What are Emotions For? From Affective Epistemology to Affective Ethics

Abstract

In Knowing Emotions: Truthfulness and Recognition in Affective Experiences, RickFurtak defends the bold thesis that emotions are indispensable to our capacity to recognize the importance of the things we encounter. Emotions, he says, "embody a kind of understanding that is accessible to us only by means of our affective experience.Specifically, it is only through the emotions that we are capable of recognizing the value or significance of anything whatsoever" (Furtak 2018, 3). Yet although the book presents a lively discussion of the recognitive capacity of emotions, it does not offer Abstract: What would it mean for an emotion to successfully "recognize" something about an object toward which it is directed? Although the notion of "emotional recognition" is central to Rick Furtak's Knowing Emotions, the text does not provide an account of this concept that enables us to assess the extent to which a given emotional response is recognitive. This article draws from the text to articulate a novel account of emotional recognition. According to this account, emotional recognition can be assessed not only in terms of the "accuracy" of an emotional construal in a strictly epistemological sense, but also in terms of the quasi-ethical ideal of responding emotionally to what we encounter in ways that are "specific," "deep," and "balanced." 132 implicitly called upon to live up to a quasi-ethical ideal of responding emotionally to the things we encounter in ways "does them justice" and "gives them their due," so to speak, by responding to them in ways that are specific, deep, and balanced.

Affective injustice and fundamental affective goods

“… 12 12 For a discussion of the claim that emotional responses can be normatively evaluated in light of their constitutive aims or teloi , read Gallegos 2020. …”