ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the nature of emotions and their role as a source of knowledge about the world, about others and about ourselves. The exclusion of the emotions from most accounts of commonsense psychology tells us a good deal about prevailing views on the nature of the emotions and the place they are thought to occupy in our mental lives. The comparison of emotions with sensations can also lead us astray when it is combined with a familiar but faulty philosophical picture of the nature of sensations as wholly private, exclusively known items of consciousness. There may be some people who think they cannot have a feeling without expressing it to others and, for them, it may be very difficult or distressing to contain powerful or troubling feelings in their mind without immediately trying to expel and give vent to them. Keeping the feelings in mind, as opposed to dcting upon them, is not seen as a choice.
