Books by Carolyn Price
Emotion
Emotion is at the centre of our personal and social lives. To love or to hate, to be frightened o... more Emotion is at the centre of our personal and social lives. To love or to hate, to be frightened or grateful is not just a matter of how we feel on the inside: our emotional responses direct our thoughts and actions, unleash our imaginations, and structure our relationships with others. Yet the role of emotion in human life has long been disputed. Is emotion reason?s friend or its foe? From where do the emotions really arise? Why do we need them at all?
In this accessible and carefully argued introduction, Carolyn Price focuses on some central questions about the nature and function of emotion. She explores the ways in which emotion contrasts with belief and considers how our emotional responses relate to our values, our likes and our needs. And she investigates some of the different ways in which emotional responses can be judged as fitting or misplaced, rational or irrational, authentic or inauthentic, sentimental or profound. Throughout, she develops a particular view of emotion as a complex and diverse phenomenon, which reflects both our common evolutionary past and our different cultural and personal histories.
Engagingly written with lots of examples to illuminate our understanding, this book provides the ideal introduction to the topic for students and scholars and anyone interested in delving further into the intricate web of human emotion.
Functions in Mind: A Theory of Intentional Content
his book investigates what it means to say that mental states -- thoughts, wishes, perceptual exp... more his book investigates what it means to say that mental states -- thoughts, wishes, perceptual experiences, and so on -- are about things in the world. The answer it offers is a novel teleosemantic account of intentional content, grounded in and shaped by a carefully constructed theory of functions. This account centres on the claim that the content of an intentional state depends both on the information that it is supposed to carry and on the way in which it is used -- whether to trigger a simple response, to help keep track of an object or place, to help in planning a route through the environment, or in a sophisticated process of reasoning. Along the way, this account is defended from recent objections to teleosemantic theories, and applied to some notable problems in the philosophy of mind. The book brings together philosophy and biology in order to understand the mind as part of the natural world.
The book is available in Oxford Scholarship Online
Papers by Carolyn Price
Acta Analytica, Jun 2013
What does it mean to say that an emotional response fits the situation? This question cannot be a... more What does it mean to say that an emotional response fits the situation? This question cannot be answered simply by specifying the core relational theme (loss or risk, say) associated with each emotion: we must also explain what constitutes an emotionally significant loss or risk. It is sometimes suggested that emotionally significant situations are those that bear on the subject’s interests or concerns. I accept that this claim is plausible for some emotional responses; and I propose a particular way of interpreting it. I suggest that, for many emotions, emotional significance is determined by the subject’s likes and dislikes – that is, settled dispositions to find a certain situation pleasant or distressing. I contrast this account with other preference-based accounts and with an account that appeals to the subject’s interests. I argue that we should prefer the likes-based account to these rival views.
Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, Jul 9, 2012
This paper considers a central question in the philosophy of emotion: what is an (instance of) em... more This paper considers a central question in the philosophy of emotion: what is an (instance of) emotion? This is a highly controversial question, which has attracted numerous answers. I argue that a good answer to this question may prove very hard to find. The difficulty, I suggest, can be traced back to three features of emotional phenomena: their diversity, their complexity and their coherence. I end by suggesting that we should not be disturbed by this result, as we do not need to know what an instance of emotion is in order to investigate the topic of emotion.
International Journal of Philosophical Studies, Apr 18, 2012
Why should we love the people we do and why does love motivate us to act as it does? In this pape... more Why should we love the people we do and why does love motivate us to act as it does? In this paper, I explore the idea that these questions can be answered by appealing to the idea that love has to do with close personal relationships (the ‘relationship claim’). Niko Kolodny (2003) has already developed a relationship theory of love: according to Kolodny, love centres on the belief that the subject shares a valuable personal relationship with the beloved. However, this account has some implausible consequences. I shall develop an alternative account, discarding the assumption that love centres on a belief, and beginning instead from a conception of love as an emotional attitude – which, I suggest, involves a form of evaluation that is not belief. As I explain, adopting this view allows us to interpret the relationship claim, not as a claim about the subject’s beliefs, but as a claim about the function of love. This approach allows us to answer the questions above, while avoiding the difficulties that confront Kolodny’s account. I end by exploring a case that might be thought to raise some difficulties for my account.
Inquiry 53 (1), Jan 11, 2010
Donald Gustafson has argued that grief centres on a combination of belief and desire:
(1) The be... more Donald Gustafson has argued that grief centres on a combination of belief and desire:
(1) The belief that the subject has suffered an irreparable loss.
