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Le groupe de recherche en philosophie Thumos (université de Genève) propose deux bourses de thèse de 4 ans à partir d'octobre 2010, en lien avec le programme de recherche "Désir, émotion et esprit" présenté ci-dessous. Le profil des postes et les modalités de recrutement sont disponibles sur le site de Thumos.Desire,  Emotion and the Mind2010-2014Philosophy Department of the University of GenevaSwiss Centre for Affective Sciences1.  Summary of research planWe commonly explain emotions by means of  desires, and explain desires by means of emotions. For instance, we say  things like “He admires Maria so much, he wants to spend most of his  time with her” and “Sam wanted to have this book so badly, he is now  overjoyed”. On the traditional belief-desire model of the mind, however,  it is not clear that there is a clear distinction between desire and  emotion given that the so-called category of the pro-attitudes tends to  lump together many different phenomena, and among these, desires and  emotions. This holds also for many philosophical and psychological  accounts of the emotions in which desires and emotions are not clearly  distinguished. If so, how are we to make sense of these very ordinary  types of explanations in which, on the face of it, one type of mental  state is appealed to in explaining another type of mental state?In light of these problems, the present  project sets itself the task of explaining why and how emotions and  desires should be distinguished, and proposes an account of how the  relation between them should be conceived. The hypothesised account  posits not only that emotions are distinct from desires, but also that  the emotions, conceived as evaluative experiences of one’s environment,  explain desires – causally, ontologically and epistemically – and that  this fact has important consequences for our general understanding of  the mental realm.I start (§2.1 State of research) by  introducing the topic and aim of the project (§2.1a). I first summarise  the research on desire and emotion in the context of the goals pursued  in the project (§2.1b), and subsequently discuss part of the debate in  moral psychology relevant for the explanation of action in terms desire  (§2.1c). On this basis (§2.2. Detailed research plan), I motivate and  clarify the aforementioned overarching hypothesis. Because our emotions  are trackers of values, they play a non-eliminable role in our  psychology: they rationalise our desires (standardly conceived as  triggers of action). Next (§2.2a), I single out four challenges for the  hypothesis that open up four directions for research, i.e. four distinct  sub- projects. The first concerns the very possibility of emotions  constituting reason-giving states (2.2b), the second is concerned with  the different ways in which emotional phenomena can be said to  rationalise desires (with a particular focus on temperaments,  sentiments, personality traits, etc.) (§2.2c), the third is concerned  with how fruitful the proposed hypothesis is in providing a taxonomy of  the pro-attitudes (§2.2d), the fourth is concerned with confronting the  hypothesis and its framework with work conducted in empirical psychology  (§2.2d).The crux of the hypothesis put forward  in this project is not only that emotions have, as it is often observed,  a crucial regulatory role to play in our lives, but that without them  we would be blind to a whole dimension of our environment, i.e. its  evaluative dimension. This, if true, militates in favour of  reconsidering the fundamental architecture of the mind as including  emotions in addition to beliefs and desires. It is thanks to emotions  that our desires and our (evaluative) beliefs get to be intelligible  from a rational or normative perspective.2.Research plan2.1. State of researcha. Topic and Aim.  Desire is a key concept in contemporary philosophy of mind, one which  is fascinatingly understudied. In the framework of so-called  belief-desire psychology (Davidson, 1963), also sometimes referred to as  Humeanism (Smith, 1994), in which most contemporary philosophy of mind  is couched, there is nothing special about desires. Desire is regarded  as one type of many mental states or perhaps even just a cover term for  all the phenomena that motivate and cause action, sometimes called  conations or pro-attitudes: drives, instincts, appetites, needs,  impulses, urges, desires, wants, values, motives, will, volitions,  strivings and tryings, efforts, obligations, goals, intentions, choices,  decisions, principles, normative beliefs, sentiments, character traits,  temperaments, wishes, yearnings, expectations, hopes AND emotions  generally. Of course, these phenomena might be different in some way or  other, but for most philosophical purposes within the belief-desire  model of the mind, they are the same inasmuch as they serve to propel us  to action. The present project is motivated by the following worry  about this view: by mixing all the phenomena listed here – note that it  lumps together psychological states, processes and dispositions, but  also states and processes that on the face of it might not be  psychological at all – are we not missing differences which might  ultimately produce a completely different picture of the mind when we  really attend to them? In particular, and this is crucial for this  project, the category of “pro-attitude” does not distinguish between  desire and emotion. This should give us pause. Why?We are familiar with the following  folk-psychological explanations: “She desires to visit her mother  because she misses her”, “He admires Maria so much, he wants to spend  most of his time with her”, “Sam wanted to have this car so badly, he is  now overjoyed”, “Maria wanted to go with me on holidays, what a  disappointment it is for her!”. These examples illustrate a common type  of explanation: emotions cause and motivate desires, and desires cause  and motivate emotions. These explanations seem to make sense of one type  of mental states by appeal to another type. On the belief-desire model  of the mind, however, this might in fact be an illusion. For, on many  popular and important psychological (Brehm, 1999) and philosophical  (e.g. Marks, 1982, Searle, 1983; Gordon, 1987; Green, 1992, Wollheim,  1999, Gordon, 1987) accounts of emotions, the latter are explicitly or  implicitly understood in conative terms. If this is true, then the type  of explanation offered above, contrary to appearances, would not appeal  to the occurrence of one type of mental states to explain the occurrence  of another type of mental states; indeed, in the end, it might seem  that conative phenomena explain other conative phenomena. Is this  correct? Couldn’t it be rather that desire is in fact one type of  emotion; or perhaps more plausibly, that desire is distinct altogether  from emotion?The hypothesis at the centre of this  project rests on the claim that emotions and desires are distinct types  of mental phenomena playing radically distinct roles in our mental  economy. The aim of the proposed research is thus to provide an account  of the way the relations between desires and emotions should be  articulated, together with a theory of the relations between these  phenomena and action. In a nutshell the hypothesis is the following:  desires, regarded as they are in the traditional belief-desire model of  the mind as inner causes of action, can and do rationalise action when  they are grounded, directly or indirectly, in emotions conceived of as  reason-sensitive states. The present project tries to cash out this  hypothesis by bringing together three areas of research on desire that  are too often insulated from one another: (i) straight philosophy of  mind of the so-called pro-attitudes and its concern with the nature of  mental states and their interrelations, (ii) moral psychology with its  concern to characterise desire in ways that are relevant for rational  and/or moral action, and (iii) empirical psychology of emotion and  motivation with its concern to pin down the processes and mechanisms  explaining behaviour.This first part of the project  articulates the framework and prepares the ground necessary to formulate  the aforementioned hypothesis. In section B, I motivate the claim that  emotions should neither be conceived in terms of desires nor desires in  terms of emotions. This will provide the occasion for presenting the  ideas driving present-day philosophical research on desire and  motivation on the one hand and presenting present-day philosophical  research on emotion on the other hand while introducing distinctions and  themes necessary for motivating the main hypothesis of the project.  