The concept “love” can refer to different types of relationships. We use it when talking about our family, friends, romantic partners, pets, god(s), pieces of art, ideas, etc. and refer to love as if it happens to us, like a feeling, or as an action or behavior that we conduct, like an emotion or special deed, or even as a type of relationship that is had between two things. No matter what manifestation that love takes on or how it is described, the phenomenon that occurs is always the same. Of course we express love in different ways with different objects, like romantically with romantic partners and familially with family members, but the process for giving our husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, pets and everything else a special importance is the phenomenon of love. My aim in this thesis is to explain the phenomenon of love. I will argue that love is a way of responding to an object through a process of appraising it for its subjective, intrinsic value and then bestowing the experience of that appraisal back onto the object as an extrinsic quality whereby the object becomes valuable and irreplaceably important. This way of looking at the phenomenon of love, through a value theory, is taken up as a compromise of the two popular value theories, The Appraisal View and The Bestowal View. Irving Singer makes arguments for uniting these actions of appraising and bestowing value into a theory of love however leaves much unexplained and thus comes under fire from his critics. My take on love will aim at explaining how a value theory that is a compromise between Appraisal and Bestowal can avoid the problems that are suggested by Singer’s critics and describe how love occurs.

How do concepts mediate the relation between minds and the world? This is the main topic of John McDowell's Mind and World where McDowell attempts to dissolve a number of dualisms making use of a particular philosophical methodology which I identify as a version of Wittgenstein's quietism. This thesis consists of a critical analysis of a number of dualisms which McDowell attempts to dissolve in Mind and World. These include the Kantian dualism of sensibility and understanding, the dualism of conceptual versus non conceptual content, the dualism of scheme and content and the dualism of reason and nature. These dichotomies are all intricately intertwined and can be seen to be subsumed by the main topic of this thesis, namely, thinking and the world. McDowell persuasively draws attention to the unsustainability of particular philosophical positions between which philosophers have 'oscillated' such as coherentism and the given. However I claim that he does not go far enough in his attempt as a quietist to achieve peace for philosophy as traditional dichotomies such as that of realism and anti-realism still appear to exert a grip on his thinking. In this regard, 1 argue that, although McDowell’s work indicates the viability of quietism in addressing seemingly intractable philosophical positions, it would have gained by incorporating insights from European phenomenologists, such as Heidegger, who have been as intent as McDowell on reworking traditional dualisms. McDowell’s quietist methodology plays an important role in Mind and World and some of the criticism that has been directed towards his work displays a lack of appreciation of this method. I claim that a proper understanding of McDowell's version of quietism is important for a correct understanding of this text.

I defend the claim that some things genuinely matter to human beings. This involves overcoming a series of arguments which suggest that the things that matter to us are arbitrary. These arguments arise out of Nagel’s claim (in Mortal Questions) that life is absurd. The thesis also discusses different senses in which life can be said to have meaning. I put religious accounts of the meaning of life to one side. Instead, I focus on outlining how someone can experience their own life (and the world) as meaningful. My main aim is to show that some things genuinely matter. I argue that some things genuinely matter from the perspective of the individual in virtue of the fact that they can become conscious of their own needs. So, there are facts about human nature (we are self-consciousness and have needs) that, taken together, show that some things genuinely matter to us (non-arbitrarily). These include our vital needs, our happiness and positive relationships with others. I argue that these things matter to us not simply in virtue of the fact that we happen to think that they matter (although this is certainly true). Rather, they genuinely matter to us given our nature.

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In this thesis, I address the metaphysical question 'What is humour?' and the ethical question 'When is humour immoral?' Consulting a dictionary reveals a circle of definitions between 'amusement', 'funniness', and 'humour'. So I split the metaphysical question 'What is humour?' into three questions: 'What is amusement?', 'What is funniness?' and 'What is humour?' By critically analysing then synthesising recent research in philosophy, psychology and linguistics, I give the following answers: (1) x amuses y if and only if: (i) y is in a non-serious, non-threatened, non-goal-directed state. (ii) y simultaneously activates two incompatible interpretations of x via unsound logic. (iii) (ii) sufficiently increases the psychological arousal of y. (2) x is funny if and only if x merits amusement. (3) x is humour if and only if the function of x is to merit or elicit amusement. Similarly, I split the ethical question 'When is humour immoral?' into three questions: 'When is amusement immoral?', 'How does immorality affect funniness?' and 'When is humour immoral?' By using (1), (2) and (3), I give the following answers: (4) Amusement is immoral when the correct theory of normative ethics defines (1.i), (1.ii) or (1.iii) to be immoral. (5) Immorality negatively affects funniness. (6) Humour-types are not subject to moral evaluation. (7) Humour-tokens are immoral when the correct theory of normative ethics defines them to be immoral. This thesis contributes to the knowledge of the subject in two ways. First, by critically analysing and synthesising recent inter-disciplinary research, (1) provides a more precisely specified definition of amusement than that in the philosophical literature. Second, research on humour, across all disciplines, conflates the three closely related but distinct concepts of humour, amusement and funniness. By providing a linear sequence of definitions, (1), (2) and (3) avoid the conceptual confusions that commonly occur.

This thesis aims to elucidate an apparent paradox about the role of emotion in moral agency. A number of lines of concern suggest emotion may have serious negative impact on moral agency. On the other hand, there are considerations that suggest emotion also plays a crucial role in motivating, informing and even constituting moral agency. Significantly, there is a strong connection between participant reactive attitudes and ascription of moral status as agent or subject. Nonemotional agents could not hold such attitudes. Also, removing participant reactive attitudes imposes a peculiar and incoherent form of solipsism about moral agency. Given this necessary role for emotion, can we give an account of emotion that will also meet the worries? I examine, as crucial examples, three recurrent lines of concern about emotion - that it threatens our capacities for objectivity, rationality, and autonomy - to tease out the descriptive assumptions about emotion, and the normative assumptions about moral agency, that these objections are based on. I then offer three lines of argument towards resolving these worries. The first addresses the worries directly, and the other two shift blame off emotion. First, then, I argue that the normative concerns can largely be met by a descriptive account that views emotion as cognitive. However, “judgementalist” cognitive accounts that assimilate emotion to belief may make emotion metaethically respectable at the cost of making it meta-ethically redundant. Also, such accounts are descriptively less than plausible. A better approach, I argue, is to allow that belief may play a significant role in emotion but to also allow at least a quasicognitive role to the distinctively affective element in emotion: feeling. I also argue for a hrther revision of cognitive accounts to emphasise that emotions reflect features of those who feel them. If we were different, our emotions would be different. So, secondly, I argue that a number of the features that power worries about emotions have their sources in what those who feel them are like, rather than in emotions as such. However, both human nature and emotion are capable of significant plasticity and diversity. We are also capable of a considerable - but not infinite - degree of self-determination both about what we are like and what our emotions are like. Finally, I argue that the normative assumptions that power the objections to emotion are themselves in need of revision - and in some tension with each other. This leads to a McGufin-theory of emotion in moral agency: Problems with emotion’s place in moral agency serve as indicators of unresolved tensions in our thinking about moral agency, rather than just indicators of problems with emotion as such. In view of this, I also argue for caution in any attempts to change emotion to fit particular ideals of moral agency.

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