Life, on a day to day basis, is a sequence of emotional states: hope, disappointment, irritation, anger, affection, envy, pride, embarrassment, joy, sadness and many more. We know intuitively that these states express deep things about our character and our view of the world. But what are emotions and why are they so important to us? In one of the most extensive investigations of the emotions ever published, Robert Roberts develops a novel conception of what emotions are and then applies (...) it to a large range of types of emotion and related phenomena. In so doing he lays the foundations for a deeper understanding of our evaluative judgments, our actions, our personal relationships and our fundamental well-being. Aimed principally at philosophers and psychologists, this book will certainly be accessible to readers in other disciplines such as religion and anthropology. (shrink)

We commonly appeal to emotions to explain human behaviour: we seek comfort out of grief, we threaten someone in anger and we hide in fear. According to the standard Humean analysis, intentional action is always explained with reference to a belief-desire pair. According to recent consensus, however, emotions have independent motivating force apart from beliefs and desires, and supplant them when explaining emotional action. In this paper I provide a systematic framework for thinking about the motivational structure of emotion (...) and show how it is consistent with the Humean analysis. On this picture, emotions are not reducible to beliefs and desires, instead their primary motivational force comes from their role as modulators of desires—they control the strength of our occurrent desires. Emotions therefore motivate actions through the belief-desire system instead of overriding it. (shrink)

The emotions are at the centre of our lives and, for better or worse, imbue them with much of their significance. The philosophical problems stirred up by the existence of the emotions, over which many great philosophers of the past have laboured, revolve around attempts to understand what this significance amounts to. Are emotions feelings, thoughts, or experiences? If they are experiences, what are they experiences of? Are emotions rational? In what sense do emotions give meaning to what surrounds us? (...) -/- The Emotions: A Philosophical Introduction introduces and explores these questions in a clear and accessible way. The authors discuss the following key topics: -/- the diversity and unity of the emotions the relations between emotion, belief and desire the nature of values the relations between emotions and perceptions emotions viewed as evaluative attitudes the link between emotions and evaluative knowledge the nature of moods, sentiments, and character traits. -/- Including chapter summaries and guides to further reading, The Emotions: A Philosophical Introduction is an ideal starting point for any philosopher or student studying the emotions. It will also be of interest to those in related disciplines such as psychology and the social sciences. (shrink)

The emotions we experience are crucial to who we are, to what we think, and to what we do. But what are emotions, exactly, and how do they relate to agency? The aim of this book is to spell out an account of emotions, which is grounded on analogies between emotions and sensory experiences, and to explore the implications of this account for our understanding of human agency. The central claim is that emotions consist in perceptual experiences of values, such (...) as the fearsome, the disgusting or the admirable. A virtue of this account is that it affords a better grasp of a variety of interconnected phenomena, such as motivation, values, responsibility and reason-responsiveness. In the process of exploring the implications of the Perceptual Theory of emotions, several claims are proposed. First, emotions normally involve desires that set goals, but they can be contemplative in that they can occur without any motivation. Second, evaluative judgements can be understood in terms of appropriate emotions in so far as appropriateness is taken to consist in correct representation. Third, by contrast with what Strawsonian theories hold, the concept of moral responsibility is not response-dependent, but the relationship between emotions and moral responsibility is mediated by values. Finally, in so far as emotions are perceptions of values, they can be considered to be perceptions of practical reasons, so that on certain conditions, acting on the basis of one's emotions can consist in responding to one's reasons. (shrink)

Given the fundamental role of emotional intelligence in learning, especially in virtual learning contexts where individuals experience more stress and anxiety, the need to understand and recognize one's own feelings and the mutual feelings of peers has gained more importance. Flow as the ultimate state in harnessing emotions in the service of performance and learning has been introduced as the main reason for one's willingness to perform activities which are connected to no external motivation. In this regard, the present study (...) was conducted to first introduce a new educational program to enhance the EI level in the English as a foreign language online education environment and next to investigate the possibility of raising EFL learners' perceived flow. To achieve these goals, the study recruited a sample of 67 EFL learners who were next divided into experimental and control groups. The experimental group received the EI intervention over 10 weeks and the control group received the ordinary online EFL instruction. Data were collected through EI and flow questionnaires and semi-structured interviews which focused on learners' perception of the EI intervention and signs of enhanced flow. Statistical analysis of the data showed a positive effect of the program on the learners' EI and their perceived flow. The study emphasizes the role of applying positive emotions in making language learners more engaged in online classroom tasks. (shrink)

