Fabrice Teroni

A l’instar de bien d’autres activités, manger du chocolat suscite du plaisir. Mais comment articuler de manière satisfaisante les différents sens en jeu dans l’ingestion d’un aliment – le goût, bien sûr, mais aussi l’odorat, l’ouïe et le toucher – avec ce plaisir ? Selon une approche traditionnelle, ce dernier n’est rien de plus qu’une expérience ineffable qui, si elle s’avère accompagner certaines stimulations sensorielles ou des activités plus intellectuelles, ne porte sur rien du tout. Est-ce plausible ? Ou faudrait-il plutôt comprendre le plaisir comme un sens supplémentaire qui viendrait prêter main forte au goût, à l’odorat et au toucher afin de parachever notre appréhension du chocolat ? Et, après tout, qu’est-ce qu’un plaisir ? Je suggère dans ce qui suit que la variété des types de plaisirs que nous sommes susceptibles de ressentir ainsi que la manière dont nous les ressentons vont à l’encontre de l’approche traditionnelle : les plaisirs portent sur quelque chose et nous renseignent à son propos. Cependant, cela ne signifie pas pour autant qu’il faille situer le plaisir sur le même plan que les sens. Il se situe plutôt en aval de leur activité, présuppose les informations qu’ils délivrent et constitue une réaction évaluative à leur endroit.

Tullmann et Buckwalter (2014) ont récemment soutenu que le paradoxe de la fiction tenait plus de l’illusion que de la réalité. D’après eux, les théories contemporaines des émotions ne fourniraient aucune raison d’adopter une interprétation du terme « existence » qui rende les prémisses du paradoxe incompatibles entre elles. Notre discussion a pour but de contester cette manière de dissoudre le paradoxe de la fiction en montrant qu’il ne prend pas sa source dans les théories contemporaines des émotions. Bien plutôt, son origine se situe dans ce que Radford (1975) décrit comme une incohérence dans nos réactions émotionnelles aux évènements fictionnels et non fictionnels. Malgré ce désaccord, nous concédons à Tullmann et Buckwalter qu’une solution satisfaisante au paradoxe de la fiction doit s’appuyer sur les théories des émotions. Ainsi, en guise de conclusion, nous expliquons comment il convient de comprendre l’incohérence en question et comment les théories des émotions pourraient contribuer à la résolution du paradoxe de la fiction.

Philosophers and psychologists often distinguish episodic or personal memory from propositional or semantic memory. A vexed issue concerns the role, if any, of memory “impressions” or “seemings” within the latter. According to an important family of approaches, seemings play a fundamental epistemological role vis-à-vis propositional memory judgments: it is one’s memory seeming that Caesar was murdered, say, that justifies one’s judgment that he was murdered. Yet, it has been convincingly argued that these approaches lead to insurmountable problems and that memory seemings are not wellsuited to play this justifying role. As a result, many contemporary accounts of propositional memory dispense with these seemings altogether. Is the idea that memory seemings play a key role in propositional memory really the result of bad theorizing? My aim is to shed light on this issue, which I will approach as follows. In Section 1, I contrast episodic memory with propositional memory so as to clarify the nature of the latter. According to the account I put forward, episodic memory consists in the preservation of acquaintance with objects and events, whereas propositional memory consists in the preservation of thought contents. In Section 2, I turn my attention to the contrast between propositional memory contents and propositional memory as an attitude. I argue that they play different roles. Memory contents satisfy a past awareness constraint and a causal constraint; the attitude of remembering explains why we are inclined to endorse these contents. This distinction leads me to explore the attitude of remembering, and I argue, in Section 3, that the most appealing account of this attitude is in terms of feelings of familiarity. In Section 4, I turn my attention to the epistemology of propositional memory and revisit the claim that propositional memory judgments are justifi ed by memory seemings. In so doing, I contend that the attitude of remembering plays an exclusively explanatory role and does not contribute to the epistemology of propositional memory judgments. I conclude by drawing a more general lesson regarding the respective roles of attitudes and contents.

