Emotion as Feeling Towards Value

Introduction to Emotional Experiences

Much of what we take to be meaningful and significant in life is inextricably linked with our capacity to experience emotions. Here, Jonathan Mitchell considers emotional experiences as sui generis states; not to be modelled after other mental states such as perceptions, judgements, or bodily feelings, but given their own analysis and place within our mental economy.

Original View of Emotional Experiences

More specifically, he proposes an original view of emotional experiences as feelings-towards-values. Central to this view is the notion that emotional experiences include (non-bodily) felt attitudes which represent evaluative properties of the particular objects of those experiences.

Theoretical Framework and Content of Emotional Experience

After setting out a framework for theorising about experiences and their contents, Mitchell argues that the content of emotional experience is evaluative. He then explains the best way to marry this claim with the presence of specific kinds of valenced attitudinal components in emotional experience and critical aspects of emotional phenomenology.

Role of Bodily Feelings

Building on this, he introduces a distinctive role for bodily feelings, by way of a somatic enrichment of the felt valenced attitudes involved in emotional experience.

Understanding Emotions and First-Person Perspective

Finally, he considers issues pertaining to the intelligibility of emotions, and shows how the feelings-towards-values view can account for the way in which emotional experiences often make sense in a first-person way.