Many psychological scientists and behavioral neuroscientists affirm that “emotion” influences thinking, decision-making, actions, social relationships, well-being, and physical and mental health. Yet there is no consensus on a definition of the word “emotion,” and the present data suggest that it cannot be defined as a unitary concept. Theorists and researchers attribute quite different yet heuristic meanings to “emotion.” They show considerable agreement about emotion activation, functions, and regulation. The central goal of this article is to alert (...) researchers, students, and other consumers of “emotion” research to the multiple meanings or aspects that distinguished scientists attribute to ”emotion,” increase appreciation of its interesting and challenging complexity, and sharpen perspectives on “emotion” and the associated body of literature that is of critical significance to science and society. (shrink)

Most scholars of emotions concede that although cognitive evaluations are essential for emotion, they are not sufficient for it, and that other elements, such as bodily feelings, physiological sensations and behavioral expressions are also required. However, only a few discuss how these diverse aspects of emotion are related in order to form the unity of emotion. In this essay I examine the co-presence and the causal views, and I argue that neither view can account for the (...) unity of emotions. In particular, both views face the problem of fortuitous connection, and, as a result, they fail to identify and distinguish an emotion from other mental states. Consequently, they fail to account for our first person authority over our emotions. I finally argue that only an internal, conceptual relation between the cognitive/evaluative and affective/physiological aspects of emotion can avoid such problems, and suggest that the Aristotelian distinction of form and matter can provide such internal relation. (shrink)

I address the questions of whether cognitive methods are suited to the study of emotion, and whether they are suited to the study of the unique aspect of emotion. Based on a definition of cognitive processes as those that mediate between variable input–output relations by means of representations, and the observation that the relation between stimuli and emotions is often variable, I argue that cognition is often involved in emotion and that cognitive methods are suited to study (...) them. I further propose that the unique feature of emotion has to do with the content of the representations involved in the transition from stimulus input to emotion. Emotions are elicited when stimuli contain information about the satisfaction status of goals (i.e., when they are goal relevant). Given that cognitive methods are fit to study any representation-mediated process regardless of their content, they can a fortiori be used to study a process that operates on representations with goal-relevant content. I compare this process to processes that have no or a different relation to goals, including the process that deals with purely valenced information. (shrink)

Inspired by the idea that emotion(s) and motion(s) constitute profoundly intertwined dimensions of physical and cultural embodiment reflected in language, this volume comprises nineteen contributions presenting exploratory and applicative accounts of (e)motion(s) situated across a range of topical research areas.

We consider three possible reasons why humans might accord a privileged status to emotional information when mentally traveling backward or forward in time. First, mental simulation of emotional situations helps one to make adaptive decisions. Second, it can serve an emotion regulation function. Third, it helps people to construct and maintain a positive view of the self.

While the recognition of ambiguous emotions is crucial for successful social interactions, previous work has shown that they are perceived differently depending on whether they are viewed on male or female faces. The present paper aims to shed light on this phenomenon by exploring two hypotheses: the confounded signal hypothesis, which posits the existence of perceptual overlaps between emotions and gendered morphotypes, and the social role hypothesis, according to which the observer's responses are biased by stereotypes. Participants were asked to (...) categorise blended faces (i.e. artificial faces made ambiguous by mixing two emotions) in a forced-choice task. Six emotions were used to create each blend (neutral, surprise, sadness, fear, happiness, anger), for a total of 15 expressions. We then applied signal detection theory – considering both the morphotype of the stimuli and the participants’ gender – to distinguish participants’ perceptual processes from their response biases. The results showed a perceptual advantage for anger on male faces and for sadness on female faces. However, different strategies were deployed when labelling emotions on gendered morphotypes. In particular, a response bias towards angry male faces establishes their special status, as they resulted in both excellent detection and a tendency to be over-reported, especially by women. (shrink)

This study addresses two desiderata of historical emotion research: reflecting on the interdependence of textual functions and the representation of emotions, and acknowledging the interdependence of studies on the premodern and modern periods in the history of emotion. Contemporary research on the history of emotion is characterised by a proliferation of studies on very different eras, authors, themes, texts, and aspects. The enthusiasm and confidence with which situations, actions, and interactions involving emotions in history are discovered, (...) however, has led to overly direct attempts to access the represented objects (emotions/feelings/affects); as a result, too little attention has been paid to the conditions and functions of their representations. That is why this study engages with the emotion research of historians from an unashamedly philological perspective. Such an approach provides, among other things, insights into the varied, often contradictory, observations that can be made about the history of emotion in modernity and premodernity. (shrink)

