Emotions, Thoughts, and Feelings

Abstract

Abstract I have been arguing, for thirty years now, that emotions are a kind of judgment—or rather, a complex of interlocking judgments, desires, and intentions. Back in the seventies, it was an argument that attracted some attention but little sympathy. What provoked me then—and still provokes me now—is what I call the primitivist conception of emotions, the idea that emotions are basically physiological or (now) neurological syndromes conjoined with feelings that have only marginally to do with cognition or our engagements in the world.