(2) The desire that this should not be the case.
And yet, as Gustafson points out, if the belief is true, the desire cannot be satisfied. Gustafson takes this to show that grief inevitably implies an irrational conflict between belief and desire.
I offer a partial defence of grief against Gustafson’s charge of irrationality. My defence rests on two elements. First, I offer an alternative model of emotion, which presents emotions as complex episodes, initiated by emotional appraisals. Secondly, I appeal to John Bowlby’s account of grief to argue that grief involves two forms of sadness (anguish and desolation) which Gustafson’s analysis runs together. I concede that anguish does characteristically involve an element of irrationality. But the irrationality of anguish does not arise from an apparently gratuitous clash between belief and desire, but from a conflict between emotion and belief – a form of irrationality that is both familiar and easily explained. Moreover, desolation need not involve any irrationality.
Should moods be regarded as intentional states, and, if so, what kind of intentional content do t... more Should moods be regarded as intentional states, and, if so, what kind of intentional content do they have? I focus on irritability (understood as an angry mood) and apprehension (understood as a fearful mood), which I examine from the perspective of a teleosemantic theory of content. Eric Lormand has argued that moods are non-intentional states, distinct from emotions; Robert Solomon and Peter Goldie argue that moods are generalised emotions and that they have intentional content of a correspondingly general kind. I present a third model, on which moods are regarded, not as generalised emotions, but as states of vigilance; and I argue that, on this model, moods should be regarded as intentional states of a kind quite distinct from emotions. An advantage of this account is that it allows us to distinguish between a mood of apprehension and an episode of objectless fear.
British Journal of Aesthetics 43(1), Jan 2003
It has been suggested that we might treat the meaning of literary works as a matter of their func... more It has been suggested that we might treat the meaning of literary works as a matter of their function. In this paper I investigate what such an account might look like, given a defensible theory of artificial functions. I consider two teleological accounts of work meaning: one that takes the meaning of a literary work to be determined by its design function and one that takes meaning to depend on use function. It might be thought that an account centring on design functions would be a robustly intentionalist account; in contrast, I argue that such an account would take authors' intentions to be one factor among others determining the meaning of literary works. An account centring on use functions will be a robustly anti‐interpretationalist account; but I argue that it is a less attractive version of the account, because it cannot distinguish between a reasonable and an unreasonable reading of a literary work.
A historical theory of rational norms claims that, if we are supposed to think rationally, this i... more A historical theory of rational norms claims that, if we are supposed to think rationally, this is because it is biologically normal for us to do so. The historical theorist is committed to the view that we are supposed to think rationally only if, in the past, adult humans sometimes thought rationally. I consider whether there is any plausible model of rational norms that can be adopted by the historical theorist that is compatible with the claim that adult human beings are subject to rational norms, given certain plausible empirical assumptions about our history and capabilities. I suggest that there is one such model: this model centres on the idea that a procedure is rational if it has been endorsed (or at least not rejected) by mechanisms that have the function to ensure that the subject learns to reason in a way that approaches a certain kind of optimality.
General-purpose content
International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 14 (2), 2000
In this paper, I consider the objection, raised by Radu Bogdan, that a teleological theory of con... more In this paper, I consider the objection, raised by Radu Bogdan, that a teleological theory of content is unable to ascribe content to a general-purpose, doxastic system. I begin by giving some attention to the notion of general-purpose representation, and suggest that this notion can best be understood as what I term "interest-independent" representation. I then outline Bogdan's objection in what I take to be its simplest form. I attempt to counter the objection by explaining how a teleologist might ascribe content in a particular case - the case of a perceptual judgement whose content is learned. I reject the idea that the teleologist can appeal to the way in which the subject has used the judgement, or its constituent concepts, in the past, on the grounds that it is possible for the subject to produce judgements and concepts that never help her to satisfy any of her interests. Instead, my account depends on the idea that the process of learning is regulated by a mechanism whose function is to produce a harmony between the information carried by perceptual judgements and the way in which they are used in inference.
Philosophical Studies 89(1), Jan 1998
Determinate functions
Nous 32 (1), Mar 1998
The purpose of this paper is to consider an objection which is often brought against teleological... more The purpose of this paper is to consider an objection which is often brought against teleological theories of intentional content. The objection is that teleological theories are unable to support determinate ascriptions of content to intentional states. I defend a particular version of the teleological theory against a particular version of this objection.
