Emotions as states

A common distinction in emotion theory is between ‘occurrent emotions’ and ‘dispositional emotions’, ‘emotional episodes’ and ‘emotional states’, ‘emotions’ and ‘sentiments’, or more neutrally between ‘short-term emotions’ and ‘long-term emotions’. While short-term emotions are, or necessarily comprise, experiences, long-term emotions are generally seen as states that can exist without experience. Given the theoretical importance of experience for emotion theorists, long-term emotions are often cast aside as of secondary importance, or at any rate as in need of separate treatment. In this paper, I cast doubt on the distinction. I argue that the considerations that support a view of long-term emotions as non-experiential states equally support a view of short-term emotions as non-experiential states, and so long-term and short-term emotions are ultimately the same sort of thing. If I am right, the dominant experience-centered accounts of emotions are at best accounts, not of emotions per se, but of some closely related phenomenon.