Emotion as Position-Taking

Abstract

It is a popular thought that emotions play an important epistemic role. Thus, a considerable number of philosophers find it compelling to suppose that emotions apprehend the value of objects and events in our surroundings. I refer to this view as the Epistemic View of emotion. In this paper, my concern is with a rivaling picture of emotion, which has so far received much less attention. On this account, emotions do not constitute a form of epistemic access to specific axiological aspects of their objects. Instead it proposes that they are ways of taking a stand or position on the world. I refer to this as the Position-Taking View of emotion. Whilst some authors seem sympathetic to this view, this it has so far not been systematically motivated and elaborated. In this paper, I fill this gap and propose a more adequate account of our emotional engagement with the world than the predominant epistemic paradigm. I start by highlighting the specific way in which emotions are directed at something, which I contrast with the intentionality of perception and other forms of apprehension. I then go on to offer a specific account of the valence of emotion and show how this account and the directedness of emotions makes them intelligible as a way of taking a position on something.

1 Introduction

Much current work on the emotions conceives of them as epistemically significant. As many philosophers suppose, emotions apprehend the values and disvalues of objects and events in our surroundings.¹ Roughly, the idea is that, in favourable circumstances, emotions like joy and disappointment disclose a certain object or event as having positive or negative value, respectively. I call this view the Epistemic View of emotion.

In this paper, my concern is with a rivaling picture of emotion, which has received much less attention. On this account, emotions are ways of taking a position on the world: in being joyful or disappointed about something we do not apprehend its value but rather adopt a positive or negative stand towards it in light of its value. This view – which I call the Position-Taking View of emotion – goes back to an early strand of phenomenology. It is mostly associated with Husserl’s student von Hildebrand.² The view occasionally also surfaces in the contemporary philosophical literature on emotion.³ However, while some authors seem sympathetic to the idea, it has so far not been adequately motivated and elaborated.⁴ In this paper, I wish to do so and offer a more satisfactory account of our emotional engagement with the world than the predominant epistemic paradigm.

I first explicate the sense in which emotions are directed at something (section 2). A corollary of this will be that the Epistemic View misrepresents our emotional involvement with the world and that this involvement is more aptly conceived as a position-taking. I substantiate this claim by offering a specific account of the valence of emotions (section 3).

The view I develop in this paper is concerned with emotions qua occurrence or episode. This general take is shared by the Epistemic View which construes them as epistemic episodes. Notwithstanding this common ground, the view I will propose radically differs from the latter with respect to the kind of episode as which it conceives emotions.

2 Emotional Directedness

To motivate the Position-Taking View I will begin with a common observation: emotions are intentional in that they have a target ⁵ or particular object. Thus, if Sam is indignant, there will be something about which he is indignant; if Maria is afraid, there will be something that she fears etc. When philosophers introduce the notion of a particular object, they usually add that emotions also have formal objects. In contrast to particular objects, formal objects are shared by all instances of the respective emotion type. Thus, while occurrences of indignation (fear) may be about different things, they are all concerned with offence (danger). More specifically, the formal object of an emotion is a particular (dis)value property which provides its standard of adequacy: indignation about (fear of) x is fitting if and only if x is offensive (dangerous).⁶ Some theorists suppose that there is more to the connection between emotions and formal objects.⁷ According to the Epistemic View, emotions moreover apprehend and thus provide awareness of instances of their formal object.

In the course of the paper, I will show that the Epistemic View misrepresents the link between emotions and their formal object. However, my primary focus for now will be on their particular objects. To make plausible the notion of an emotional position-taking, I shall contrast the intentionality of emotions with the intentionality of a different type of experience to which proponents of the Epistemic View often assimilate them. As they frequently suppose, emotion can be modeled on perception.⁸ While this view may seem intuitive in that both emotions and perceptions appear to be passive mental occurrences, I will show that it conceals an important difference in respect of their intentionality.

