Analyzes the meaning expressed in music, the social and psychological sources of meaning, and the methods of musical communication This is a book meant for ...

In this chapter, we start by spelling out three important features that distinguish expressives—utterances that express emotions and other affects—from descriptives, including those that describe emotions (Section 1). Drawing on recent insights from the philosophy of emotion and value (2), we show how these three features derive from the nature of affects, concentrating on emotions (3). We then spell out how theories of non-natural meaning and communication in the philosophy of language allow claims that expressives inherit their (...) class='Hi'>meaning from specificities of emotions—namely, from being felt, evaluative attitudes toward propositional or non-propositional contents (4). (shrink)

This dissertation may be divided into two parts. The first part is about the Extended Gricean Model of information transmission. This model, introduced here, is meant to better explain how humans communicate and understand each other. It has been developed to apply to cases that were left unexplained by the two main models of communication found in contemporary philosophy and linguistics, i.e. the Gricean (pragmatic) model and the code (semantic) model. In particular, I show that these latter two models cannot (...) apply to cases where one communicate through spontaneous emotional expressions and how the Extended Gricean Model of information transmission does. The second part of the dissertation is about what emotional signs mean, in various senses of the term ‘mean'. I review existing theories of meaning and see how they apply to emotional signs, i.e. signs which give us information about the affective state of the sign producer. (shrink)

What is the relation between emotional experience and its behavioural expression? As very preliminary clarification, I mean by ‘emotional experience’ such things as the subjective feeling of being afraid of something, or of being angry at someone. On the side of behavioural expression, I focus on such things as cowering in fear, or shaking a fist or thumping the table in anger. Very crudely, this is behaviour intermediate between the bodily changes which just happen in emotional arousal, such as sweating (...) or the secretion of adrenalin, and reasoned actions done ‘out of an emotion’, such as breathing deeply to clam down, or writing a letter of complaint, for which a standard rationalizing explanation can be given.1 I pursue the relation between this experience and expression in a somewhat roundabout manner. First, I note an analogy between a problem of other minds, and Berkeley’s (1975) challenge to Locke’s (1975) realism. Second, I sketch what I regard as the correct strategy for meeting this challenge. Third, I develop and defend a parallel response to the problem of other minds, as this applies to certain basic directed emotions. This yields the following answer to my opening question. Reference to the appropriate expressive behaviour is essential to the identification of the way in which various emotional experiences present their worldly objects. (shrink)

The discrepancy between syntax and semantics is a painstaking issue that hinders a better comprehension of the underlying neuronal processes in the human brain. In order to tackle the issue, we at first describe a striking correlation between Wittgenstein's Tractatus, that assesses the syntactic relationships between language and world, and Perlovsky's joint language-cognitive computational model, that assesses the semantic relationships between emotions and “knowledge instinct”. Once established a correlation between a purely logical approach to the language and computable psychological activities, (...) we aim to find the neural correlates of syntax and semantics in the human brain. Starting from topological arguments, we suggest that the semantic properties of a proposition are processed in higher brain's functional dimensions than the syntactic ones. In a fully reversible process, the syntactic elements embedded in Broca's area project into multiple scattered semantic cortical zones. The presence of higher functional dimensions gives rise to the increase in informational content that takes place in semantic expressions. Therefore, diverse features of human language and cognitive world can be assessed in terms of both the logic armor described by the Tractatus, and the neurocomputational techniques at hand. One of our motivations is to build a neuro-computational framework able to provide a feasible explanation for brain's semantic processing, in preparation for novel computers with nodes built into higher dimensions. (shrink)

Current discussions of hermeneutical injustice, I argue, poorly characterise the cognitive state of victims by failing to account for the communicative success that victims have when they describe their experience to other similarly situated persons. I argue that victims, especially when they suffer moral wrongs that are yet unnamed, are able (1) to grasp certain salient aspects of the wrong they experience and (2) to cultivate the ability to identify instances of the wrong in virtue of moral emotions. By moral (...) emotions I mean emotions like indignation that reflect an agent’s ethical commitments and bear on her ethical assessments. Further, I argue that victims can impart their partial understanding of the wrong they suffer to others who are not similarly situated by eliciting moral emotions such as pity that are tied to broad notions of justice and fairness. (shrink)

Emotions, Truths and Meanings Regarding Cattle: Should We Eat Meat? Content Type Journal Article Category Review Paper Pages 1-5 DOI 10.1007/s10806-011-9334-2 Authors Michiel Korthals, Department of Applied Philosophy, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands Journal Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics Online ISSN 1573-322X Print ISSN 1187-7863.

