Philosophers' Imprint 12 (2012)
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Discourse containing the verb ‘feel’, almost without exception, purports to describe inner experience. Though this much is evident, the question remains what exactly is conveyed when we talk about what and how we feel? Does discourse containing the word ‘feel’ actually succeed in describing the content and phenomenology of inner experience? If so, how does it reflect the phenomenology and content of the experience it describes? Here I offer a linguistic analysis of ‘feels’ reports and argue that a subset of ‘feels’ reports, when accurate, reflect the representational content of emotions, tactile experiences and bodily sensations. Because ‘feels’ reports may reflect the representational content of bodily experience, these types of report may be able to give us some insight into the structure of bodily experience. I argue that our descriptions of bodily experience, on the assumption that they are sometimes accurate, indicate that emotions and tactile experiences are experiences of bodily reactions to objects, whereas bodily sensations are partial descriptions of emotions and tactile experiences or other events of the body. At the end I address the concern that an adequate account of inner experience cannot be given in terms of an analysis of ordinary language
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References found in this work BETA
The Representational Character of Experience.David J. Chalmers - 2004 - In Brian Leiter (ed.), The Future for Philosophy. Oxford University Press. pp. 153--181.
Which Properties Are Represented in Perception.Susanna Siegel - 2005 - In Tamar S. Gendler & John Hawthorne (eds.), Perceptual Experience. Oxford University Press. pp. 481--503.
Propositional Attitudes: An Essay on Thoughts and How We Ascribe Them.Mark Richard - 1990 - Cambridge University Press.
View all 19 references / Add more references
Citations of this work BETA
Corporate Crocodile Tears? On the Reactive Attitudes of Corporate Agents.Gunnar Björnsson & Kendy Hess - 2017 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 94 (2):273–298.
The Semantics of ‘What It’s Like’ and the Nature of Consciousness.Daniel Stoljar - 2016 - Mind 125 (500):1161-1198.
Bodily Awareness and Novel Multisensory Features.Robert Eamon Briscoe - forthcoming - Synthese:1-29.
Feeling Nothing: Numbness and Emotional Absence.Tom Roberts - 2019 - European Journal of Philosophy 27 (1):187-198.
View all 7 citations / Add more citations
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2010-02-09
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