A Contemporary View of Brentano's Theory of Emotion

INTRODUCTIONIn this paper I consider Franz Brentano's theory of emotion. My interest is mainly philosophical, rather than historical, and I argue that his theory contains many correct insights about the nature of emotion. I focus on three of its central claims:i. emotions are sui generis intentional phenomena;ii. emotions are essentially evaluative phenomena;iii. emotions provide the basis of an epistemology of objective value.I believe all three of these claims are correct, and in what follows I weave together Brentano's arguments with some of my own to support them. Despite a strong affinity between Brentano's view and the view I favor, our understanding of (i)-(iii) sometimes diverges, and where relevant, I'll point out some of these differences.Claims (i) and (ii) are the subject of much attention in contemporary theories of emotion, and while there is wide acceptance of the idea that emotions are intentional and somehow connected to value, Brentano's theory is distinctive in its nonreductive treatment of emotions.Claim (iii) is more controversial, in part because the assertion that value is objective is controversial. Brentano clearly accepts that value is objective:Is there a moral law that is natural in the sense of being universally and incontestably valid-valid for men at all places and all times, indeed valid for any being that thinks and feels-and are we capable of knowing that there is such a law?.... My own answer is emphatically affirmative. (1969 [1889], 6)I agree that value is objective, although I won't argue for it here. My present interest is in the prospect of providing an epistemology of objective value on the basis of emotional experience.It is crucial to note at the outset that although Brentano is concerned with objective value, he does not take this to mean that objects or states of affairs have objective value properties such as 'good' and 'bad'.1 According to Brentano, the terms 'good', 'bad' and 'better' are syncategorematic. That is, when they are used in sentences where they seem to be predicates, they aren't really predicating goodness and badness of anything. 'Good' is not a term that refers to a property and so in this sense is not independently meaningful; it is an expression such that when it occurs in the context of a sentence, it contributes to the meaning of that sentence. It functions in a way similar to the way in which definite descriptions function in Russell's theory of descriptions, according to which, 'The F' in the sentence 'The F is G' is not an independently meaningful expression; rather, it only contributes to the meaning of the sentence as a whole.In contrast, the arguments I offer for (i)-(iii) appeal to the idea that in having emotional experiences subjects necessarily attribute value properties to objects and states of affairs. It is then most natural to take objective value as a matter of objects and states of affairs having value properties. This difference may in turn affect some of the details of the epistemology of value under consideration.In what follows I will focus on conscious emotional episodes, noting in passing that we allow that attributions of emotional states or conditions may be true even if the person to whom they are attributed is not at that time consciously feeling any emotion at all, being, perhaps, in a dreamless sleep. I will also not discuss freefloating anxiety or depression, which are sometimes cited as examples of emotions that are not intentional. I think that there are good arguments in favor of treating these phenomena, too, as intentional, perhaps as directed at the self or at the world in general, but a fuller consideration of these issues is for another time.The plan of the paper is as follows. In the first two sections I briefly situate (i) and (ii)-that emotions are essentially intentional and essentially evaluative phenomena-in the context of Brentanos overall theory of the mind. …