Emotions are open to various kinds of normative assessment. For example, we can assess emotions for their prudential or moral value. Recently, philosophers have increasingly attended to a distinct form of normative assessment of emotions – fittingness assessment. An emotion is fitting when it is merited by its object. For example, admiration is fitting when it is felt towards the admirable, and shame towards the shameful. This paper defends a hybrid account of emotional fittingness. Emotions are complex, and typically involve (...) various elements. As well as involving representations that can be assessed for accuracy, emotions typically motivate their subjects in characteristically urgent ways. The fittingness of an emotion as a whole is a function of the fittingness of both its representational and motivational aspects. (shrink)

This paper advances an analytic philosophical approach to atmospheres. We start by outlining three core characteristics of atmospheres: holism (an atmosphere is a holistic entity that emerges through the combinations of various aspects of the environment), affectivity (atmospheres are grasped corporeally and affectively), and quasi-objectivity (atmospheres cannot be captured in solely objective or solely subjective terms). We look at the most promising candidate theory of atmospheres, which defends that atmospheres supervene on affective affordances, and challenge it by casting doubt on (...) how far the concept of affective affordance can stretch in order to accommodate the relevant phenomenology, and by highlighting current controversies in the ontology of affordances. We then outline a more promising theory based on recent developments in the metaphysics of potentiality. According to the proposed theory, atmospheres are high-level nested relations of agent-environment joint potentialities. (shrink)