Philosophy of Mind Seminar (Friday - Week 8, TT22)

Sometimes, your feelings conflict with your evaluative beliefs. Maybe, for example, you are scared of a spider that you know is harmless. Here your feeling is a reason to avoid the spider. But you should ultimately trust your judgment. However, things are different with traditional matters of the heart. Suppose, for instance, that you start to feel badly about a relationship you judge to be important and valuable. Here we think that, sometimes, you should trust your feelings---that you should follow your heart. But this raises a puzzle. For it is hard to see how it could ever be reasonable to follow your heart—why your feelings should ever deserve your trust when they conflict with deeply held evaluative judgments. In this talk, I will try to clarify the puzzle and assess possible solutions.

The Seminar will by in a hybrid format. Those wishing to be added to the mailing list they can write to Mike Martin.