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Knowing How You Feel: The Structure and Importance of Emotional Self-Knowledge

The aim of this thesis is to offer up a structure of what I call Emotional Self-Knowledge—roughly, knowledge of one’s own emotions. I begin with a broad understanding of an emotion event, according to which emotion events include a set of bodily feelings in response to some object. I then argue that knowledge of the object and the feeling of the emotion are required parts of knowing one’s own emotions if we expect emotional self-knowledge to be prudentially useful. I then outlining three levels of emotional self. The first requires knowledge of the feeling on is experiencing; the second requires that knowledge plus knowledge of the emotionally-salient object. The final level is knowledge of one’s emotional dispositions, and as such is the most robust form of emotional self-knowledge. I conclude by examining some cases in which emotional self-knowledge can be usefully applied towards an agents own prudential goals.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:GEORGIA/oai:scholarworks.gsu.edu:philosophy_theses-1202
Date12 August 2016
CreatorsBoudreau, Robert
PublisherScholarWorks @ Georgia State University
Source SetsGeorgia State University
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
SourcePhilosophy Theses

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