engleski

No Private Emotions: communal aspect of rationality of emotions

There is a wide spectrum of ontologies of emotion in literature, mostly emphasising their similarity to judgements or perceptions, and there is no universal conclusion of what emotions really are, and whether they are a single kind of thing at all. Nonetheless, emotions also raise normative questions about the extent to which they can be said to be rational, or can contribute to rationality. Contribution of emotions to conduct of ‘ rational life’ is important, as the characteristics of belief and action most commonly associated with rationality do not provide sufficient grounds to guide an organism towards any particular course of action. The fact that humans, unlike machines, do not face a problem of deciding among a range of logically possible actions, as most of the consequences of each are eliminated a priori, without time being wasted on their consideration, may be due to our capacity for emotions, as they seem to provide a mechanism by which our attention is constrained and directed. The extent to which a particular course of action can be seen to be rational will depend on rationality of emotions then. On Ronald de Sousa’ s account emotions seem to have both an innate biological and a socially induced component. A question arises whether private emotions can be developed, or whether sentient beings that are not members of our ‘ social group’ can have emotions. Based on the contribution of emotions to ‘ rational life’ we can also ask how much of our rational behaviour is a result of social conditioning. A brief survey of the related issue of interpretation of Wittgenstein’ s ‘ private language argument’ shows that epistemological not ontological barriers preclude considerations of privacy of emotions.

rationality; private language argument; emotions

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