Being Emotional about the Past: On the Nature and Role of Past‐Directed Emotions*

Abstract

We sometimes experience emotions which are directed at past events (or situations) which we witnessed at the time when they occurred (or obtained). The present paper explores the role which such "autobiographically pastdirected emotions" (or "APD-emotions") play in a subject's mental life. A defender of the "Memory-Claim" holds that an APD-emotion is a memory, namely a memory of the emotion which the subject experienced at the time when the event originally occurred (or the situation obtained) towards which the APD-emotion is directed. On this view, APD-emotions might play an important role in our acquiring knowledge about our own past emotions, which renders the view rather attractive. However, as I show in the present paper, none of the various possible versions of the Memory-Claim are tenable. This leaves us with the "Universal-New-Emotion-Claim", according to which all APD-emotions are new emotional responses to the past events (or situations) towards which the relevant APD-emotions are directed. Further consideration of the "Universal-New-Emotion-Claim" shows that while APD-emotions do not play the epistemological role they could have played had some version of the Memory-Claim turned out to be true, a subject's APD-emotions nevertheless do play a vital role in a subject's mental life: they help the subject to develop a balanced sense of self. Each of us experiences many different emotions every day. Very often the emotions we experience are directed at objects or events which we presently perceive. At other times, however, the emotions we experience are directed at

Remembering emotions

“…Thus, so as not to exclude entire disciplines and to avoid scientists and philosophers talking past each other, as, I believe, might have been the case in the past, e.g. (Debus 2007;LeDoux 1992), I will start with a commonsense notion that serves as a working definition and assumes only so much as to sufficiently reflect the phenomena under consideration here, and from there on show its limitations given the described accounts, and if need be revise the definition accordingly. The choice of accounts (both, scientific as well as philosophical) will be necessarily subjective given the scope of the paper.…”

“…Philosophers and scientists alike have diverging opinions on this question (Debus 2007;James 1983;LeDoux 1992;Christianson and Safer 1996;Ribot 1897;Ross 1991;Titchener 1895;Levine et al 2006), but a satisfactory answer is still lacking. At the same time, both memory and emotions arguably play a vital role in everyday life.…”

Dimensiones de análisis de los recuerdos personales como recuerdos afectivos

“…Mientras que Debus (2007) sostiene que las emociones empáticas dirigidas hacia el yo pasado corresponden a una perspectiva de primera persona, el ejemplo anterior de la emoción de lástima muestra que en realidad las emociones empáticas hacia el yo pasado corresponden a una perspectiva externa y de tercera persona. Aunque algunos autores han sostenido que el contagio emocional es uno de los procesos que forman parte de la reacción empática (Hatfield, Rapson y Le, 2009) 9 , existe una diferencia fundamental entre ambos fenómenos.…”

Storytelling agents: why narrative rather than mental time travel is fundamental

“…Debus 2007;Gerrans and Kennett 2010;Suddendorf and Corballis 2007). There has also been some focus on metaphysical issues -whether forward and backward time travel are the same kind of process (Debus 2014) -as well as conceptual issues concerning the relationship between thinking about, and experiencing, the past (Debus 2013).…”