Could There Be Expressive Reasons? A Sketch of A Theory

Abstract

In pursuit of a theory of expressive reasons, I focus on the practical rationality of actions such as welcoming, thanking, congratulating, saluting – I label them ‘expressive actions.’ How should we understand the kinds of practical reasons that count in favour of expressive actions? This question is related to the question of how to understand non-instrumental fittingness-type reasons for emotion. Expressive actions often are and should be expressions of emotion. It seems to be an important feature of such actions that the reasons that count in favour of the action are entangled with reasons of fittingness that count in favour of the relevantly connected emotion. But how should we understand this entanglement? I argue that the relevant category of reasons cannot be captured on approaches standard in normative theory. I develop a theory of sui generis expressive reasons. I argue that we have reason to perform actions that mark certain situations that contain some significant value or disvalue, independently of any reason to alter those situations. This is the role of expressive actions. Sui generis reasons for expressive actions are entangled with reasons for relevantly connected emotions because (some) emotions have the same role of marking extraordinary situations.

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