In this chapter I present my reconstruction of Kant’s theory in more detail. One important aspect is Kant’s insistence that the feeling of pleasure is not to be understood as a sensation, occasioned or caused by the representation of an object and separate from the sensations that are involved in the representation. I analyze Kant’s often neglected argument for this claim in § 3 of the Critique and conclude that his view is best understood as an ‘attitudinal’ theory: if a representation satisfies the a priori principle or interest of a faculty, we adopt an attitude of preferring or desiring to have that representation in our mind; equivalently, we say that the representation is purposive for the faculty. In this way the transcendental definition of pleasure, which characterizes the feeling as the tendency of a representation to be maintained in the mind, and the theory of pleasure as interest satisfaction are combined.

Chapter 6 suggests that the relevance-theory notion of cognitive effect be supplemented with the new notion of affective effect. We propose two different types of affective effect: primary affective effects, which typically act as input to inferential processes, and secondary affective effects, which are typically the output of inferential processes. Primary affective effects come in two flavours: anticipatory effects and transfer effects. The first of these are those effects which prepare an individual for a course of action; the latter are communicative, and inextricably linked with the interpretation of natural codes, inherently communicative behaviours which are ‘natural’ in the sense of Grice. In the case of secondary affective effects, propositional descriptions give rise to affective effects which rest on the imaginative abilities of the hearer/reader. This happens typically with literature and poetry. Emotions, we argue, appear to be a central contributor to persuasion, and we suggest this is so because of the special relationship that exists between affective and cognitive effects within the domain of achieving relevance.

I outline Merleau-Ponty’s critique of first-generation empiricism with its causal account of sensations of determinate qualities, which is rejected in favour of a figure background account that factors in our interests and our biological imperatives. I then show how he rejects a classical account of re-identification through associations based on the projection of memories. We do not associate past and present bundles of sensations, rather past and present configurations. I then run through his positive view of intersensory or intermodal perception, in which our senses work together from the outset because they are structured to do so. Finally I suggest how he would criticise the second-generation objective thought found in the contemporary physicalism that no longer posits unstructured sensations or externally related variables. He would show that our lifeworld, our responses to significant situations and our beliefs in proximate and distant action possibilities for ourselves and others are utterly ineliminable.

Sentimentalism in eighteenth-century Scottish literature reflected the ideas of moral philosophers like Francis Hutcheson, David Hume and Adam Smith, who argued that our sense of morality has its origins in feelings aroused by impressions conveyed by the senses. The influence of Smith’s concept of the impartial spectator, an imaginary witness and judge of human interactions, is evident in novels by Henry Mackenzie and Tobias Smollett, whose characters’ emotional responses to scenes of suffering are described in great detail. In theatre, John Homes’ Douglas was deemed a success by the amount of tears shed by the audience, while Joanna Baillie’s plays dramatised moral sentiments by illustrating particular vices and virtues. Macpherson’s Ossianic poems became an international sensation through their nostalgic sentimentalism, which depicted the pure and noble virtues of a bygone era. Sentimentalism in the poetry of Robert Burns celebrates both individual subjectivity and common humanity through his treatment of universal themes like love and nature. Unlike the Romantic movement that would follow it, which tended to privilege individual autonomy and subjectivity over sociability, sentimentalism in Scottish literature depicted individuals as social beings whose sensibility was stimulated and defined by their interactions with others.