2.1 Directedness and Perceptual Intentionality

Imagine perceiving a landscape.⁹ There are various objects in front of you: houses, trees, a mountain in the background. Giving a naïve description of your visual experience, we might say that these objects are presented to you. The same goes for their properties: the redness of the roofs, the dark green of the trees, the shape of the mountain are all in a straightforward sense presented to you.¹⁰ Now imagine that, as you perceive the landscape, you also feel an emotion. Contemplating the scene in detail, intense joy wells up in you. In saying that your joy wells up in you, we imply that it contrasts in respect of its experienced location with the perceived external scene. At the same time, it has a specific connection with that scene: it is directed toward it. You feel glad about the scene.

If this account is descriptively accurate, there is a salient phenomenological difference between emotion and perception. As a first pass, one might say that there is a different direction to the intentionality of each type of experience. Thus, von Hildebrand proposes that in perception, “the intention goes, so to speak, from the object to the subject: the object reveals itself to our mind, it speaks and we listen.“¹¹ Put less figuratively, we might say that in perception your role is that of a recipient who registers what is presented. By contrast, it seems that the intentionality of your joy towards the scene has the opposite direction. Here, the ‘intention’ goes from the subject to the object: the joy inside you is directed towards the external scene; it is you who ‘speaks’.¹² Another way of putting this contrasting point is in terms of your emotion having a target. This notion represents emotions as being aimed at something. One might think that von Hildebrand’s speech act-metaphor is somewhat more evocative, though, in that it invites a slightly richer characterization of emotional directedness. It invites thinking of emotion as a position adopted towards an object: in having a positive feeling aimed at the landscape you are not simply registering the scene, but take a favorable stand towards it.

Since the contrast I am highlighting may be unfamiliar, it calls for further elucidation. Also, one might doubt that it generalizes to all emotions. For example, in the case of an immediate reaction of fear to a sudden danger this contrast is not as easily set up. Here, it is less plausible to say that the emotion ‘wells up in you’ and contrasts in respect of its felt location with the external situation. Can we still characterize immediate emotional reactions as aimed at something or as position-takings? To show that we can and further elucidate what I have in mind, I will offer some remarks on the locutions we deploy to ascribe objects to emotions and perceptions. Once we have a clearer understanding of directedness, I will then substantiate the richer characterization of emotions as position-takings.

While ‘directed toward’ is often used technically to characterize all intentional phenomena, there is a more restrictive, ordinary use that captures what is specific to emotional as opposed to perceptual intentionality. On this use, the term is a near synonym of ‘aimed at’ and applies only to some intentional phenomena.¹³ More specifically, we can speak of joy, fear, indignation, jealousy, contempt and admiration as directed toward (aimed at) something. In contrast, perceptions do not admit of this characterization. Thus, on this use of ‘directed toward’ the following sentence seems anomalous:

Maria’s fear was directed toward the motorbike; and so were the visual perceptions she enjoyed as the bike approached

Compare, moreover, the prepositions we use in attributing objects to emotions and perceptions, respectively.¹⁴ In the former case, we use prepositions such as ‘about’, ‘at’ and ‘over’:

Sam is glad about the scene in front of his eyes

Maria is angry at Sam

George is enthusiastic over his victory

These prepositions convey a direction towards an object. In this respect, they differ from the preposition ‘of’, as used to attribute objects to perception:

Maria has a vivid perception of the landscape

Sam enjoys a visual experience of the mountains

Rather than conveying a direction towards an object, ‘of’ here specifies what is registered. To be precise, ‘of’ can also be used to attribute emotional objects:

Maria is afraid of the motorbike

John is contemptuous of Peter

However, here the preposition conveys something different. Note that we can paraphrase these ascriptions by saying that the respective emotion is directed towards (aimed at) something. When ‘of’ attributes objects of perception, no such paraphrase is possible.

The same goes for ascriptions of objects to the two phenomena by means of ‘that’-clauses. Consider:

Peter is glad that he got sight of the scene

George is sad that the show has closed

These sentences contrast in the same way with sentences such as

Maria perceives that there is a mountain.

While the former can be paraphrased in terms of the emotion being directed at a certain state of affairs, the latter admits of no corresponding paraphrase.

