Doxastic cognitivism : An anti-intellectualist theory of emotion

[Extract] Judgment-based varieties of cognitivism have inspired a spirited discourse among cognitivists and non-cognitivists alike. For example, a number of theorists have taken issue with the slogan that emotions are evaluative judgments while nevertheless maintaining that the emotions still somehow represent evaluative states of affairs. This has led to a proliferation of alternatives to judgement-based cognitivist proposals—creating a literature so vast that it is out of the scope of this paper to undertake an exhaustive survey.2 I will present and explore an alternative to judgment-based cognitivist approaches that is not well-represented in the literature—an approach that I shall call, ‘Doxastic Cognitivism’.