ABSTRACT
Ambivalent emotions are a normal and inescapable aspect of our affective lives, as when one is simultaneously pleased and displeased that a team won a game. This contrasts strikingly with parallel cases involving beliefs: contrary beliefs seem like abnormal aspects of our cognitive lives that we should try to get rid of. It is irrational to simultaneously believe and disbelieve that a team won a game. According to many philosophers, this demonstrates that ambivalent emotions are not genuinely contrary, since otherwise they would constitute an irrational pair. These philosophers contend that the objects of these emotions are not one and the same. In contrast to this view, the authors argue that emotional attitudes, such as being pleased and displeased entirely parallel belief and other cognitive attitudes. Moreover, the notion of contrariety is not to be understood differently for emotions than for judgments. Thus, some emotions that have the same object are genuinely contrary. The chapter provides an account of why this involves no irrationality by arguing that the logic of emotions differs from that of belief, and identifies where exactly they diverge.
