I'm too exhausted to answer this one. (Anyone have more energy?) I am angry at myself because I'm too exhausted to answer it; I feel remorse over being too exhausted to answer it; and I even fear that some will criticize me for not really being too exhausted to answer it but for being lazy, or a wiseacre, or both. In a Doonesbury strip years ago (see a footnote in Patricia Greenspan's book on the emotions for a slightly different version), a football team, the offense, is in a huddle, arguing over the meaning of "emotion" and its extension (or the things that count as emotions). "Horniness!" opines the fullback. "Horniness is NOT an emotion, you dummy," retorts the quarterback. So, is being tired more like being horny or more like being angry that I haven't answered the question?

There is nothing quite like a swift kick to the fanny to get one energized. I thank Professor Gentzler for arousing me from my stupor. All I did last night, of course, was to suggest that tiredness was not an emotion because it didn't look much like standard emotions such as anger, remorse, and fear. I did not explain the difference. But Professor Gentzler is too modest about her own contribution to this thread, and exaggerates my ability to improve its quality. What she taught us about Plato is superb, while I merely dabble in the theory of the emotions. Nonetheless, here goes. (Maybe another panelist can help by telling us something about the Solomon-Schachter experiments.) On a currently popular model of emotion (see Daniel Farrell and O. Harvey Green, for starters), emotions are composed of three elements: a belief (the cognitive feature), a desire (the conative), and a feeling (the affective). I believe that the animal is a hyena and that it is about to strike; I desire not to have my...

Nor we do we need a weatherperson to tell which way the wind blows.

The expressions "Free Rider" and "Easy Rider" both fit nicely with this cute example. I'm not convinced (yet) that it is not a moral question. When I refrain from making that automotive move--or when I give in to temptation, and do it--I feel my moral sense at work. I'm a cheater, or I rose above the base human urge to cheat. I suspect that utilitarians, deontologists of various stripes, and virtue-ethicists all would have something to say, or pontificate, about it. Jan Narveson, by the way, would say (has said) that the fact that we have such crowded highways is a sign that our lives are getting better (and not, say, environmentally worse). Update February 14, 2006: I took a passenger van from O'Hare airport in Chicago to a hotel in the Loop last Thursday. The cars on I-90 were crawling up each other's tailpipes. My driver scooted off the interstate at an obscure exit, zipped through the intersection (the light was green), and dove right back in on the other side. When I got out of the van at...