Emotional Knowing: the Role of Embodied Feelings in Affective Cognition

Emotional Congruence and Judgments of Honesty and Bias

“…Our results are in line with Furtak's philosophical account of emotion as integral to knowledge (Furtak, 2017). An individual who says he believes black and white people are equal while having negative emotional responses to black people is not honest, in this account, because he ignores or has lost contact with his own emotional reactions.…”

“…Our broader theoretical conceptualization of honesty as a psychological construct involves an important role for emotions. We suggest that honesty, as it is understood by perceivers, does not just involve the accurate reporting of reasoned statements; it must also involve a felt commitment to those statements (Furtak, 2017). True beliefs involve having the right kinds of emotional reactions in relevant situations, and perceivers use information about the consistency of these emotional reactions with propositional statements when judging honesty and character.…”

“…In social situations, however, truth can involve emotional content not captured by explicit propositional statements. Illustrating this, Furtak (2017) reinterprets a philosophical scenario from Roberts (2003) in which an individual says he believes black and white people are equal, yet he feels strong negative emotions in reaction to seeing his sister dating a black man (Roberts, 2003). Roberts argues that this demonstrates how emotion and reason are separate.…”

The Epistemic Role of Emotions in Value Sensitivity: a Phenomenological Analysis

“…This phenomenologically informed picture of emotions is consistent with classic sub specie boni understandings of emotional life and akin to contemporary appraisal models of emotion as found in psychology (Roseman, 2001). Further, it aligns well with (at least some versions of) so-called cognitive and perceptive philosophical theories of emotion (Ferran, 2008;Goldie, 2002;Nussbaum, 2003), although, as mentioned, it fits even better with accounts that emphasize not only the connection between evaluation and emotion, but their essential intertwinement (Maiese 2014;Furtak 2018;Colombetti 2010). Emotional responses are in part constituted by some sort of appraisal or valuation, positive or negative.…”

“…Through the method of philosophical phenomenology, the contribution is to establish a significant explanandum for any possible adequate account of the connection between emotion and value sensitivity (Huemer, 2007;Husserl, 1950;Overgaard, Gilbert, & Burwood, 2013). The paper's phenomenological approach to evaluative emotions resembles the accounts of Maiese (2014) and Furtak (2018) in emphasizing how we do not experience the evaluative and the affective components of emotional experience as distinct and separate elements. On the contrary, we experience them as aspects of the same, which is why emotions are not merely responses to evaluations; they have crucial epistemic evaluative functions.…”