Robert C. Roberts first presented his vivid account of emotions as 'concern-based construals' in his book Emotions: An Essay in Aid of Moral Psychology. In this new book he extends that account to the moral life. He explores the ways in which emotions can be a basis for moral judgments, how they account for the deeper moral identity of actions we perform, how they are constitutive of morally toned personal relationships like friendship, enmity, collegiality and parenthood, and how pleasant and (...) unpleasant emotions interact with our personal wellbeing. He then sketches how, by means of their moral dimensions, emotions participate in our virtues and vices, and for better or worse, express our moral character. His rich study will interest a wide range of readers working on virtue ethics, moral psychology and emotion theory. (shrink)

The emotions we experience are crucial to who we are, to what we think, and to what we do. But what are emotions, exactly, and how do they relate to agency? The aim of this book is to spell out an account of emotions, which is grounded on analogies between emotions and sensory experiences, and to explore the implications of this account for our understanding of human agency. The central claim is that emotions consist in perceptual experiences of values, such (...) as the fearsome, the disgusting or the admirable. A virtue of this account is that it affords a better grasp of a variety of interconnected phenomena, such as motivation, values, responsibility and reason-responsiveness. In the process of exploring the implications of the Perceptual Theory of emotions, several claims are proposed. First, emotions normally involve desires that set goals, but they can be contemplative in that they can occur without any motivation. Second, evaluative judgements can be understood in terms of appropriate emotions in so far as appropriateness is taken to consist in correct representation. Third, by contrast with what Strawsonian theories hold, the concept of moral responsibility is not response-dependent, but the relationship between emotions and moral responsibility is mediated by values. Finally, in so far as emotions are perceptions of values, they can be considered to be perceptions of practical reasons, so that on certain conditions, acting on the basis of one's emotions can consist in responding to one's reasons. (shrink)

ACTION, EMOTION AND WILL "This a clear and persuasive book which contains as many sharp points as a thorn bush and an array of arguments that as neat and ...

Michael S. Brady offers a new account of the role of emotions in our lives. He argues that emotional experiences do not give us information in the same way that perceptual experiences do. Instead, they serve our epistemic needs by capturing our attention and facilitating a reappraisal of the evaluative information that emotions themselves provide.

Paul E. Griffiths argues that most research on the emotions has been as misguided as Aristotelian efforts to study "superlunary objects" - objects...

Jesse Prinz argues that recent work in philosophy, neuroscience, and anthropology supports two radical hypotheses about the nature of morality: moral values are based on emotional responses, and these emotional responses are inculcated by culture, not hard-wired through natural selection. In the first half of the book, Jesse Prinz defends the hypothesis that morality has an emotional foundation. Evidence from brain imaging, social psychology, and psychopathology suggest that, when we judge something to be right or wrong, we are merely expressing (...) our emotions. Prinz argues that these emotions do not track objective features of reality; rather, the rightness and wrongness of an act consists in the fact that people are disposed to have certain emotions towards it. In the second half of the book, he turns to a defense of moral relativism. Moral facts depend on emotional responses, and emotional responses vary from culture to culture. Prinz surveys the anthropological record to establish moral variation, and he draws on cultural history to show how attitudes toward practices such as cannibalism and marriage change over time. He also criticizes evidence from animal behavior and child development that has been taken to support the claim that moral attitudes are hard-wired by natural selection. Prinz concludes that there is no single true morality, but he also argues that some moral values are better than others; moral progress is possible. Throughout the book, Prinz relates his views to contemporary and historical work in philosophical ethics. His views echo themes in the writings of David Hume and Friedrich Nietzsche, but Prinz supports, extends, and revises these classic theories using the resources of cutting-edge cognitive science. The Emotional Construction of Morals will stimulate and challenge anyone who is curious about the nature and origin of moral values. (shrink)

It is often claimed that emotions are linked to formal objects. But what are formal objects? What roles do they play? According to some philosophers, formal objects are axiological properties which individuate emotions, make them intelligible and give their correctness conditions. In this paper, I evaluate these claims in order to answer the above questions. I first give reasons to doubt the thesis that formal objects individuate emotions. Second, I distinguish different ways in which emotions are intelligible and argue that (...) philosophers are wrong in claiming that emotions only make sense when they are based on prior sources of axiological information. Third, I investigate how issues of intelligibility connect with the correctness conditions of emotions. I defend a theory according to which emotions do not respond to axiological information, but to non-axiological reasons. According to this theory, we can allocate fundamental roles to the formal objects of emotions while dispensing with the problematic features of other theories. (shrink)

Peter Goldie opens the path to a deeper understanding of our emotional lives through a lucid philosophical exploration of this surprisingly neglected topic. Drawing on philosophy, literature and science, Goldie considers the roles of culture and evolution in the development of our emotional capabilities. He examines the links between emotion, mood, and character, and places the emotions in the context of consciousness, thought, feeling, and imagination. He explains how it is that we are able to make sense of our (...) own and other people's emotions, and how we can explain the very human things which emotions lead us to do. He argues that it is only from the personal point of view that thoughts, reasons, feelings, and actions come into view. This fascinating book gives an accessible but penetrating exploration of an important but mysterious subject. Any reader interested in emotion and its role in understanding our lives will find much to think about here. (shrink)