With these distinctions in hand, I move on to discuss, in section C,  debates in moral psychology on the role desires might or might not play  in our ordinary explanations of action in terms of reasons. In this  section, I motivate the claim that the solutions proposed in the  literature on how the belief-desire model of the mind should be modified  or abandoned to account for our ordinary explanations of action are not  satisfactory as they stand. This, as we shall see, opens the door to  the idea that a satisfactory account of the mind must regard emotions  not only as distinct from desires but also as an essential and  non-eliminable ingredient of our mental economy.b. Three  intuitions about desires and their link to emotions. In  philosophy, research on desire is very scattered (desires are often  treated in passing and in relation to other phenomena) and this is  particularly true of research on desire and its link with emotions. It  is fair to say though that three fundamental intuitions have  traditionally driven the theory of desire, intuitions that continue to  drive present-day research on this topic. And as we shall see, we seem  to have analogous intuitions with respect to emotions. (1) A first  intuition with respect to desire, especially strong when focusing on the  experiential dimension of the phenomenon is related to the pleasures and pains  coming with its satisfaction or its frustration. We might think that  desires are essentially states that are oriented towards pleasure and  thus that they should be compared and contrasted with aversions that are  oriented towards the avoidance of pain (Duncker, 1941; Dretske, 1966;  Gosling, 1969; especially Strawson, 1994), (2) A second intuition, at  the other end of the spectrum, would have it that desires are evaluative  representations. They represent the desired  object as good in some way. This ancient and venerable way of  looking at desire is congenial to the moral philosopher whose primary  objective is to understand the link between action and value (Aristotle,  Aquinas, and for instance Stampe, 1987; Helm, 2001; Oddie, 2005). (3)  Finally, a third intuition, perhaps the first that comes to mind,  insists on the link between desire and action.  Desires are simply those mental states that dispose subjects to bring  about the content of these states. Accounts based on this intuition are  widespread in contemporary philosophy of mind and can be considered to  represent the standard view (Armstrong, 1968; Searle, 1983; Stalnaker,  1987; Smith, 1994).Now, at the first approximation at  least, are these intuitions not precisely those we also have regarding  emotions? If we think of emotion as being the locus of pleasures and  pains (e.g. Russell, 1980 and 2003; Goldstein, 2003), as being forms of  evaluations of the world and of oneself (e.g. deSousa, 1987; Tappolet,  2000) and as having intimate links with action (Frijda, 2003), it is no  surprise that desires and emotions are often put in the same box. But  should they really? A further look at these intuitions and the research  that ground them reveal that they should not.(1) The conception of desire/aversion as  dispositions to feel pleasures or pains is perhaps one that is most  congenial to the empirically minded philosopher trying to think of  desire as a ‘natural kind’. For while it is difficult to even start  looking for desires in the brain, the mechanics of pain and pleasure  might turn out easier to detect (e.g. Morillo, 1990). On this view, the  distinctive feature of desires and aversions, beyond the various states  of affairs towards which they might be geared, is the pleasures and  pains that the desired state of affairs brings to the subject. To desire  a car is to be disposed to feel pleasure when getting it, to feel pain  when not getting it. This is an elegant and simple way of conceiving of  desire, one that is likely to be applicable to higher animals as well as  humans and thus thought to be easily accommodated within a naturalist  framework of the mind. Note however a crucial feature of the proposed  account. On this way of characterising desire, the link between the  latter and motivation/behaviour is indirect at best. If I desire that p,  I might, if possible, try to bring about that p. But that is not at all  essential to the theory (Strawson, 1994). On this view, I can desire  that it rains, i.e. be disposed to feel pleasure when it does, while  there is nothing I will or can do to bring it about. While this is a  conceivable view of desire, it is not one that will be congenial to the  belief-desire theorist who thinks of it as essentially propelling  action.Be that as it may, once this conception  of desire is stated, it might immediately gain plausibility and appeal  when it is realised that a variety of possible theories of the emotions  is already incorporated into it. If we put together the idea that  desires are dispositions to pleasures or pains and the very common and  intuitive idea that emotions are nothing but pleasures and pains  (valence), perhaps felt with various intensities (arousal) (Russell,  1991), then the link with emotions might be thought to be immediate. Why  not say that the positive emotions are pleasures associated with or  representing the satisfaction of desires and negative emotions are pains  associated with or representing the frustration of desires (Wollheim,  1999)? Or similarly –and this is for example how the most important and  empirically informed recent philosophical publication on desire has it–  emotions are conceived of as representations of net changes in desire  satisfaction  (It should be stressed that in Schroeder’s theory, desire  satisfaction/frustration is associated directly with reward/punishment,  and that the latter, for empirical reasons, should not be identified  straightforwardly with pains and pleasures) relative to expectation  (Schroeder, 2004). Note that we face here one way in which to articulate  the relation between desires and emotions. While emotions here are not  directly assimilated to desires, they are analysed in terms of their  fate.This being said, the view of desires  suggested by the first intuition cannot be the whole story about them –  nor about emotions for that matter (it makes little sense for example to  say that an emotion is satisfied or frustrated). First of all, it is  not clear that all states that dispose me to feel happy in some  circumstances can be described as desires. Second, say, something  totally unforeseen and not even imaginable by me happens and makes me  really happy. In this case, wouldn’t it be really strange to say that I  desired that thing even tacitly or unconsciously? If you do not think it  strange –after all we might have desires with very general and vague  contents– you should think of the converse case. I might very well  desire something whose satisfaction brings indifference or displeasure.  Should we say in this case, and even though the desire has not  disappeared, that because it was not a disposition to feel pleasure in  the relevant circumstances, it was not truly a desire at all?(2) This brings us to the second  intuition: the idea that it is not pleasure that is at the centre of  desire, but the representation of a state of affairs as falling under  the good (the value of the good), pleasure being one of the good that  one might represent by desires. Perhaps, what distinguishes the  motivations that, say, a robot might have from the real desires that  mental beings might have is that mental beings construe the desired  state of affairs as being worth pursuing (Helm, 2006). On this view,  desires are representation of states of affairs as being good in some  way or other, representations that have the power to move one to action.  To desire a cigarette is to view smoking as worth pursuing, to desire  helping your friend is to view this action as a good thing to do. In  both cases, these positive representations are thought of as enough to  dispose one to action.Now here again we face a conception of  desire which possesses all the ingredients for thinking of desires and  emotions as having very similar structures. Although the idea of desires  as presentations of values is more congenial to the philosopher than to  the psychologist, the latter is familiar with the idea that emotions  are presentations of values or at least forms of evaluations. Since the  cognitive revolution in emotion theory (e.g. Lazarus, 1966; Solomon,  1976; Scherer, 1984), it is common to think of emotion as having as one  of its fundamental functions to make subjects sensitive to what is  significant for them, or of value to them, given what they care about.  On this view of the emotions, objects and situations are affectively  presented in evaluative terms, e.g. as being dangerous (fear),  self-degrading (shame), obstructive or offensive (anger), etc. Emotions  are sensitive to the evaluative dimensions of our environment given our  cares, concerns, goals, etc., and as such, tend to motivate us to  distinct types of actions (Frijda, 2007). In this context, then, we have  of course another reason to believe that desires, this time understood  as representations of objects, states and processes as good, are very  much like emotions. This, together with the intuitions that desires have  intimate relations with pains and pleasures, might convince someone  that there is no interesting distinction between emotions and desires.While the present project endorses the  claim that emotions are indeed forms of evaluations of the world, it  holds that it is wrong to think of desires in such terms. To say that  desiring something implies in some sense that the subject views that  thing in some favourable light is probably correct, but it is doubtful  that desires in themselves represent the object in that light. First of  all, many desires, instrumental desires for example, might be thought  not to be in themselves representations of state of affairs as being  good. Second, and crucially, on most accounts of desires, they have the  wrong nature to have a representative role. If a desire is a state that  has the function to change the world in the way the desire represents it  to be, it is bizarre to think that it is also and in itself a  representation of the world as good. Desires, many philosophers would  argue, have the world-to-mind direction of fit (e.g. Searle, 1983;  Humberstone, 1992; Smith, 1994; Zangwill, 1998; the initial intuition  comes from Anscombe, 1957). Desires, in stark contrast with emotions,  aim at the realisation of their content (see Goldie 2000 for caution on  this point). It makes no sense to say, for example, that my joy at  seeing the cake (as opposed to my desire to eat it), aims at the  realisation of its content. As a result and with such a picture of  desire, we end up with an account which downplays what is usually  considered to be the most important trait of desire: its essential link  to action.