Feeling Apprehensive

Our bodily states can affect our susceptibility toward emotional arousal; empirical research suggests that discrete patterns of somatic upheaval can be identified, at least for some emotions. Such findings correspond with the observation that there is something it’s like to feel a particular emotion: that the experience of emotion has a distinct subjective character. Rather than bodily feelings that are nothing but physical disturbances devoid of intentionality, they can be feelings about our surroundings, which have intentionality and are therefore capable of conveying significant information. The somatic agitation we feel when we are trembling with fear is not a mere sensation but a felt apprehension of danger. When we are afraid, we are not convinced that the object of our fear is harmless—contrary to what others have argued. It would be false to claim that emotions are divorced from cognition, or to identify them simply with intellectual judgments.