EMOTION, EXPERIENTIAL MEMORY AND SELFHOOD

• Authors: Sunny Yang
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Recently, emotion has attracted much attention in many areas of philosophy. In the philosophy of mind, some argue that emotions are individuated and identified with reference to feelings, beliefs, desires, or perceptions. Furthermore, they are often claimed to be changeable, unstable, and ambivalent. However, despite their instability, emotions are sometimes long-standing. They have, in addition, perspective. These characteristics of the emotions help us in solving one of philosophy’s most enduring problems, that is, the problem of personal identity. In order to illustrate this claim the author elaborates on the conception of ‘experiential memory’ suggested by Wollheim. To understand memory as experiential, we need to understand the affective element attached to some memories. The author argues that memory affects not only our past thought but also our past emotions, and those emotions deriving from the past stay on to affect our whole being and our future. Hence, the experiential memory is not just confined to the recalling of events or experiences that the subject has experienced, but concerns the narrative structure of a person’s life as a whole.

Keywords

EN

EMOTION; EXPERIENTIAL MEMORY; WOLLHEIM; PERSONAL IDENTITY

• Publisher: Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences and Institute of Philosophy of Academy of Sciences of Czech Republic
• Journal: Organon F. medzinárodný časopis pre analytickú filozofiu
• Year: 2013
• Volume: 20
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 18 – 36

Contributors

author

Sunny Yang

• Department of Philosophy, Seoul National University, Seoul 151-742, South Korea