Presentations of Value: Evaluative Outlooks and Practical Reason

In this dissertation, I argue for an evaluative outlook account of human practical reason by developing a viable representational psychology that vindicates the following key claims. First, some mental states are evaluative representations with ineliminably evaluative representational content. Second, any successful explanation of a rational action must appeal to evaluative representations. Third, many evaluative representations are products of subrational processes and capacities. Fourth, in humans evaluative representations function to be elements in an overall evaluative understanding. And fifth, evaluative representations by nature have motivational efficacy. In addition to these five foundational claims, I add two more speculative points. Some evaluative representations are partly constituted by their phenomenal quality. And the phenomenal quality of an evaluative representation (if it has phenomenal quality) partly explains its motivational efficacy.

In the first chapter, I state and discuss these key claims and the motivations of the evaluative outlook model. In the second chapter, I sketch an account of representational mind, from perception to propositional thought, and I consider how representations can have evaluative content. In the third chapter, I consider, and ultimately reject, the claim made by some philosophers that emotions are perceptions of evaluative properties. The fourth chapter focuses on capacities for propositional thought and understanding, ultimately developing a notion of intention as a conative state with conceptual content that functions to guide other conative states. In the fifth and final chapter, I develop the idea that life’s meaningfulness is an end that functions in practical reasoning to organize other ends.