Irene Lonigro is a PhD student in Philosophy at the University of Milan, Italy. She has presented papers at conferences both home and abroad. She has worked with CISA (The Swiss Centre for Affective Sciences) and Thumos (the research group on emotions, values and norms at the University of Geneva). Her dissertation develops the topic of imaginative resistance in fiction. She is interested in aesthetics, philosophy of mind and ethics.
A post by Irene Lonigro
According to a venerable philosophical tradition, imagination builds upon experiences we have already had (Nagel, 1974; Paul, 2014). I cannot imagine what it feels like to taste a new kind of fruit like a durian until I have that very experience first-hand. We may call this limitation to our imagination the experiential constraint. Tasting a durian for the first time is therefore an ‘epistemically transformative’ experience that was previously inaccessible to us (Paul, 2014: 26).
More recently, some scholars have questioned the experiential constraint. Following Amy Kind, there is no in principle difficulty in imagining new experiences. We can indeed access new experiences in imagination through ‘imaginative scaffolding’, the process of adding, subtracting and modifying our previous experiences to obtain novel re-combinations in imagination (2020: 137). We can perhaps imagine a new sensory experience like eating a durian by scaffolding out from experiences we have already had.
Now, try to imagine a new example: what it feels like to experience the joy of motherhood if you have never been a mother or to experience nostalgia for the first time. These examples present us with new experiences, this time of an emotional nature. Can we access these experiences via imagination? More generally, can we apply imaginative scaffolding to emotions as well? In this post, I explore whether and how the case of emotions presents a different kind of challenge for imagination compared to other experiences.
When applying imaginative scaffolding to emotions, we encounter special difficulties that are not common to other mental states. First, while it is beyond dispute that we can imagine emotional states propositionally, the possibility of imagining emotions in a non-propositional way has been questioned (Currie and Ravenscroft 2002). That is, it is unclear whether and to what extent we can imagine them sensorily and in such a way as to preserve their distinctive phenomenology.
Even if we agree that we can imagine emotions in a phenomenally rich way (Dorsch, 2011, 2012; Engisch and Langkau, 2024), we still may ask whether we can imagine new emotions. The answer is complex for at least two reasons: first, it is not entirely clear what is meant by a ‘new’ emotion. Secondly, it is unclear how to define affective phenomenology in the imaginative context. Let us begin with the first issue.
What exactly do we mean by a ‘new’ emotion? We could simply mean a new token of the same emotion type (e.g., a new instance of joy, when we have experienced joy before), or we could mean a new type of emotion (e.g., the feeling of nostalgia, when one has never experienced nostalgia before).
The first case is similar to the example in Kind of tasting a particular strawberry when one has tasted other strawberries before (2020: 138) and it does not seem to involve a new kind of experience. However, we should not be too hasty in dismissing examples like these. In the case of emotions, the problem already observed by Kind, namely, that of determining the difference between experiences which are totally new and those that are not, is even more complex. We might ask whether instances of the same emotion type are always commensurable, even when their intentional objects are fundamentally different: is the joy of motherhood comparable to other instances of joy?
Moreover, how do we classify cases involving cognitively sophisticated emotions? Is it sufficient to have experienced the primitive emotion of disgust to imagine moral disgust? Or should we consider them as two distinct emotion types? Prinz (2004) would say they are the same emotion with the same structure, but not everyone would agree. This suggests that it is difficult in the case of emotions to draw a sharp line between what counts as a fundamentally new experience and what does not.
I leave aside these concerns for now and focus on the second, more relevant case involving new emotion types. Cases of this kind are undeniably challenging since they involve experiences which qualify as epistemically transformative. We can read all about nostalgia, but it seems that we cannot know what it feels like until we experience that emotion ourselves. Can imagination assist us in this and similar cases?
Some authors have answered affirmatively. We can apply scaffolding to radically new emotions, by combining more primitive phenomenal experiences in the imagination (Werner, 2023: 179; Vendrell-Ferran, 2025). This route seems viable for complex phenomenal states with a mixed affective signature, like nostalgia. Following this path, we can imagine nostalgia for the first time by combining more primitive affective states (e.g., delight with a sense of loss and longing). Another interesting example of this kind is the one suggested by Susan Feagin of being ‘surprised into contemptuous amusement in the midst of anxiety’ (1997: 60). In this case too, the emotion has a complex structure, but one that can be traced back to simpler affective states.
One might object that complex emotions are not phenomenal states built out of simpler parts: that is just an oversimplified picture. True, but do we need a perfect level of accuracy for the scaffolding process to be successful? What is the criterion for accuracy in this context?
A natural solution is to adopt an isomorphic criterion, namely, our previous experiences and the new one must be sufficiently similar in their phenomenal character. We therefore select from our emotional repertoire only those experiences which are epistemically relevant, that is, that are isomorphic to the new state. What it means to be sufficiently similar for two affective experiences is something that must be established and depends heavily on which theory of emotions we want to support (therefore, on which aspects of the affective experience are defined as central and which are not).
This process of associating similar experiences in imagination somehow resembles the process by which our emotional sensitivities evolve, that is, by exploiting the similarity between situations that already elicit the emotion and new situations (Deonna and Teroni, forthcoming: 219; D’Arms and Jacobson, 2010). So, for instance, a new situation involving moral offence can elicit anger in virtue of its connection to more primitive situations (of physical offence) which are similar to the new one. If emotional growth requires a form of ‘aspectual perception’ (Deonna and Teroni, forthcoming), that is, the ability to see new situations in light of situations we have already experienced, here we may talk about ‘aspectual imagination’: the ability to imagine new emotional states in light of more primitive states we have already felt.