In this work, on the one hand, we examined the relationship between emotional intelligence (EI) and empathy and, on the other, the relationship between emotional intelligence and nonverbal sensitivity, through two independent studies. The first study analyzed the relationship between dimensions of emotional intelligence and aspects of empathy, in a sample of 856 participants who completed two measures of EI, the Trait Meta-Mood Scale (TMMS) and the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (TEIQue), and a measure of empathy, The Interpersonal Reactivity (...) Index (IRI). The results showed a similar pattern of significant positive relations in all the EI domains with empathic Perspective-taking, and significant negative relationships with empathic Personal Distress, except for the EI domain of Attention, which had a positive relationship. Stepwise multiple regression analyses showed that the dimension that best predicted empathic Perspective-taking and Empathic Concern was the Emotionality Factor; whereas Attention best predicted empathic Fantasy; and the Self-Control Factor best predicted Personal Distress, although negatively. Gender emerged as a predictor of three empathic aspects, Fantasy, Empathic Concern, and Personal Distress, with women obtaining higher scores than men in all of them. Age was the only predictor of Fantasy, with a negative relationship. The second study involved 646 people who completed the same measures of EI as the participants of the first study and the Mini-Profile of Nonverbal Sensitivity (Mini-PONS). The results showed some significant relationships between EI dimensions and the channels and quadrants of the MiniPONS. Stepwise multiple regression analyses showed that very few EI dimensions predicted nonverbal sensitivity, with Attention obtaining the best result. Both gender and age emerged as predictors, some in unique cases, of channels, quadrants and of the total score of nonverbal sensitivity; age had a negative relationship, and women obtained higher scores than men. (shrink)

This article focuses on two largely ignored aspects of the understanding of strong metaphors: the visual dimension and the emotional factors. Particularly, I intend to offer answers to the following questions: 1) What does it mean to understand a visual metaphor? 2) Can Wittgenstein’s ideas about the vision of aspects help to better understand this understanding? 3) In what sense does his notion of secondary sense enrich the philosophical reflection on the understanding of metaphors? 4) In what sense (...) may emotions be an important factor in the understanding of certain metaphors? The article is framed in a methodological proposal: I defend a phenomenology of the metaphor, that is, an accurate description of our experiences with metaphors, and in this case, its understanding. (shrink)

What are the underlying processes that enable human beings to recognize a happy face? Clearly, featural and configural cues will help to identify the distinctive smile. In addition, the motivational state of the observer will influence the interpretation of emotional expressions. Therefore, a model accounting for emotion recognition is only complete if bottom-up and top-down aspects are integrated.

Drawing on a rich variety of Indian texts across multiple traditions, including Vedanta, Buddhist, Yoga and Jain, this collection explores how emotional experience is framed, evoked and theorized in order to offer compelling insights into human subjectivity. Rather than approaching emotion through the prism of Western theory, a team of leading Indian philosophers showcase the unique literary texture, philosophical reflections and theoretical paradigms that classical Indian sources provide in their own right. From solitude in the Saundarananda and psychosomatic theories (...) of disease in the Yogavasistha to female lament in Greek, Sinhala Buddhist and Sanskrit epic tales, their chapters reveal the range and diversity of the phenomena encompassing the English term 'emotion'. In doing so, they contribute towards a more cosmopolitan, comparative and pluralistic conception of human experience. Adopting a broad phenomenological methodology, this handbook reframes debates on emotion within classical Indian thought and is an invaluable resource for researchers and students seeking to understand the field beyond the Western tradition. (shrink)

Now in a thoroughly revised and expanded third edition, this authoritative Handbook reviews current knowledge about all aspects of emotion and its role in human ...

In Responsible Brains, Hirstein, Sifferd and Fagan apply the language of cognitive neuroscience to dominant understandings of criminal responsibility in criminal law theory. The Authors make a compelling case that, under such dominant understandings, criminal responsibility eventually ‘translates’ into a minimal working set of executive functions that are primarily mediated by the frontal lobes of the brain. In so arguing, the Authors seem to unquestioningly accept the law’s view of the “responsible person” as a mixture of cognitive capacities and mechanisms—thereby (...) leaving aside other fundamental aspects of individuals’ human agency. This commentary article offers a critique of the Authors’ rationalist and individualist approach. The critique can be summarized through the following claim: We humans, as responsible beings, are more than our executive functions. This claim articulates through four main points of discussion: role of emotions in moral judgments and behavior; executive functions and normative criteria for legal insanity; impact of adverse situational factors on executive functions; Authors’ account of punishment and, especially, rehabilitation. (shrink)

