Why Some Recalcitrant Emotions Are Not Irrational

My thesis argues against the prevalent view that recalcitrant emotions are irrational because they cause an epistemic inconsistency between one’s incorrect emotional evaluative construals and one’s correct beliefs or judgments. I argue that recalcitrant emotions are not irrational in cases where they are fitting and convey correct evaluative construals, whereas one’s beliefs or judgments about the emotion-eliciting objects or circumstances turn out to be false. I label these cases as incorrect-belief recalcitrance and develop a substantive account of them. In these cases of emotional recalcitrance, one’s beliefs falsely deny the instantiation of the formal objects of their emotions, resulting in an epistemic inconsistency between their correct emotional construals and their incorrect judgments. Furthermore, I suggest that to meet the rationality requirement of epistemic consistency, agents should either reduce their unfitting emotions or change their incorrect beliefs to resolve emotional recalcitrance.