If scaffolding works for complex emotions like nostalgia, can it be applied to basic emotions as well? What about happiness, fear or disgust which do not contain other emotions as parts (Ekman et al. 1969)? The decisive question seems to be whether these states have a structure or not. Being (at least, minimally) structured is a precondition to imaginative scaffolding. Vendrell-Ferran has recently argued that basic emotions like disgust or fear can be analysed in terms of elementary feelings like ‘feeling bad, tense, threatened, diminished, and so on’ (2025: 244). However, several negative emotions can involve the feelings mentioned by Ferran: not only fear and disgust, but also sadness and shame, for instance. How can we distinguish between these different emotions? Maybe we just need to find the ‘right’ combination for each emotion, and this is something we can improve with practice.
This brings us to the second problem mentioned earlier, namely, how to define affective phenomenology in the imaginative context. More generally, we may wonder whether phenomenology alone is sufficient to identify an emotion type. In the literature, emotions are typically defined in light of their formal object, namely, the evaluative property the emotion represents and which determines the emotion’s correctness conditions (e.g., danger for fear). Can we come to know fear only by imagining its affective phenomenology? What if the same phenomenology is common to other emotional states? Fear and anger are said to share a similar phenomenology, for instance. If scaffolding gives us access to a phenomenology that is indistinguishable from that of other affective experiences, then the process is epistemically trivial. We want to imagine new emotions without losing their distinctive phenomenological profile.
We must therefore aim for a more fine-grained phenomenology. When scholars talk about affective phenomenology, they usually refer to the valence dimension of emotions, that is, the feelings of pleasure or displeasure associated with the emotion. A central aspect of affective phenomenology concerns bodily phenomenology, namely, the complex interaction of ‘somatic-visceral’ feelings (Todd, 2023). However, some scholars have noticed that bodily phenomenology is not sufficient by itself to account for the specificity of emotions and argued that cognitive and conative forms of phenomenology are more important (Kriegel, 2015). We must therefore draw on all these aspects of affective phenomenology in order to imagine emotions accurately.
The problems discussed here are just some of the issues that would be worth addressing in future research. Another issue concerns the role of affective memory in scaffolding. If the scaffolding process depends on previous phenomenal experiences, the retrieval of these experiences by means of affective memory proves crucial. We therefore might ask whether affective memory can perform this role. Can we retrieve past emotions at will? And, if so, what if our memory is weak or biased (Levine, Lench and Safer, 2009)? These seem to be pressing issues for any advocate of imaginative scaffolding in the emotional context. For now, I hope I have highlighted at least some of the special challenges involved in imagining new emotions.
References
Currie, G. and I. Ravenscroft (2002). Recreative Minds, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
D’Arms, J. and D. Jacobson (2010). Demystifying Sensibilities: Sentimental Values and the Instability of Affect. In: The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Emotion, edited by P. Goldie, pp. 585-613. New York: Oxford University Press.
Deonna, J. and F. Teroni, (forthcoming). Imagination, Creativity, and Emotion. In: The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Imagination and Creativity, edited by A. Kind and J. Langkau. New York: Oxford University Press.
Dorsch, F. (2011). Emotional Imagining and Our Responses to Fiction, Enrahonar 46: 153-176.
–––, (2012). The Unity of Imagining, Frankfurt: Ontos.
Ekman, P., E. R. Sorenson, and W. V. Friesen (1969). Pan-cultural elements in facial displays of emotions. Science, 164: 86-88.
Engisch, P. and J. Langkau (2024). Empathizing Across Sensibilities, Philosophical Explorations, 27(2): 184–196.
Feagin, S. L. (1997). Imagining Emotions and Appreciating Fiction. In: Emotion and the Arts, edited by M. Hjort and S. Laver, pp. 50-62. New York: Oxford University Press.
Kind, A. (2020). What Imagination Teaches. In: Becoming Someone New: Essays on Transformative Experience, Choice, and Change, edited by J. Schwenkler and E. Lambert, pp. 133–146. New York: Oxford University Press.
Kriegel, U. (2015). The Varieties of Consciousness. New York: Oxford University Press.
Levine, L. J., H. C. Lench, and M. A. Safer (2009). Functions of remembering and misremembering emotion. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 23(8), 1059–1075.
Nagel, T. (1974). What Is it Like to Be a Bat?, Philosophical Review, 83: 435-450.
Paul, L. A. (2014). Transformative Experience. New York: Oxford University Press.
Prinz, J. (2004). Gut Reactions. A Perceptual Theory of Emotion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Todd, C. (2023). Affective Memory, Imagined Emotion, and Bodily Imagery, Synthese, 202(152): 1- 24.
Vendrell Ferran, I. (2025). Can we empathize with emotions that we have never felt? In: Imagination and Experience: Philosophical Explorations, edited by I. Vendrell Ferran and C. Werner, pp. 232–253. New York: Routledge.
Werner, C. (2023). ‘Tell me, how does it feel?’. Learning what it is like through literature. In: Empathy’s Role in Understanding Persons, Literature, and Art, edited by T. Petraschka and C. Werner, pp. 174–196. New York: Routledge.