This book engages with what are widely recognized as the two core dimensions of emotion. When we are afraid, glad or disappointed, we feel a certain way; moreover, our emotion is intentional or directed at something: we are afraid of something, glad or disappointed about something. Connecting with a vital strand of recent philosophical thinking, I conceive of these two aspects of emotion as unified. Examining different possible ways of developing the view that the feeling dimension (...) of emotion is itself intentional, I argue against the currently popular view that it is a form of perception-like receptivity to value. I instead propose that emotional feeling is a specific type of response to value, an affective ‘position-taking’. This alternative conceives of emotional feeling as intimately related to our cares and concerns. While situating itself within the analytic-philosophical debate on emotion, the discussion crucially draws on ideas from the early phenomenological tradition in an attempt to think past the theoretical strictures of many contemporary approaches to this subject. The result is a new view of emotional feeling as a thoroughly personal form of engagement with value. (shrink)

Williamson explains, defends, and applies Kant's theory of emotion. Looking primarily to the Anthropology and the Metaphysics of Morals, she situates Kant's theory of affect within his theory of feeling and focuses on the importance of moral feelings and the moral evaluation of our emotions.

Happiness can be expressed through smiles. Happiness can also be expressed through physical displays that without context, would appear to be sadness and anger. These seemingly incongruent displays of happiness, termed dimorphous expressions, we propose, represent and communicate expressers’ motivational orientations. When participants reported their own aggressive expressions in positive or negative contexts, their expressions represented positive or negative emotional experiences respectively, imbued with appetitive orientations. In contrast, reported sad expressions, in positive or negative contexts, represented positive and negative emotional (...) experiences respectively, imbued with consummatory orientations. In six additional experiments, participant observers interpreted that aggression displayed in positive contexts signalled happy-appetitive states, and sadness displayed in positive contexts signalled happy-consummatory states. Implications for the production and interpretation of emotion expressions are discussed. (shrink)

In this study, we examined the effects of emotional experience, a relatively new dimension of emotional knowledge that gauges the ease with which words evoke emotional experience, on abstract word processing in the Stroop task. In order to test the context-dependency of these effects, we accentuated the saliency of this dimension in Experiment 1A by blocking the stimuli such that one block consisted of the stimuli with the highest emotional experience ratings and the other block consisted of the stimuli with (...) the lowest emotional experience ratings. We attenuated the saliency of this dimension in Experiment 1B by intermixing the stimuli. We observed slower color naming performance for words with higher emotional experience ratings only in Experiment 1A, suggesting that the dimension of emotional experience is an aspect of semantic representation for abstract words but that its influence can be modulated by context. We interpret these results more generally using Vigliocco, Meteyard, Andrews, and Kousta's framework of semantic representation, and more specifically using Cohen, Dunbar, and McClelland's model of Stroop task performance. (shrink)

Emotion is conceptualised as an emergent, dynamic process based on an individual's subjective appraisal of significant events. It is argued that theoretical models of emotion need to propose an architecture that reflects the essential nature and functions of emotion as a psychobiological and cultural adaptation mechanism. One proposal for such a model and its underlying dynamic architecture, the component process model, is briefly sketched and compared with some of its major competitors. Recent empirical evidence in support of (...) the model is reviewed. Special emphasis is given to the dynamic aspect of emotion processes, in particular the sequence of appraisal checks and the synchronisation of response systems, as well as the capacity of the model to predict individual differences in emotional responding. (shrink)

Excerpt from The Psychological Aspects of Christian Experience Continued observation of the various methods of religious instruction has brought upon me a conviction that grows stronger as the years go by, that there must be, as Francis Peabody says, a new expansion of the range of studies appropri ate to the teachers of religion. There ought to be a far deeper study of the psychology of reli gion. The appeal to the impulses and emotions, so prevalent in the methods (...) of some teachers, is far behind twentieth century enlightenment. It was foreign to the methods of our Saviour. He taught men. He did not frighten them into ao tion, neither entice them. He instructed their minds in truth. Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

