Different Ways of Being Emotional about the Past

Bibliographic Data

ID21735317
AuthorsMarina Trakas (0000-0001-6977-140X, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, corresponding author)
Year2022
Pages1-14
Publication date2022-11-16
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueFilosofia Unisinos (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1519-5023 • E-ISSN: 1984-8234
PublisherUNISINOS - Universidade do Vale do Rio Dos Sinos (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.4013/fsu.2022.233.08
OpenAlexW4311243855
LanguageEN
References cited9

According to Dorothea Debus (2007), all emotional aspects related to an act of remembering are present and new emotional responses to the remembered past event. This is a common conception of the nature of the emotional aspect of personal memories, if not explicitly defended then at least implicitly accepted in the literature. In this article, I first criticize Debus’ arguments and demonstrate that she does not give us valid reasons to believe that all the emotional aspects related to a memory are present and new emotional responses to that past event. I then criticize Debus’ thesis tout court for being a direct consequence of assuming a particular conceptualization of the nature of emotions: emotions as physiological changes. Finally, based on a different conceptualization of emotions that focuses on their relational nature, I propose an alternative framework for analyzing the different possible emotional aspects of our personal memories. This leads me to conclude, contrary to Debus, that some emotional aspects of our memories are not occurrent emotions but are better conceived as a sort of quasi-emotions. Keywords: Personal memory, emotion, quasi-emotion, appraisal

Cognitive psychology · Conceptualization · Emotional Memory · sort · Computer Science · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Psychology · Social Psychology · Artificial Intelligence

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