Mark Thomson (University of the Fraser Valley): Emotions are Not Multi-Modal Perceptions: They Are Processing-Modes

Abstract: A guiding idea in much of the literature on conscious emotions is that emotions are representational experiences. For a while, the most popular account was that emotions are like unimodal perceptual experiences. Recently, however, this view has come under significant pressure. In response, defenders have proposed that emotions are like multi-modal perceptual experiences, such as audio-visual experiences. This paper argues that the analogy with multi-modal perceptual experience fails and that the guiding idea is misleading. It then motivates an alternative: emotional experiences are non-representational conscious processes that operate on a variety of non-emotional states.