This chapter focuses on fundamental trends in the philosophy of emotion since the publication of William James’ seminal and contentious view. James is famous for his claim that undergoing an emotion comes down to feeling (psychological mode) specific changes within the body (content). Philosophers writing after him have also attempted to analyse emotional modes in terms of other psychological modes (believing, desiring, and perceiving) and to adjust their contents accordingly. The discussion is organized around a series of contrasts that have played fundamental roles in shaping these approaches to the emotions. These contrasts are those between emotions and feelings, between specific and unspecific phenomenology, and between dependent and independent modes. Focus on these contrasts enables a review of some dramatic turning points in the recent history of theorizing about the emotions; it also serves to bring to light fundamental constraints bearing on emotion theory.

The most salient aspect of memory is its role in preserving previously acquired information so as to make it available for further activities. Anna realizes that something is amiss in a book on Roman history because she learned and remembers that Caesar was murdered. Max turned up at the party and distinctively remembers where he was seated, so he easily gets his hands on his lost cell phone. The fact that information is not gained anew distinguishes memory from perception. The fact that information is preserved distinguishes memory from imagination. But how do acquisition and retrieval of information contribute to the phenomenology of memory?The exclusive aim of this chapter is to sketch a map of the phenomenology of memory. It is structured as follows. In section 1, I introduce the contrast between content (what is remembered) and psychological attitude (remembering). This distinction will be helpful in disentangling issues in the phenomenology of memory. Section 2 is devoted to the contribution of memory content to phenomenology, section 3 to the contribution of the attitude of remembering.

This paper explores substantive accounts of emotional phenomenology so as to see whether it sheds light on key features of emotions. To this end, we focus on four features that can be introduced by way of an example. Say Sam is angry at Maria’s nasty remark. The first feature relates to the fact that anger is a negative emotion, by contrast with positive emotions such as joy and admiration (valence). The second feature is how anger differs from other emotions such as sadness, fear and joy (individuation). The third concerns the objects of anger and the sense in which anger discloses the significance of Maria’s remark to Sam (intentionality). Finally, there is anger’s relation to behaviour (motivation). Does focussing on emotional phenomenology encourage specific accounts of these features? We shall see that there are reasons to think it does. Still, are these reasons of sufficient import to dispel the scepticism of those who think that nothing of consequence plays out at the personal level of emotional experience? Given the role of emotional experience in our evaluative practices, we shall conclude that they are. Our discussion is structured as follows: section 1 focuses on feeling approaches to phenomenology, section 2 on componential approaches, section 3 on perceptual approaches and section 4 on attitudinal approaches. Section 5 concludes with some observations regarding the significance of emotional phenomenology.

Le fameux paradoxe de la fiction (Radford 1975) a suscité maintes interprétations. L’une des distinctions importantes qui affleure bien souvent au sein de cette littérature, pour se voir presque aussitôt négligée, est celle entre les deux questions suivantes : « comment les émotions peuvent-elles être suscitées par des œuvres de fiction ? » et « les émotions suscitées par de telles œuvres peuvent-elles être rationnelles ? » Dans ce qui suit, je me concentrerai exclusivement sur la seconde de ces questions et chercherai à montrer que la plupart de nos réponse affectives à la fiction ne sont pas irrationnelles. Ma discussion se structure de la manière suivante. La première section esquisse la nature du lien entre émotions et valeurs et introduit une conception selon laquelle les émotions sont des attitudes évaluatives. Au cours de la deuxième section, nous nous tournerons vers le problème de la rationalité des émotions pour mettre l’accent sur deux de ses aspects – celui qui regarde le rapport entre une émotion et sa base cognitive, d’un côté, et, de l’autre, celui entre l’émotion elle-même et les jugements et comportements auxquels elle peut donner lieu. La troisième section applique ces considérations à propos de la rationalité affective aux émotions suscitées par la fiction, dont je distingue trois types principaux : les émotions esthétiques, les émotions-blob et les émotions-pour. Une quatrième et dernière section explore quelques conséquences des conclusions auxquelles m’auront amené ce qui précède.