These linguistic considerations illustrate the contrast I have in mind. Moreover, they suggest that it is not restricted only to specific emotional responses: we speak of emotions as being directed towards (aimed at) something regardless of whether they arise slowly or as an immediate reaction.¹⁵ To offer some additional elucidation of the directedness of emotions, I would like to supplement these considerations with some remarks on their relation to reasons. This will also show more clearly how the view I am elaborating is opposed to the Epistemic View.

2.2 Directedness and Responsiveness

When we feel an emotion towards something, its target will provide a reason for which we have the emotion. That is, we feel it in light of some aspect of its target. We can also put this by saying that an emotion is a response to its target. In this context, the term ‘response’ is not used simply to indicate a causal connection between the emotion and its object but to attribute a motivating reason for the former. To see that the directedness of an emotion implies that it is a response, we need to look more closely at ordinary emotion ascriptions. Consider the following sentences¹⁶:

*Peter is glad about the scene, though not because the scene appears to have any positive import to him whatsoever

*Maria is afraid of the motorbike, though she is not afraid because the motorbike appears even remotely dangerous to her

*George is sad that the show has closed, though he is not sad because its closure appears to him as a loss of any sort

These sentences seem semantically anomalous. They indicate that the attribution of a target to an emotion entails that this object constitutes a motivating reason for it. More precisely, this motivating reason is a specific evaluative respect in which its target presents itself. As these examples suggest, to conceive of an emotion as directed is to recognize it a response to an appearance of its formal object.¹⁷

This take on the directedness of emotion adds further support to the claim that emotions and perceptions differ in respect of intentionality. Note that perceptions are not responses: as a request for a reason-giving rather than mere causal explanation, the question ‘why do you perceive x?’ makes no sense.¹⁸ Accordingly, emotions and perceptions seem to relate to their objects in different ways.

To adequately situate these considerations it is worth noting also that they are incompatible not only with views that take emotion to be a form of perception, but with any version of the Epistemic View.¹⁹ As a request for motivating reasons, the question ‘why do you apprehend x?’ is meaningless, too. The same goes for cognate verbs such as ‘grasp’, ‘register’, ‘discover’, ‘detect’,’(come to) be aware of’.²⁰ What is more, they tell against the Epistemic View also insofar as they indicate that appearances of formal objects serve as motivating reasons for emotions.²¹ This is in part because, in favourable circumstances, the evaluative construal to which an emotion is responsive already does the epistemic work which the Epistemic View accords to emotion. More specifically, under certain conditions the value appearance to which an emotion is responsive constitutes actual awareness of value. Since this appearance also brings about the emotion, it temporally precedes it. Thus, in such cases, the respective value is apprehended prior to the emotion. But this means that the emotion itself does not apprehend this value: one cannot apprehend what one has already apprehended. Of course, not all emotions are based on actual awareness of value. Thus, there are cases where the evaluative appearance is non-veridical. However, in this case, there is no value to be apprehended by the emotion in the first place.²²

If these remarks are correct, it follows that the directedness of emotion falsifies the Epistemic View. If emotional directedness is a matter of responsiveness to apparent value, emotions do not apprehend value.

Having shed additional light on the directedness of emotion, I shall now explicate the richer characterization of emotional intentionality as position-taking in order to develop a genuine alternative to the Epistemic View. While the directedness of emotion is crucial to this proposal, there is more to the idea of a position-taking. More specifically, one may wonder about the precise sense in which one can be said to take a particular position towards something in having an emotion. While von Hildebrand’s speech act metaphor renders this characterization somewhat intuitive, it must be shown to be apt as a substantive, rather than mere metaphorical, account.²³

3 Emotional Valence and Position-Taking

We find a hint at how to substantiate the Position-Taking View in a brief remark by Mulligan (2010a, 234):

It is hard to deny that emotions are reactions, viz. have the character of responses. [...] Indeed, the fact that so many emotions are positive or negative and thus have a “valence” just means that these emotions are reactions, position-takings for or against something.²⁴