Purpose. The study seeks to clarify the preconditions for moral and legal decision-making based on the identification of axiological foundations that correlate with the moral perceptions of good and evil and psychological phenomena such as emotions. Theoretical basis of the study is to apply comparative, axiological, systemic methods. This methodological approach allows us to analyze and disclose the essence of the process of moral and legal decision-making on the basis of certain axiological prerequisites and enables to substantiate the connection between (...) the axiological and psychological aspects of taking moral and legal decisions. Originality of the work is to broaden the perceptions of the processes and mechanisms for making moral and legal decisions, which are based on the axiological dimension, in particular on the system of reference individual and social values. The study shows that every necessary moral and legal decision taken by a person is futurologically balanced in the emotional sense, rationally reasoned and morally perceptible in the context of man’s beliefs about good and evil, and realized with necessity in the personal system of reference values that determines the style and manner of individual and social behaviour in the context of material and spiritual values and is an axiological foundation for making all types of moral and legal decisions. Conclusions. Moral and legal decision-making is a social process that is connected with such a social essence of a person as rationality, which gives an opportunity to act axiologically. A person makes moral and legal decisions in a complex way, based on the unity of the moral, axiological and psychological aspects of his worldview, which are grounded on the system of reference values. (shrink)

Emotions are open to various kinds of normative assessment. For example, we can assess emotions for their prudential or moral value. Recently, philosophers have increasingly attended to a distinct form of normative assessment of emotions – fittingness assessment. An emotion is fitting when it is merited by its object. For example, admiration is fitting when it is felt towards the admirable, and shame towards the shameful. This paper defends a hybrid account of emotional fittingness. Emotions are complex, and typically (...) involve various elements. As well as involving representations that can be assessed for accuracy, emotions typically motivate their subjects in characteristically urgent ways. The fittingness of an emotion as a whole is a function of the fittingness of both its representational and motivational aspects. (shrink)

In Poland, as in most countries, interpreting (similarly to translation) is a free profession (apart from sworn translation and interpreting rendered by certified translators and interpreters) which does not adhere to any particular prescriptive code or officially accepted regulations. Efforts have been made both internationally and domestically to introduce a set of universal principles or a professional working framework on commercial and scholar grounds (various codes of conduct drafted by organisations worldwide) to standardise techniques and approaches to interpreting with the (...) aim of establishing a set of practices to ensure high quality interpreting. Regardless of the prescriptive nature of such codes or guidelines and the work of scholars, one of the matters that is of essence and still seems open for discussion is the choice of the grammatical person in which interpreters render and relay interpreted messages to their clients. This article presents a short description of what community interpreting is, its place within the interpreting domain, and it focuses on the aspect of direct/indirect address (using first or third grammatical person, respectively, while interpreting), its emotional and cognitive strain which the interpreters experience, and related lexical and grammatical choices they consequently make. The purpose of the article is the identification of possible reasons of such choices on the basis of feedback received from professionally active interpreters (both as full-time and part-time interpreters) in diverse settings: business, community, remote interpreting. The study reveals that the choice of grammatical person depends on many factors, such as cognitive and emotional strain, personal preference, context, client, and, in most cases, it is not dictated by any code of conduct. (shrink)

The paper argues against a widely held synchronic view of emotional rationality. I begin by considering recent philosophical literature on various backward‐looking emotions, such as regret, grief, resentment, and anger. I articulate the general problem these accounts grapple with: a certain diminution in backward‐looking emotions seems fitting while the reasons for these emotions seem to persist. The problem, I argue, rests on the assumption that if the facts that give reason for an emotion remain unchanged, the emotion remains (...) fitting. However, I argue there are rationally self‐consuming attitudes: affective attitudes that become less fitting the longer they endure while the facts that give reason for them persist. A widely held synchronic view of fitting affective attitudes denies that fittingness at a time depends on the agent's attitudes at different times and therefore denies that the fittingness of an affective attitude can depend on its duration. Once we reject the synchronic view, we may see that affective attitudes are often fitting due to the fitting processes of which they are part. These fitting processes explain the fitting diminution of backward‐looking emotions as well as other diachronic aspects of the fittingness of emotions. -/- . (shrink)

I agree with the commentators that study of physical disease risk conferred by affective dispositions such as anger/hostility, anxiety, and sadness, should be more cognizant of developments in emotion theory. Emotions differ in their functional value depending on the person’s lifespan trajectory. Discrete emotions have different psychophysiological signatures; and emotional competence, including production, regulation, and knowledge, may be critical in determining whether specific negative affects, or general negative affectivity, are toxic for physical health. Emotion researchers, however, have mainly (...) focused on acute affective experiences and ignored the general effects of negative affectivity, which subsumes the discrete negative affects. Most diseases develop over years so more needs to be known about the biological signatures of chronic specific affects and negative affectivity. (shrink)

