Characterize 'concern-based construals'.

Question: Characterize 'concern-based construals'. Use a detailed example of your own!

The disquisition “What an emotion is: A sketch” by Robert C. Roberts in 1988, has the aim to describe clearly what Roberts understands as emotions. He defines emotions, feelings, construals and judgments to exclude some other interpretations of emotions.

At first, he gives seven points that characterize emotions. Some major attributes are that emotions can be felt and they are intentional states with propositional objects. The subject of an emotion is sometimes capable of controlling it and sometimes not (for example: One can let a certain fear take control over oneself or one tries to ignore it and is therefore able to suppress it.). Additionally, emotions are typically experienced as unified states of mind. Roberts does not want to include all definitions of emotions that any philosopher or psychologist has made but he gives a quite all-embracing account of occurrences: embarrassment, anger, shame, envy, gratitude, hope, anxiety, jealously, grief, despair, remorse, joy, resentment, fear, religious awe, pity, panic, pride, indignation, contempt, disgust, resignation, compassion

But, construing a feature to myself is not adequate to really feel this feature. For example, to feel excluded must imply that I averse being excluded. So, a construed feeling is an intentional feeling (because it is about/of/etc. something) and it is based in a concern. Only these feelings of construed condition can be allocated to emotions.

Another widespread idea is that emotions are some kind of “evaluative judgment”. For example, I left my bike outside and am afraid it will go rusty because of a weather forecast that says, it will rain during the night. From this, one can derive that I judge my bike to be endangered by rain. So, my judgment complies with my emotion. Roberts enumerates three arguments against this kind of relation between emotions and judgments. The first one, just to make clear that in Roberts opinion, emotions can also not be equated with judgments, states that sometimes the proposition that would be confirmed in the judgment according to our emotion is disbelieved. Bike-example: I might make the opposite judgment because I try not to believe in the weather forecast for the following night although it stays in the back of my head. In this case (and many others) emotion seems to be irrational, but a mental state is nothing less than an emotion for being irrational. So, the equation of emotions and judgments has failed as well.

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