How can we motivate ourselves to do what we think we ought? How can we deliberate about personal values and priorities? Bennett Helm argues that standard philosophical answers to these questions presuppose a sharp distinction between cognition and conation that undermines an adequate understanding of values and their connection to motivation and deliberation. Rejecting this distinction, Helm argues that emotions are fundamental to any account of value and motivation, and he develops a detailed alternative theory both of emotions, desires and (...) evaluative judgements and of their rational interconnections. The result is an innovative theory of practical rationality and of how we can control not only what we do but also what we value and who we are as persons. (shrink)

This review demonstrates that an individualist view of emotion and regulation is untenable. First, I question the plausibility of a developmental shift away from social interdependency in emotion regulation. Second, I show that there are multiple reasons for emotional experiences in adults to elicit a process of social sharing of emotion, and I review the supporting evidence. Third, I look at effects that emotion sharing entails at the interpersonal and at the collective levels. Fourth, I examine (...) the contribution of emotional sharing to emotion regulation together with the relevant empirical evidence. Finally, the various functions that the social sharing of emotion fulfills are reviewed and the relevance of the social sharing of emotion for emotion scientists is discussed. (shrink)

The challenge of explaining the emotions has engaged the attention of the best minds in philosophy and science throughout history. Part of the fascination has been that the emotions resist classification. As adequate account therefore requires receptivity to knowledge from a variety of sources. The philosopher must inform himself of the relevant empirical investigation to arrive at a definition, and the scientist cannot afford to be naive about the assumptions built into his conceptual apparatus. The contributors to this volume have (...) approached the problem of characterizing and classifying emotions from the perspectives of neurophysiology, psychology, and social psychology as well as that of philosophical psychology. They discuss the difficulties that arise in classifying the emotions, assessing their appropriateness and rationality, and determining their function in motivating moral action. (shrink)

I begin this article with an increasingly accepted claim: that emotions lend differential weight to states of affairs, helping us conceptually carve the world and make rational decisions. I then develop a more controversial assertion: that environments have non-subjective emotional qualities, which organize behavior and help us make sense of the world. I defend this from ecological and related embodied standpoints that take properties to be interrelational outcomes. I also build on conceptions of experience as a cultural phenomenon, one that (...) coheres around shared environmental contours and public emotional concerns, introducing normative constraints (or what might be called “world grammars”). Endorsing this outlook suggests an argument for the view that cultural spaces have affectively charged, non-subjective, normative openings and closures. These openings and closures engender selectively permeable barriers which cordon space without physically preventing entry, as seen with decorative half walls and elevation changes. An area with such barriers may look emotionally hostile to, say, the dispirited homeless who are in fact less welcome there. Outcomes like these might be thought of as “political affordances.” These affordances can be regarded as normative openings and closures that implicitly filter, and hence segregate, according to various social divisions. Although registering political affordances requires more than the detection of ambient arrays, the notion retains core Gibsonian ideas: that affordances are values, that these values are linked with how a space can be used, and that the existence and nature of such affordances is not a subjective matter. (shrink)

Theories of emotional justification investigate the conditions under which emotions are epistemically justified or unjustified. I make three contributions to this research program. First, I show that we can generalize some familiar epistemological concepts and distinctions to emotional experiences. Second, I use these concepts and distinctions to display the limits of the ‘simple view’ of emotional justification. On this approach, the justification of emotions stems only from the contents of the mental states they are based on, also known as their (...) cognitive bases. The simple view faces the ‘gap problem’: If cognitive bases and emotions (re)present their objects and properties in different ways, then cognitive bases are not sufficient to justify emotions. Third, I offer a novel solution to the gap problem based on emotional dispositions. This solution (1) draws a line between the justification of basic and non-basic emotions, (2) preserves a broadly cognitivist view of emotions, (3) avoids a form of value skepticism that threatens inferentialist views of emotional justification, and (4) sheds new light on the structure of our epistemic access to evaluative properties. (shrink)

Life, on a day to day basis, is a sequence of emotional states: hope, disappointment, irritation, anger, affection, envy, pride, embarrassment, joy, sadness and many more. We know intuitively that these states express deep things about our character and our view of the world. But what are emotions and why are they so important to us? In one of the most extensive investigations of the emotions ever published, Robert Roberts develops a novel conception of what emotions are and then applies (...) it to a large range of types of emotion and related phenomena. In so doing he lays the foundations for a deeper understanding of our evaluative judgments, our actions, our personal relationships and our fundamental well-being. Aimed principally at philosophers and psychologists, this book will certainly be accessible to readers in other disciplines such as religion and anthropology. (shrink)