A long-standing debate surrounds the question as to what justifies memory judgements. According to the Past Reason Theory, these judgements are justified by the reasons we had to make identical judgements in the past, whereas the Present Reason Theory claims that these justifying reasons are to be found at the time we pass the memory judgements. In this paper, I defend the original claim that, far from being exclusive, these two theories should be applied to different kinds of memory judgements. The Past Reason Theory offers the most appealing account of justified propositional memory judgements, while the Present Reason Theory provides the best approach to justified episodic memory judgements. One outcome of my discussion is thus that memory is not epistemologically unified and my argument in favour of this conclusion connects with the issues of internalism, reliabilism and the basing relation.

Meinong's early essay, Zur erkenntnistheoretischen Würdigung des Gedächtnisses, provides, despite its brevity, a very important discussion of mnesic phenomena. In this paper, I investigate some points I believe to be of particular interest: some of them are briefly broached by Meinong, whereas others form an important part of his argument. Moreover, I will connect the discussion with more recent concerns in analytical philosophy. This presentation is structured in the following way. In section (1), I present Meinong's definition of memory, and contrast it with more recent conceptions. In section (2), I present his epistemological discussion of memory judgements, which is further investigated in section (3), where I discuss the notion of presumptive evidence via the criticisms it elicited from Franz Brentano. At the end of this presentation, we will understand why Meinong's essay is a landmark in the philosophical investigation of memory.

Fabrice Teroni,Julien Deonna | : Selon l’analyse FA des concepts évaluatifs, notre conception d’un objet comme ayant une valeur donnée est la conception d’une certaine attitude évaluative appropriée à son endroit. Cet article examine deux défis que doit relever cette analyse. Le défi psychologique exige de l’analyse qu’elle fasse appel à des attitudes qui soient à même d’éclairer nos concepts évaluatifs, tout en ne présupposant pas la maîtrise de ces mêmes concepts. Le défi normatif réclame quant à lui que la compréhension du caractère approprié des attitudes pertinentes s’articule autour d’une forme de normativité intimement liée à la nature de ces attitudes, sans pour autant dépendre de la maîtrise des concepts évaluatifs analysés. Afin d’établir si l’analyse FA peut relever ces défis, nous commençons par clarifier la nature des attitudes auxquelles il convient de faire appel. Dans la première section, nous considérons des attitudes génériques comme les désirs et présentons des raisons de privilégier des attitudes plus spécifiques, à savoir les émotions. La suite de la discussion évalue la plausibilité d’une analyse FA souscrivant à l’une ou l’autre des approches contemporaines en théorie des émotions. La deuxième section souligne qu’il est difficile d’associer l’analyse FA aux théories en termes de contenu évaluatif et la troisième présente les atouts d’une théorie en termes d’attitudes évaluatives. Dans la dernière section, nous revenons au défi normatif et esquissons une manière de le relever. | : According to the FA analysis of evaluative concepts, our conception of an object as having a given value is the conception of a given evaluative attitude towards it as being appropriate. In this paper, we explore two challenges that this analysis has to take up. The psychological challenge requires that the analysis appeal to attitudes that are apt to shed light on our evaluative concepts while not presupposing the mastery of these same concepts. The normative challenge requires that we understand the appropriateness of the relevant attitudes in terms of a kind of normativity intimately related to these attitudes, again without this presupposing the mastery of the relevant evaluative concepts. To determine whether the FA analysis can meet these challenges, we start by clarifying the sort of attitudes the analysis should appeal to. In section 1, we consider generic attitudes like desires and give some reasons to favor more specific attitudes, namely emotions. The ensuing discussion assesses the prospects of an FA analysis in light of contemporary accounts of emotions. In section 2, we argue that the FA analysis should not be combined with accounts according to which emotions have evaluative contents and then offer, in section 3, some reasons for combining the FA with an account in terms of evaluative attitudes. In section 4, we show how this allows for solving the normative challenge.

