ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author argues that an emotion is a complex which involves dynamically related elements of cognition, desire, and affectivity. Beginning with affectivity, some who advocate this type of account of emotion understand emotional affectivity as purely a matter of feeling , where to feel something involves attending to or noticing it. To sum up author account of emotional affectivity then, an affect is a bodily or psychic condition which we are in, but which we need not feel, in having an emotion, and this condition is linked dynamically with the elements of cognition and desire in that emotion. Turning to the cognitive element of emotion, it is important that this is not construed too narrowly. However, any attempt to define emotions in terms of affective or affectless desires fails, because while emotions do involve affects and desires, emotions also involve cognitions.