Do basic emotions produce their predicted facial expressions in nonlaboratory settings? Available studies in naturalistic settings rarely test causation, but do show a surprisingly weak correlation between emotions and their predicted facial expressions. This evidence from field studies is more consistent with facial behavior having many causes, functions, and meanings, as opposed to their being fixed signals of basic emotion.

The collection of papers addresses the perennial problem of the relation between language and meaning. It proposes various theoretical approaches to the issue ranging from a synergetic theory of meaning merging the cognitive and the socio-historical perspectives, through holistic, evolutionary models and a revision of some of the assumptions of Cognitive Metaphor Theory to the discussion of the role of pragmatic competence in meaning construction. A number of papers make recourse to corpus based studies and psycholinguistic experiments. (...) The topics of specific linguistic investigations cover such diverse issues as idiom processing, emotion words in Chinese, valuation of abstract nouns, the preposition <I>at and scalar adjectives. Several papers explore the application of the reflections on the nature of meaning to lexicography and translation. One, self-reflective article investigates the consequences of the unformulated assumptions about meaning for the coherence of proposed linguistic theories. The volume firmly places the study of meaning in the centre of the linguistic research by showing its significance for linguistic theory and its applications. (shrink)

Locating stance -- Structures of stance in lived experience -- Stance and others, stance and lives -- The social life of stance and the politics of expressive culture.

According to the action analogy, emotions and actions have certain structural and normative similarities that no theory of emotions should ignore. The action analogy has recently been used in an objection against the so-called perceptual theory of emotions, often defended by means of an analogy between emotion and perception. Beyond the dialectical significance of the action analogy, one might wonder whether it can support a picture of emotions as fundamentally action-like—what I call an agential theory. This article is a (...) first step in answering this question. After discussing various ways to formulate the agential theory, I sketch a version of it. (shrink)

Recent empirical and philosophical research challenges the view that reason and emotion necessarily conflict with one another. Philosophers of science have, however, been slow in responding to this research. I argue that they continue to exclude emotion from their models of scientific reasoning because they typically see emotion as belonging to the context of discovery rather than of justification. I suggest, however, that recent work in epistemology challenges the authority usually granted the context distinction, taking a socially (...) inflected reliabilism as my example. Intersubjectively stable emotions may play a reliable role in the formation, which for the reliabilist also means the justification, of scientific beliefs. (shrink)

