Les animaux ont-ils des émotions?

Abstract

In this article, I ask whether it is possible to reconcile the claim that animals have emotions with the attractive and widespread idea that emotions are relations between a subject and a value. I start by explaining that the challenge requires that we avoid ascribing to animals cognitive capacities that are too complex and I close by putting forward a theory which, through its specific articulation of the relation between emotion and value, is ideally placed to meet this challenge. Before that, I present the grounds for the claim that emotions are forms of evaluations. I stress the fact that!this idea has traditionally led to a theory of emotions according to which emotions are nothing but judgments of value, the consequence being that animals are construed as devoid of I then consider whether a particular theory – the perceptual theory – is apt to resolve the problem. According to it, emotions constitute experiences of evaluative properties which could be enjoyed by members of many different species. Given that there are compelling reasons to reject this theory, I finally present an original alternative – the attitudinal theory of emotions – that has the virtue, among others, of being able to account for animal emotions.