Sensing values?

Abstract

In “The Authority of Affect” (Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, July 2001), Mark Johnston argues that, under favorable conditions, certain affective states are states in which we literally sense the exemplifications of certain objective values. But Johnston’s argument does not convincingly show that the rival projectivist or dispositionalist conceptions of the relation between affect and value cannot explain all of his initial assumptions equally well. These affective states may also count as disclosures of exemplifications of certain objective values even if they are not states in which we literally sense exemplifications of these values.