According to Mulligan, the character of emotions as position-takings is an immediate consequence of their valence: emotions are position-takings for or against something insofar as they are positive or negative. This claim allows for multiple readings. Rather than assessing various different conceptions of emotional valence,²⁵ I shall here opt for the one that I take to best elucidate what seems pre-theoretically correct about the view I am looking to explicate. I will thus understand valence in hedonic terms and propose that emotions are position-takings insofar as they feel good or bad.²⁶ This reading makes sense in light of the example I have given at the outset of section 2. What makes it intuitive to think of the joy you feel towards the scene as the taking of a favorable position towards that scene seems closely related to how you feel in experiencing that joy: you feel good. The same goes for negative emotions. In indignation, one adopts a negative stance towards a certain event or state of affairs; its character as a negative stance is intuitively related to the specific discomfort we feel in indignation. The proposal makes sense also of ambivalent emotions. In feeling nostalgic one takes a positive position towards one’s past, albeit one that is positive in a qualified sense: while nostalgia is pleasant, it also involves an element of pain.

While these examples favor substantiating the Position-Taking View on the basis of a hedonic account of emotional valence, there are well-known objections to this account which might suggest that this approach is unfaithful to the variety and complexity of our emotional lives. Thus, it can seem that some emotions do not have a hedonic feel. The most commonly proposed counter-example is surprise. Another candidate is beatitude, which is not supposed to have any valence on its traditional Christian understanding. Moreover, the view might seem to fail to recognize emotional valence as variable across different occurrences of the same emotion type. As I have illustrated the view, valence is understood as fixed for each type of emotion. Yet things may seem more complicated. Consider erotic love. While this emotion is generally pleasant, unrequited erotic love is painful. Note, moreover, that in these cases the character of erotic love as a position-taking seems independent of its hedonic dimension: even when painful, erotic love is still intuitively a positive stance.

Although I will here not be able to offer a full defense of a hedonic account of emotional valence, I shall offer some remarks to disperse these two concerns.²⁷ A straightforward reply to the first one is to deny that apparent counter-examples are genuine emotions. Although this move may seem desperate, it is in fact not uncommon and has intuitive support in case of the first of the above given examples. It seems that someone who was merely surprised, but never emotionally (dis)pleased, by significant events in her life would lead a psychological life hardly worth being called emotional.²⁸ Moreover, surprise differs from paradigm emotions in that it is not based on any concern.²⁹ Unlike in the case of joy, indignation or nostalgia, nothing is at stake in surprise: one may be surprised by events that are entirely irrelevant to one’s desires, needs or attachments. I take these considerations to provide good reasons to doubt that surprise is an emotion and dismiss this putative counterexample. I do not think that all proposed counter-examples can be handled in this way, though. Thus, I would not deny that beatitude is an emotion. Yet I would maintain that it is a form of comfort. Beatitude is, after all, a form of relief, that is, relief from the burden of mundane concerns. Relatedly, beatitude is also based on a concern: a concern for one to be free of mundane concerns, which is satisfied by one’s present condition.³⁰

The apparent variability of hedonic valence across occurrences of a particular emotion type similarly rests on a mistaken view of the phenomena. There is no doubt a sense in which unrequited erotic love is unpleasant. However, acknowledging this does not require attributing a different hedonic dimension to the emotion in these cases but recognizing a distinct occurrence of disappointment or frustration. This distinct emotion is unpleasant in that it involves the frustration of particular erotic interests, including, perhaps, a more general interest to have a partner.³¹ These interests also inform the valence of erotic love: erotic love is pleasant inasmuch as its object is construed so as to positively resonate with these interests. Although the pleasantness of erotic love recedes into the background when it is unrequited, there is more to the overall experience than pain: it is usually a bittersweet affair. Accordingly, there is also no reason to suppose that, in such cases, the hedonic dimension of erotic love and its positive character as a position-taking diverge.³²

While the hedonic character of emotion helps pin down what seems intuitive about the Position-Taking View, this approach still falls short of a substantive account which allows us to appreciate the proposal as more than metaphorical. If emotions possess both hedonic valence and directedness, this makes it compelling to suppose that they are in some sense positively or negatively aimed at specific aspects of our circumstances. However, in which sense precisely is this a matter of taking a stand?