Ratio 8(2), Sep 1995
In this paper, I try to develop an account of functions which might be of use to a biologist enga... more In this paper, I try to develop an account of functions which might be of use to a biologist engaged in classifying and explaining natural phenomena. The most pressing difficulty facing such an account is the need to reconcile the normativity of function statements with their explanatory force. I consider two familiar accounts of function statements, offered by Andrew Woodfield (an ‘Actual Capacity Theorist’) and Larry Wright (a ‘Historical Theorist’). I examine both accounts in search of the strongest possible formulation of each type of theory. I fail to find a formulation of the ACT which is completely immune from counterexamples, but I do find a satisfactory formulation of the HT. In particular, I argue that the HT should incorporate a point central to the ACT that functions involve a means/end relationship between two devices. I then consider functional explanations: I argue that an ACT which holds that function statements are intrinsically explanatory cannot offer a satisfactory account. The account offered by Woodfield, who rejects this assumption, is adequate, though less attractive than the account suggested by the HT. I conclude by considering how the HT can account for functional norms.
Book chapters by Carolyn Price
At first sight, it is hard to imagine a full account of our moral and social lives that has nothi... more At first sight, it is hard to imagine a full account of our moral and social lives that has nothing to say about compassion. The moral value of compassion is emphasized in many religious traditions; and many moral theorists have taken compassion to play a foundational role in our moral lives. Yet there is no agreed account of what compassion is. There is disagreement, too, about compassion's value – how, exactly, it might contribute to morally admirable or flourishing lives; what its limitations and dangers might be; and even whether it is important in our moral lives at all. Finally, assuming that compassion is morally valuable, we might wonder how it is to be cultivated. In this introduction, we shall sketch some of the background to these debates, before introducing the chapters that follow.
Fearing Fluffy: the content of an emotional appraisal
Published in 'Teleosemantics' edited by Graham MacDonald and David Papineau. Oxford: Oxford Unive... more Published in 'Teleosemantics' edited by Graham MacDonald and David Papineau. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006: 208-228.
Reviews by Carolyn Price
Teleosemantics re-examined: content, explanation and norms (Essay review of Millikan and Her Critics, edited by Dan Ryder, Justine Kingsbury and Kenneth Williford)
Review of Functional Beauty by Glenn Parsons and Allen Carlson
European Journal of Philosophy, 2011
Review of Embodiment, Emotion and Cognition by Michelle Maiese
The Philosophical Quarterly, 2012
Review of The Pursuit of Unhappiness: The Elusive Psychology of Well-being by Daniel M. Haybron
Philosophy 84 (4), Oct 2009
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Books by Carolyn Price
In this accessible and carefully argued introduction, Carolyn Price focuses on some central questions about the nature and function of emotion. She explores the ways in which emotion contrasts with belief and considers how our emotional responses relate to our values, our likes and our needs. And she investigates some of the different ways in which emotional responses can be judged as fitting or misplaced, rational or irrational, authentic or inauthentic, sentimental or profound. Throughout, she develops a particular view of emotion as a complex and diverse phenomenon, which reflects both our common evolutionary past and our different cultural and personal histories.
Engagingly written with lots of examples to illuminate our understanding, this book provides the ideal introduction to the topic for students and scholars and anyone interested in delving further into the intricate web of human emotion.
The book is available in Oxford Scholarship Online
Papers by Carolyn Price
(1) The belief that the subject has suffered an irreparable loss.
(2) The desire that this should not be the case.
And yet, as Gustafson points out, if the belief is true, the desire cannot be satisfied. Gustafson takes this to show that grief inevitably implies an irrational conflict between belief and desire.
I offer a partial defence of grief against Gustafson’s charge of irrationality. My defence rests on two elements. First, I offer an alternative model of emotion, which presents emotions as complex episodes, initiated by emotional appraisals. Secondly, I appeal to John Bowlby’s account of grief to argue that grief involves two forms of sadness (anguish and desolation) which Gustafson’s analysis runs together. I concede that anguish does characteristically involve an element of irrationality. But the irrationality of anguish does not arise from an apparently gratuitous clash between belief and desire, but from a conflict between emotion and belief – a form of irrationality that is both familiar and easily explained. Moreover, desolation need not involve any irrationality.
Book chapters by Carolyn Price
Reviews by Carolyn Price