(3) Insisting on the third of these  intuitions, i.e. the link between desire and action, is perhaps the most  secure way of bringing to the fore the differences between desire and  emotion. On this view, a desire that p is essentially this state that  propels us to do p. This way of thinking of desire is one that is most  natural for the functionalist philosopher of mind interested in the  links between belief, desire and action, and one which grounds the  belief-desire model already alluded to. The philosopher who insists on  the link between desire and action will emphasise those features of  desires that make them the natural candidates for being essentially  dispositions to action. First, and in addition to what has already been  said about the direction of fit of desires, she will argue that desires,  contrary to appearances, are always directed at states of affairs.  Indeed, desiring an object (a car) is always, ultimately, desiring that  some state of affairs involving the object obtains (possessing the car)  (Searle, 1983; Humberstone, 1990). Second, she will point out that  desires are always directed at a state of affairs that is believed to be  non-actual, i.e. future (Kenny, 1963). It is very bizarre to desire  something the subject believes is already the case. It can be argued  indeed that what looks like desires concerning past events, if they are  not the emotional attitudes of regret, guilt, etc., are desires that  these events still be ahead of one. This is why desires are said to be  concerned only with future state of affairs. Finally, she would likely  insist that the bringing about of the state of affairs must be believed  to be in the power of the desirer – one cannot desire bringing about  something one believes one has no control over whatsoever (Anscombe  1957; Kenny, 1963). Hence, this set of claims, combined with the idea  that the performance of an action has a special feel to it when it is  desired, a feel that is associated with the feedback the world is  exerting on us as a result of trying to make an impact on it,  (O’Shaughnessy, 1980; Bayne, 2006; Pacherie, 2008), lead us to a picture  of desire which essentially links it to action. All these features now  indeed point towards the idea that desires are essentially states of the  subject that dispose her to act so as to realise the state of affairs  represented by the desire. And if this is so, then there are good  reasons to think that desires are states that are very different from  emotions. Why?While emotions certainly have links with  motivation and action, it cannot be as intimate as the link between  desire and action that is suggested here (e.g. Prinz, 2004). First,  emotions, it is often said, can be directed at objects rather than  states of affairs. It seems wrong to say, for example, that admiring  someone can be reduced to a case in which the subject admires one, or a  collection of, states of affairs. Second, although they can and are  often directed at future events, emotions are often directed at present  or past events. Regret, guilt, or nostalgia are all examples of  emotional phenomena that are essentially concerned with the past. And  finally, emotions – unlike desires – can be about objects that are not  believed to be in the power of the subject. One can feel and often feels  emotions about things over which one has absolutely no control. In  fact, it is often said that what is called ‘coping potential’, which can  vary from ‘very much’ to ‘none at all’, is a key determinant in  distinguishing emotions (e.g. Scherer, 1994). Now, what these issues  point towards is that the link between emotion and action is not as  intimate as that between desires and action. This of course should not  come as a surprise if, as we have suggested, emotions present the world  in evaluative terms, i.e. if they have, contrary to desires, the  mind-to-world direction of fit.This quick and partial review of the  ideas and intuitions regarding desire and their link to emotions and  emotion theories shows at the very least that understanding the latter  with the help of the former is not very promising. Now, if looking at  the structure of these two types of mental states should make us think  that it might be a mistake to lump them together in the pro-attitude  category, looking at them from the perspective of action explanation in  moral psychology provides further and different reasons not to do so.c. Desire in Moral  Psychology. There is one area of philosophy, often called moral  psychology, which has long insisted that there is something wrong with  the ‘belief-desire model’ as it stands, and insisted that lumping all  these states together under the umbrella of the conative or pro-attitude  will not do. The thought in this literature is that there must be  restrictions on the kind of behaviour that can be evaluated from the  point of view of morality or rational behaviour, and that these  restrictions are likely to have to do with the type of state that  brought about the behaviour (e.g. Nagel, 1970; Dancy, 1993; Schueler,  1995, 2003). The point is often put like this: actions, at least those  that are relevant for morality are done for reasons. However, not all  the states that we lump together in the pro-attitude box will count as  reasons for actions. My impulse to eat as opposed to my intention to go  to a gourmet restaurant, for example, might not count as a reason for my  action and might therefore fare differently with respect to evaluations  from the point of rationality or morality. If a desire that p, say, is  just a propeller of action, i.e. a triggering cause as opposed to a  structuring cause (Dretske, 1988) that just happens to be operative in  the subject, then the intuition is that the desire in question will  perhaps explain causally the action, but will fail to provide a rational  explanation or justification for it. People at least sometimes act for  reasons that are not reducible to simply desiring performing the action.  The idea is often put this way: it is only when the desire is  appropriately connected to the world, that is, connected to it in such a  way that the projected action is intelligible from the point of view of  rationality or morality that it now might count as a reason for the  action, as opposed to just a brute tendency towards performing it. My  desire to help Jack is perhaps intelligible as a reason to help him if  it is, or is grounded in, an understanding of Jack’s plight and the role  I see myself having with regard to Jack’s fate.This debate, which traditionally opposes  the Humean and the Non-Humean with regard to motivation, is a rare  domain of philosophy in which emphasis is put on the fact that the  crucial distinctions must be made within different types of  pro-attitudes. But the truth is that for obvious and legitimate reasons,  this debate has not gone very far in producing an interesting taxonomy  of the conative realm. As things stand now, fundamentally, mainly two  strategies to get out of the limitations of the belief-desire model for  the purpose of the explanation of action have surfaced.The first consists in rejecting the  model altogether with its distinction between two states (desire and  belief) to which two different functions are ascribed, and reverting to  the ancient and venerable idea (corresponding to one possible reading of  the second intuition presented above in section B) that evaluative  cognitions are in themselves sufficient for motivation. Believing that x  is good is enough for motivating one to pursue x (e.g. Nagel, 1970;  McDowell, 1978 and 1979; Smith, 1994; Dancy, 2000). Although the  motivations for this view are extremely varied, it is fair to say that  the driving idea is the following: a rational explanation of action must  make reference to reasons. And whether we are internalist or  externalist about reasons (Williams, 1981), only so-called cognitive  states –such as believing that x is a good thing– can put us into  contact with reasons and rationally motivate action. The picture  (sometimes called “the deliberative model”) is one in which we  deliberate about the various reasons there are/we have, on the basis of  which we form intentions or make decisions. And the upshot of this view  (admittedly barely sketched here) has generally been to put aside  efforts to provide an account of motivation which tries to reconcile our  Humean mechanistic picture of the mind with the fact that action  explanations are rational explanations. In light of the many reasons we  adduced for thinking that desires have an essential role to play in our  understanding of how action comes about, abandoning altogether the  belief desire-model might be considered to be too much of a price to  pay.The second strategy, one that can be  endorsed in reaction to the first, has consisted in accepting the  framework of the belief-desire model – desires are required because  evaluative cognitions are not in themselves sufficient for having the  motivation to act in accordance with what they recommend – while  supplementing it by reconfiguring desires so as to make them apt to play  the double role of propeller and reason-giver. That is how strange and  new mental states, such as ‘Besires’ (Altham, 1986), ‘motivated desires’  (e.g. Nagel, 1970; Schueler, 1995), ‘second-order