Talk: Tricia Magalotti

Title: "The Epistemic Peculiarity of Emotions"

When

3 to 5 p.m., Nov. 15, 2019

Where

Emotions seem to behave in a way that is epistemically peculiar. We have good reasons for thinking that emotions are candidates for epistemic rationality and irrationality (and are not merely arational). At the same time, it seems as though they behave in a way that is epistemically different from beliefs. For example, it does not seem quite as irrational to fear flying as it does to believe that flying is dangerous. This observation raises an interesting question: if the epistemic standards for two different mental attitude types are in fact different, can it be the case that is the same sense of “epistemic rationality” employed in the two cases? In this talk, I aim to explain this discrepancy between beliefs and emotions by appeal to a form of Epistemic Consequentialism, the view that the justification of a belief depends on the consequences of believing in a particular way.