UC San Diego

This paper challenges the traditional understanding of secondary affect, on which the latter is a cognitive appraisal of a somatic state that already has an antecedent, primary affect. We appeal to cases of acquired anosmia—the loss of the sense of smell—to argue that there are instances where secondary affect arises in the absence of (indeed, because of the absence of) primary affect, and that this can be so even when the secondary state is completely veridical. We conclude that, in this specific sense, secondary affect need not be secondary after all.