desires’ (Frankfurt,  1988), ‘reason providing desires’ (Platts, 1991), etc. were born. These  are states that in themselves can play the double role of giving a  reason for an action and causally propelling it.This latter idea is very attractive  since it combines the two intuitions according to which desires must  represent the thing desired as good in some way while disposing one to  act. It promises that desire will be able to play the double role of  giving a reason for the action (the state of affairs is perceived to be  good in some way) while also performing its duty of propelling the  subject to action. It is an attractive idea, but there are good reasons  to resist it at least in some versions of the view. Some of these  reasons have already been adduced. Many desires, we said, might not in  themselves be representations of states of affairs as good and, and  could not even be so, as the considerations regarding their direction of  fit have suggested. But perhaps most importantly, desires seem to be  the wrong kind of state to represent the world in more diverse  evaluative terms. Although we might perhaps want to say that desires are  experiences of things as desirable, they are definitely not experiences  of things as elegant, as admirable, as funny, as majestic, as  offensive, etc. But for desires to play the kind of reason-giving role  we want them to play, we would expect them to be sensitive to a wide  range of evaluative properties, a sensitivity that it would be very  artificial to ascribe to them. Even when we think of those desires that  have a phenomenological dimension to them, it makes little sense to say  that their phenomenology is such that it makes differences between these  distinct values. Finally and most importantly, the idea in question  rules out the possibility of a type of explanation we constantly have  recourse to. We say things as “I desire this cloth because I  experience/judge, etc. its elegance”, “I want to eat it because it looks  tasty”, explanations that are not available if the desire itself is an  experience of the elegant or of the tasty.The arguments sketched here militate  thus in favour of distinguishing what I desire from what motivates me to  desire something. And this takes us back to square one: if we are not  ready to abandon altogether the Humean model of the mind for the reasons  adduced, and if we are not happy with the proposed amendments to it  that have been proposed to make it suitable to account for the fact that  action explanations are rational forms of explanations, what are we to  do? In the next part of the presentation of this project I propose a  solution which emphasises the epistemic role emotions plays in desire  and action explanation.2.2 Detailed research planThe presentation of this part of the  project is structured around a broad hypothesis (section (a)) that  provides the framework for four distinct sub-projects (section (b), (c),  (d) and (e)) each treating a specific issue or challenge arising from  trying to build the case for the hypothesis.a. The hypothesis:  Emotions as causes and reasons for desires. The starting point  of the presentation of the state of research regarding the topic of this  project was the following: not all the phenomena that the belief-  desire model of the mind puts under the pro-attitude category appear to  be playing the same role in our mental economy. A rationale for this  claim was provided on the basis of the sketch of two unrelated arguments  emanating from two different areas of research. From straight  philosophy of mind, we found good reasons to distinguish within the  category of the pro-attitudes those that are emotions from those that  are desires. From moral psychology, we found good reasons to distinguish  within the category of desires those that might count as reasons for  actions from those that are just causes of actions, leaving room,  perhaps, for those that might play both roles. If the conclusions of  these two arguments are to be taken seriously, then a natural manner of  combining them into one single and coherent picture presents itself. The  hypothesis at the centre of this picture is that emotions and desires  have radically distinct roles. The idea in a nutshell is that desires,  conceived of as they are traditionally as triggering causes of action  can and do rationalise action when they are grounded, directly or  indirectly, in emotions conceived of as reason- sensitive sates. This  radical division of labour between emotions and desires makes sense in  the light of (a) the epistemic status of the two types of mental sates,  (b) the way they are both connected with action, and (c) the epistemic  and metaphysical relations existing between the two types of states.(a) First, the epistemic status of  emotions and desires are distinct. Emotions, conceived as experiences of  the world in evaluative terms may be claimed to be reason-sensitive  states, and as such provide reasons for both axiological judgements and  for desires to act. These desires to act, by contrast and insofar as  they are essentially geared towards their realisation, do not present  the world in any given way and as such cannot in themselves rationalise  actions. This is the sense in which they are very different from an  epistemic standpoint. (b) Because emotions are cognitive states, namely  presentations of the world in axiological terms, they have only an  indirect link with action. We can characterise it by saying that  emotions can present at most possibilities for action, constraining,  through the axiological properties it reveals, what it makes sense to  desire in the circumstances. The desires born of these emotional  experiences, by contrast, have a direct, in fact necessary, link with  action since they are in themselves dispositions to realise their  content. This is the sense in which emotions and desires differ with  respect to their link with action. (c) Now, the following understanding  of the epistemic and metaphysical relations existing between the two  naturally suggests itself: when a desire to act directly stems from an  emotion or an emotional inclination, as when I desire to hit Jack  because I felt offended by his remark, then we have good reasons to  think that the desire can inherit its rationalising role from the  rationalising role of the emotion that gave rise to it. My desire to  take revenge on Jack can rationalise my hitting him when it is  understood that it is born out of my having been offended by his unfair  treatment of me. At the centre of the present picture, the case in which  our desires are caused and justified by our emotions enjoys a  privileged explanatory status.Now the following clarifications are in  order. Whereas the case in which a desire to act is caused and  rationalised by an emotion enjoys a privileged explanatory status within  the present picture, this does not amount to claiming that all desires  to act are causally and rationally grounded in actual emotional  experiences. First, nothing in what has been said rules the possibility  of (a) desires being caused and rationalised by other types of mental  states, nor (b) that desires might cause and rationalise emotions and  other states, for example other desires. The crucial and simple idea is  that the explanation of someone’s desire proceeds in terms of what she  takes to be axiologically the case and this leaves room for a variety of  possible scenarios. The attitude of taking something to be  axiologically the case can be an emotion, but it can also be and often  is, an axiological belief, an axiological memory or an axiological  imagining, etc. On the present hypothesis, however, given that a  person’s emotions or emotional profile is what gives him access to the  evaluative properties of the world, his beliefs, memories and imaginings  with axiological content will ultimately (if at all) be rationalised  through this person’s emotion or emotional tendencies. The point here is  not (or not only) that many present-day desires can still be  rationalised by long gone and even forgotten emotional experiences, but  that desires are often made intelligible via reference to a person’s  possible or likely emotional response. My desire not to accompany you to  this exhibition is intelligible in the light of my contempt for  contemporary art. My being disposed to feel contempt in this case can  still be invoked to explain my (negative) desire in the absence of any  felt emotional experience. (b) For the same reasons, if a desire causes  and rationalises an emotion, for example my disappointment at the  cancellation of this or that professor’s lecture, then the  disappointment is made sense of through the mention of my desire to  attend the lecture, which is in turn and ultimately rationalised through  the mention of, say, the admiration I feel for the professor in  question. Also a desire for a certain end (an intrinsic desire) will  typically cause and rationalise the desires for the means (extrinsic  desire) for this end as long as the initial desire is rationalised by an  emotion or an emotional tendency.Note too that the present hypothesis is  prima facie compatible with the idea that some of our desires have no  grounding at all, be it in emotions or in other types of mental states.  