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Integrating Evaluation and Affectivity into the
Intentionality of Emotions
Wendy Wilutzky
What characterizes all emotions is their pronounced affective and inherently evaluative
nature and any adequate theory of emotions must account for how these features
characterize the intentionality of emotions. As a case in point I will discuss the account put
forward by Michelle Montague (2009). Montague dissects the intentionality of emotions into
a cognitive, an evaluative and an affective content and attempts to explain how these relate to
one another. Central to her account is the notion of framing, by which she means to denote
not only a thin content but a kind of thick cognitive content in which a state of affairs is
represented as bearing a certain relation to a subject. One and the same state of affairs may
be framed in different ways, e.g. as a success for someone or as a failure for someone else.
The framing itself, however, is not yet evaluative or has any connection to affective content.
Instead, the framing first needs to be associated with an evaluative content, which may then
bring about a third kind of content, namely the affective phenomenality of emotions.
Montague’s account poses two problems. First, the separation of the framing process from
the evaluative content of an emotion seems questionable, since the framing of a state of
affairs is itself already an evaluation of a situation. Secondly, the affective, evaluative and
cognitively framed contents of an emotion appear as distinct objects in emotion experience
according to Montague. This is not only phenomenologically implausible but furthermore
neglects the way in which the affective content of an emotion may inform the other aspects of
an emotion’s intentionality. These two points of criticism will be explicated by contrasting
Montague’s account with those of Bennett Helm and Peter Goldie in these respects. The
overall conclusion to be drawn from these considerations is that the evaluative and affective
contents of emotions are not distinct components that need only be added to an otherwise
‘cold’ or purely cognitive intentionality. Instead, the evaluative and affective contents of
emotion are intertwined and also figure in the cognitive content.
1. Introductory Remarks
In the past, emotions have often falsely been characterized as a merely bodily reaction to a
distinct mental content, i.e. as some kind of bodily arousal. Since the emergence of cognitivist
theories of emotions, however, it has been commonly acknowledged that emotions are not
only bodily responses to a cognitive content, but that emotions themselves are best to be
regarded as cognitive phenomena. The reason for this reconceptualization of emotions was
the insight that emotions have intentionality, that is, that they are always directed at or about
the world: one is afraid of something, happy about something, angry at someone etc.
Emotions, since they have intentionality, clearly belong to the class of mental phenomena
where they form a kind of mental state of their own, as their intentionality is not reducible to
that of other mental states, such as beliefs and desires (this point has been extensively and
rather successfully argued for by e.g. Goldie 2000, Slaby 2008). What sets emotions apart
from other mental states is their pronounced affective and inherently evaluative nature and
the way in which these characterize an emotion’s intentionality.
A few years ago, Michelle Montague (2009) put forth an account of emotions intended to
address just these issues. Montague not only showed that emotions are not reducible to
beliefs and desires, but also insisted that besides a cognitive content, an affective and an
evaluative content are equally to be included in an account of the intentional structure of
emotions. Although in general Montague’s efforts and aims are favorable and in many