To answer this question, it is necessary to give a more substantive account of the hedonic character of emotion itself. Suitably explicated, their hedonic tone shows emotions to be position-takings inasmuch as it makes them intelligible as forms of approval or disapproval. Intuitively, in (dis)approving of something one takes a positive (negative) position toward it. More precisely, to (dis)approve of something is to find it (dis)agreeable, i.e. concordant (discordant) with oneself or one’s evaluative outlook. In the remainder, I show that the hedonic dimension of emotion is a form of concordance (discordance) with oneself.

3.1 The Personal Dimension of Hedonic Valence

There is an intimate connection between the hedonic tone of emotions and our concerns. For example, the pleasantness of one’s joy after having completed a good day’s work seems intimately linked to one’s desire to meet one’s goals for the day: we feel good insofar as this desire is palpably satisfied. So is the discomfort involved in one’s disappointment that one has not met them: we feel uncomfortable inasmuch as this desire is frustrated. Likewise, as noted in the last subsection, the pleasantness of erotic love seems to be tied to the fate of certain concerns, i.e. certain erotic interests.

Such considerations motivate an account of emotional valence defended by Roberts (2003, 157). According to Roberts, emotional (dis)pleasure consists in the “perceived satisfaction or frustration of a concern by a situation”.³³ While I take this to be roughly correct, there are two respects in which this view requires qualification. I address these in turn.

First, it is important to clarify the idea of the satisfaction or frustration of a concern. In giving an account of emotional (dis)pleasure, the satisfaction or frustration of concerns must be sharply distinguished from the (dis)value to which the emotion is responsive. This is important since it seems plausible to think of this (dis)value as constituted (at least in part) by the positive or negative significance or relevance which something has relative to particular concerns. And it can seem that the positive or negative relevance of something for a concern coincides with its satisfaction or frustration, respectively.³⁴

To illustrate and motivate this view of the formal objects of emotions, consider danger, the formal object of fear. Intuitively, what we are responsive to in fearing something is always apparent danger to something qua object of our concern. When I am afraid that the impending storm might damage the photographs that I forgot on the porch before leaving, my fear is motivated by the storm’s potential to damage something about which I care. The badness of the danger seems to consist in its negative relevance to a particular attachment. Similarly, when I am glad to have completed my goals for the day, I am responsive to the relevance of their completion for my corresponding desire. Their completion is good insofar as it accords with this desire.³⁵

Importantly, to think of something as positively or negatively relevant to a concern is not to think of it as positively or negatively resonating with (satisfying or frustrating) that concern. The former is to recognize it as objectively (in)congruent with this concern. In contrast, in the latter case we refer to an actual psychological occurrence in which this concern is favorably or adversely impinged upon in a specific way. This distinction is worth stressing since satisfaction and frustration are often equated with the objective (in)congruence of things with concerns. At least in the case of desires, it is usually supposed that they are satisfied when they bring about changes which make the world congruent with (render true) their intentional content. My account of satisfaction and frustration crucially differs from a mere semantic understanding of these notions in conceiving of satisfaction and frustration as actual psychological occurrences.³⁶ On this account, the objective (in)congruence of something with a concern is neither necessary nor sufficient for its satisfaction (frustration). It is not necessary since the satisfaction (frustration) of concerns may be a response to mere apparent (in)congruence with them: in the relevant, psychological sense the satisfaction of my concern to meet my goals for the day requires only that the world seems congruent with it. Concern (in)congruence is not sufficient for concern satisfaction (frustration) either since the fact of something’s being (in)congruent with a concern does not entail that one registers the (in)congruence and responds accordingly.