These will typically be difficult or impossible to consider from a  rational point of view, i.e. regarded as reason-sensitive and  reason-giving. Conversely, the hypothesis is compatible or even  encourages the idea that an emotion might cause and rationalise many  different desires in the same subject at the same time. My  admiration/awe of the professor has caused both my desire to greet and  meet him but also my desire to stay at a respectable distance, etc. In  addition, while the model of desires as dispositions to act, as we have  seen, probably puts many constraints on what can be desired (only state  of states, that are viewed as non-actual, future, believed to be in the  power of the subject, etc.) the content of the desire can be as ‘open’  as we want. Jane’s distaste of this journalist’s question might cause  and rationalise her desire to stop this very interview right now and/or  also and more generally stop talking to journalists altogether.On the present hypothesis, emotions are  claimed to have a non-eliminable role within our mental economy. Insofar  as it is what gives us sui-generis access to a world of axiological  properties, emotions are said to justify our axiological judgements and  our action through our desires that could not be provided by other  means. It is also in virtue of this role that the hypothesised model can  accommodate the intuitions of both the Humean who thinks of desires as  inner causes of action with a world-to-mind direction fit, as well as  the intuitions of the anti-Humean who insists that proper explanations  of actions must appeal to mental states that are sensitive to reasons.  The hypothesis accommodates these intuitions by avoiding the purely  mechanistic picture of the Humean (emotions can constitute reasons for  our desires) while steering clear of the over-intellectualist picture of  the mind typically provided by the anti-Humean (acting for a reason  need not result from a deliberative process in which our axiological or  normative beliefs play the essential reason-providing role). In its  present state, however, the hypothesis constitutes only a framework for  research. Here are four crucial areas in which the hypothesis can be put  to the test.b. Emotions as  reasons. A crucial and foundational claim motivates the present  hypothesis: emotions track objects’ values and as such can be said to  track reasons for judging and desiring. This claim is controversial and  one aim of this project is to defend it in some details. The point of  departure here is usefully apprehended with the help of an analogy with  perception. The idea is that in the same way that perceptions track  objects’ perceptual properties for us, emotions track evaluative  properties (De Sousa, 1987; Tappolet, 2000, Deonna, 2006, Doering,  2007). In the same way that perception gives us a sui-generis and non-  eliminable access to the perceptual environment, emotions gives us a  sui-generis and non-eliminable access to the evaluative properties of  our environment. While this has to be true for the hypothesis of this  project to get off the ground, it faces a number of challenges. The main  one can be stated as follows. While it makes no sense to ask why (in a  normative sense) I saw this or that object in front of me, it often (or  perhaps always) does make sense to ask why I felt this or that emotion  over this or that object. And the thought behind this observation is  that the disanalogy is to be explained by the fact that, contrary to the  claim, emotions are not access to reasons, but reactions to them. It  makes sense to ask why you are afraid of the dog, because the danger  represented by it is accessed to independently of and prior to the  emotional reaction. If this is the case then emotions are reactions to  reasons and not detectors of reasons and as a result will not be apt to  play any reason-giving role.A good strategy to answer this challenge  should proceed in the following way. If there is a disanalogy between  perception and emotion in this respect, it is not because one is access  and the other reaction. The fact is that emotions have indeed  non-evaluative cognitive bases (a perception, a belief, a testimony, a  memory, etc.) and are metaphysically and epistemically dependent on  them. My fear of the dog depends metaphysically and epistemically on my  perception of the dog. This however does not rule out, far from it, the  fact that it is through my fear that I become aware of the danger of the  dog as given in my perception of it (Teroni, 2007). If the disanalogy  is now explained in this new and different way, then another explanation  can be given perhaps of why we ask reasons for emotions in a way that  we do not for perceptions. Because emotions have non-evaluative bases,  many questions can arise with regard to what the non-evaluative facts  are. Have you met the dog before? Do you know him for being vindictive  and erratic? Etc. Developing this two-tier strategy to answer the  challenge is the central aim of this sub-project.c. Emotional  reasons and affective dispositions. Even if it can be shown that  emotions have the right kind of structure to be reason-giving states  rationalising our desires, judgements and actions, the very idea of a  world imbued with evaluative properties which would be given through our  emotion and which would justify our judgements and desires for actions  needs to be elaborated and clarified. In particular, one might think  that our emotions are so dependent on what can be called our  motivational set (and in particular our personality traits, our  sentiments and other idiosyncratic tendencies) that they might be the  wrong candidates for rationalising our desires and judgements. How  should this challenge be addressed? To explain a person’s judgement,  desire or an action by mentioning an emotion is to make reference to  this person’s affective sensitivity to certain values. To explain for  example his desire to flee by reference to her fear is to explain the  desire through this person sensitivity to danger. To explain someone’s  desire to help through mention of his compassion is to explain his  desire through his sensitivity to the plight of others. To explain his  desire to go and see this exhibition of Pollock through mention of his  enthusiasm or love for conceptual art is to explain the desire through  his sensitivity to some aesthetical properties of this form of art.  Hence to explain a judgement, a desire, or an action in terms of  distinct emotions is always to explain in terms of distinct inclinations  to see the world in distinctive evaluative terms. What these examples  illustrate is that the weight and intelligibility of the explanation  might rest variously either on the side of the world and its evaluative  properties or on the side of the person’s emotions or emotional profile.  What does that mean? In many cases, such as when we explain Jack’s  desire to flee from the lion by mentioning his fear, the emotions are  entirely intelligible solely in the light of the relation existing  between some objects/situations and their obvious axiological  dimensions. It is just a fact that lions are for most of us dangerous.  At other times, however, the particular emotional profile of the  person’s whose desire we try to understand has to be invoked. My desire  to go see a Pollock exhibition might make sense only given that I am the  kind of person who has a particular attachment to Pollock or a general  interest in contemporary art. While explanations in terms of emotions on  the whole rationalise judgements, desires, and behaviours in the same  way for all of us – distinct emotions give us access to distinct  families of values –, appeal to our idiosyncratic emotional profiles  (personality traits, sentiments, affective dispositions) explain our  desires, action and judgments in terms of our axiological priorities,  i.e. in terms of the distinct weight we put on distinct values (see  Goldie, 2000; Deonna &#38; Teroni 2009).The upshot of all this for the project  is thus twofold: first, (a) the reason-providing nature of the emotions  that ground our desires appears to come from two different sources. To  put it bluntly, the way the world is constrains what axiological  properties can be in it given, on the one hand, the kind of creatures we  are, and given, on other hand, the kind of specific or individual  person we are understood in terms of our specific emotional profiles,  i.e. our axiological priorities. Now, making sense of these explanations  in terms of these two sources of axiological pressures, and the  dynamics between them, is the aim of this sub- project. Second, (b) the  emotional profiles which are here claimed to be one source of  justification for our desires to act have been cashed out in terms of  affective phenomena such as people’s sentiments, personality traits and  other affective dispositions. Now you will remember that all these had  pride of place in the list of the pro-attitudes with which we started.  This confirms that not everything that this category contains should be  apprehended in the same manner, and this observation favours a more  refined treatment of the various phenomena being lumped together.d. A taxonomy of  the conative domain. We embarked on this project by observing  that the category of the pro-attitudes lumps together a great variety of  phenomena (mental states and non-mental states; emotional and conative  phenomena). The framework of the present hypothesis naturally suggests  means through which some order can be brought to the category. While of  course the present effort at classification must leave room for the  inherent fuzziness of ordinary language –many of the terms listed (such  as ‘motivation’ for example) have very ambiguous or vague meanings– the  hypothesis driving it indicates clearly how to proceed in this effort.  