Are emotions perceptual experiences of value?

Ratio 25 (1):93-107 (2012)
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Abstract

A number of emotion theorists hold that emotions are perceptions of value. In this paper I say why they are wrong. I claim that in the case of emotion there is nothing that can provide the perceptual modality that is needed if the perceptual theory is to succeed (where by ‘perceptual modality’ I mean the particular manner in which something is perceived). I argue that the five sensory modalities are not possible candidates for providing us with ‘emotional perception’. But I also say why the usual candidate offered – namely feeling or affectivity – does not give us the sought-after perceptual modality. I conclude that as there seems to be nothing else that can provide the needed perceptual modality, we should reject the perceptual theory of emotion.1.

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Demian Whiting
University of Hull

Citations of this work

The authority of pleasure.Keren Gorodeisky - 2021 - Noûs 55 (1):199-220.
Are emotions perceptions of value?Jérôme Dokic & Stéphane Lemaire - 2013 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 43 (2):227-247.
How can emotions be both cognitive and bodily?Michelle Maiese - 2014 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 13 (4):513-531.
Intellect versus affect: finding leverage in an old debate.Michael Milona - 2017 - Philosophical Studies 174 (9):2251-2276.

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References found in this work

Naming and Necessity: Lectures Given to the Princeton University Philosophy Colloquium.Saul A. Kripke - 1980 - Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Edited by Darragh Byrne & Max Kölbel.
The representational character of experience.David Chalmers - 2004 - In Brian Leiter (ed.), The future for philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 153--181.
Naming and necessity.Saul Kripke - 2010 - In Darragh Byrne & Max Kölbel (eds.), Arguing about language. New York: Routledge. pp. 431-433.

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