We start this overview by discussing the place of emotions within the broader affective domain – how different are emotions from moods, sensations and affective dispositions? Next, we examine the way emotions relate to their objects, emphasizing in the process their intimate relations to values. We move from this inquiry into the nature of emotion to an inquiry into their epistemology. Do they provide reasons for evaluative judgements and, more generally, do they contribute to our knowledge of values? We then address the question of the social dimension of emotions, explaining how the traditional nature vs. nurture contrast applies to the emotions. We finish by exploring the relations between emotions, motivation and action, concluding this overview with a more specific focus on how these relations bear on some central ethical issues.

We are prone to think that the emotions someone undergoes are somehow revelatory of the sort of person she is, and philosophers working in the field have frequently insisted upon the existence of an intimate relation between a subject and her emotions. But how intimate is the relation between emotions and the self? I first explain why interesting claims about this relation must locate it at the level of emotional intentionality. Given that emotions have a complex intentional structure – they are about an object and evaluate it – this means that the relation between emotions and the self may take different shapes. My discussion focuses on three different claims about this relation. According to the first claim, all emotions are about the subject who undergoes them. The second claim appeals to a more moderate form of reflexivity and affirms that emotions always feature a representation of other psychological states of the subject. The third understands the relation between emotions and the self in e...

Ma discussion est structuree autour de l examen de trois theses concernant le rapport entre emotions et moi. J examine d'abord la these selon laquelle toute emotion renferme une forme de reflexivité en ce qu elle est intentionnellement dirigee vers le sujet qui la ressent. Le moi est ici considere être l objet particulier de toute emotion. Je me consacre ensuite a l examen d une deuxieme these, plus subtile, qui considere que les emotions sont reflexives en ce qu elles portent toujours sur d autres etats psychologiques du sujet. Je me tourne enfin vers une these qui situe le rapport entre emotions et moi au niveau de l objet formel. Elle soutient que toute emotion a pour objet formel une propriete evaluative relationnelle dont l un des termes est le sujet qui la ressent. Je cherche a montrer que ces trois theses valent au mieux pour un sous-ensemble restreint d emotions et qu elles doivent parfois etre remplacee par des theses modestes quant au rapport entre emotions et moi, a savoir des theses qui ne presupposent aucun rapport intentionnel entre les deux.

Quel est le lien entre les émotions et la connaissance ? Selon une idée répandue, la réponse s’impose avec évidence : les émotions sont en rapport avec la connaissance dans la seule mesure où elles y font obstacle. Leur caractère disruptif, envahissant et sélectif empêcherait de raisonner correctement ou de poser un regard englobant et objectif sur les situations auxquelles nous faisons face. Je souhaite soutenir l’idée opposée, à savoir que les émotions permettent à ceux qui les ressentent d’entrer en relation avec certaines valeurs. L’hypothèse est, plus précisément, la suivante : les émotions constituent une voie épistémique privilégiée vers la connaissance des valeurs. Il conviendra bien sûr d’élucider le sens dans lequel une émotion peut constituer ou conduire à une forme de connaissance évaluative. J’aborderai ce problème à travers la notion de justification en répondant à la question : qu’est-ce qu’une émotion justifiée ? Après avoir considéré les raisons de ressentir une émotion – d’abord, dans la section 2, les raisons liées à la prise en compte de certains aspects de l’environnement (les « bases cognitives des émotions ») puis, dans la section 3, celles liées aux besoins, désirs et dispositions affectives (leurs « bases motivationnelles ») – je serai alors en mesure, dans la section 4, d’expliquer en quoi les émotions constituent une voie privilégiée vers la connaissance des valeurs. Toutefois, avant de m’aventurer sur ces terres épistémologiques, je souhaite dire quelques mots à propos du genre de conception des émotions qui sous-tend ma discussion.