Digital technologies are pervasively used, and they are becoming part of our everyday actions by being designed to be connected to every aspect of our private life like emotions. However, it is not very clear how they are going to change who we are through their tight intertwinement. Especially in relation to emotions, it is not clear at all what happens when they become digitalized and visualized through these digital devices. Usually, the research focusses on the effect on the privacy (...) of the intrusion of digital devices in our lives as if this process of digitalization leaves the meanings human beings give to their emotions untouched. This article does not focus on the privacy related to the personal information captured by the devices, but it aims to open an analysis of the effects of this digitalization on the emotions in order to highlight the fact the introduction of these digital technologies change what emotions are. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 10.4 (2003) 353-355 [Access article in PDF] Emotions and Narrative Selves Valerie Gray Hardcastle In their commentaries, both Phillips (2003) and Woody (2003) agree that the affective side of personhood needs to be better addressed in narrative views of self. In their arguments, they focus mainly on how a patient or a subject is here and now. In contrast, Kennett and Matthews (2003) take a (...) longer view and argue for the importance of a diachronic unity for selfhood. This commentary seeks to integrate these views by discussing how emotions are central to building our personal sense of unified agency. 1Phillips and Woody are right: most philosophical discussions of the narrative view of self are overly cognitive and focus too much attention on our linguistic story-telling abilities and not enough on what it is like to be a person experiencing the world. This is too bad, for it is our affective reactions that drive our personal life narratives. Consider: of all the experiences in the world, we only chose a small subset to become or represent who we are. I regularly eat cold cereal for breakfast before heading off to work, but if you ask me to describe myself, I describe my work or my children, not my breakfast-eating habits. Why is this? I identify with my work, my family life, or my play, but not with my sleeping patterns, the trajectories I chose when I drive, or how I brush my teeth. How is it that I have selected the former activities to highlight in my self-stories, but not the latter?I maintain that I choose the former because I have strong affective ties to them, ties that I do not have to driving routes or personal hygiene. And these ties are what determine what gets into our narratives of self. Actually, my claim is stronger than that. I believe that our emotions not only color what we do but they also allow us to act in the first place (this discussion is greatly expanded in my forthcoming book).Humans delight in pretending that our most prized and most humanly attribute is our forebrain, which houses, we also pretend, our capacity for rational thought. Since Plato at least we have held that subduing our passions to the iron rule of reason is our supreme aspiration; it is the ideal for human cognition. Ironically, we think that the more we are like Star Trek's alien Mr. Spock, the more human we really are.But what would life really be like with an overdeveloped forebrain and without emotion? Let us consider more carefully what it is we really prize about being human. We can rationalize well, it is true, but we do so in the service of personal goals. As Aristotle reminds us, we have practical rationality; we have means-ends reasoning with a point. This is just another way of saying that it is imperative that we identify what is important to us prior to cognizing.Obviously, one might scoff, we need an end to engage in means-ends reasoning. But often, I think, what having an end entails is not well appreciated. These days it is fashionable to believe that our fundamental ends—survival and reproduction—are set by our biology and that all [End Page 353] other ends (or most other ends) derive from them in some fashion. Maybe this story is true, but it obscures how ends—whether they be hardwired in or they come later—function in the human psyche.At a bare minimum, that we have particular ends tells us that we have to tag our abstractions, interpretations, and matched patterns with valances—some things are good, some things are bad, and some are indifferent. Tagging our experiences thus is just what it means to have emotions; we are reacting affectively to our world around us. And it is these reactions that determine which inputs we respond to and which we ignore. We literally cannot move about in our world without emotion. I think, perhaps, that this fact is what Phillips and Woody are... (shrink)

A profusion of jobs has arisen in contemporary capitalism involving ‘connective labor’, or the work of emotional recognition. Yet the expansion of this interpersonal work occurs at the same time as its systematization, as pressures of efficiency, measurement and automation reshape the work, generating a ‘colliding intensification’. Existing scholarship offers three different ways of understanding the role of emotions in connective labor – as tool, commodity or vulnerability – depending on their view of systematization as useful, inseparable or dehumanizing. Based (...) on 106 in-depth interviews and 300+ hours of observations, I found that vestiges of all three models lurked in the experience of providing connective labor, yet none fully captured the profound meaning practitioners reported finding in their work. Systems varied on three dimensions, reflecting the relative worth of worker, recipient or the work, extracting value from the forged connections, while the meanings workers derived shaped their perspective on its systematization. (shrink)

Includes emotional and affective feelings. Mood builds on the human organism's body, but you must turn to the development of affective experience of the body. I did not last for more than the physical body Zhumo, this article from the mood in the body discussed the rise of the body, to significant problems of the body by the body to experience over the body, as well as the physical body plays in the emotional life of role, will be particularly focused (...) on the discussion of the role of the brain. Basically, the emotional mood of the rise in the body surface of the body, but the emotion does not stop the body. Since the emergence of human consciousness with the intention of the role, so there are feelings of the development. Affective refers to the so-called intentional sexual feelings, especially those that point to the meaning and value of high-level emotions, such as aesthetic, moral feelings and religious sentiments. This paper illustrates how the human experience from the development of the aesthetic experience of the body, powered by the desire to develop a sense of beauty and art have meaning in the world. Furthermore, affective development also has its ethical dimension. This paper by discussing Aristotle's "practical wisdom", as well as Confucianism, Taoism-related ideas, show affection broad sense of the ethical dimension. Finally, to discuss the religious aspects of affective life, and do a little due. Human affectivity includes emotions and feelings. Emotions have their physiological foundation on human body as organism, whereas intertional feelings refer to body as lived. The present author has in his previous writings put emphasis on body as lived, but few words have touched upon body as organism. This paper makes a remedy on this point and attempts to deal with problems such as how emotions arises from body as organism so as to make clear the transition from body as organism to body as lived, and the role organic body played in our emotional life, focus being put on the functions of the brain. Basically speaking, the emotional aspect of human affectivity is originated from, but not limited to, organic body. I see our body as the locus of human desire, defined as a dynamic energy towards the meaningfulness of life. Because of the emergence of consciousness and its intentionality, we have a further development of life of our intentional feelings. "Intentional feeling" denotes those feelings with intentionality that directs iself towards meaningulness and values, especially those intending higher levels of mental activities such as aesthetic feeling, moral feeling and religious sentiment. We will discuss first how aesthetic feelings emerge from body as lived, in the way that desire as dynamism of meaning develops into a world of aesthetic values. Intentional feeling has its ethical dimensional, in the sense determined by Aristotle's idea of ​​phronesis, Confucian idea of ​​moral praxis and Daoist idea of ​​life praxis. In the end, this paper will try to shematize the religious dimension of intentional feeling. (shrink)