Here are a few important examples.First of all, and in the spirit of the  belief-desire model, some of the terms listed there are naturally  understood as being equivalent to the way the term desire has been used  throughout this document. Wants and volitions, but also perhaps  crucially tryings and strivings are cases in hand (for tryings, see in  particular O’Shaugnessy, 1980; Hornsby, 1980). They are states with  content that dispose subjects to act so as to make these contents true.  Other phenomena listed, such as principles or obligations or rules of  conducts are naturally interpreted within the present perspective as  being types of evaluative or normative beliefs. They have the  mind-to-world direction of fit.More interestingly, other phenomena  often associated with the lower or animal parts of our motivational  structure and commonly classified in the conative domain, might on the  present hypothesis best be regarded on the model of the emotions as it  was sketched here. Indeed, it is fair to say that at least some of the  phenomena that we refer to using terms such as appetites or urges seem  emotional in nature. The idea here is that we often want to distinguish  between, for example, a general positive attitude towards eating or sex  in general (having appetite or an urge) from wanting to eat some  particular piece of food or wanting to indulge in some specific sexual  act (desire). From the perspective of the present hypothesis, reference  to appetites and urges so understood looks like reference to states that  present the world in evaluative terms, i.e. attention seems to be  focused on the actual world construed as offering possibilities for  causing and grounding particular desires (for an account of appetitive  desires, see Davis, 1987, and, for emotional desires, Goldie, 2000).At the other hand of the spectrum in the  list of the pro-attitudes, we have all these states –of which we have  said very little– that we variously refer to with the terms intentions,  choices, decisions, and the like. As Bratman (e.g. Bratman, 1987), for  example, has shown, these should not be confused with desires, or a mix  of beliefs and desires. While I can easily have two desires that I know  are incompatible, I cannot form two intentions that I know are  incompatible. And this is because intentions, in contrast with desires,  are not only dispositions to act, but commitments to act. Now the  present hypothesis is entirely neutral with respect to this, and can  thus be accommodated within any philosophical project which looks at  motivation from a broader perspective. In fact, the study of action from  the perspective of a person’s short and long- terms plans, life-driving  projects, etc., the manner in which deliberation and intentions are  formed in the process of acting out these plans and projects is of  particular interest given the emphasis on emotions and emotional  profiles within the present framework. To give just one example,  Bratman’s notion of ‘personal policies’ - which is associated to the  desires with which the subject identifies (see in particular Bratman,  1989 and 2000) - underpinning people’s acting out of strategies and  plans might be enlightened if understood in the framework of what I  called our emotional profiles (sentiments, personality traits and other  affective dispositions). Other refinements of the taxonomy can focus on  the status of imaginative desires, wishes or fictional desires insofar  as these attitudes can be described as specific counter-factual  dispositions to act.What these examples illustrate is that  the hypothesis driving this project offers a potentially very powerful  tool for providing an appealing taxonomy of the conative domain, which  is the central aim of this sub-project.e. Emotion, desire  and empirical psychology. The proposed hypothesis faces numerous  philosophical challenges, as we have just seen, but it also faces  challenges of an empirical nature. In this section, I pin down areas  which illustrate the necessity of working within an interdisciplinary  framework for progress to emerge with regard to the central topic of  this project. (1) First, for emotions to play their reason-giving role,  as has been already emphasised, they must be conceived as states that  are sensitive to a certain kind of information in the world: evaluative  information. They thus cannot simply be a mix of pleasures and pains as,  for example, both the dimensionalist (Russell, 1995) and the  constructionist (Barrett 2006), conceive of them, nor can they easily be  understood in terms of representation of desire satisfaction and desire  frustration (Schroeder, 2006; Wollheim, 1999). Now, in the  philosophical theories of the emotions, the various options within this  evaluative model are well-known and the same can be said about the  so-called appraisal model of the emotion in  empirical psychology. When this is understood, it is obvious that there  are roads for mutual exploration that would be very beneficial for both  philosophy and psychology. Two areas in particular are worth  mentioning: (i) within appraisal theory (Scherer, 1984), or so the  philosopher would think, it is unclear whether emotions are conceived  directly as experiences of values or whether they are reactions to  antecedently perceived values. The so-called appraisal checks within the  sequence of evaluations constituting an emotion within appraisal theory  are not clearly singled out as affective phenomena describable as  experiences of values. (ii) From the other direction, the idea within  appraisal theory that an emotion is a dynamical process (going from  checks to checks and reappraising the eliciting condition on the basis  of these checks while the process unfolds) is something that does not  have much echo in philosophical theories of the emotions, but that  should be taken into account. The theory of emotions grounding this  project can thus both inform and be informed by extensive  collaborations, including empirical means to decide these issues, with  those directly working in appraisal theory. (2) Second, it might be  thought that the suggested account of desire promotes a picture of  desire that reduces it to an empty shell. That is, once the emotions or  the appetites have done their job of presenting an end as worth pursuing  or avoiding, what role, if any, is left for desires to play except  satisfying the urge of the Humean to postulate such states ? This  challenge has to be met by the Humean. The fact that desires are  essentially dispositions for actions is indeed a necessary condition but  not a sufficient one to distinguish it from other motivational states.  But here the Humean does not lack resources: there might be rational  constraints on what can qualify as the content of a desire –the desire  is not only directed towards the desired state of affairs, the state of  affairs is intended by the subject (Dretske, 1988)– as well as  experiential or phenomenal constraints linked to the already mentioned  feedback inherent in the idea of desire as trying or a striving to  accomplish something (Armstrong, 1967, O’Shaughnessy, 1980; Bayne, 2006;  Pacherie, 2008). And here exchange and collaboration with empirical  scientists working on the motivational dimension of emotion should be of  much help. Within appraisal theory, psychologists distinguish between a  subject’s detection of ‘intrinsic pleasantness’ from the detection of  ‘goal conduciveness’ (Frijda &#38; Zellenberg, 2003), a distinction  that, on one interpretation at least, could be mapped onto the  distinction made here between emotion (and appetite?) on the one hand  and intentions and plans on the other. Here, emotions and appetites  detect positive and negative values and/or saliencies (intrinsic  pleasantness) which are then either confronted with existing generic  intentions or plans (goal-conduciveness). However, it is not clear  within this picture of motivation, articulated around the distinction  between intrinsic pleasantness and goal-conduciveness, what room is left  for desires conceived as dispositions to make true their contents with  their characteristic feedback. Ways to test empirically this manner of  conceptualising the structure of the motivational processes, in  particular by exhibiting behavioural dissociations between the  manifestations of these alleged processes, are presently sought. (3)  Third, recent empirical data (e.g. Berridge &#38; Robinson, 1998;  Berridge, 2003) strongly suggest that distinguishing between the  conative and the affective makes sense. Although the evidence is very  difficult to interpret, the data suggest that in pathologies of  motivation of various sorts, either artificially induced in animals or  naturally occurring in human (e.g. drug addiction), neural structures  associated with ‘wanting’ (reward system) and neural structure  associated with ‘liking’(valence), two structures that work usually in  tandem start to operate in isolation. While these data certainly seem to  favour the general hypothesis underlying this project, i.e. that  conation and affect are not to be identified with one another, at this  stage it is not clear at all that these data fit into to the model  proposed here. This kind of evidence and in particular how pathologies  of motivation can inform the theory of motivation must be integrated in a  general theory of the relations between emotion and desire.In these three areas, researchers within  the NCCR in affective sciences, scientists with whom existing  collaborations on other issues have proved either very successful or  very promising have indicated their interest in pursuing the questions  and problems they raise.2.3. State of personal  ResearchMy interests have always been  principally in the philosophy of mind, and more particularly in the  philosophy of emotion. My