Knowing value and acknowledging value: on the significance of emotional evaluation

ABSTRACT

It is widely assumed that emotions are evaluative. Moreover, many authors suppose that emotions are important or valuable as evaluations. According to the currently dominant version of cognitivism, emotions are evaluative insofar as they make us aware of value properties of their intentional objects. In attributing to emotions an epistemic role, this view conceives of them as epistemically valuable. In this paper, I argue that proponents of this account mischaracterize the evaluative character of emotions and, a fortiori, their value. Moreover, I propose an alternative view of emotional evaluation, according to which emotions are practically rather than epistemically important. As I argue, emotions are ways of acknowledging their intentional objects as (dis)valuable. As such, they do not apprehend values but make them count. I elaborate this idea by drawing an analogy with legal and political sanctions. The resulting view has it that emotions are practically important in that they affirm the cares and concerns which serve as standards of emotional evaluation.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotion
• evaluation
• knowledge of value
• value response
• acknowledgment
• sanction

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Henceforth, I will use ‘value’ for both value and disvalue properties.

2 Judgmentalism has found at least one further proponent in Nussbaum (2001). I discuss her view in section 3.

3 Some argue that emotions both constitute and apprehend value (Helm 1994, 2001; Slaby and Wüschner 2014). I won’t be able to discuss this proposal, though my argument against EV in section 2 targets it, too.

4 Since my concern is with the importance ascribed to emotions on all versions of EV, I will ignore the fact that some of its proponents also think of them as practically significant in making available reasons for action. Cf. Helm (2001, 75ff.), Döring (2007), Tappolet (2016, chapter 5), Mitchell (2021, 56f., 155ff.).

5 In this paper, I draw on prior work (Müller 2017, 2019, 2022). Its main contribution is to develop more fully the positive view outlined in (2017, 2022) and elaborate its implications for the value of emotion.

6 EV is not defended exclusively on pre-theoretical grounds, though. Cf. e.g. Tappolet (2016, chapter 1), Mitchell (2021, chapter 3).

7 For more on this, cf. von Hildebrand (1969, 13ff.), Müller (2019, chapter 3; 2022).

8 I say more about the intelligibility of emotions in section 5.

9 Emotions might still be epistemically valuable in other ways. On Brady’s (2013) view, for example, emotions have epistemic value in virtue of capturing and consuming attention so as to facilitate a more accurate appraisal of one’s evaluative situation. Yet, qua facilitated by emotion, this appraisal is distinct from emotion. As noted, my concern is with the value which emotions possess in being themselves evaluations.

10 In support of this view, cf. Müller (2017), Naar (2021a).

11 Maguire (2018) is sceptical of normative reasons for emotion. For a compelling response, cf. Massin (2021). In defence of normative reasons for emotions, cf. also Naar (2021b).

12 For some support for this, cf. Müller (forthcoming). I intend to develop a more sustained argument in a separate paper focusing on the intentionality of belief.

13 In this connection, cf. also Müller (2019, 98f.).

14 Helm (2001, 62ff.) argues that emotions constitute sui generis (rather than intellectual) assent to value. Similarly, Furtak (2018, chapter 4) and Mitchell (2021, chapter 6) conceive of (at least some) emotions as an affective form of recognition of value. Since these authors also espouse EV, they do not get the notion of acknowledgment properly into focus, though. On Mitchell’s view, cf. Müller and Döring (forthcoming).

15 He restricts this claim to responses to evaluative properties that are exemplified independently of the subject’s interests or concerns. I believe there are problems with this proposal, though I will here not be able to take up this issue. I propose and motivate a rivalling view in section 5.

16 Cf. also Engel (2013) on basing.

17 In this connection, cf. also Naar (2021a, 13612f.) on the possessed/unpossessed distinction in connection with reasons for emotion.

18 The same holds true on the non-factive use of ‘acknowledge x as F’: in (mistakenly) acknowledging a piece of kitsch as artistically excellent, it comes to count for us as artistically excellent.

19 This is forcefully argued for, with a focus on international sanctions, by Daase (unpublished).

20 Cf. Daase (unpublished) for a similar, broad concept of a sanction. Though my proposed understanding differs somewhat from Daase’s, I believe that both touch on the same core idea.

21 For a cognate proposal, cf. Poellner (2016), Mitchell (2021, chapter 4). An important difference is that both also endorse EV.

22 While I have here focused on emotions that are either positive or negative, the view also covers emotions with mixed valence (e.g. nostalgia). Here, the position we take is ambivalent. Cf. Müller (2019, 91).

23 In contrast to the former acknowledgment, the latter is always factive: in responding to the norm (concern) qua standard of congruence in the way appropriate to it qua standard of congruence, we acknowledge it for what it is.