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Epistemic perceptualism and neo-sentimentalist objections

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Robert Cowan
Robert Cowan*
Affiliation:
Philosophy, School of Humanities, University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK
*
Email: robert.cowan@glasgow.ac.uk
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Abstract

Epistemic Perceptualists claim that emotions are sources of immediate defeasible justification for evaluative propositions that can (and do) sometimes ground undefeated immediately justified evaluative beliefs. For example, fear can constitute the justificatory ground for a belief that some object or event is dangerous. Despite its attractiveness, the view is apparently vulnerable to several objections. In this paper, I provide a limited defence of Epistemic Perceptualism by responding to a family of objections which all take as a premise a popular and attractive view in value theory – Neo-Sentimentalism – according to which values are analysed in terms of fitting emotions.

Keywords

Perceptual theory of emotionsimmediate justificationaffective intuitionismneo-sentimentalismevaluative judgement
Type
Distinguished Lecture
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 46 , Issue 1 , February 2016 , pp. 59 - 81
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Journal of Philosophy 2015

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