Introduction

This chapter considers epistemological and ethical issues and questions about the aetiology of emotions, many of which bear on these other issues, either directly or indirectly. Rather than attempt to force-fit the emotions into a ready-made conception of the mind within nature, the way forward is surely to develop an account which is from the outset able to include the richness and diversity of emotional life. The emotions will then be dealt with on their own terms—neither specifically mental nor specifically material. Evolutionary accounts of emotion are often provided against a background view that the mind is composed of many distinct mechanisms, or modules, where the operation of each module can be considered largely independently. Simon Blackburn, in his contribution, brings out another sense in which desire and belief are involved in emotion, but in a way which makes them much more intimately related.