•  8
    Memory identification and its failures
    Philosophy and the Mind Sciences 5. 2024.
    When we remember, we often know that we do. How does this memory identification proceed? After having articulated some constraints on an attractive account of memory identification, this paper explores three types of accounts that respectively appeal to features of memory content, of memory as an activity, and of memory as an attitude. It offers reasons to favour an attitudinal account giving pride of place to the feeling of familiarity.
  •  174
    Emotions as Value Enablers
    In Value, Morality and Social Reality. Essays Dedicated to Dan Egonsson, Björn Petersson and Toni Ronnow-Rasmussen, Lund University Press. pp. 433-450. 2023.
    The paper is structured as follows. §1 lays out the worry that the FA analysis fosters a revisionary understanding of emotional values. §2 introduces the distinction between enablers and favourers and how it is pressed into service by Toni to reply to this worry. While I agree that the reply is attractive, since casting emotions in the role of enablers chimes well with how we pre-theoretically understand the relations between emotions and values, I observe that doing so requires that we tackle t…Read more
  •  8
    The Hedonist’s Emotions
    Les Ateliers de l'Éthique / the Ethics Forum 17 176-191. 2022.
    Julien Deonna et Fabrice Teroni Cet article explore l’intuition hédoniste convaincante selon laquelle les émotions affectent le bonheur parce qu’elles sont des états de plaisir et de déplaisir. La discussion s’intéresse à deux contraintes sur une version plausible de l’hédonisme et explique quels récits des émotions satisfont ces contraintes. La section 1 s’articule autour de la contrainte de non-aliénation : les constituants du bonheur d’un sujet doivent l’engager. Nous soutenons que l’intuitio…Read more
  •  86
    Why are emotions epistemically indispensable?
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.
    Contemporary philosophers are attracted by the Indispensability Claim, according to which emotions are indispensable in acquiring knowledge of some important values. The truth of this claim is often thought to depend on that of Emotional Dogmatism, the view that emotions justify evaluative judgements because they (seem to) make us aware of the relevant values. The aim of this paper is to show that the Indispensability Claim does not stand or fall with Emotional Dogmatism and that there is actual…Read more
  •  8
    Présentation
    Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 114 (2): 147-154. 2022.
  •  109
    In this paper, we contrast the different ways in which the representationalist and the attitudinalist in the theory of emotions account for the fact that emotions have evaluative correctness conditions. We argue that the attitudinalist has the resources to defend her view against recent attacks from the representationalist. To this end, we elaborate on the idea that emotional attitudes have a rich profile and explain how it supports the claim that these attitudes generate the wished-for evaluati…Read more
  •  40
    In contemporary psychology and philosophy, influential theories approach the emotions via their relations to values and evaluations. My aim is to contribute to our understanding of how these evaluative theories in psychology and philosophy relate to one another. I first explain why this presupposes that we make up our minds about the relations between “molecular” and “molar” properties. The rest of my discussion explores some ways of understanding the relation between the molar and the molecular…Read more
  •  351
    According to the fitting attitude (FA) analysis of value concepts, to conceive of an object as having a given value is to conceive of it as being such that a certain evaluative attitude taken towards it would be fitting. Among the challenges that this analysis has to face, two are especially pressing. The first is a psychological challenge: the FA analysis must call upon attitudes that shed light on our value concepts while not presupposing the mastery of these concepts. The second challenge is …Read more
  •  30
    According to the fitting attitude (FA) analysis of value concepts, to conceive of an object as having a given value is to conceive of it as being such that a certain evaluative attitude taken towards it would be fitting. Among the challenges that this analysis has to face, two are especially pressing. The first is a psychological challenge: the FA analysis must call upon attitudes that shed light on our value concepts while not presupposing the mastery of these concepts. The second challenge is …Read more
  •  543
    Emotions and Memory
    The Emotion Researcher 2021. 2021.
    Pre-theoretically, it seems obvious that there are deep and multifarious relations between memory and emotions. On the one hand, a large chunk of our affective lives concerns the good and bad events that happened to us and that we preserve in memory. This is one amongst the many ways in which memory is relevant to the nature and causation of emotions. What does recent research teach us about these relations? § 1 surveys some key issues in this regard. On the other hand, which events we happen to…Read more
  •  62
    Lost in Intensity: Is there an empirical solution to the quasi-emotions debate?
    with Steve Humbert-Droz, Amanda Ludmilla Garcia, Vanessa Sennwald, Julien Deonna, David Sander, and Florian Cova
    Aesthetic Investigations 4 (1): 460-482. 2020.
    Contrary to the emotions we feel in everyday contexts, the emotions we feel for fictional characters do not seem to require a belief in the existence of their object. This observation has given birth to a famous philosophical paradox (the ‘paradox of fiction’), and has led some philosophers to claim that the emotions we feel for fictional characters are not genuine emotions but rather “quasi-emotions”. Since then, the existence of quasi-emotions has been a hotly debated issue. Recently, philosop…Read more
  •  8
    Meinong on memory
    In Markus Textor (ed.), The Austrian Contribution to Analytic Philosophy, Routledge. pp. 1--64. 2006.