A new theory of how the brain constructs emotions that could revolutionize psychology, health care, law enforcement, and our understanding of the human mind Emotions feel automatic, like uncontrollable reactions to things we think and experience. Scientists have long supported this assumption by claiming that emotions are hardwired in the body or the brain. Today, however, the science of emotion is in the midst of a revolution on par with the discovery of relativity in physics and natural selection in (...) biology--and this paradigm shift has far-reaching implications for us all. Leading the charge is psychologist and neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett, whose theory of emotion is driving a deeper understanding of the mind and brain, and shedding new light on what it means to be human. Her research overturns the widely held belief that emotions are housed in different parts of the brain and are universally expressed and recognized. Instead, she has shown that emotion is constructed in the moment, by core systems that interact across the whole brain, aided by a lifetime of learning. This new theory means that you play a much greater role in your emotional life than you ever thought. Its repercussions are already shaking the foundations not only of psychology but also of medicine, the legal system, child-rearing, meditation, and even airport security. Why do emotions feel automatic? Does rational thought really control emotion? How does emotion affect disease? How can you make your children more emotionally intelligent? How Emotions Are Made answers these questions and many more, revealing the latest research and intriguing practical applications of the new science of emotion, mind, and brain. (shrink)

In this paper, we consider the question of whether there exists an essential relation between emotions and wellbeing. We distinguish three ways in which emotions and wellbeing might be essentially related: constitutive, causal, and epistemic. We argue that, while there is some room for holding that emotions are constitutive ingredients of an individual’s wellbeing, all the attempts to characterise the causal and epistemic relations in an essentialist way are vulnerable to some important objections. We conclude that the causal and epistemic (...) relation between emotions and wellbeing is much less strong than is commonly thought. (shrink)

In Emotions and Reasons, Patricia Greenspan offers an evaluative theory of emotion that assigns emotion a role of its own in the justification of action. She analyzes emotions as states of object-directed affect with evaluative propositional content possibly falling short of belief and held in mind by generalized comfort or discomfort.

In this paper, we develop a fresh understanding of the sense in which emotions are evaluations. We argue that we should not follow mainstream accounts in locating the emotion–value connection at the level of content and that we should instead locate it at the level of attitudes or modes. We begin by explaining the contrast between content and attitude, a contrast in the light of which we review the leading contemporary accounts of the emotions. We next offer reasons to (...) think that these accounts face substantial problems since they locate the link emotions bear to values at the level of content. This provides the incentive to pursue an alternative approach according to which emotions qualify as evaluations because they are specific types of attitudes, an approach we substantiate by appealing to felt bodily stances. We conclude by considering two reasons why this approach may be resisted; they respectively pertain to the alleged impossibility of drawing the attitude–content contrast in the case of the emotions and to the suspicion that so doing raises qualia-related worries. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to propose a systematic classification of emotions which can also characterize their nature. The first challenge we address is the submission of clear criteria for a theory of emotions that determine which mental phenomena are emotions and which are not. We suggest that emotions as a subclass of mental states are determined by their functional roles. The second and main challenge is the presentation of a classification and theory of emotions that can account for (...) all existing varieties. We argue that we must classify emotions according to four developmental stages: 1. pre-emotions as unfocussed expressive emotion states, 2. basic emotions, 3. primary cognitive emotions, and 4. secondary cognitive emotions. We suggest four types of basic emotions (fear, anger, joy and sadness) which are systematically differentiated into a diversity of more complex emotions during emotional development. The classification distinguishes between basic and non-basic emotions and our multi-factorial account considers cognitive, experiential, physiological and behavioral parameters as relevant for constituting an emotion. However, each emotion type is constituted by a typical pattern according to which some features may be more significant than others. Emotions differ strongly where these patterns of features are concerned, while their essential functional roles are the same. We argue that emotions form a unified ontological category that is coherent and can be well defined by their characteristic functional roles. Our account of emotions is supported by data from developmental psychology, neurobiology, evolutionary biology and sociology. (shrink)

Until recently, philosophers and psychologists conceived of emotions as brain- and body-bound affairs. But researchers have started to challenge this internalist and individualist orthodoxy. A rapidly growing body of work suggests that some emotions incorporate external resources and thus extend beyond the neurophysiological confines of organisms; some even argue that emotions can be socially extended and shared by multiple agents. Call this the extended emotions thesis. In this article, we consider different ways of understanding ExE in philosophy, psychology, and the (...) cognitive sciences. First, we outline the background of the debate and discuss different argumentative strategies for ExE. In particular, we distinguish ExE from cognate but more moderate claims about the embodied and situated nature of cognition and emotion. We then dwell upon two dimensions of ExE: emotions extended by material culture and by the social factors. We conclude by defending ExE against some objections and point to desiderata for future research. (shrink)

