Emotional Phenomenology

A New Puzzle

Bibliographic Data

ID21751027
AuthorsAarón Álvarez-González (0000-0002-6541-3784, Universitat de Barcelona, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume24
Issue5
Pages1185-1205
Publication date2025-12-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePhenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1568-7759 • E-ISSN: 1572-8676
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1007/s11097-023-09887-1
OpenAlexW4317384282
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited31

Emotions are taken by some authors as a kind of mental state epistemically akin to perception. However, unlike perceptual phenomenology, which allows being treated dogmatically, emotional phenomenology is puzzling in the following respect. When you feel an emotion, you feel an urge to act, you feel, among other things, your body’s action readiness. On the other hand, at least sometimes, you are aware that an emotion by itself is not a sufficient reason to justify an evaluative judgment and/or an action, not even prima facie. How can a single mental state, emotion, seem to be dogmatic and hypothetic at the same time? It seems that emotions alone fall short of the justifying role in which their guiding role would be grounded. If this is true, then emotional experience cannot be epistemically akin to perception. Unless we are willing to claim that emotions cause action blindly (i.e., not rationally), we need an account of the distinctive epistemic role of emotional experience that renders its guidance role rational. In this paper I outline this new problem and its consequences for the metaphysics and epistemology of emotional experience. I also try to offer the sketch of a plausible solution

Cognitive psychology · Epistemology · Metaphysics · Perception · Philosophy of mind · Prima facie · Sketch · Emotions and Moral Behavior · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Philosophy · Psychology · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment · Social Psychology

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