Dormant and Active Emotional States

George Pitcher marks a familiar distinction in the philosophy of emotions as follows: When it is said of someone that he has an emotion, this may be said of him either in (a) an occurrent, or in (b) a dispositional sense. A person who is frightened by a face at a window, or who gets angry at two boys because they are mistreating a dog, has an emotion in the former, occurrent, sense – he is actually in the grip of the emotion. But a person who hates his father, or is jealous of his landlord, has an emotion in the latter, dispositional, sense – he may not actually be feeling the emotion now. (Pitcher 1965, 331-2). I will take issue with this idea that there are two different senses in which someone has an emotion. While it is unquestionably the case that there is a proper distinction to be marked here, I take it that it is the distinction between an emotional state being active and the same state being dormant, not a distinction between two kinds of emotional state – occurrent and dispositional ones. I will argue that when you are in the grip of anger with the two boys for mistreating the dog you are in the very same dispositional state you will be in later when you have cooled down and are thinking about something else altogether though still angry with the two boys for mistreating the dog. When in the grip of anger you are in a dispositional state that is in the process of being manifested – it is an active dispositional state.