Most researchers of emotions agree that although cognitive evaluations such as beliefs, thoughts, etc. are essential for emotion, bodily feelings and their behavioral expressions are also required. Yet, only a few explain how all these diverse aspects of emotion are related to form the unity or oneness of emotion. The most prevalent account of unity is the causal view, which, however, has been shown to be inadequate because it sees the relations between the different parts of (...) emotion as external and contingent. I argue that an adequate account of unity would require internal or conceptual relations between the aspects of emotion, and I suggest that such an account can be found in Aristotle's metaphysics and theory of emotion, and specifically, in his form and matter distinction. After I show that emotions are intentional pleasures and pains or distresses, I argue that the characteristic intentional pleasure and pain of an emotion, along with its other intentional elements , are the form of the emotion, whereas the bodily feelings are its matter. Form and matter constitute a conceptual unity, which cannot be accounted for in conglomeration accounts that see emotions as mixtures of different parts related only through efficient causation. (shrink)

This book defines political ideology as a structural force that combines ideas, emotion, and people for the purpose of transforming political discourse. It advances a theoretical proposition concerning the creation of alternative modes of governance and proposes a general theory explains the reasons for the creation of political ideologies as an escape from perceived injustice. The theory also explains democracy's success and the failure of Communism and the Fascism. The purpose of any political ideology, whether Democracy, Fascism (and its (...) varieties), or Communism, is to escape human suffering by combining ideas, emotion, and people in the production of fundamental societal change. Ideologies must possess these three variables to attain the necessary power to succeed as a political force. Power gives the ideology the structural ability to transform society, trapping the once free individual into the ideology. (shrink)

We report an experiment on two treatments of an ultimatum minigame. In one treatment, responders’ reactions are hidden to proposers. We observe high rejection rates reflecting responders’ intrinsic resistance to unfairness. In the second treatment, proposers are informed, allowing for dynamic effects over eight rounds of play. The higher rejection rates can be attributed to responders’ provision of a public good: Punishment creates a group reputation for being “tough” and effectively “educate” proposers. Since rejection rates with informed proposers drop to (...) the level of the treatment with non-informed proposers, the hypothesis of responder’s enjoyment of overt punishment is not supported. (shrink)

Cilj je slušanja glazbe u školi oblikovati kulturno-umjetnički svjetonazor učenica i učenika te doprinijeti njihovom estetskom odgoju. U hrvatskim osnovnim školama realizira se prema tzv. standardnom modelu kojemu je težište na spoznajnoj dimenziji. Kako bi se povećali pozornost, motivacija, slušalačke navike i prihvaćanje umjetničke glazbe, predlaže se spoznajno-emocionalni pristup koji višemodalno povezuje glazbene i izvanglazbene sadržaje. Cilj istraživanja bio je usporediti utjecaje spoznajno-emocionalnog i standardnog pristupa u nastavi glazbene kulture na spoznajni i emocionalni aspekt slušanja glazbe. Sudjelovalo je 557 učenika (...) i učenica iz 30 petih razreda. Slušali su Hačaturjanovu Maskaradu, Beethovenovu Wellingtonovu pobjedu, Rimski Korsakovljevu Šeherezadu i Fauréovu Pavanu te odgovarali na pitanja vezana za spoznajni i emocionalni aspekt slušanja glazbe. Petnaest razreda imalo je nastavu po standardnom, a 15 razreda po spoznajno emocionalnom pristupu. U spoznajnom aspektu odgovori učenika i učenica uglavnom se nisu razlikovali. U emocionalnom aspektu, u Šeherezadi i Pavani nešto su intenzivnije doživljavane dominantne emocije kada je bio primijenjen spoznajno-emocionalni pristup. The purpose of music listening in school is to shape students’ world view regarding culture and arts, as well as to contribute to their aesthetic education. Croatian elementary schools use the ‘standard model’, which focuses on the cognitive dimension. In order to increase attention, motivation, listening habits, and acceptance of artistic music, a cognitive-emotional approach is suggested that connects musical and extra-musical content in multiple modalities. The goal of the research is to compare the effects of the cognitive-emotional approach versus the standard approach to music teaching on the cognitive and emotional aspects of music listening. 557 year 5 students from 30 classes participated in the research. They listened to Khachaturian’s Masquerade, Beethoven’s Wellington’s Victory, Rimsky- Korsakov’s Scheherazade, and Fauré’s Pavane, as well as answering questions related to the cognitive and emotional aspects of music listening. Fifteen classrooms used the standard approach, while the other fifteen used the cognitive-emotional approach. Student responses generally did not differ in the cognitive aspect. In the emotional aspect, Scheherazade and Pavane engendered somewhat more intense dominant emotions when the cognitive-emotional approach was used. (shrink)

