The aim of this project is to understand how emotion (such as joy, grief, fear, anger, or disgust) may be affective (be felt) as well as cognitive (have a content). Most philosophers writing on emotion agree that emotions are experienced as affective as well as cognitive, but disagree about the definition or description of the emotion proper. To unite these two aspects of the emotion in one phenomenological description has proved to be difficult. Philosophical theories of emotion tend to overemphasise the one and neglect the other. This difficulty will be, at least, clearly spelled out and the merits of the alternative views compared to each other. At the very best the problem will be solved by this project. The results of it will be related to action theory, in which desire, sometimes considered as an emotion, commonly plays an important role.

Working plan: First, arguments that emotions really are intentional, phenomenologically speaking, i.e. that they have intentional objects, will be scrutinised. Secondly, conceptions of intentionality figuring in recent theories of emotion will be described and examined. (Hence this project is comparative; such approaches to emotion are missing today.) In the literature at least seven ideas about intentionality, with their theoretical roots in different philosophical areas, have been ascribed to emotion. These ideas about intentionality in emotion will be scrutinized. Finally the conclusions from the first two phases of the project will be used in formulating what the emotional intentionality may look like and in testing the heuristic hypothesis that the affective aspect somehow is the intentionality of the emotion, or part of it.