Newsletter of Phenomenology

Keeping phenomenologists informed since May 2002

Emotions, feelings and intentionality

Peter Goldie

pp. 235-254

Emotions, I will argue, involve two kinds of feeling: bodily feeling and feeling towards. Both are intentional, in the sense of being directed towards an object. Bodily feelings are directed towards the condition of one's body, although they can reveal truths about the world beyond the bounds of one's body – that, for example, there is something dangerous nearby. Feelings towards are directed towards the object of the emotion – a thing or a person, a state of affairs, an action or an event; such emotional feelings involve a special way of thinking of the object of the emotion, and I draw an analogy with Frank Jackson's well-known knowledge argument to show this. Finally, I try to show that, even if materialism is true, the phenomenology of emotional feelings, as described from a personal perspective, cannot be captured using only the theoretical concepts available for the impersonal stance of the sciences.

Publication details

DOI: 10.1023/A:1021306500055

Full citation:

Goldie, P. (2002). Emotions, feelings and intentionality. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 1 (3), pp. 235-254.

This document is unfortunately not available for download at the moment.