This thesis explores whether the negative emotions of anger or frustration can help us in overcoming deep moral disagreements. Deep moral disagreements are essentially rationally irresolvable disagreements on moral issues, such as the permissibility of abortion or homosexual marriage. For such disagreements, the usual means of rational argumentation does not seem to be an effective tool in overcoming them. Instead, other persuasion techniques are needed. Surprisingly, the philosophical discussion of what to do in the face of deep disagreements lacks clear proposals as to how to actually recognize that one has become a part of such a disagreement. However, the recognition is needed in order for a person to be justified in abandoning rational argument in the name of arational persuasion. The thesis aims to fill this research gap by proposing and then applying an empirically-minded approach to the study of deep disagreements. Under the proposed framework, the thesis argues that deep disagreements are almost always accompanied by negatively valenced emotions like anger, frustration, dismay, fear, or even hatred. Drawing upon cognitive theories of emotions, in which emotions are wholly or partly constituted by the evaluation of external stimuli as having some property, the thesis claims that the connection between negative emotions and deep disagreements is not accidental. Rather, the connection stems from person's evaluation of the disagreement as having the properties of depth. Thus, the constructive role of negative emotions in deep disagreements consists is that it tells us when to switch to arational means of persuasion.
