Self-Ascribing Emotions - Expressing or Detecting? Detectivist Components in Neo-expressivism

Abstract

The main aim of this article is to explain why expressivist models of self-ascribing emotions should include a detectivist component of some kind. I argue that the transition from natural to verbal expression requires the ability to recognize and classify some states of the body. Under certain assumptions such an ability can be interpreted as the ability to detect our own emotions. Thus neo-expressivism should not entirely reject detectivism. On the contrary, in order to understand and explain the ability to self-ascribe emotions, we should combine both accounts.