The 2nd annual Interdisciplinary Approach to
Philosophical & Psychological Issues Conference

"Unconscious Emotions: Respectable, Useful, and Probably Necessary"
Andrea Scarantino (Invited Speaker)
Georgia State University

Are there unconscious emotions? For the layman, this question has a straightforward answer. Emotions are feelings, and feelings are by definition felt, so an unconscious emotion is a conceptual impossibility. Some contemporary emotion theorists find this simple argument, which finds its roots in Freud’s remarks on emotions, compelling. Others disagree, and think that there is strong empirical evidence for the existence of unconscious emotions. Anthony Hatzimoysis
(2007) has recently canvassed the empirical evidence in support of unconscious emotions, and concluded that it “falls short of supporting the claim that there are unconscious emotions”. In my paper, I reply to Hatzimoysis and build a case in favor of two types of unconscious emotions, which I call P-unconscious emotions and A-unconscious emotions respectively. A central task for future emotion theory, I conclude, will be to understand how these varieties of emotional unconsciousness are related to one another.