The epistemology of emotional experience

Mitchell, Jonathan 2017. The epistemology of emotional experience. Dialectica 71 (1) , p. 84. 10.1111/1746-8361.12171

PDF - Accepted Post-Print Version Download (357kB)

Abstract

This article responds to two arguments against “Epistemic Perceptualism”, the view that emotional experiences, as involving a perception of value, can constitute reasons for evaluative belief. It first provides a basic account of emotional experience (Section 1), and then introduces concepts relevant to the epistemology of emotional experience, such as the nature of a reason for belief, non-inferentiality, and prima facie vs. conclusive reasons, which allow for the clarification of Epistemic Perceptualism in terms of the Perceptual Justificatory View (Section 2). It then challenges two arguments which purport to show that emotional experience is not a source of reasons for evaluative belief (Sections 3, 4 and 5). The first argument claims that because normative why-questions are always appropriate in the case of emotions, then emotions can never be conclusive reasons for corresponding evaluative beliefs. The second purports to show that appeal to emotional experience as a source of reasons for evaluative beliefs renders emotions problematically self-justifying, and since emotions cannot be (even provisionally) self-justifying, they cannot provide any sort of reason for corresponding evaluative beliefs. This article responds to these arguments, and in doing so shows there is still much to be learned about the epistemology of emotional experience by drawing analogies with perceptual experience.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	English, Communication and Philosophy
Publisher:	Wiley
ISSN:	0012-2017
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	20 October 2021
Last Modified:	21 Nov 2024 22:00
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/144424

Citation Data

Cited 20 times in Scopus. View in Scopus. Powered By Scopus® Data

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item