{"id":{"repo_id":"cambridge","oai_identifier":"oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/312534"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/cambridge/oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/312534","repository":{"repo_id":"cambridge","name":"Cambridge University","base_url":"https://api.repository.cam.ac.uk/server/oai/request"},"display":{"title":"In Pursuit of Reason: An Essay on Rationality and Emotion","abstract":"Since the publication of Anthony Kenny’s Action, Emotion and Will, there has been a consensus that emotions involve representing their objects as mattering to the subject in a certain way. All major contemporary theories aim to accommodate this characteristic, and those that clearly cannot have generally been abandoned. This essay is an investigation of a related but distinct characteristic of emotion, one that has often been mentioned but that is only beginning to be systematically investigated. This is that emotions are candidates for rationality: it is unreasonable to be angry with someone who is blameless, to envy someone who is wretched, or to be outraged about something that is unproblematic. In this essay, I offer an account of exactly what this rationality consists in, I argue that existing theories of emotion cannot wholly accommodate it, and I develop a theory that can. Chapter One is a critique of the currently ascendant perception theories, and Chapter Two is a critique of the formerly ascendant belief theories. Chapter Three outlines a positive account of emotions, which I characterise as a form of ‘non-doxastic cognitivism’. 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In this essay, I offer an account of exactly what this rationality consists in, I argue that existing theories of emotion cannot wholly accommodate it, and I develop a theory that can. Chapter One is a critique of the currently ascendant perception theories, and Chapter Two is a critique of the formerly ascendant belief theories. Chapter Three outlines a positive account of emotions, which I characterise as a form of ‘non-doxastic cognitivism’. 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