 It seems clear that in many (perhaps even most) cases of envy, the subject is liable to find some moral complaint with which to justify negative feelings toward his rival. This would explain various experimental findings that correlate feelings of envy with complaints of injustice. But, of course, such complaints may be defensive rationalizations of rancorous feelings, rather than elements in envy. Claims about which of the various thoughts that commonly attend a given type of emotion belong in a characterization of that emotion type are best defended within the context of a general theory of how to individuate emotion types, which is beyond the scope of this entry. In any case, some version of the thesis that envy is not a moral emotion seems both plausible and necessary to make sense of the debate over whether egalitarianism is motivated by envy (see section 3.1 below).