Emotions are judgments of value

✍ Scribed by George C. Kerner

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 1982
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 594 KB
• Volume: 1
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0167-7411
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00157541

✦ Synopsis

Just as sense perceptions may descry facts, emotions may descry values. The former may give us knowledge about what is the case, the latter about the proper direction of our decision and actions. Sense perceptions are primitive judgments of fact, emotions are primitive judgments of value. In order to build an argument for these claims, I must first bring out that all the more advanced forms of consciousness --such as judging and deciding as well as believing and intending --involve preparatory mental acts. I shall call them ,,identifications,,. This piece of technical vocabulary is necessary since there is no ordinary word that covers the whole variety of these ancillary feats of consciousness.