Abstract
Emotions are significant to us in part in virtue of involving feeling. Moreover, on a currently widely held view, their significance derives from the fact that the feeling involved in emotions is inseparable from their world-directed aspect or intentionality. On this view—which I call intentionalism—, how we feel in being afraid of some object or event is inextricably intertwined with the way we are psychologically involved with this object or event. In this opening chapter, I introduce intentionalism and specify the main aim of this book. As the view is usually elaborated, emotional feelings constitute a form of perception-like apprehension of axiological properties or values. I call this the axiological receptivity view (AR). My goal is to show that AR is mistaken and to propose and defend a more adequate intentionalist account of emotional feeling.
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Notes
- 1.
The term “Gemüt” is notoriously hard to translate. “Soul” is one common choice. It does not capture all the relevant connotations, however, which is why I opt for “sensitive mind”. Cf. Scheer (2014) for a very illuminating overview of the history of the term.
- 2.
One might wonder whether there are emotions that lack any felt aspect. Cf. e.g. Roberts (2003, 2013). It seems to me that philosophers who assume so ultimately confuse emotions with the disposition to have them. Cf. Döring (2009, 14, n. 4). In this connection, cf. also Deonna and Teroni (2012, chapter 1). I here adopt what I take to be the most common view, on which there is always something it feels like to have an emotion.
- 3.
About half a century ago, when the emotions were rediscovered by analytic philosophers, feeling was sometimes thought irrelevant to understanding emotion. Cf. e.g. Bedford (1957), Kenny (2003 [1963]), Pitcher (1965). It seems to me that, in most cases, this attitude was, at least in part, an artifact of a rather simplistic conception of feeling, which was insensitive to any of the above alluded complexities.
- 4.
To be more precise, one might also put this point by saying that emotions have particular objects or targets . The particular object or target of an emotion is the object which is picked out by the noun or propositional complement of the psychological verb by means of which it is canonically ascribed. I say more about the notion of a target in Sects. 2 and 3 in Chapter 3.
- 5.
Some theorists who think of the felt aspect of emotion as intentional still embrace a compound view, according to which an emotion comprises further intentional acts or states in addition to feeling. Cf. e.g. Goldie (2000, chapter 1; 2002, 2009). What is rejected in this case is not the idea that emotions are compound occurrences but the claim that their felt dimension is non-intentional.
- 6.
It is fair to say that perhaps not everyone who rejects the feeling/intentionality divide does so with a view to illuminating the idea that emotional feeling plays a significant role in our psychological lives. But it seems to me that many philosophers who reject this divide do. It is theorists with this specific aim that I refer to as intentionalists about emotional feeling.
- 7.
It is worth highlighting that McDowell himself is not party to this skepticism.
- 8.
These authors hold this view in different degrees of strength. My reading of Tappolet (2000, chapter 6) as a proponent of this view is largely based on her remarks on Goldie’s notion of ‘feeling towards’ in her review of Goldie (2000). Cf. Tappolet (2002). Poellner (2016) advocates a qualified version of this view, which holds for a restricted class of emotion. There are also views on which emotion is assimilated to perception while it is not (or not explicitly) supposed that the role of presenting value is played specifically by their felt aspect. Cf. e.g. Pelser (2014). Also, some authors draw analogies between emotion and perception without supposing that emotions present values, but argue, for example, that both reliably co-vary with values. Cf. e.g. Cuneo (2006). In this connection cf. also Brady (2013, chapter 2), Dokic and Lemaire (2013). Note further that, unlike McDowell, none of the philosophers I have mentioned are concerned specifically with aesthetic value.
- 9.
From now on, I use the term “value” to refer to both positive value and negative value (disvalue).
According to some proponents of AR, the importance of emotional feeling resides mainly in a specific justificatory role. That is, some suppose that qua affective acquaintance with value emotions provide a specific type of warrant for corresponding evaluative judgments. Cf. e.g. Tappolet (2000, chapter 7), Döring (2004, chapters 8 and 9), Roberts (2013, chapter 3). The claim that emotions justify evaluative judgments has also been defended independently of AR, e.g. by arguing that emotions and perceptions both serve as evidence for certain states of affairs, as Cuneo (2006) has it. In this connection, cf. also Brady (2013, chapters 2.3 and 2.4). In this work, I will not, or at least not explicitly, be concerned with the justification of evaluative judgment.
- 10.
- 11.
Although sympathetic to AR, Helm (2001, 45f., 64ff.) and, following him, Slaby (2008, 242f.), might be seen to espouse a closely related account which avoids reductionism. They partly conceive of emotional feeling as a type of distinctive, non-intellectual assent to value. However, this view differs from the one I propose as well in how it conceives of the intentionality of emotional feeling. Cf. Sect. 1 in Chapter 4, p. 90.
- 12.
In his (2010b) Mulligan distinguishes between the affective aspect of emotion and its cognitive base. He can plausibly be read as defending the view that emotions are position-takings with respect to their affective aspect. In this connection, cf. also my remarks on Mulligan’s view in Sect. 1 in Chapter 4.
- 13.
- 14.
The view proposed by these theorists is not to be confused with the traditional feeling theory of emotion, commonly associated with James (1884, 1891) and, sometimes, Hume (1978 [1738–1740], bk. 2). According to the latter, emotional feelings are identical to non-intentional sensations. The present proposal might be considered a more sophisticated feeling theory which dispenses with the dichotomy between feeling and intentionality.
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Müller, J.M. (2019). Introduction. In: The World-Directedness of Emotional Feeling. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23820-9_1
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