ABSTRACT
Affective experience broadly construed encompasses several related and interwoven, but non-identical, kinds of experiences and states. These different kinds overlap, mixing with one another in various ways. Moreover, each is itself a complex phenomenon requiring detailed analysis. Consider, for example, Peter Goldie’s description of an emotion as “complex, episodic, dynamic, and structured” (2000, 12). An emotion is complex insofar as it contains many elements: perceptions, thoughts, or beliefs; bodily changes; feelings; and a variety of dispositions (2000, 12–13). It is episodic and dynamic insofar as elements come and go as the emotion waxes and wanes (2000, 13). And it is structured, on Goldie’s view, in that it is part of a narrative in which it is embedded (2000, 13, see also 144).
