Mortons Emotion and Imagination

What is the link between emotion and imagination? This page should have its own folder like some of the other reflections. It will eventually. I am currently in the process of moving many of my notes from an older repository to this one.

Adam ( Citation: Morton, 2013 Morton, A. (2013). Emotion and Imagination. Polity. ) argues that through the use of imagination, we have the capacity to imagine another’s moral emotions by imagining their imaginings.

Imagining the other person’s emotion here means imagining their imagination . . .. ( Citation: Morton, 2013, p. 206 Morton, A. (2013). Emotion and Imagination. Polity. )

In order to avoid what Morton calls moral smugness, a vice that undermines second-personal knowledge, we must practice what he calls emotional unbundling. It is a virtue that requires that we take motives from which our own emotions are constructed and attribute them as much as it is possible to someone else’s.

A person acts, moved by shame, approval, condemnation, or some other moral emotion. Another person tries to understand, and perhaps to anticipate the next action. But she knows that if she were acting from shame, condemnation, or approval, she would do something very different. Perhaps what he calls shame is leading him to public confession rather than wanting to hide; perhaps what he calls condemnation is leading him to teasing rather than attack. One possibility the second person must face is that his shame, or condemnation, is not hers. Perhaps they are different emotions with some family resemblance. Part of the evidence that a similar but different emotion was at work could be that the second person managed to imagine such an emotion and it fitted. But to get this evidence, she would have to be able to do the imagining. ( Citation: Morton, 2013, p. 206 Morton, A. (2013). Emotion and Imagination. Polity. )

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