Abstract

A proper account of affective memory must distinguish it from here-and-now emotions directed to the past (i.e., present emotions about past events) and semantic emotional memory (i.e., remembering the fact that one felt a certain way in the past but without any phenomenology of re-experiencing past personal events). Previous accounts have failed to make these distinctions, leading some theorists to doubt whether affective memory is a real mental phenomenon. I argue that there is a real, unique mental phenomenon of affective memory and that it is _emotional imagination directed towards one’s personal past_. Specifically, I argue that (i) affective memory is about emotions as _felt_ in a past situation; (ii) remembering emotions involves _imaginatively simulating_ emotions as something one personally experienced in the past; and (iii) the simulative character of affective memory is what distinguishes it from here-and-now emotions and semantic emotional memory.