What are Emotions For? From Affective Epistemology to Affective Ethics

Abstract

Rick Furtak defends the bold thesis that emotions are indispensable to our capacity to recognize the importance of the things we encounter. Emotions, he says, “embody a kind of understanding that is accessible to us only by means of our affective experience. Specifically, it is only through the emotions that we are capable of recognizing the value or significance of anything whatsoever” (Furtak 2018, 3). Yet although the book presents a lively discussion of the recognitive capacity of emotions, it does not offer Abstract: What would it mean for an emotion to successfully “recognize” something about an object toward which it is directed? Although the notion of "emotional recognition" is central to Rick Furtak’s Knowing Emotions , the text does not provide an account of this concept that enables us to assess the extent to which a given emotional response is recognitive. This article draws from the text to articulate a novel account of emotional recognition. According to this account, emotional recognition can be assessed not only in terms of the “accuracy” of an emotional construal in a strictly epistemological sense, but also in terms of the quasi-ethical ideal of responding emotionally to what we encounter in ways that are “specific,” “deep," and “balanced."