Emoções são mesmo intencionais? Considerações para uma teoria adverbial das emoções

Abstract

This is a text about what emotions are and how emotional states or events are distinguished from other states or events. The problem of what emotions are is often approached as assuming the notion of intentionality, that is, as assuming that emotional states or events are about something. If, on the one hand, this idea corresponds to an ordinary intuition, on the other hand theories that are based on it often have undesirable consequences, such as, for example, the idea that emotions require an intellectual judicative component and, therefore, that emotions are states or events that can only be experienced by creatures with intellectual capacities. Is it possible to challenge the thesis that emotions are intentional? In this article I intend to address this issue, considering, in a brief and modest way, the thesis that emotions are not intentional and envisioning a positive alternative.