This volume brings together new work by leading philosophers on the topics of emotion and value, and explores issues at their intersection. Recent work in philosophy and psychology has had important implications for topics such as the role that emotions play in practical rationality and moral psychology, the connection between imagination and emotion in the appreciation of fiction, and more generally with the ability of emotions to discern axiological saliences and to ground the objectivity of ethical or aesthetic (...) value judgements. This volume makes a unique contribution to scholarship on emotion and value by bringing together top authors from these lines of research. In addition, it explores various links between the emotions and self-understanding, touching on a range of themes that include depression, empathy, agency, guilt, and self-trust. All of these issues are approached from a number of different perspectives in order to present the reader with a wide view of this extremely rich terrain and to demonstrate how the latest thinking in a number of currently intensive areas of research is deeply interconnected. (shrink)

In this study William Lyons presents a sustained and coherent theory of the emotions, and one which draws extensively on the work of psychologists and physiologists in the area. Dr Lyons starts by giving a thorough and critical survey of other principal theories, before setting out his own 'causal-evaluative' account. In addition to giving an analysis of the nature of emotion - in which, Dr Lyon argues, evaluative attitudes play a crucial part - his theory throws light on the (...) motivating role of emotions in our lives, our attitudes towards our emotions and our responsibility for them. (shrink)

What are 'emotions'? This book offers a balanced survey of facts and theory.

Tracing the leading role of emotions in the evolution of the mind, a philosopher and a psychologist pair up to reveal how thought and culture owe less to our faculty for reason than to our capacity to feel. Many accounts of the human mind concentrate on the brain’s computational power. Yet, in evolutionary terms, rational cognition emerged only the day before yesterday. For nearly 200 million years before humans developed a capacity to reason, the emotional centers of the brain were (...) hard at work. If we want to properly understand the evolution of the mind, we must explore this more primal capability that we share with other animals: the power to feel. Emotions saturate every thought and perception with the weight of feelings. The Emotional Mind reveals that many of the distinctive behaviors and social structures of our species are best discerned through the lens of emotions. Even the roots of so much that makes us uniquely human—art, mythology, religion—can be traced to feelings of caring, longing, fear, loneliness, awe, rage, lust, playfulness, and more. From prehistoric cave art to the songs of Hank Williams, Stephen T. Asma and Rami Gabriel explore how the evolution of the emotional mind stimulated our species’ cultural expression in all its rich variety. Bringing together insights and data from philosophy, biology, anthropology, neuroscience, and psychology, The Emotional Mind offers a new paradigm for understanding what it is that makes us so unique. (shrink)

Emotions often misfire. We sometimes fear innocuous things, such as spiders or mice, and we do so even if we firmly believe that they are innocuous. This is true of all of us, and not only of phobics, who can be considered to suffer from extreme manifestations of a common tendency. We also feel too little or even sometimes no fear at all with respect to very fearsome things, and we do so even if we believe that they are fearsome. (...) Indeed, instead of shunning fearsome things, we might be attracted to them. Emotions that seem more thought-involving, such as shame, guilt or jealousy, can also misfire. You can be ashamed of your big ears even though we can agree that there is nothing shameful in having big ears, and even though you judge that having big ears does not warrant shame. And of course, it is also possible to experience too little or even no shame at all with respect to something that is really shameful. Many of these cases involve a conflict between one’s emotion and one’s evaluative judgement. Emotions that are thus conflicting with judgement can be called ‘recalcitrant emotions’. The question I am interested in is whether or not recalcitrant emotions amount to emotional illusions, that is, whether or not these cases are sufficiently similar to perceptual illusions to justify the claim that they fall under the same general heading. The answer to this depends on what emotions are. For instance, the view that emotions are evaluative judgments makes it difficult to make room for the claim that emotional errors are perceptual illusions. Fearing an innocuous spider would simply amount to making the error of judging that the spider is fearsome while it is in fact innocuous. This might involve an illusion of some sort, but it certainly does not amount to anything like a perceptual illusion. In this chapter, I argue that recalcitrant emotions are a kind of perceptual illusion.. (shrink)

