In a Sentimental Mood

Abstract Emotion, and its expression, is present in almost every facet of life. They are found in our personal relationships, morality, politics, and art. However, they also evolved over geological time and are intimately connected to our bodies. In a Sentimental Mood is a philosophical examination of what emotion is, the kinds of emotions there are, the ways in which they are expressed in our behavior and the things we make, including our moral judgments. The aim of the book is to integrate the diverse work in psychology, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and behavioral ecology with that from the philosophy of biology and psychology. Some of the main conclusions of the book are that emotion is a multimodal perceptual experience integrating exteroception and interoception. Many are natural kinds in virtue of being causally structured clusters of elicitors, behavior, and autonomic nervous activity. Emotional expression—even as embodied in artwork—involves a special kind of designed showing. Finally, the nature of moral judgments can be fruitfully understood with the resources of teleosemantics and hybrid expressivism.