Analysing hope: The live possibility account | Zendy

Palmqvist CarlJohan | Zendy

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Analysing hope: The live possibility account

Author(s) -

Palmqvist CarlJohan

Publication year - 2021

Publication title -

european journal of philosophy

Language(s) - English

Resource type - Journals

SCImago Journal Rank - 0.42

H-Index - 36

eISSN - 1468-0378

pISSN - 0966-8373

DOI - 10.1111/ejop.12584

Subject(s) - subject (documents) , epistemology , order (exchange) , psychology , philosophy , sociology , computer science , economics , finance , library science

The orthodox definition of hope suffers from an exclusion problem: it is unable to exclude subjects without hope. In fact, the orthodox definition even allows for despair to be falsely classified as hope. This problem suggests two basic desiderata for a successful analysis of hope: it should solve the exclusion problem, and it should have the resources to explain why, in a given situation, a subject does or does not form a hope. Bearing these desiderata in mind, I assess two recent hope‐accounts offered by Jack M. C. Kwong and Cheshire Calhoun. I then offer my own view, which is based on the Jamesian notion of a “live possibility”. I suggest that a possibility needs to reach a certain probability threshold in order to count as live, and according to my account, to hope is to desire the truth of such a live possibility. This view is well‐equipped to solve the exclusion problem, and it can explain why a subject does or does not hope.

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