Bennett, C. orcid.org/0000-0001-8084-1210 (2022) Could there be expressive reasons? A sketch of a theory. International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 30 (3). pp. 298-319. ISSN 0967-2559
Abstract
In pursuit of a theory of expressive reasons, I focus on the practical rationality of actions such as welcoming, thanking, congratulating, saluting – I label them ‘expressive actions.’ How should we understand the kinds of practical reasons that count in favour of expressive actions? This question is related to the question of how to understand non-instrumental fittingness-type reasons for emotion. Expressive actions often are and should be expressions of emotion. It seems to be an important feature of such actions that the reasons that count in favour of the action are entangled with reasons of fittingness that count in favour of the relevantly connected emotion. But how should we understand this entanglement? I argue that the relevant category of reasons cannot be captured on approaches standard in normative theory. I develop a theory of sui generis expressive reasons. I argue that we have reason to perform actions that mark certain situations that contain some significant value or disvalue, independently of any reason to alter those situations. This is the role of expressive actions. Sui generis reasons for expressive actions are entangled with reasons for relevantly connected emotions because (some) emotions have the same role of marking extraordinary situations.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. |
Keywords: | Emotion; expression; expressive action; reasons; practical rationality; ethical theory |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Arts and Humanities (Sheffield) > Department of Philosophy (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 30 Aug 2022 12:39 |
Last Modified: | 27 Jan 2023 17:20 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Taylor & Francis |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/09672559.2022.2121891 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:190309 |
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