The Evaluative Content of Emotion

Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 85:75-86 (2019)
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Abstract

The content of emotion sometimes seems to be conflated with its object, but we can distinguish between content and object on the model of Fregean sense versus reference. Fear, for instance, refers to something the subject of fear is afraid of and represents that object of fear as dangerous, so that the emotion can be said to have evaluative content. Here I attempt to clarify and defend my view of emotional discomfort or other affect as what does the evaluating. Some current accounts of the unpleasantness of physical pain take a similar view, but in application to emotion they call for an explanation of how emotional affect can simultaneously evaluate both the affective symptoms of emotion and the emotion's object. I suggest an explanation and indicate how it supports the link between emotional valence and motivational force.

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Patricia S. Greenspan
University of Maryland, College Park

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References found in this work

A Treatise of Human Nature.David Hume & A. D. Lindsay - 1958 - Philosophical Quarterly 8 (33):379-380.
Uber Sinn und Bedeutung.Gottlob Frege - 1892 - Zeitschrift für Philosophie Und Philosophische Kritik 100 (1):25-50.
What makes pains unpleasant?David Bain - 2013 - Philosophical Studies 166 (1):69-89.
Action, Emotion and Will.Anthony Kenny - 1963 - Philosophy 39 (149):277-278.

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