A second qualification concerns the term ‘perceived’ in this context. The claim that emotional (dis)pleasure consists in the perceived satisfaction (frustration) of concerns invites misconceptions. In particular, it can seem to come dangerously close to an epistemic conception of emotion: Does it not amount to the claim that emotions perceive or register the satisfaction or frustration of concerns? We can disperse this worry if we instead characterize hedonic tone as the felt satisfaction (frustration) of a concern and understand ‘feel the satisfaction (frustration) of a concern’ adverbially, that is, as ascribing a way of feeling rather than awareness of concern satisfaction (frustration). We thereby take account of the fact that emotional (dis)pleasure is canonically ascribed by the adverbial construction ‘feel good (bad)’. On the proposed analysis, ascriptions of emotional (dis)pleasure by the transitive construction ‘feel the satisfaction (frustration) of a concern’ ascribe what is also ascribed by ‘feel good (bad)’. In this context, ‘good’ (‘bad’) refers to concern satisfaction (frustration) qua way of feeling.³⁷

We can motivate this analysis by noting that adverbial analyses of transitive ‘feel’ constructions make good sense in an intimately related context. Consider ascriptions of the specific emotions that go by the names ‘satisfaction’ and ‘frustration’. To say of someone that she feels satisfaction (frustration) is tantamount to saying that she feels satisfied (frustrated). We thereby ascribe a certain way of feeling rather than awareness of an emotion.³⁸ This way of feeling can be characterized as positive (negative): it is a case of feeling good (bad). Thus, this ascription seems to be analyzable in adverbial terms, where the ascribed way of feeling is picked out also by ‘feel good (bad)’. I propose to similarly analyze ‘feel the satisfaction (frustration) of a concern’. While it seems that one cannot simply analyze this locution as being synonymous with ‘feel frustrated (satisfied)’ at pains of assimilating all emotional (dis)pleasure to the emotions of satisfaction and frustration, I suggest a related analysis on which it picks out a corresponding, qualified way of feeling: feeling satisfied or frustrated as the subject of specific concerns. Thus, taking account of the fact that we canonically ascribe emotional (dis)pleasure by means of ‘feel good (bad)’, I understand talk of feeling the satisfaction (frustration) of a particular concern as talk of feeling satisfied (frustrated) as a subject of that concern. Correspondingly, I take ‘good’ (‘bad’) in this connection to refer to ways one feels (frustrated/satisfied) qua subject of certain concerns. It seems that, despite initial appearances, this analysis accommodates also the valence of the emotions satisfaction and frustration. Although the way we ordinarily ascribe these emotions seems to imply that it is the person as such rather than particular concerns of hers that is satisfied (frustrated), we can account for the relevant intuitive distinction by supposing that the concerns in these cases have a special standing. When I report not simply joy but satisfaction after having completed a good day’s work, the comfort of my emotion is still tied to the fate of my desire to meet my goals for the day. In this case, however, the desire has a particular standing in being central to my evaluative perspective or at least presently takes a prominent place within my personal investments. It is for this reason that we here commonly speak of satisfaction simpliciter.³⁹ Crucially, this adverbial analysis of ‘feel the satisfaction (frustration) of a concern’ makes room for a view of hedonic tones which avoids conceiving of them as forms of awareness of concern satisfaction (frustration).⁴⁰

In light of this account of emotional (dis)pleasure, it is now but a small step towards completing my exposition of the Position-Taking View. In the final subsection, I explain how this account makes sense of emotions as forms of (dis)approval.

3.2 Hedonic Valence as a Position towards the World

The proposed view of hedonic tone is not simply an account of the (un)pleasant character of emotion. It makes emotions intelligible as ways of finding the world (dis)agreeable. To see this, it is crucial to recognize the satisfaction (frustration) of concerns as a way in which the world is concordant (discordant) with onself or one’s evaluative outlook. The relevant notion of concordance (discordance) is a specifically experiential notion. It is paradigmatically expressed in ordinary discourse in first person reports of the following form:

