Is the Perceptual Model of Emotions Still A Good Competitor? A Small Phenomenology of Feeling

Abstract

This paper defends a version of the Perceptual Model of feeling, according to which feeling is the mode of presence of axiological aspects of reality, or values. After considering the objections to this Model (§1), it presents an intentional analysis of feeling as the core of all emotions, more generally of all the phenomena of affective life, for which it proposes a taxonomy and provides in addition a dedicated phenomenology of feeling consciousness and of the degrees of intuitive cognition of values which may be distinguished in it (§2 and §3). Finally, it reconsiders the objections to the Perceptual Model in order to make sense of them, showing the limits in which they are valid and how to overcome them (§4).