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Abstract
The aim of this dissertation is to further our understanding of the possible justifications for the norms that dictate the kinds of things that an emotion should be felt towards. Take, for example, the emotion of pride. Most would agree that it is, in some sense, a mistake for a person to feel proud of things that are not accomplishments of his own e.g., barring special circumstances, it would be a mistake to be proud of one's height. Understanding the justification of these norms involves answering such questions as: why is it legitimate to hold our feelings to these standards? What sort of mistake does one make in diverging from one of these norms?
My main thesis is that we can understand these emotional norms as following from the emotions' signaling functions. On this signaling account, for example, pride should only be felt towards one's accomplishments because this is necessary if pride is to signal what it should signal to us about its objects. There are two important features to this account. First, the signaling account does not presume that the emotions necessarily comprise beliefs or any other mental representations, which helps us to bypass a significant difficulty posed by the emotions' diverse psychological natures. Second, I argue that the emotions signaling functions can be established by appeal to a wide range of considerations, including the simple fact that we take the emotions to be signaling to us and the moral advisability of having the emotions perform their signaling functions.
My appeal to the morality of feeling an emotion in grounding basic emotional norms conflicts with the widespread view that such appeals are fallacious. I argue that, to the contrary, such appeals to moral considerations are wholly legitimate and may even be necessary for justifying these norms. Finally, I claim that employing the signaling account can help illuminate the norm for a problematic emotion, disgust.
