 My dissertation project is sorting out the place emotions have in our theories of the world. Emotions are part of our mental lives which has value to and for us, and we often times appeal to emotions in explanation of each other's behavior. However, in the past few decades, psychologists and neuroscientists have begun to explore our emotional lives using experimental methods. The emerging consensus among empirical scientists tell us that emotions are a very old response system which is designed to operate largely independently of our conscious thought processes. Some experiments have even seemed to show that we can have emotion, and not even recognize that anything has happened. Several philosophically important questions arise when comparing these two domains. Are they talking about the same thing? Can the scientific explanations command any claim to have reduced or eliminated our everyday use of these concepts? Emotions, as they have significance to us, are perspectival: the world appears to me a certain way. Is is it even possible to have a scientific investigation of these perspectival facts? Finally, is it possible that our everyday experience is latching on to some bit of reality which is being missed by the science of emotion, such as values, and therefore our ordinary use of these concepts is legitimate?
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