answers to these questions, which presuppose a sharp distinction between cognition and impulse, and develops a detailed alternative theory both of emotions, desires, and evaluative judgments and of their rational interconnections. The result is an innovative theory of practical rationality and how we can control not only what we do but also what we value and who we are as persons.

Table of Contents

1. Two problems of practical reason

Part I. Felt Evaluations: 2. Emotions and the cognitive-conative divide

3. Constituting import

4. Import: cares, values and preferences

Part II. Practical Reason: 5. Single evaluation perspective

6. Rational control: freedom of the will and the heart

7. Deliberation about value

8. Persons, friendship and moral value.