Musical systems develop associations over time between aspects of musical form and concepts from outside of the music. Experienced listeners internalize these connotations, such that the formal elements bring to mind their extra-musical meanings. An example of musical form-meaning mapping is the association that Western listeners have between the major and minor modes and happiness and sadness, respectively. We revisit the emotional semantics of musical mode in a study of 44 American participants (musicians and non-musicians) who each evaluated the (...) relatedness of 96 melody-word pairs. Among the tonal melodies, we manipulated mode (major and minor) and timbre (clarinet and flute) while systematically controlling for other musical factors including pitch register and melodic contour. Similarly, among the English words, we manipulated word affect (happy and sad) while systematically controlling for other lexical factors including frequency and word length. Results demonstrated that participants provided a higher proportion of related responses for major melodies paired with happy words and minor melodies paired with sad words than for the reverse pairings. This interaction between mode and word affect was highly significant for both musicians and non-musicians, albeit with a larger effect for the former group. Further interactions with timbre suggested that while both clarinet and flute conveyed happiness when in the major mode, the clarinet was somewhat more successful than the flute at conveying sadness in the minor mode. Debriefing questionnaires suggested that the majority of the participants, including all of the non-musicians, had no awareness of the major-minor manipulation, and instead directed their attention to register and contour. We argue that the affective character of the major and minor modes is but one example of form-meaning mapping in music, and suggest further exploration of the roles of timbre, register, and contour in conveying musical emotions. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to sketch a theory of musical experience which takes the empirical research seriously without abandoning or neglecting music’s transcendental features. The tension between the recent empirical approach, as represented particularly by Huron’s ITPRA theory, and the transcendental fact that music as an instance of art is something one can understand and, moreover, can understand oneself through, should be overcome by elaborating on the concept of emotion and the role it can play in musical (...) understanding. This will be done against the narrower background of the pragmatists’ theories of meaning, as represented by the semantic work of Meyer and Brandom, and their broader link to the philosophy of Hegel and the great systems of German idealism. (shrink)

ABSTRACTUsing authentic textual data from written personal narratives, we investigate how individuals with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and Tourette Syndrome mediate their emotive and sensory experiences through language. Our study reveals that experiential comparisons of different kinds feature prominently as means of conveying such experiences. We identify a number of meaning domains that are recruited in correspondences between sources and targets, including motion and force, and detail how sensory modalities, bodily sensations, and emotions are exploited to (...) evoke emotive/sensory responses in readers. We conclude that comparative construal is a significant communicative strategy precisely because it elicits familiar situational meanings capable of evoking vicarious experiences in readers. By considering texts from actual uses of language in natural situations, our research sheds new light on how emotive/sensory... (shrink)

In the article, the author represents a specific function of a metaphor - emphatic function that in its turn proceeds from the emotional one. The author unfolds the role, significance, and effects of emotional and emphatic functions of metaphor in the dialogues of Internet discourse. The formation of stable emotional relations is the most important condition of human development, the main aim and the final result of his education as well as the essential factor for the formation of empathy - (...) an important psychological reaction. The author proves that a metaphor is the means of creation and development of empathy, which is a state when a person sympathizes with another human’s feelings so much that starts identifying himself with this human for some time. Art as a whole and fiction in particular by means of a metaphor and figurativeness make for the formation of empathy. In Internet discourses the empathy expressed by the communicants in lexemes with direct meaning or by means of metaphors and phraseological units leads to creation of an open and friendly dialogue among the communicants. Thus, a metaphor thanks to its bright expressiveness either supports a positive mood in the dialogues of Internet forum or intensifies negative feelings and emotions to one another and escalates a conflict. Since a metaphor stimulates the development of empathy, the ability to produce and use metaphors and phraseological units in the speech, it can be considered as a significant factor in upbringing an accomplished personality able to understand other people’s feeling and communicate successfully with those around. (shrink)