    Meinong’s early essay, Zur erkenntnistheoretischen Würdigung des Gedächtnisses1, 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,…Read more
  •  29
    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 emot…Read more
  •  23
    Introduction
    In Christine Tappolet, Fabrice Teroni & Anita Konzelmann Ziv (eds.), Shadows of the Soul: Philosophical Perspectives on Negative Emotions, Routledge. pp. 1-9. 2018.
  •  17
    Introduction
    In Hichem Naar & Fabrice Teroni (eds.), The Ontology of Emotions, Cambridge University Press. pp. 1-13. 2018.
    What is an emotion? No one will seriously doubt that it is a psychological entity of some sort. Rich and lively philosophical debates have failed to generate any stable picture regarding the nature of emotions that extends much beyond this platitude, however. At most, a bare majority of philosophers would agree that emotions exemplify the following features. First, emotions are characterized by a certain phenomenology: they are felt. Second, they are intentional phenomena and, as such, are in on…Read more
  •  326
    Valence, Bodily (Dis)Pleasures and Emotions
    In Michael S. Brady, David Bain & Jennifer Corns (eds.), Philosophy of Suffering, Routledge. pp. 103-122. forthcoming.
    Bodily (dis)pleasures and emotions share the striking property of being valenced, i.e. they are positive or negative. What is valence? How do bodily (dis)pleasures and emotions relate to one another? This chapter assesses the prospects of two popular theses regarding the relation between bodily (dis)pleasures and emotions in light of what we can reasonably think about valence. According to the first thesis, the valence of bodily (dis)pleasures is explanatory prior vis-à-vis the valence of emotio…Read more
  •  91
    Emotion, Fiction and Rationality
    British Journal of Aesthetics 59 (2): 113-128. 2019.
    The aim of this article is to explore in a systematic way the rationality of emotions elicited when we engage with works of fiction. I first lay out the approach to the emotions on which my discussion is premised. Next, I concentrate on two facets of emotional rationality—the first pertains to the relation between emotions and the mental states on which they are based, the second to the relation between emotions and the judgements and behaviour they elicit. These observations about emotional rat…Read more
  •  844
    The Phenomenology of Memory
    In Sven Bernecker & Kourken Michaelian (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Memory, Oxford University Press. pp. 21-33. 2017.
    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 informa…Read more
  •  1506
    In what sense are emotions evaluations?
    In Sabine Roeser & Cain Samuel Todd (eds.), Emotion and Value, Oxford University Press Uk. pp. 15-31. 2014.
    In this chapter, we first introduce the idea that emotions are evaluations. Next, we explore two approaches attempting to account for this idea in terms of attitudes that are alleged to become emotional when taking evaluative contents. According to the first approach, emotions are evaluative judgments. According to the second, emotions are perceptual experiences of evaluative properties. We explain why this theory remains unsatisfactory insofar as it shares with the evaluative judgement theory t…Read more
  • Differentiating shame from guilt
    with A. D. Julien
    Consciousness and Cognition 17 (3): 725-740. 2008.
  •  69
    In Pursuit of Emotional Modes: The Philosophy of Emotion After James
    In Alix Cohen & Robert Stern (eds.), Thinking about the Emotions : A Philosophical History, Oxford University Press. pp. 291-313. 2017.
    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 …Read more
  •  89
    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…Read more
  •  95
    We argue that the main objections against two central tenets of a Jamesian account of the emotions, i.e. that (1) different types of emotions are associated with specific types of bodily feelings (Specificity), and that (2) emotions are constituted by patterns of bodily feeling (Constitution), do not succeed. In the first part, we argue that several reasons adduced against Specifity, including one inspired by Schachter and Singer’s work, are unconvincing. In the second part, we argue that Consti…Read more
  •  597
    Le paradoxe de la fiction: le retour
    with Florian Cova
    L'expression des Émotions: Mélanges En l'Honneur de Patrizia Lombardo. 2015.
    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 ém…Read more
  •  241
    On Seeming to Remember
    In Kourken Michaelian, Dorothea Debus & Denis Perrin (eds.), New Directions in the Philosophy of Memory, Routledge. pp. 329-345. 2018.
    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 …Read more
  •  1593
    Is the Paradox of Fiction Soluble in Psychology?
    Philosophical Psychology 29 (6): 930-942. 2016.
    If feeling a genuine emotion requires believing that its object actually exists, and if this is a belief we are unlikely to have about fictional entities, then how could we feel genuine emotions towards these entities? This question lies at the core of the paradox of fiction. Since its original formulation, this paradox has generated a substantial literature. Until recently, the dominant strategy had consisted in trying to solve it. Yet, it is more and more frequent for scholars to try to dismis…Read more
  •  414
    Fictions, émotions et araignées au plafond
    Liber Amicorum Pascal Engel. 2014.
    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 ce…Read more
  •  148
    What Role for Emotions in Well-being?
    with Julien A. Deonna
    Philosophical Topics 41 (1): 123-142. 2013.
    It is striking that for each major theory of well-being, there exists a companion theory of the emotions. Thus, to classical hedonic views of well-being, there corresponds no less classical pure feeling views of the emotions; to desire views that conceive of well-being in terms of desire satisfaction, there corresponds a variety of theories approaching the emotions in terms of the satisfaction/frustration of desires; and finally, to so called objective list theories of well-being, there correspo…Read more