RATCLIFFE, MATTHEW orcid.org/0000-0003-4519-4833 (2025) What are The Emotions? Voluntas: revista internacional de filosofia. e93908. ISSN: 2179-3786
Abstract
Philosophers and cognitive scientists frequently construe emotional experience in terms of discrete episodes or states that can be individuated, enumerated, and assigned to different types. In this paper, I address (a) the source and status of this broad conception of the emotions, and (b) the extent to which it succeeds in accommodating the structure and variety of human emotional experiences. I argue that the emotions are a selective abstraction from the much richer phenomenology of emotional life. This abstraction originates neither in an everyday, commonsense picture of emotion nor in emotion theory. Instead, it is a chimerical hybrid of the two, which risks eclipsing the complexity, diversity, and nuances of human emotional life. I conclude by sketching a philosophical perspective that emphasizes the dynamic, temporally extended structure of emotional experience more so than individuation, enumeration, and classification.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Article |
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| Authors/Creators: |
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| Dates: |
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| Institution: | The University of York |
| Academic Units: | The University of York > Faculty of Arts and Humanities (York) > Philosophy (York) |
| Date Deposited: | 19 Nov 2025 10:20 |
| Last Modified: | 19 Nov 2025 10:20 |
| Published Version: | https://doi.org/10.5902/2179378693908 |
| Status: | Published |
| Refereed: | Yes |
| Identification Number: | 10.5902/2179378693908 |
| Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:234670 |

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