Abstract
I argue that one’s responsibility for one’s emotions has a two-fold structure: one bears direct responsibility for emotions insofar as they are the upshot of first-order evaluative judgements concerning reasons of fit; and one bears derivative responsibility for them insofar as they are consequences of activities of emotional self-regulation, which can reflect one’s take on second-order reasons concerning the strategic, prudential, or moral desirability of undergoing a particular emotion in a particular context.
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Notes
See Smith (2005) for discussion.
Although Smith says comparatively little about these reasons and their distinctive features, her examples of the reasons associated with emotion-relevant evaluations are those of fittingness. In addition, this account presupposes that emotions are grounded in cognitive-evaluative states, and that they have a representational component. This is a popular, but not mandatory, conception of the essential nature of emotions (see, e.g., Solomon (1976), de Sousa (1987), Greenspan (1988)). For discussion of emotional reasons, see D’Arms and Jacobson (2000).
In other cases, such as embarrassment, anxiety, or annoyance, it is less easy to specify precisely the relevant reasons of fit, and hence to analyse exactly how responsibility for these attitudes is to be understood. Nonetheless, we have a reasonable intuitive grip on what counts as an appropriate emotional response in a given circumstance, even if we do not always have the vocabulary to express it.
This is not to say, however, that an inability to proportion one’s emotions appropriately always entails a lack of responsibility for these states. When a (disproportionate) emotion aligns with, and so expresses, the agent’s evaluative judgements it can be an outcome for which she is responsible, on the self-disclosure picture. Thanks to an anonymous referee for alerting me to this possibility.
See, e.g. Helm (1994) for discussion.
See Smith (2005) for similar cases.
Thus Smith (2008, 2012) states that the rational relations view is not simply an account of “aretaic” responsibility, warranting attributions of goodness and badness, but of moral responsibility proper, licensing attributions of praise or blame. Against this, see, e.g. Levy (2005), Shoemaker (2011).
We can tell a similar story for certain forms of aesthetic criticism, too. For instance, we might treat a subject’s enjoyment of a sentimental artwork as aesthetically problematic in virtue of its being grounded in poor aesthetic judgement.
See Smith (2005: 267) for discussion of this case.
For example, her amusement at racist jokes; her lack of sympathy for the suffering of minority groups; her satisfaction at their mistreatment, and so on.
See also Scanlon (1998).
Ruling out, that is, that the amusement is simply a reflexive response to a tense situation, for instance.
Perhaps in conjunction with the exercise of cognitive change: she may construe the emergency in a positive light, as an opportunity for heroism and acclaim; she may imaginatively frame the situation as being part of a simulation or training exercise, etc.
There is no clear boundary between these two subcategories, such that there is always an answer to when a modification gives rise to a new situation, but no special difficulties arise from this.
Competing theories of the essential nature of emotions will thus come down differently on whether behavioural expression alters the emotion itself directly (a feeling theory will hold that phenomenological effects are constitutive of emotional effects, for instance). For present purposes, it suffices to examine the intentional contents of the emotion, for these are the locus of emotional responsibility on the view under consideration.
See, e.g., Griffiths and Scarantino (2009).
For instance, setting a bad example to our children, or interfering with our care for them.
Children, after all, plausibly lack sophisticated powers of emotional self-regulation.
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Acknowledgements
Thanks to Conor McHugh, Giovanna Colombetti, audiences in Cardiff, Exeter, and Lisbon, and two anonymous referees for comments and assistance. This work has been funded by the European Research Council under the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013), project title “Emoting the Embodied Mind (EMOTER)”, ERC grant agreement 240891.
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Roberts, T. Emotional Regulation and Responsibility. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 18, 487–500 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-014-9535-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-014-9535-7