The emotions expressed in music differ from the emotions felt by people in that they are unfelt,necessarily publicly displayed and lack emotional-objects. Do emotion terms have a secondary use indescriptions of human behaviour in which they refer to ’emotions’
that are similarly unfelt, necessarily publicly displayed and lacking in emotional-objects? As the following case indicates, the answer is yes. We frequently describe the character of a person’s appearance or bearing by the use of emotion terms. We say ‘He is a sad-looking person’ or ‘He makes a sad figure’. In such cases we do not mean that he now feels sad or even that he often feelssad; we are referring not to any emotion, in fact, but to the lookof him, to what I will call ’emotion-characteristics in appearances’.Because this use of emotion terms involves reference to appearances and not to feelings, the sadness of a person’s look cannot not be displayed, nor does it take an emotional-object as his feeling of sadness normally does. Although we may sometimes be justified in over-ruling first-person reports of felt-emotions we are obliged to take such reports seriously and, in some cases, as definitive.