Philosophers commonly distinguish emotions from other feelings. For example, Anthony Kenny distinguishes emotions from both sensations and perceptions. Perceptions are connected with a specific organ or part of the body and sensations such as hunger or thirst are sometimes characteristically located in parts of the body. Emotions, however, are neither connected with organs nor characteristically felt in specific parts of the body. Kenny rightly points out that emotions and sensations are alike in one important respect, namely they are both linked (...) to characteristic forms of expression. He then says “ … the existence of characteristic expre5sions of emotion itself provides a further link between emotion and sensations: for the expression characteristic of each emotion—e.g., weeping—is itself felt, and this feeling is a genuine sensation”. (shrink)

A phenomenal concept is a concept that one possesses only if one has the relevant experience. In this essay, I argue that phenomenal concept theorists, namely, those who believe that we acquire phenomenal concepts through being acquainted with the relevant experience, can never succeed in determining which species of non-human animals are phenomenally conscious because they prohibit any a priori correlation between phenomenal and non-phenomenal concepts. I make my argument by first discussing several ways in which a phenomenal concept theorist (...) may explain which animal species are conscious, namely, with neuro-identity theory, behaviorism, and functionalism, and the problem that these approaches entail. I then illustrate how the alternative approaches of scientific inference to the best explanation, analogical inference, similarity inference, and inference by prototype face the same problem. (shrink)

In this paper I review some leading developments in the empirical theory of affect. I argue that (1) affect is a distinct perceptual representation governed system, and (2) that there are significant modular factors in affect. The paper concludes with the observation thatfeeler (affective perceptual system) may be a natural kind within cognitive science. The main purpose of the paper is to explore some hitherto unappreciated connections between the theory of affect and the computational theory of mind.