There are close links between emotions and values, or at least this is what our ordinary ways of talking suggest. For many, if not all, types of emotion it is thus possible to find a corresponding evaluative term, one often derived from the name of the emotion in question. These are for example evaluative terms such as ‘shameful', ‘offensive, ‘annoying', ‘dangerous', ‘contemptible', ‘admirable', ‘amusing', ‘exciting', ‘boring', and the like. Starting perhaps from these linguistic observations, the philosophical task is of course to elucidate the nature of the links between emotions and values, and attempts at doing so have traditionally revolved around the following three questions: first, what is the role of emotions in elucidating the nature of value? For example, should dangerousness be understood in term of the fear response? Second, what is the role of emotions in our getting access to values? For example, what may be the role of fear in becoming aware that a given animal is dangerous? Third, what value do emotions have? For example, is fear of special value because it helps behaving appropriately towards its object? We hall take up these questions in turn and survey the most important answers they have received in the literature. As we shall discover, answering the first question amounts to surveying a variety of theories according to which there is an ontological relation between values and emotions since the former should be elucidated in terms of the latter (Sec. 1). Addressing the second question consists in reviewing theories according to which there is an intentional relation between emotions and values because the former are apprehensions of value or evaluations (Sec. 2). Grappling with the third question, we shall explore some reasons for thinking that emotions can exemplify values (Sec. 3).

Negative emotions are familiar enough, but they have rarely been a topic of study in their own right. This volume brings together fourteen chapters on negative emotions, written in a highly accessible style for non-specialists and specialists alike. It starts with chapters on general issues raised by negative emotions, such as the nature of valence, the theoretical implications of nasty emotions, the role of negative emotions in fiction, as well as the puzzles raised by ambivalent and mixed emotions. The second part of the volume consists of studies of specific emotional phenomena, ranging from the emotion of being moved and the sense of uncanniness to jealousy, hatred, shame, contempt, anxiety, and grief.

It is often claimed that emotions are linked to formal objects. But what are formal objects? What roles do they play? According to some philosophers, formal objects are axiological properties which individuate emotions, make them intelligible and give their correctness conditions. In this paper, I evaluate these claims in order to answer the above questions. I first give reasons to doubt the thesis that formal objects individuate emotions. Second, I distinguish different ways in which emotions are intelligible and argue that philosophers are wrong in claiming that emotions only make sense when they are based on prior sources of axiological information. Third, I investigate how issues of intelligibility connect with the correctness conditions of emotions. I defend a theory according to which emotions do not respond to axiological information, but to non-axiological reasons. According to this theory, we can allocate fundamental roles to the formal objects of emotions while dispensing with the problematic features of other theories.

Les émotions peuvent être pénibles, voire néfastes. Pensons par exemple à la peur, la colère, la haine, la jalousie ou au mépris. De telles émotions sont souvent qualifiées de négatives. Mais que sont les émotions négatives et comment se distinguent-elles des émotions positives ? Plus généralement, qu’impliquent-elles pour notre compréhension des émotions ? Et quels sont concrètement leurs effets sur nos pensées et nos vies ? De plus, comment analyser l’ambivalence affective, comme quand on ressent à la fois de l’amour et de la haine ? Réunissant dix contributions rédigées pour l’occasion, Les ombres de l’âme propose des éléments de réponses originaux à ces questions. Ce faisant, cet ouvrage jette les bases d’une philosophie des émotions négatives.

The evaluations involved in shame are, intuitively at least, of many different sorts. One feels ashamed when seen by others doing something one would prefer doing alone (social shame). One is ashamed because of one’s ugly nose (shame about permanent traits). One feels ashamed of one’s dishonest behavior (moral shame), etc. The variety of evaluations in shame is striking; and it is even more so if one takes a cross-cultural perspective on this emotion. So the difficulty – the “unity problem” of shame- turns out to be the following: is there a common trait shared by all shame evaluations that will allow us to differentiate these evaluations from those that feature in other negative self-reflexive emotions like anger at oneself or self disappointment? Some progress is perhaps accomplished if we say that, in shame, a given trait or behavior is evaluated as degrading or as revealing one’s lack of worth. Still, even if we agree with this last claim, truth is that these answers are less illuminating than we might wish. A theory of shame should surely further elucidate the aspect of one’s identity relevant for shame, namely, the self of shame. In this connexion, philosophers have referred to “self-esteem,” “self-respect” or the “social self,” significantly disagreeing thus on which aspect of one’s identity is at stake in shame. After critically discussing the different solutions to the problem, we offer our own. Shame, we claim, consists in an awareness of a distinctive inability to discharge a commitment that goes with holding self-relevant values. This conception solves the unity problem while illuminating other aspects of this emotion.