focus in this and related areas started during  my undergraduate studies (University of Geneva, 1992-1996 and one year  at the University of St-Andrews), and became the principal subject of my  work during my PhD years at the University of Bristol (1998-2002) where  I wrote my dissertation on the subject of empathy. As a post-doc in  Cambridge (UK), in UC Berkeley, and in Oxford (2002-2004), I continued  working, writing, and teaching in the philosophy of mind, the philosophy  of psychology and moral psychology with particular attention paid to  the nature of emotions and their link to morality. I mention this  trajectory because this extensive travelling between universities and  philosophy departments in various parts of the world has shaped the  specific brand of philosopher of mind I am. While there are many ways of  philosophising about the mind, I do not privilege any particular one,  apart perhaps from a residual concern to practice philosophy with an eye  to respect our ordinary ways of thinking about the topic at hand. I  believe the present project reflects this general attitude.I returned to Switzerland towards the  end of my post-doc years (2004) to take up a non-permanent teaching and  research position at l’EPFL which I still hold (a position directly  affiliated with the philosophy departments of the Universities of Geneva  and Lausanne) with the title of Maître d’enseignement et de Recherche  Suppléant (more or less equivalent to supply assistant professor). While  occupying this position, I was also enrolled as, and still am, a  (part-time) researcher at Centre Interfacultaire en Sciences Affectives  (CISA), an inter-faculty centre of the University of Geneva which is the  leading institution of the FNS funded National Centre of Competence in  Research (NCCR) in Affective Sciences. This still characterises my  present-day professional situation.The core of my research and the  publications2 associated to it have thus been concerned with three  interrelated topics: (1) the subject of empathy and more generally the  manner in which we come to attribute psychological states to one another  [Deonna, The Transparency of Emotions, PhD Dissertation, 2002; Deonna,  The structure of Empathy, 2007; Deonna&#38;Nanay, The simulation vs.  Theory-theory debate: plea for an epistemological turn, submitted]; (2)  the subject of mental content, and in particular the idea that we may  represent the world in non-conceptual ways [Deonna&#38;Creese, Les  Liaisons Dangereuses or How not to construe non-conceptual content,  2006];(3) and the nature and structure of emotions [Most relevant  publications are: Deonna, Emotion, Perception and Perspective, 2006;  Deonna&#38;Teroni, Qu’est-ce qu’une emotion ? 2008, Deonna&#38;Scherer,  The intentional object disappearing act: constraints on a definition of  Emotion, 2009; Deonna&#38;Teroni, Taking affective explanations to  heart, 2009], the links of emotions to morality [Most important are,  Deonna, Evolution, émotion et morale, 2007, Deonna&#38;Teroni,  Distinguishing Shame from Guilt, 2008]Although the topics of research (1), (2)  and (4) have obvious and important connections with the material and  arguments at the centre of this project, I shall focus here on the  research accomplished directly on the topic of the emotions as it  obviously constitutes the groundwork for the concerns of the present  project. All the publications listed under (3) defend from various  perspectives the conception of the emotion that is presupposed by the  hypothesis of this project. First, they all develop on the idea that  emotions are intentional states with content that represent the world in  evaluative terms. The article co- written with psychologist K. Scherer,  a leading appraisal theorist of the emotions, constitutes one of the  rare efforts existing in the literature on the manner in which  philosophy and psychology speak of emotions as states that indicate the  significance the environment has for us. More importantly, my article  Emotion, Perception and Perspective (2006) is of crucial importance for  the present project. It is an attempt at defending an analogy between  perception and emotion at various levels, the most important one being  that they can be both conceived as sui-generis means of picking up  information about the world, respectively perceptual and evaluative  information. This article thus constitutes important groundwork for  sub-project (a), although it does not directly address the main  challenge at its core. My book, Qu’est-ce qu’une emotion ?, co-written  with F. Teroni and now contracted with Routledge for an English  translation, is a very well- received and broadly used (in the  francophone world) introduction to the philosophical theories of the  emotions. It is particularly relevant for the present project as it  contains an important discussion of the links between emotion, desire  and motivation. Starting with a criticism of the so-called belief-desire  theory of emotion, it goes on to show that no theory of the emotion  that presupposes that desire is an essential component of it can explain  the ordinary structure of our folk-explanations in terms of emotions.  To a large extent, then, this discussion in the book constitutes the  point of departure of the overarching claim of the present project.  Finally, the article Taking affective explanations to heart (2009),  again co-written with F. Teroni, provides the basic distinctions  relevant for sub-project (b) which is concerned with the explanation of  our desires in terms of our emotional dispositions or our emotional  profiles. It proposes a characterisation of the phenomena of emotions,  moods, temperaments, personally traits, and sentiments and how they  relate to one another. The work accomplished in this article can  constitute a springboard for meeting the challenge of understanding why  explanations of desire, action and judgement in terms of some, but not  all, of these phenomena, do constitute rational or normative explanation  of action.The accomplished research and the  ongoing one, i.e. the publication just described as well as the numerous  participations at workshop and meetings on the same or related topics  (see complete CV) over the years puts me, I believe, in a excellent  position to attain the aims set out in the present project. This belief  is reinforced by the fact that it will be conducted in the same context  in which the work for the most recent portion of these publications has  been conducted, i.e. the Centre Interfacultaire en Sciences Affectives  (CISA). The NCCR “Affective Sciences: Emotions in individual behaviour  and social processes”, directed by Klaus Scherer, is one of the first  interdisciplinary research networks worldwide to study emotions in a  comprehensive manner. Its very active research teams in the neuroscience  and psychology of emotion and motivation, and in particular its  philosophy unit (the Thumos group) of which I am already a member with  its direct connection with the very active and productive philosophy  department of the University of Geneva, is the ideal setting for the  successful pursuit of such a project.2.4 ScheduleThe detailed research plan of this  project (2.3) is structured around a broad hypothesis (a. The  hypothesis: Emotions as causes and reasons for desires) and four  distinct sub-projects (b. Emotions as reasons; c. Emotional reasons and  affective dispositions; d. A taxonomy of the conative domain; e.  Emotion, desire and empirical psychology) each treating a specific  aspect of the framework generated by the hypothesis. As a general fact,  it must be expected that progress in all the sub-projects will  contribute to build the case in favour of the broad hypothesis  underlying this project. More specifically, while two of them ground the  hypothesis at the centre of the project (sub-projects (b) and  sub-project (c)), another explore the fruitfulness of the account in  related areas of the philosophy of mind (sub-project d.). Sub- project  (e) has a distinct status as progress within it is directly dependent on  ongoing or emerging collaborations within the NCCR in Affective  Sciences.The overarching long-term aim of the  project (after 4 years) is to be ready to publish a philosophical  monograph on the relation between emotion and motivation along the lines  sketched in the present document. Consistent with my being embedded in  an interdisciplinary setting for the duration of this project, the  intended audience for this book is the philosophical and  non-philosophical academic community interested in these issues. Given  this long-term aim, here is how I foresee the schedule of the work to be  accomplished in all of the sub-projects. Sub-projects (b) and (c),  which ground the claim at the centre of the project, will naturally be  tackled first. Although crucial to the aims of the project, this can be  completed quickly given that the material and lines of arguments in each  of them, resting as they do in part on already published material  (Deonna, 2006, Deonna &#38; Teroni, 2009), are at an advanced stage of  preparation. I should thus be in a position to publish two articles (one  in each of the sub-projects) in peer- reviewed international philosophy  journals by the end of the first year (autumn 2011). Preparation of the  material and lines of argument for the overarching claim of the  project, with particular focus on sub-project (c) and (d), should also  start immediately at the onset of the project. However, progress here is  expected to be slower especially given that the lines of exchange and  understanding between our team and the other scientist of the NCCR and  elsewhere, although already into place, must be firmly anchored.  