 Though most philosophers appeal to typical experience and empirical data to reject the plausibility of Kivy’s position, they admit the problem that motivates it, namely, the conceptual tension between the nature of music and the nature of the emotions we feel in response to it. To elaborate, there is some consensus that emotions are cognitive, in the sense that they take intentional objects—they are about things—and that the nature of a given emotion’s intentional object is constrained. For instance, in order to feel fear, one must believe that there is something that is threatening (the “intentional object” of the emotion). When one listens to a sad piece of music, however, one knows there is nothing literally feeling an emotion of sadness, and thus it is puzzling that one should be made sad by the experience.