Moral Emotions builds upon the philosophical theory of persons begun in _Phenomenology and Mysticism _and marks a new stage of phenomenology. Author Anthony J. Steinbock finds personhood analyzing key emotions, called moral emotions. _Moral Emotions _offers a systematic account of the moral emotions, described here as pride, shame, and guilt as emotions of self-givenness; repentance, hope, and despair as emotions of possibility; and trusting, loving, and humility as emotions of otherness. The author argues these reveal basic structures of interpersonal experience. (...) By exhibiting their own kind of cognition and evidence, the moral emotions not only help to clarify the meaning of person, they reveal novel concepts of freedom, critique, and normativity. As such, they are able to engage our contemporary social imaginaries at the impasse of modernity and postmodernity. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to explore in a systematic way the rationality of emotions elicited when we engage with works of fiction. I first lay out the approach to the emotions on which my discussion is premised. Next, I concentrate on two facets of emotional rationality—the first pertains to the relation between emotions and the mental states on which they are based, the second to the relation between emotions and the judgements and behaviour they elicit. These observations about (...) emotional rationality are then applied to emotions elicited by works of fiction. After having distinguished several families of emotions, I concentrate on what I call blob-emotions and emotions-for. I argue that, given their nature as direct responses to a restricted range of stimuli, blob-emotions are not irrational. As regards emotions-for fictional entities, I emphasize that a subject’s rationality shows in the way her emotions-for respond to evidence. On this basis, I discard an influential reason to think that emotions-for fictional entities are irrational. Finally, I offer an argument to conclude that they are typically correct and rational. (shrink)

Can we experience emotion without the feeling of accelerated heartbeats, perspiration, or other changes in the body? In his paper “What is an emotion”, William James famously claimed that “if we fancy some strong emotion and then try to abstract from our consciousness of it all the feelings of its bodily symptoms, we find we have nothing left behind” (1884, p. 193). Thus, bodily changes are essential to emotion. This is known as the Subtraction Argument. The (...) Subtraction Argument is still used to support Embodied theories of emotion. Proponents of Disembodied theories, however, have different intuitions regarding the role of bodily changes in the experience of emotion. In order to advance this debate, I conducted a series of studies testing people’s intuitions regarding the Subtraction Argument. Results show that, against James’ claims, most people consider that their hypothetical (Study 1) and actual (Study 2) emotions persist in the absence of bodily feelings. Furthermore, Study 1 found that participants’ responses were not related to individual differences in reflection or interoceptive awareness. These results pose a problem for Embodied theories of emotion and challenge extant explanations for the persistence of emotional experience in cases of impaired interoception. (shrink)

Recent work in cognitive science provides overwhelming evidence for a link between emotion and moral judgment. I review findings from psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and research on psychopathology and conclude that emotions are not merely correlated with moral judgments but they are also, in some sense, both necessary and sufficient. I then use these findings along with some anthropological observations to support several philosophical theories: first, I argue that sentimentalism is true: to judge that something is wrong is to have (...) a sentiment of disapprobation towards it. Second, I argue that moral facts are response-dependent: the bad just is that which cases disapprobation in a community of moralizers. Third, I argue that a form of motivational internalism is true: ordinary moral judgments are intrinsically motivating, and all non-motivating moral judgments are parasitic on these. (shrink)

Emotional creativity refers to a set of cognitive abilities and personality traits related to the originality of emotional experience and expression. Previous studies have found that emotional creativity can positively predict posttraumatic growth and mental health. The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has posed great challenges to people’s daily lives and their mental health status. Therefore, this study aims to address the following two questions: whether emotional creativity can improve posttraumatic growth and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic and (...) how it works. To do this, a multiple mediation model has been proposed, which supposes that emotional creativity is associated with posttraumatic growth and mental health through perceived social support and regulatory emotional self-efficacy. The study involved 423 participants from multiple regions with different COVID-19 involvement levels. Participants were asked to complete a questionnaire with six parts, which included Emotional Creativity Inventory (ECI), Regulatory Emotional Self-Efficacy Scale (RES), Stress-Related Growth Scale-Short Form (SRGS-SF), Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support scale (MSPSS), Brief Symptom Inventory-18 scale (BSI-18), and COVID-19-related life events questionnaire. Path analysis used to examine the mediation model indicated that under the control of COVID-19-related life events and age, perceived social support mediated a positive association between emotional creativity and posttraumatic growth as well as a negative association between emotional creativity and all mental health problems, including somatization, depression, and anxiety. Regulatory emotional self-efficacy mediates the association between emotional creativity and posttraumatic growth, emotional creativity and anxiety, and emotional creativity and depression. The results suggest that emotional creativity plays an important role in coping with stressful events related to COVID-19. Furthermore, these results might provide a better understanding of the possible paths through which emotional creativity is related to psychological outcomes, such as mental health and posttraumatic growth. (shrink)

