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Prefatory Remarks on the Possibility of a Phenomenology of Mood

Tue, August 23, 12:30 to 1:30pm, TBA

Abstract

This paper is a preparation for an analysis of emotions. This preliminary discussion of how such an examination will take place is necessary in light of the principle that nothing can be understood without reference to the mode of observation. It is argued that what emotions are is contingent on the possible ways in which emotions are observed. Accordingly, before any analysis of emotions can be conducted, it is necessary to examine the “environment” from which observations of emotions occur, which, as the intended destination of this very paper indicates, is from sociology. What this theoretical discussion will demonstrate is that the terms of observation are always those of the observer (i.e. sociology) and not the terms of the observed (i.e. emotions). That sociology, rather than persons, “emotes” may strike one as peculiar. However, if one considers the findings of sociological research on emotion (i.e. hypotheses, theories, laws), it is clear that they are the means of approaching emotion and not emotion as experienced in everyday life or emotion in its own terms. While it may very well be, for example, that emotions are outcomes of social structures, this correspondence cannot account for any phenomenal differences in how emotions are experienced and thus reveal the world.

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