The unity of caring and the rationality of emotion

Abstract

Caring is a complex attitude. At first look, it appears very complex: it seems to involve a wide range of emotional and other dispositions, all focused on the object cared about. What ties these dispositions together, so that they jointly comprise a single attitude? I offer a theory of caring, the Attentional Theory, that answers this question. According to the Attentional Theory, caring consists of just two, logically distinct dispositions: a disposition to attend to an object and hence to considerations pertaining to it, and a disposition to respond to the real or apparent reasons those considerations provide. The emotional and other attitudes involved in caring are instantiations of these two, more general dispositions; and these apparently diverse emotional and other dispositions are connected because the real or apparent reasons to which they are dispositions to respond are connected, in structured “packages.” The fact that the reasons to which a caring agent responds are connected in this way provides the basis for an error theory, explaining why it appears as if the emotions involved in caring are governed by rational coherence requirements.