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

by Bennett W. Helm

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521039116
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	08/16/2007
Series:	Cambridge Studies in Philosophy
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.46(h) x 0.59(d)

About the Author

Bennett Helm is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Franklin and Marshall College.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements; 1. Two problems of practical reason; Part I. Felt Evaluations: 2. Emotions and the cognitive-conative divide; 3. Constituting import; 4. Varieties of import: cares, values and preferences; Part II. Practical Reason: 5. Single evaluative perspective; 6. Rational control: freedom of the will and the heart; 7. Deliberation about value; 8. Persons, friendship and moral value; Select bibliography; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"This book is a significant contribution to some of the most central debates in moral psychology and represents an important advance in the articulation of a broadly McDowellian approach to them." Ethics

From the Publisher