ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses whether emotions are epistemically valuable. The perceptual model, an account where emotions are a source of justification, is presented. Two different accounts of how emotions provide justification are then given. The first is the reliabilist account, which argues that emotions’ perceptual content can serve as a justification if the content is the result of a reliable process. The second is phenomenalism, which claims that the content of the emotions provides justification in virtue of the phenomenology of the experience. Next, three objections to the perceptual model are presented. First, emotions may not be epistemically reliable. Second, emotions seem epistemically superfluous. The same considerations that would be used to justify my emotion also justify the related belief. So, there’s no justificatory role being played by the emotion. Lastly, emotions seem to have a different function role than do sensory perceptions. The chapter concludes by examining ways that feminist thinkers have argued for the epistemic value of emotions. It discusses how emotions have been viewed in the Western tradition in a way that promotes various forms of epistemic injustice.
