ABSTRACT
In Chapter 6, we saw that one central motivation for perceptual theories of the emotions is the claim that the epistemological relation between emotions and evaluative judgments mirrors that between perceptions and perceptual judgments: in both cases, the experience typically causes and potentially justifies the judgment. Now, the fact that we often make evaluative judgments as a causal result of the emotions we experience (e.g., Mary judges the remark to be offensive because she is angry at its author) is something that we have already emphasized. Whether emotions can in addition justify evaluative judgments is an important question that we shall address in due course (see Chapter 10), but not before the question as to the conditions under which the emotions themselves are justified is answered. Recall that this last question is one that can hardly be asked from within the framework of perceptual theories since, modeling emotions on perceptions as they do, they fail to recognize that emotions are states for which we ask for reasons. Yet it is not unusual to ask why we have the emotions we have. For this and further reasons, we defended in the previous chapter the claim
that emotions are attitudes that we adopt towards contents provided by other mental states that we called their cognitive bases. More specifically, we have said that distinct emotional attitudes are correct when the object provided by their cognitive bases exemplifies the relevant evaluative property. Emphasizing in this way the role of cognitive bases puts us in an ideal position to investigate epistemological issues that were masked from the perspective of perceptual theories. In the present chapter, we investigate the conditions that must be satisfied by these cognitive bases in order for emotional attitudes based on them to be justified. In this way, the first part of the epistemological constraint that we said any satisfactory theory of the emotions should satisfy will be met: emotions will be pictured as epistemologically dependent on their bases. After examining in Chapter 9 the epistemological consequences of the fact that a subject’s motivational set is also an important determinant of the emotions he experiences, we shall finally be in a position, in Chapter 10, to meet the second part of our epistemological constraint: we shall explain in what sense emotions play important epistemological roles vis-à-vis the evaluative judgments they typically trigger in spite of their own epistemological dependence on cognitive bases.
