Ambivalence, Emotional Perceptions, and the Concern With Objectivity:

Abstract

Emotional perceptions and value judgements admit of strict objectivist ambivalence, wherein an agent maintains mutually undermining attitudes regarding a single evaluative state of affairs. While prevalent perceptual accounts resolve the tension of emotional ambivalence by positing that conflicting attitudes merely target distinct, compatible values, this framework fails to capture genuine instances where the application of a single value is simultaneously affirmed and challenged. A dissimilarity argument demonstrates that strict objectivist ambivalence operates through a relation of mutual undermining rather than formal contradiction or conjunction, challenging the assumption that evaluative attitudes mirror the logic of factual belief. In these cases, conflicting perceptions or judgements contend directly over how a value concept applies to an object within a unified perspective. Simultaneously, the existence of ambivalence involving separate values indicates that emotions and evaluative judgements cannot be exhaustively explained by their objectivist dimensions, requiring recognition of non-objectivist, practical orientations in evaluative life. – AI-generated abstract.