The Epistemic Role of Emotions in Value Sensitivity: a Phenomenological Analysis

Abstract

This paper presents a phenomenological account of central epistemic roles that emotions can play in the context of value sensitivity. I specify significant ways emotions are given in lived experience as possible sources of value apprehension. Thereby, an explanandum or experienced framework for the ongoing debate on the relation between emotion and value awareness is explicated. Through a phenomenological analysis, the paper explicates and illustrates three central epistemic functions that emotions can have in being sources of evaluative information, as seen from the point of view of lived experience: A) Emotions are constitutively related to presentations of value; B) Emotions tend to prompt specific value attention; and C) Emotional openness can play a crucial role in directly grasping determinate value. Further, based on the analyses of A), B), and C), the phenomenological investigation makes intelligible what can go wrong when emotions distort our evaluative outlook and argues that it can be analyzed as a result of the central attention-shaping functions of emotions as they present themselves in lived experience.