Events

Are there emotional episodes that lack phenomenal consciousness? I first provide an overview of some seemingly compelling pieces of evidence in favor of Unconscious Emotion, explaining their key limitations. Then, I analyze a study by Winkielman et al. (2005b) that shows behavior indicative of an emotional change while subjects’ reports do not indicate such a change. While I take this to be the best putative evidence for unconscious emotion, I argue that an explanation of subjects’ behavior in terms of unconscious emotion is not superior to an explanation that posits that subjects’ emotional experience changed but subjects fail to notice or verbalize this change. From this, I conclude that we should either be agnostic about the existence of unconscious emotional episodes or form our view based on independent background commitments regarding the methodology or nature of consciousness or emotion. To facilitate the latter strategy, I survey the resulting theoretical landscape, exploring the main theoretical options with respect to mutual inconsistencies, relations of evidential support, and noteworthy implications.