X (the scene/the weather/her new haircut…) (dis)agrees with me

Such statements usually report that something is concordant (discordant) with oneself in a particular sense: it is (not) to one’s taste or liking. At the same time, they are reports of (dis)pleasure: what (dis)agrees with one ipso facto (dis)pleases one. This notion of concordance (discordance) with oneself makes emotions intelligible as forms of (dis)approval once we appreciate that it covers a rather broad range of (dis)pleasures. Thus, while concordance (discordance) with one’s taste or liking can be understood in a somewhat restrictive sense, as referring to a specific set of (broadly) aesthetic cares, there is also a corresponding notion which refers to our personal investments more generally. The pleasantness of one’s joy after having completed a good day’s work is a case of the world being in agreement with oneself as someone desiring to meet their goals for the day; the bother of indignation is a case of disagreement with oneself as someone with certain normative concerns or values. The proposed account of hedonic tone invokes a broader notion of (dis)agreement with one’s concerns on these lines. Emotional (dis)pleasure is concordance (discordance) with one’s concerns in the form of their satisfaction (frustration): one feels satisfied (‘agreed with’) or frustrated (‘disagreed with’) as a subject of specific concerns.

On the basis of this notion of (dis)agreement it should now be easy to make sense of emotions as forms of (dis)approval. To do so, we only have to relate this notion to their directedness. If we recognize the (dis)comfort of emotion as directed (dis)agreement, emotions thereby become intelligible as ways of finding something (dis)agreeable. That is, for one to feel good or bad towards something in having an emotion is for one to find it concordant or discordant with oneself as a subject with specific cares. In line with my remarks on the responsive character of emotion, we can add that this (dis)agreement is a response to a particular (dis)value. More specifically, given the above understanding of formal objects, emotions can be conceived as ways of finding something (dis)agreeable relative to particular concerns, which are responses to its apparent relevance with respect to those concerns.

There is considerable room to expand this view and contrast it with cognate proposals. While I lack the space to situate it in detail within the current theoretical landscape, I would yet like to briefly compare it with Deonna and Teroni’s (2012, ch. 7; 2014; 2015) recent account of emotions as evaluative attitudes.⁴¹ This account, which likewise opposes a perceptual view of emotion, is based on a specific analogy between emotions and other phenomena with formal objects. More specifically, in the case of phenomena with formal objects, it is generally their intentional mode, rather than intentional content, which is responsible for the fact that their conditions of adequacy involve the corresponding formal object. As they propose, it is because S adopts the intentional mode of fear towards x that her mental state is fitting if and only if x is dangerous. Fear is the mode of taking-as-dangerous an intentional content.

I have assessed this proposal and developed my own version of the view that emotions are evaluative modes elsewhere.⁴² In contrasting Deonna & Teroni’s account with my account in this paper, I should stress that their core notion of an attitude is the technical notion of intentional mode rather than that of position-taking.⁴³ This notion applies to all intentional phenomena. To be fair, Deonna & Teroni’s view does have some echoes with the Position-Taking View. For example, in explicating their view they also sometimes speak of emotions as stances or postures we adopt towards the world (e.g. 2012, 79, 81; 2015, 302).⁴⁴ Relatedly, they similarly contrast the phenomenology of perception with the phenomenology of emotion and account for the difference by characterizing emotions as attitudes (2015, 306). Yet they do not do enough to highlight what is specific to emotions as attitudes in this further, non-technical sense and how this distinguishes them from every form of apprehension.⁴⁵ Relatedly, while they note that emotions, but not perceptions, admit of justifying reasons, they do not recognize them as responses to value and hold on to the Epistemic View.⁴⁶ In this respect, their position conflicts with the Position-Taking View.

My central concern here has been to put the specific sense in which emotions are directed at center stage and to show how their intentionality and their valence jointly give substance to a view that sharply contrasts with the Epistemic View in every possible form. One can read my considerations on hedonic tone as offering a substantive characterization of the intentional modes of emotions; however, this account conceives of their modes as fundamentally different from the intentional mode of any form of apprehension.

4 Conclusion

I motivated and developed an alternative to the popular view that emotions apprehend value. According to this alternative, emotions are ways of taking a position in response to value. As I argued, emotions are position-takings insofar as their hedonic feel constitutes a specific form of (dis)approval. Indeed, in recognizing emotions as stances that are informed by our complex background of cares and concerns, this picture recognizes them as one of the most subtle and sophisticated forms of position-taking we are capable of.