CEPPA Works-in-Progress Talk – Lara Jost (St Andrews)

The Epistemic Value of Affective Intentional Experience

In this paper, I argue that despite risks of falsehood, theorists should recognize that affective intentional experience (AIE), which includes emotions, pains/pleasures and some gut feelings, can be a source of knowledge and justification. Indeed, AIE provides the best explanation for how we know certain things. I will focus the analysis on two such cases: pain in patients with endometriosis and microaggressions. I will then discuss points of resistance against the conclusion that AIE is epistemically valuable and why one might defend that it is not a genuine source of knowledge and justification. I will then offer some responses those challenges and explain how such resistance towards AIE impoverishes our epistemological theories and how it contributes to the silencing of marginalized agents, in particular women and people of colour.