Idiogenetic theory of emotions

According to Brentano judgment cannot be explained in terms of a composition of presentations but consists instead in a sui generis mental mode of acceptance or rejection targeting the presented object. A similar analysis has been proposed by Brentano for emotional mental states. According to it also in this case we have an irreducible (but this time emotional) attitude towards the presented object. In Brentano’s official works these idiogenetic views have been consistently held and supplemented by the epistemic theories of truth and emotional correctness. In this combination they allow for a parsimonious and elegant ontology including only objects of the nominal form. But on the other hand there are strong philosophical intuitions speaking for the classical (broadly Aristotelian) theory of truth and (to a lesser degree) also for the adequational construal of emotional correctness. This leads eventually to a much more liberal ontology of intentionality including such entities as states of values in the role of truth-makers for emotional attitudes. In this paper I am going to focus on emotional attitudes and compare these two approaches: the ontologically temperate epistemic view and ontologically permissive adequational picture.