In a series of cross-cultural investigations of word meaning, Cliff Goddard and Anna Wierzbicka examine key expressions from different domains of the lexicon - concrete, abstract, physical, sensory, emotional, and social. They focus on complex and culturally important words in a range of languages that includes English, Russian, Polish, French, Warlpiri and Malay."--Publishers website.

Western scholarship on early Chinese thought has tended to either dismiss the foundational role of metaphor or to see it as a uniquely Chinese mode of apprehending the world. This article argues that, while human cognition is in fact profoundly dependent on imagistic conceptual structures, such dependence is by no means a unique feature of Chinese thought. The article reviews empirical evidence supporting the claims that human thought is fundamentally imagistic; that sensorimotor schemas are often used to structure our understanding (...) of abstract concepts; that these schemas can be selectively combined to result in novel structures; and that there are inextricable connections between body, emotion, and thought in both everyday and philosophical cognition. It also provides a review of a recent trend where, explicitly or not, scholars from a variety of backgrounds have begun to take metaphor more seriously as a foundational bearer of philosophical meaning in early China. (shrink)

The abbreviation ARCS in the ARCS motivational model comprises the first letters of four English words: Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction. The ARCS motivation model is based on a systematic and easy-to-operate motivation theory. Many research studies have verified the applicability and effectiveness of the ARCS model in education worldwide. The proposed optimized ARCS motivation model takes the traditional ARCS motivation model and systematically optimizes it to make it suitable for the coding of data from videos of music classes. The (...) case analysis method selected 14 high-quality music lessons as the research object. The optimized ARCS model involves text conversion, coding, and statistical analysis of the transcripts of videos of high-quality music classes. The data analysis was used to analyze the characteristics of students’ emotional and behavioral motivation incentive strategies in each section of the ARCS motivation model in combination with specific high-quality case lesson fragments. This paper summarizes ways and means of using a motivational approach in the teaching of quality music classes, providing theoretical support for the practice of music teaching. (shrink)

William James’s reputation in the field of emotion research is based on his early psychological writings where he defines emotions as ‘feelings of bodily changes’. In his later work, particularly in his study of mystic emotion, James comes up with what looks like a completely different approach. Here his focus is on positive feelings of inspiration and joy, but also on downbeat moods like melancholy and depression. He examines how these feeling states give meaning to an individual’s (...) life. Theorists often speculate about a gap between James’s early writings and his later work, and assume that the later James turned from an evolutionary-minded natural scientist into a metaphysical philosopher. In my paper, I follow Ratcliffe in his view that a sharply drawn line between the early and the late work is implausible and that James’s later study of mysticism fits nicely with his early psychology. Drawing on James, I show how in his later work, James develops a theory of embodied emotions that anticipates the role ascribed by twentieth century phenomenology to anxiety and other ‘bad moods’, as possibilities for philosophical reflection and self-understanding. (shrink)

In this paper a tentative neurophysiologically framed approach of the Freudian unconscious that would function on the basis of linguistic (phonological) organizing principles, is proposed. A series of arguments, coming from different fields, are taken together. First, clinical reports indicate that in a state of high emotional arousal linguistic fragments are treated in a decontextualized way, and can lead to the isolation of phoneme sequences which, independently of their actual meaning, are able to resort emotional effects. Second, phonological and (...) neurophysiological arguments are given to make the case that language processing – be it producing, receiving or imagining language – is a motor event. A crucial distinction is proposed: while contextualized processing correlates on a neurophysiological level with action understanding, and is psychoanalytically akin to secondary processing, decontextualized language processing has a neurophysiological counterpart in object understanding and is psychoanalytically akin to primary processing. Third, isolated speech fragments are therefore considered as objects which, similarly to non-linguistic objects, undergo emotional conditioning and establish an idiosyncratic linguistically structured emotional memory. Phoneme sequences which in this way come to carry high emotional valences are thought to be more readily subject to threaten the bodily integrity, and therefore more readily inhibited. When this inhibition leads to the prevention of effective realization of the voluntary motor output, this is thought to result in the sustained high levels of neuronal activation which seek for release by attracting substitutes that are phonemically similar to the censored speech fragments though they are cognitively non threatening. As a result, the speech of the subject would be particularly concerned with the verbalizations of these substitutive phoneme sequences. In summary, the Freudian unconscious is conceived as the instantiation of a linguistic action space which would be idiosyncratically organized by particular phonemic “phantoms” operating as attractors for the subject’s (linguistic) actions. (shrink)

