State of Research Recent research investigating the ‘feeling’ character of emotions (especially Goldie 2000, 2004, 2009; Prinz 2004; Scherer 2009 & 2008) has failed to carry out a systematic description and categorisation of the typical experiential (i.e. phenomenal) content of emotional feelings. As a result, important features of emotional feelings have been neglected which can help explain not only traditional questions surrounding the relation between emotional feelings and cognition, the body and the self but also illuminate the discussion about the representational status of emotional feelings. Current Proposal The proposed interdisciplinary study asserts that a systematic phenomenological analysis will show that emotional feelings present to conscious experience, most of all, a sense of self, namely the sense of being a ‘situated, embodied and motivated agent’. Secondarily and strongly related to this particular sense of self, emotional feelings also involve felt basic representations of spatial, temporal and causal features of the particular objects of emotions (incl. objects, events and states of affairs). By comparison, it is suggested that localised bodily sensations form only a minor component in emotional feelings. Furthermore, the current research proposes that emotional feelings depend for their typical content crucially also on imagination (for imagination, see, e.g., P L Harris 1989 & 2000), namely inter alia the simulation (e.g., Gordon 1986; Goldman 1993; Nichols & Stich 2003) of spatial, temporal and causal probabilities, as regards the particular object of an emotion, and spatial, temporal and causal possibilities, as concerns available ways of acting. Along with existing interdisciplinary research, it will be claimed that imagination and simulation are closely connected to the availability of a body schema and a body image (Shaun Gallagher, 2005). Finally, the current study will describe in outline how the sense of self in emotional feelings can be traced back to the stepwise formation of different perceptual capacities at successive stages in evolutionary history. Interdisciplinary Outlook The outlook of the proposed research is decidedly interdisciplinary both in its theoretical and practical orientation: in theoretical terms, the study will combine the special expertise in phenomenological research at Fribourg University (Gianfranco Soldati, Martine Nida-Rümelin) with up-to-date scientific findings produced at the Swiss Centre for Affective Sciences, Geneva, the worldwide leading research institute on appraisal theory of emotion, under the leadership of Klaus Scherer; in practical terms, successive parts of the project will be presented regularly both at Fribourg University research seminars and conferences and at NCCR seminars and ‘iClub’ meetings at the Swiss Centre for Affective Sciences, Geneva. More generally, the study is part of an attempt at strengthening the interdisciplinary collaboration between the Fribourg philosophy department and the Swiss Centre for Affective Sciences, , Geneva, drawing in as well the Lausanne University philosophy of science research group, under the leadership of Michael Esfeld. In addition, planning is currently at an early stage (please see enclosed message board announcement) regarding the establishing of a Fribourg-based regional ‘society for the philosophy of psychology and neuroscience’ which will cover two streams: (a) the methodology and metaphysics of psychology / neuroscience; and (b) collaborative interdisciplinary work, initially on emotions (the phenomenology of emotions; bodily representations in emotions; appraisal in emotions).