Publication Type

Journal Article

Version

acceptedVersion

Publication Date

3-2026

Abstract

According to the perceptual theory of emotion, emotions are evaluative perceptions. However, emotions involve us in a way that regular perception does not and this has led to two influential objections to the perceptual theory have emerged. According to the first objection, the perceptual theory is false because the phenomenology of emotion is the phenomenology of response. According to the second objection, the perceptual theory is false because emotions are susceptible to evaluations of rationality and reason-responsiveness. In this essay, I defend the perceptual theory by disarming these two objections. In response to the first objection, I suggest that emotional phenomenology bears a striking resemblance to the phenomenology of touch. Both are non-transparent forms of experience whereby it is through our experience of being affected in a certain way that reveals to us some property of the world. I disarm the second objection by providing a developmental account as to how adult emotion acquires the features of rational and reason-responsive evaluability. In the process of childhood, we gain the ability to construe the world in certain ways and regulate our emotions in concert with the moral community, thus transforming emotions and bringing them into the space of normative evaluability.

Keywords

Emotion, perceptual theory of emotion, theory of emotion, rationality, reason-responsiveness, touch

Discipline

Philosophy | Social Psychology

Research Areas

Psychology

Publication

Erkenntnis

Volume

91

First Page

1145

Last Page

1168

ISSN

0165-0106

Identifier

10.1007/s10670-025-00930-y

Publisher

Springer

Copyright Owner and License

Authors

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-025-00930-y

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