Aarón Álvarez-González

During the last decade we have witnessed a stagnated debate on the epistemic nature of emotion with two clear factions: those who defend that emotions are epistemically akin to perception and those who deny it. In this paper I propose a way out of that impasse. Based on Sosa’s distinction, I propose that there are animal and reflective evaluative knowledge in both of which emotion’s play a non-superfluous epistemic role. On the one hand, we can devise an externalist version of perceptualism immune to traditional objections. On the other hand, we not only can but should complement that externalist position with an account of reflective evaluative knowledge, used by non-perceptualist to attack traditional, internalist versions of perceptualism. Thus, perceptualism and non-perceptualism do not disagree with each other, they are just offering an analysis of different epistemic achievements, which have different epistemic statuses and different epistemic requirements.

ABSTRACT There is an important debate in the philosophy of mind that has roots in the phenomenological tradition, namely: what are the primitive forms of consciousness, that is, what are the fundamental ingredients or aspects of consciousness. This paper wants to contribute to partially answering this general question by providing an answer to a required sub-question within this question: is emotional phenomenology fundamental? I will answer in the affirmative and will offer an argument focused on contemplative emotions elicited by fiction. Another type of contemplative emotions, namely, esthetic emotions, have been invoked in the literature but I will argue that the phenomenology of emotions elicited by fiction, given their continuity and sameness in kind with the phenomenology of garden variety emotions, are more dialectically efficient vis-à-vis the debate on the irreducibility of emotional phenomenology.

Emotions are taken by some authors as a kind of mental state epistemically akin to perception. However, unlike perceptual phenomenology, which allows being treated dogmatically, emotional phenomenology is puzzling in the following respect. When you feel an emotion, you feel an urge to act, you feel, among other things, your body’s action readiness. On the other hand, at least sometimes, you are aware that an emotion by itself is not a sufficient reason to justify an evaluative judgment and/or an action, not even prima facie. How can a single mental state, emotion, seem to be dogmatic and hypothetic at the same time? It seems that emotions alone fall short of the justifying role in which their guiding role would be grounded. If this is true, then emotional experience cannot be epistemically akin to perception. Unless we are willing to claim that emotions cause action blindly (i.e., not rationally), we need an account of the distinctive epistemic role of emotional experience that renders its guidance role rational. In this paper I outline this new problem and its consequences for the metaphysics and epistemology of emotional experience. I also try to offer the sketch of a plausible solution.