Q&A: Emotion as Evidence About Reality
Emotion as Evidence About Reality
Question
In your opinion, can a subjective emotion lead to a claim about reality? In other words, can the fact that I feel something indicate something specific about reality? I assume your answer would be negative, but my thought is that when I feel something, there is some particular reason I felt that way. If I’m afraid, for example, it’s because I’m in a frightening situation, so the basis isn’t the emotion itself, but the emotion points it out to me. That would seem to mean that my subjective emotion can lead to an objective claim about reality.
Answer
An emotion usually points to something that arouses it. A feeling of love toward someone indicates that there is something about that person that evokes that feeling. So my answer is actually not negative. Of course, the existence of an emotion is not always reliable evidence, and certainly there is no guarantee that you are correctly interpreting the factor that arouses the emotion (for example, love of God does not mean that God exists).