This book analyzes the uses of emotive language and redefinitions from pragmatic, dialectical, epistemic and rhetorical perspectives, investigating the relationship between emotions, persuasion and meaning, and focusing on the implicit dimension of the use of a word and its dialectical effects. It offers a method for evaluating the persuasive and manipulative uses of emotive language in ordinary and political discourse. Through the analysis of political speeches and legal arguments, the book offers a systematic study of emotive language in argumentation, rhetoric, (...) communication, political science and public speaking. (shrink)

Emotions have long been of interest to philosophers and have deep historical roots going back to the Ancients. They have also become one of the most exciting areas of current research in philosophy, the cognitive sciences, and beyond. -/- This book explains the philosophy of the emotions, structuring the investigation around seven fundamental questions: What are emotions? Are emotions natural kinds? Do animals have emotions? Are emotions epistemically valuable? Are emotions the foundation for value and morality? Are emotions the basis (...) for responsibility? Do emotions make us better people? -/- In the course of exploring these questions, the book also discusses cutting-edge empirical research on emotion, feminist approaches to emotions and their value, and methodological questions on how to theorize about the emotions. The book also contains in-depth discussions of specific emotions like compassion, disgust, anxiety, and curiosity. It also highlights emerging trends in emotion research. (shrink)

What produces emotions? Why do we have emotions? How do we have emotions? Why do emotional states feel like something? This book considers these questions, going beyond examining brain mechanisms of emotion, by proposing a theory of what emotions are, and an evolutionary, Darwinian, theory of the adaptive value of emotion.

Engineers are normally seen as the archetype of people who make decisions in a rational and quantitative way. However, technological design is not value neutral. The way a technology is designed determines its possibilities, which can, for better or for worse, have consequences for human wellbeing. This leads various scholars to the claim that engineers should explicitly take into account ethical considerations. They are at the cradle of new technological developments and can thereby influence the possible risks and benefits more (...) directly than anybody else. I have argued elsewhere that emotions are an indispensable source of ethical insight into ethical aspects of risk. In this paper I will argue that this means that engineers should also include emotional reflection into their work. This requires a new understanding of the competencies of engineers: they should not be unemotional calculators; quite the opposite, they should work to cultivate their moral emotions and sensitivity, in order to be engaged in morally responsible engineering. (shrink)

Efforts to bridge emotion theory with neurobiology can be facilitated by dynamic systems (DS) modeling. DS principles stipulate higher-order wholes emerging from lower-order constituents through bidirectional causal processes cognition relations. I then present a psychological model based on this reconceptualization, identifying trigger, self-amplification, and self-stabilization phases of emotion-appraisal states, leading to consolidating traits. The article goes on to describe neural structures and functions involved in appraisal and emotion, as well as DS mechanisms of integration by which they (...) interact. These mechanisms include nested feedback interactions, global effects of neuromodulation, vertical integration, action-monitoring, and synaptic plasticity, and they are modeled in terms of both functional integration and temporal synchronization. I end by elaborating the psychological model of emotion–appraisal states with reference to neural processes. (shrink)

It may seem that when you have an emotional response to a perceived object or event that makes it seem to you that the perceived source of the emotion possesses some evaluative property, then you thereby have prima facie, immediate justification for believing that the object or event possesses the evaluative property. Call this view ‘dogmatism about emotional justification’. We defend a view of the structure of emotional awareness according to which the objects of emotional awareness are derived from (...) other experiences such as bodily sensation, inner awareness, sensory perception, memory, and imagination. On this basis, we argue that dogmatism about emotional justification is an untenable position, regardless of whether the special feature of an immediate justifier that makes it an immediate justifier is its presentational phenomenology or its evidence insensitivity. (shrink)

This paper explores substantive accounts of emotional phenomenology so as to see whether it sheds light on key features of emotions. To this end, we focus on four features that can be introduced by way of an example. Say Sam is angry at Maria’s nasty remark. The first feature relates to the fact that anger is a negative emotion, by contrast with positive emotions such as joy and admiration (valence). The second feature is how anger differs from other emotions (...) such as sadness, fear and joy (individuation). The third concerns the objects of anger and the sense in which anger discloses the significance of Maria’s remark to Sam (intentionality). Finally, there is anger’s relation to behaviour (motivation). Does focussing on emotional phenomenology encourage specific accounts of these features? We shall see that there are reasons to think it does. Still, are these reasons of sufficient import to dispel the scepticism of those who think that nothing of consequence plays out at the personal level of emotional experience? Given the role of emotional experience in our evaluative practices, we shall conclude that they are. Our discussion is structured as follows: section 1 focuses on feeling approaches to phenomenology, section 2 on componential approaches, section 3 on perceptual approaches and section 4 on attitudinal approaches. Section 5 concludes with some observations regarding the significance of emotional phenomenology. (shrink)

