Theme
The Expected Fittingness Maximisation Theory of Emotional Rationality
Speaker
Artūrs Logins, Assistant Professor, Laval University
Moderator
Davide Fassio, Associate Professor, Zhejiang University
Time
Friday, March 13, 2026, 16:00
Place
Room 311, Chengjun Complex Building 4, Zhejiang University(Zijingang Campus)
Abstract
According to an increasingly popular view, emotional attitudes can be properly rational or irrational. One prominent line of thought is that the rationality of emotions is tied to their representing the evaluative profile of any given situation. Such a line of thought needs to be regimented, given the overlooked behavior of the rationality of emotions in situations of uncertainty and quasi-certainty, and given the comparative nature of emotional rationality. This paper does just this by deploying decision-theoretic tools and focusing on fittingness as the fundamental value in the emotional domain. The resulting view is the theory of emotional rationality as the maximisation of expected fittingness.
About the Speaker
Artūrs Logins is Assistant Professor in Philosophy, Université Laval, Research Associate at African Centre for Epistemology and Philosophy of Science, and holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Geneva. His research interests lie in epistemology, philosophy of emotion, and metaethics. He has published over thirty articles in journals such as Philosophical Studies and Synthese, and is the author of Normative Reasons: Between Reasoning and Explanation (Cambridge University Press) and A Critical Introduction to Knowledge-First Epistemology (Bloomsbury Academic).
Organized by
School of Philosophy, Zhejiang University
Center for Pragmatic Philosophy, Zhejiang University
Epistemology Group, Zhejiang University