Nevertheless, I expect the publication of a major article in one of the  top philosophy journal on the overarching topic of this by project (on  the relation between emotion and motivation) between the second and  third year of the project (2012-2013), and another article on the topic  of sub-project (d), i.e. on the way the conative domain should be  conceptually reconfigured, around the same period. These journal  articles should serve as the groundwork culminating in the publication  of the aforementioned monograph at the end of the grant (2014).The viability of the present schedule  depends on the possibility of operating within a team of both young and  more experienced researchers, presenting their work on a regular basis,  and meeting with academics interested in this or related topics from  other universities. Regarding the team, my intentions are that the two  doctoral students supervised within this project will be attached to  sub-projects (c) and (d) respectively. International comptitions will be  open for both positions. The doctoral student attached to sub-project  (d) is expected to be a straight philosopher working on the various  aspects of motivation from a philosophical perspective, while the  doctoral student attached to project (e) should have a background in  empirical psychology with a focus on psychological theories of  motivation. There shall be two regular formal seminars a week. One  seminar (Emotion and Desire) will consist in either a meeting of the  restricted team working directly within the project and presenting their  work or in meetings with the empirical scientists working in related  areas or common projects within the CISA. The other seminar  (Cardialogical problems) consists in the ongoing weekly regular meeting  of the philosophy team of the NCCR (Thumos group) on various topics  touching philosophical aspects of the affective sciences. In addition, I  plan to organise at least four international gatherings (three  international workshops during the first three years and one major  conference the fourth year on the relation between emotion and  motivation). The doctoral students will play some part in the  organisation of these gatherings, and more generally will participate in  the numerous events, activities and conferences of the CISA in order to  broaden their horizon in the field of the affective sciences.2.5. Importance of the  researchMany aspects of the importance of the  project research have already been mentioned and I will not go over them  again. Also, the expected form in which results will be published has  already been mentioned in the previous section (2.4. Schedule). Let me  here stress two very different aspects which constitute a big part of  the motivation for pursuing it. (a) While there has been obviously great  interest in the emotions and related phenomena in recent years, and  correspondingly a great many publications surrounding this topic, the  present project focuses on emotions to defend a very bold conception of  the mind in which they play an indispensible role. It is not only that  emotions have, as it is often observed, a crucial regulatory role to  play in our lives, but that without them we would be blind to a whole  dimension of our environment, i.e. its evaluative dimension. This, if  true, militates in favour of reconsidering the fundamental architecture  of the mind as including emotions in addition to beliefs and desires.  (b) A second important aspect of the present research which was not  perhaps sufficiently brought out in this document and which is difficult  to measure concerns the interdisciplinary setting in which it will be  conducted. Although philosophical through and through, the thinking and  motivation behind the project has been enormously influenced by working  and communicating with scientists tackling the same or related issues  from an empirical perspective. And this influence not only consists in  integrating material, arguments, distinctions or ideas coming from their  work, but also manifests itself in what philosophy has to bring to  research on these topics in general and the value it (sometimes and  increasingly) has for those working on these issues in other  disciplines. Working within the philosophy unit of the NCCR in Affective  sciences thus provides a fertile environment for collaboration and  dissemination of ideas and results across disciplines. This is not  quantifiable but extremely important.ReferencesAltham, J.E.J., (1986) ‘The Legacy of  Emotivism’ in Graham Macdonald and Crispin Wright (eds) Fact, Science  and Morality: Essays on A. J. Ayer's Language, Truth and Logic, Oxford:  Basil Blackwell, pp. 275-288.Anscombe, G.E.M., (1957) Intention,  Harvard University Press. Armstrong, D.M., (1968) A Materialist Theory  of the Mind, London: Routledge &#38; Kegan Paul. 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Reasons in a World of Causes, Cambridge, Mass., MIT. Dretske,  F., (1966) ‘Ziring Ziderata’ Mind 75, pp. 211-223. Duncker, K., (1941)  “On Pleasure, Emotion, and Striving”. Philosophy and Phenomenological  Research .Vol. 1, pp. 391-430. Frankfurt, H.,  (1988) The Importance of What We Care About, Cambridge University Press.  Frijda, N. &#38; Zellenberg, M., (2003) ‘Appraisal – What is the  Dependent?’ in Appraisal Processes inEmotion: Theories, Methods, Research,  Klaus R. Scherer, Angela Schorr and Tom Johnstone, eds.,Oxford University Press, pp. 141-55.  Goldie, P., (2004) On Personality, Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group.  Goldie, P., (2000) The Emotions. A Philosophical Exploration, Clarendon  Press, Oxford. Goldstein, I., (2003) “Are Emotions Feelings? A Further  Look at Hedonic Theories of Emotions”,Consciousness and Emotions, 3, pp.  21-33. Gordon, R. M., (1987) The Structure of Emotions. An Investigation  in Cognitive Philosophy, Cambridge,Cambridge University Press. Gosling, J.,  (1969) Pleasure and Desire: The Case for Hedonism Reviewed, Oxford,  Oxford UniversityPress. Green, O.H., (1992) The Emotions,  Dordrecht, Kluwer. Helm, B. W., (2001) Emotional Reason: Deliberation,  Motivation and the Nature of Value, Cambridge,Cambridge University Press. Hornsby, J.,  (1980) Actions, London, Routledge &#38; Kegan Paul. Hume, D., (1888) A  Treatise of Human Nature, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Humberstone,  I. L., (1992) ‘Direction of Fit’, Mind, 101, pp. 59-83. Humerstone,  I.L., (1990) ‘Wanting, Getting, Having’, Philosophical Papers, Vol. XIX,  n°2, pp. 99-118. Kenny, A., (1963) Emotion, Action and the Will,  London, Routledge and Kegan Paul. Lazarus, R. S., (1991) Emotion and  Adaptation, New York, Oxford University Press. Marks, J., (1982) ‘A  Theory of Emotions’, Philosophical Studies 42, pp. 227-42. Marks, J.  (dir.), (1987) The Ways of Desire, Chicago, Precedent. McDowell, J.,  (1978) ‘Are Moral Requirements Hypothetical Imperatives?’, Aristotelian  SocietyProceedings, suppl. Vol. 52; pp. 13-29.  McDowell, J., (1979) “Virtue and Reason”, Monist 6, pp.333-350. Morillo,  C. R., (1990) “The Reward Event and Motivation”, Journal of Philosophy  87 (4), pp.169-186. Nagel, T., (1970) The Possibility of Altruism,  Oxford, Oxford University Press. O’Shaughnessy, B., (1980) The Will: a  Dual Aspect Theory, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Oddie, G.,  (2005) Value, Reality, Desire, Oxford University Press. Pacherie, E.,  (2008) ‘The Phenomenology of Action: A Conceptual Framework’, Cognition  107 (1), pp.179 - 217.Platts, M., (1991) Moral Realities: An  Essay in Philosophical Psychology, London, Routledge. Prinz, J., (2004)  Gut Reactions, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Roberts, R. C., (2003)  Emotions. An Essay in Aid of Moral Psychology, Cambridge, Cambridge  UniversityPress. Russell, J. A. (2003), ‘Core  Affect and the Psychological Construction of Emotion’, Psychological  Review,110, pp. 145–172. Russell, J.A., (1980)  ‘A Circumplex Model of Affect’, Journal of Personality and Social  Psychology, 39, pp. 1161–78. Scherer, K.R., (1984). ‘On the Nature and  Function of Emotion: a Component Process Approach’, in Klaus R. Scherer  and Paul Ekman (Ed.), Approaches to emotion, Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, pp.  293–317.Schroeder, T., (2005) Three Faces of  Desire, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Schueler, G. F., (1995) Desire,  Cambridge/London, MIT Press. Schueler, G. F. (2003) Reasons and  Purposes, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Searle, J., (1983)  Intentionality, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Smith, M., (1994)  The Moral Problem, Oxford, Blackwell.Solomon, R., (1976) The Passions,  Doubleday. Stalnaker, R., (1987) Inquiry, Cambridge, MIT Press. Stampe,  D., (1987) ‘Defining Desire’ in The Ways of Desire, Chicago, Precedent.  Stampe, D., (1987) ‘The Authority of Desire’, The Philosophical Review,  pp. 335–381. Strawson, G., (1994) Mental Reality, Cambridge M.A., MIT  Press, chap. 9. Tappolet, C., (2000) Emotions et valeurs, Paris, PUF.  Teroni, F., (2007) ‘Emotions and Formal Objects’, Dialectica, vol. 61,  3, pp. 395-415. Velleman, D., (2000) ‘The Possibility of Practical  Reason’, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Williams, B., (1981) ‘Internal  and External Reasons’, Reprinted in Moral Luck, Cambridge, Cambridge  University Press. Wollheim, R., (1999) On The Emotions, Yale, Yale  University Press. Zangwill, N., (1998) ‘Direction of Fit and Normative  Functionalism’, Philosophical Studies, 91, pp. 173- 203.Project leader : Julien Deonna(click here for a pdf version of the project)