We often assess emotions as appropriate or inappropriate depending on certain evaluative aspects of the world. Often using the term ‘fittingness’ as equivalent to ‘appropriateness’, many philosophers of emotion take fittingness assessments of emotions to be a broadly representational matter. On this sort of view, an emotion is fitting or appropriate just in case there is a kind of representational match between the emotion and the object, a matching analogous to truth for belief. This view provides (...) an account of the relationship between emotion and value that many have found plausible. In this paper, I argue that the fittingness of emotions should not be understood in representational terms. Rather, as is common in the literature on fittingness, we should interpret the notion in normative terms. After providing four arguments against the representational interpretation, and for a normative interpretation, of emotional fittingness, I discuss two ways to develop the normative picture of emotional fittingness. I also clarify the relevant issues that will have to be tackled by philosophers of emotion in the future, issues which cannot be tackled without attending to action theory and the philosophy of normativity. (shrink)

Intensive care nurses, like professionals in other intense occupations characterized by high degrees of uncertainty, manage the emotions that result from their work both on and off the job. We focus on the job strategies – calling‐in, sharing their experiences with others and engaging in a range of activities oriented to emotional recovery – that 37 intensive care nurses use to manage their emotions off the job. These strategies show how the social organization and division of labor in intensive care (...) units influences nurses' emotional management outside of them and how organizational troubles for hospitals becomes personal ones for staff. They further support theoretical approaches that view emotions as dynamic elements belonging to individuals rather than aspects of people that can be fully appropriated by organizations. (shrink)

We propose three extensions of the theory developed by Juslin & Vll (J&V). First, motion should be considered as an additional mechanism. Second, synchronization plays a role in eliciting emotion. And, third, the spectrum of musical affect or feelings is denser and broader than the spectrum of emotions, suggesting an expansion of the scope of the theory beyond emotions.

This paper is going to focus on the problem of emotions in technology, in particular in reference to the case of algorithms developed to track early rehospitalizations. In this paper I am going to discuss how phenomenology can support the integration of emotions in technology and how this integration can improve our chances for that “decent survival” that the founder of bioethics, Potter, has envisioned as the main goal of this discipline (Natl Cancer Inst Monogr 13:111–116, 1964; Bioethics, bridge to (...) the future. Prentice Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, p 24, 1971; Ann N Y Acad Sci 196(Art. 4):200–205, 1972; Cancer Res 35:2297–2306, 1975; Global bioethics. Michigan University, 1988). I believe that descriptive phenomenology can be a useful philosophical and psychological approach to improve the moral and emotional intelligence behind machine learning programming (Dreyfus, What computers can’t do: the limits of artificial intelligence. HarperCollins, 1978; The Socratic and platonic basis of cognitivism. AI & Society, Springer, Berlin, 1988) and overcome the risk of ethical opacity implied in programming (Casacuberta, Ethical and technical aspects of emotions to create empathy in medical machines. In Van Rysewik SP, Pontier M (eds) Machine in medical ethics. Springer, New York/Dordrecht, 2015). On the one hand, the ethical aspect of phenomenology would allow us to grasp the predicative and pre-predicative facie of the lived-experiences and their emotional contents. On the other hand, the phenomenological method of research applied in psychology would offer a way to transcribe and interpret data in a responsible and contextualized way. (shrink)

In clinical moral decision making, emotions often play an important role. However, many clinical ethicists are ignorant, suspicious or even critical of the role of emotions in making moral decisions and in reflecting on them. This raises practical and theoretical questions about the understanding and use of emotions in clinical ethics support services. This paper presents an Aristotelian view on emotions and describes its application in the practice of moral case deliberation.According to Aristotle, emotions are an original and integral part (...) of (virtue) ethics. Emotions are an inherent part of our moral reasoning and being, and therefore they should be an inherent part of any moral deliberation. Based on Aristotle's view, we examine five specific aspects of emotions: the description of emotions, the attitude towards emotions, the thoughts present in emotions, the reliability of emotions, and the reasonable principle that guides an emotion. We then discuss three ways of dealing with emotions in the process of moral case deliberation. Finally, we present an Aristotelian conversation method, and present practical experiences using this method. (shrink)