Lost in Intensity: Is there an empirical solution to the quasi-emotions debate?

Aesthetic Investigations 4 (1):460-482 (2020)
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Abstract

Contrary to the emotions we feel in everyday contexts, the emotions we feel for fictional characters do not seem to require a belief in the existence of their object. This observation has given birth to a famous philosophical paradox (the ‘paradox of fiction’), and has led some philosophers to claim that the emotions we feel for fictional characters are not genuine emotions but rather “quasi-emotions”. Since then, the existence of quasi-emotions has been a hotly debated issue. Recently, philosophers and psychologists have proposed to solve this debate by using empirical methods and experimentally studying differences between ‘real’ and ‘fictional’ emotions. In this paper, our goal is to assess the success of these attempts. We begin by surveying the existing empirical literature and stressing the methodological problems that plague most studies that might seem relevant to the debate, before focusing on recent studies that avoid this pitfall. We then argue that, due to conceptual problems, these studies fail to be relevant to the philosophical debate and emphasize new directions for future empirical research on the topic.

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Author Profiles

Steve Humbert-Droz
Umeå University
Fabrice Teroni
University of Geneva
Julien Deonna
University of Geneva
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Citations of this work

Experimental philosophy of aesthetics.Florian Cova - 2023 - In Alexander Max Bauer & Stephan Kornmesser (eds.), The Compact Compendium of Experimental Philosophy. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter.
Emotion in Fiction: State of the Art.Stacie Friend - 2022 - British Journal of Aesthetics 62 (2):257-271.

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References found in this work

The Emotions.Nico Frijda - 1986 - Cambridge University Press.
The emotions: a philosophical introduction.Julien A. Deonna & Fabrice Teroni - 2008 - New York: Routledge. Edited by Fabrice Teroni.
Recreative Minds: Imagination in Philosophy and Psychology.Gregory Currie & Ian Ravenscroft - 2002 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press. Edited by Christoph Hoerl.
The Nature of Fiction.Gregory Currie - 1990 - Cambridge University Press.

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