Our emotions can be revealing. They can not only reflect our character traits and our judgments, but they can also tell us things about ourselves that we do not fully realize or may not want to admit. In this chapter, I am particularly interested in how we relate to what I will call alienated emotions: emotional experiences that are unusual, surprising, or even disturbing. What, if anything, do our alienated emotions tell us about who we are? I argue here that (...) alienated emotions lead to important questions about the ethics of self-interpretation. (shrink)

A popular idea at present is that emotions are perceptions of values. Most defenders of this idea have interpreted it as the perceptual thesis that emotions present (rather than merely represent) evaluative states of affairs in the way sensory experiences present us with sensible aspects of the world. We argue against the perceptual thesis. We show that the phenomenology of emotions is compatible with the fact that the evaluative aspect of apparent emotional contents has been incorporated from outside. We then (...) deal with the only two views that can make sense of the perceptual thesis. On the response–dependence view, emotional experiences present evaluative responsedependent properties (being fearsome, being disgusting, etc.) in the way visual experiences present response-dependent properties such as colors. On the response–independence view, emotional experiences present evaluative response-independent properties (being dangerous, being indigestible, etc.), conceived as ‘Gestalten’ independent of emotional feelings themselves. We show that neither view can make plausible the idea that emotions present values as such, i.e., in an open and transparent way. If emotions have apparent evaluative contents, this is in fact due to evaluative enrichments of the non-evaluative presentational contents of emotions. (shrink)

Many people are drawn towards virtue ethics because of the central place it gives to emotions in the good life. Yet it may seem odd to evaluate emotions as virtuous or non-virtuous, for how can we be held responsible for those powerful feelings that simply engulf us? And how can education help us to manage our emotional lives? The aim of this book is to offer readers a new Aristotelian analysis and moral justification of a number of emotions that Aristotle (...) did not mention, or relegated, at best, to the level of the semi-virtuous, or made disparaging remarks about, or rejected explicitly. Kristjan Kristjansson argues that there are good Aristotelian reasons for understanding those emotions either as virtuous or as indirectly conducive to virtue. Virtuous Emotions begins with an overview of Aristotle's ideas on the nature of emotions and of emotional value, and concludes with an account of Aristotelian emotion education. (shrink)

Richard Sorabji presents a ground-breaking study of ancient Greek views of the emotions and their influence on subsequent theories and attitudes, Pagan and Christian. While the central focus of the book is the Stoics, Sorabji draws on a vast range of texts to give a rich historical survey of how Western thinking about this central aspect of human nature developed.

I discuss a large number of emotions that are relevant to performance at epistemic tasks. My central concern is the possibility that it is not the emotions that are most relevant to success of these tasks but associated virtues. I present cases in which it does seem to be the emotions rather than the virtues that are doing the work. I end of the paper by mentioning the connections between desirable and undesirable epistemic emotions.

The aim of this paper is to clarify the notion of shared emotion. After contextualizing this notion within the broader research landscape on collective affective intentionality, I suggest that we reserve the term shared emotion to an affective experience that is phenomenologically and functionally ours: we experience it together as our emotion, and it is also constitutively not mine and yours, but ours. I focus on the three approaches that have dominated the philosophical discussion on shared emotions: (...) cognitivist accounts, concern-based accounts, and phenomenological fusion accounts. After identifying strengths and weaknesses of these approaches and summarizing the elements that a multifaceted theory of shared emotions requires, I turn to the work of the early phenomenologist Edith Stein to further advance an approach to shared emotions that combines the main strengths of Helm and Salmela’s concern-based accounts and Schmid’s phenomenological fusion account. According to this proposal, the sharedness of a shared emotion cannot be located in one element, but rather consists in a complex of interrelated features. (shrink)

In this book, Rebekka Hufendiek explores emotions as embodied, action-oriented representations, providing a non-cognitivist theory of emotions that accounts for their normative dimensions. _Embodied Emotions_ focuses not only on the bodily reactions involved in emotions, but also on the environment within which emotions are embedded and on the social character of this environment, its ontological constitution, and the way it scaffolds both the development of particular emotion types and the unfolding of individual emotional episodes. In addition, it provides a (...) critical review and appraisal of current empirical studies, mainly in psychophysiology and developmental psychology, which are relevant to discussions about whether emotions are embodied as well as socially embedded. The theory that Hufendiek puts forward denies the distinction between basic and higher cognitive emotions: all emotions are embodied, action-oriented representations. This approach can account for the complex normative structure of emotions, and shares the advantages of cognitivist accounts of emotions without sharing their problems. _Embodied Emotions _makes an original contribution to ongoing debates on the normative aspects of emotions and will be of interest to philosophers working on emotions, embodied cognition and situated cognition, as well as neuroscientists or psychologists who study emotions and are interested in placing their own work within a broader theoretical framework. (shrink)