Conference | Keynote

That emotions are intentional mental states seems obvious. What is less obvious is in virtue of what emotions are about their objects. Medieval philosophers, for whom emotions belong primarily to the so-called sensory appetites, i.e., the appetitive powers we share with non-rational animals, develop a model according to which emotions inherit their intentionality from the cognitive acts that trigger them. In my talk I will explore the reasons for adopting this model as well as the different ways in which this model is supposed to work. I end the talk by focusing on at least one 14th-century author for whom the intentionality of the emotions is a key reason to maintain that emotions themselves are cognitive acts.