Abstract

According to «the emotional intentionality thesis», emotional experiences exhibit a sui generis intentional structure which consists in presenting the values of the objects they target. This paper examines the versions of this thesis put forward by Meinong and Scheler. While Meinong’s «emotional presentation account» maintains that emotions present values, Scheler’s «value-ception account» carefully dis-tinguishes between the apprehension of value in a feeling and the emotional response. The comparative study of both accounts is articulated around two issues central to contemporary emotion research: 1) the «epistemic question» that examines which emotional experience is in fact responsible for the appre-hension of value; and 2) the «cognitive bases question» which explores the relation between emotional experiences and the cognitive states responsible for presenting the objects that the emotional experiences target. After introducing the emotional intentionality thesis and its historical roots in Brentano (sec-tion 1), the next two sections examine in turn the versions of this thesis provided by Meinong and Scheler (sections 2 and 3). The paper concludes by summarizing the results of the comparative study and extracting some teachings for current research (section 4).