How To Make Emotions Trustworthy

Abstract: I investigate the conditions that, when established, make our emotions epistemically trustworthy. In contrast to perceptual states, many philosophers take emotions to be less epistemically trustworthy. I argue that this can be explained by the distinct regulatory nature of these two kinds of states—specifically, emotions admit of short-term agential regulation whereas perceptions don’t. Thus, establishing “trustworthiness conditions” for emotions requires what I call “proper regulation”. I then propose a new account of proper regulation which makes emotions trustworthy. I argue that this account has advantages over traditional philosophical accounts of proper regulation which models after doxastic regulation and adopts “reflective control” as a primary method of regulation because emotions are not as reasons responsive as doxastic states.