The emotions are at the centre of our lives and, for better or worse, imbue them with much of their significance. The philosophical problems stirred up by the existence of the emotions, over which many great philosophers of the past have laboured, revolve around attempts to understand what this significance amounts to. Are emotions feelings, thoughts, or experiences? If they are experiences, what are they experiences of? Are emotions rational? In what sense do emotions give meaning to what surrounds us? The Emotions: A Philosophical Introduction introduces and explores these questions in a clear and accessible way. The authors discuss the following key topics: the diversity and unity of the emotions the relations between emotion, belief and desire the nature of values the relations between emotions and perceptions emotions viewed as evaluative attitudes the link between emotions and evaluative knowledge the nature of moods, sentiments, and character traits. Including chapter summaries and guides to further reading, The Emotions: A Philosophical Introduction is an ideal starting point for any philosopher or student studying the emotions. It will also be of interest to those in related disciplines such as psychology and the social sciences.

In this article, we present, assess and give reasons to reject the popular claim that shame is essentially social. We start by presenting several theses which the social claim has motivated in the philosophical literature. All of them, in their own way, regard shame as displaying a structure in which "others" play an essential role. We argue that while all these theses are true of some important families of shame episodes, none of them generalize so as to motivate the conclusion that shame is an essentially social emotion. We consider each thesis in turn, explaining in the process their connections with one another as well as the constraints on a theory of shame they help uncover. Finally, we show how a non-social picture of shame is not only capable of meeting these constraints, but has the further virtue of shedding light on those situations in which others seem to play no role in why we feel shame.

Cet ouvrage répond à la question « Qu’est-ce qu’une émotion? » à la lumière des débats les plus contemporains en philosophie des émotions tout en s’appuyant sur les recherches empiriques les plus récentes au sujet de l’affect. Une fois exposée la manière dont les émotions se distinguent d’autres phénomènes affectifs tels que les humeurs, les sentiments et les dispositions affectives, l’étude propose une élucidation originale du problème majeur auquel fait face aujourd’hui la philosophie des émotions : comment comprendre la spécificité de l’intentionnalité affective? A travers une discussion à la fois fouillée et didactique des théories contemporaines les plus abouties concernant les relations entre émotion et désir d’une part, et entre émotion et valeur d’autre part, les auteurs défendent l’idée selon laquelle le corps ressenti peut fonctionner comme présentation intentionnelle en première personne d’un monde de valeurs.

The contemporary consensus on shame is pessimistic. Three main reasons, all connected with the alleged fact that, in shame, you allow yourself to become the victim of external pressures, appear to motivate this conclusion. First, shame is said to be the emotion of social sanction: when you feel shame, you submit to the judgements of others. Second, shame is supposed to be triggered by the way you look in the eyes of others. Thirdly, and as a result, shame allegedly motivates at best withdrawal from others, at worse violence towards them. In this paper, we scrutinize these claims and argue that, while each of them contains a grain of truth, they fail to justify shame’s bad reputation.

The nature of emotion is an important question in several philosophical domains, but little attention has so far been paid to identifying the general ontological category to which emotions belong. Given that they are short-lived, are they events? Since they often have components or stages, are they processes? Or does their close link with behaviour mean they are dispositions? In this volume, leading scholars investigate these basic ontological issues, contributing to current discussions about emotions and paving the way for new research into an underexplored area of philosophy. With chapters addressing issues including the temporal profile of emotions, the distinction between emotions and other affective states, and the epistemology of emotion, this highly original book will be valuable for students and specialists of philosophy, and particularly for those working in the metaphysics of mind and emotions.