Abstract: The central aim of the book is to give a deeper and wider understanding of emotion, and of related phenomena, such as consciousness, thought, feeling, imagination, expressive action, mood, and character. A key theme is the idea of a personal perspective or point of view, as contrasted with the impersonal stance of the empirical sciences. It is only from the personal perspective that thoughts, reasons, feelings, and actions—commonsense psychology—come into view. The book endorses the view that the emotions are intentional, but resists the thought that this intentionality can be fully captured without reference to feelings; this is a kind of over-intellectualizing of the emotions. The notion of feeling towards is introduced to capture the intentionality of emotion. The book argues that the various elements of emotional experience—thought, feeling, bodily change, expression, and action—are tied together as part of a narrative structure.

Keywords: character, commonsense psychology, emotions, feeling towards, intentionality, mood, narrative, personal perspective