Recent work in cognitive and computational neuroscience depicts the human cortex as a multi-level prediction engine. This ‘predictive processing’ framework shows great promise as a means of both understanding and integrating the core information processing strategies underlying perception, reasoning, and action. But how, if at all, do emotions and sub-cortical contributions fit into this emerging picture? The fit, we shall argue, is both profound and potentially transformative. In the picture we develop, online cognitive function cannot be assigned to either the (...) cortical or the sub-cortical component, but instead emerges from their tight co-ordination. This tight co-ordination involves processes of continuous reciprocal causation that weave together bodily information and ‘top-down’ predictions, generating a unified sense of what’s out there and why it matters. The upshot is a more truly ‘embodied’ vision of the predictive brain in action. (shrink)

This essay is broadly conceived as a study of how the emotional experience of shame can play an important role in the construction of personal identity. It considers, on the one hand, the way in which Greek culture conceives the social meaning of this emotion and, on the other, the double representation that Plato provides in the Symposium of two very different forms of pedagogy of shame. Using the Platonic text as a phenomenological source, the author discusses the (...) general validity and relevance to the Greek world of the anthropological scheme that opposes «shame cultures» to «guilt cultures», attributing evolutionary primacy to the latter in terms of the acquisition of individual moral autonomy. (shrink)

After what has been termed the affective or emotional turn in sociology and many other academic fields, there is still a dearth of methodologies for systematic empirical emotion analysis in sociology. The article addresses this gap and argues that the principles of narrative analysis can be fruitfully extended to the systematic empirical investigation of emotions. A short description of key principles and tools in narrative analysis will serve as the basis for showing how the same concepts can be used (...) to gain access to the emotional side of human experience. To this end the article engages with philosophical debates to develop a specific theoretical notion of emotions—their narrative nature—and discusses the emotional nature of narrative. Specifically, this calls into question any clear-cut distinction between meaning and emotion. Based on this, the text then employs linguistic and some psychological and literary research to demonstrate and systematize key ways in which emotions can be expressed narratively as well as on the level of sentences and words. Together this forms an encompassing methodological framework that can capture the emotionality of human experience in its manifold forms. Specifically, this also addresses the problem of non-conscious emotions. (shrink)

In this analysis of the ethical dimensions of doctors’ participation in macroallocation we set out to understand the skills they use, how they are acquired, and how they influence performance of the role. Using the principles of grounded moral analysis, we conducted a semi-structured interview study with Australian doctors engaged in macroallocation. We found that they performed expertise as argument, bringing together phronetic and rhetorical skills founded on communication, strategic thinking, finance, and health data. They had made significant, purposeful efforts (...) to gain skills for the role. Our findings challenge common assumptions about doctors’ preferences in argumentation, and reveal an unexpected commitment to practical reason. Using the ethics of Paul Ricoeur in our analysis enabled us to identify the moral meaning of doctors’ skills and learning. We concluded that Ricoeur’s ethics offers an empirically grounded matrix for ethical analysis of the doctor’s role in macroallocation that may help to establish norms for procedure. (shrink)

Hollywood movies can be deeply engaging and easy to understand. To succeed in this manner, feature-length movies employ many editing techniques with strong psychological underpinnings. We explore the origins and development of one of these, the reaction shot. This shot typically shows a single, unspeaking character with modest facial expression in response to an event or to the behavior or speech of another character. In a sample of movies from 1940 to 2010, we show that the prevalence of one type (...) of these shots—which we call the cryptic reaction shot—has grown dramatically. These shots are designed to enhance viewers’ emotional involvement with characters. They depict a facial gesture that reflects a slightly negative and slightly aroused emotional state. Their use at the end of conversations, and typically at the end of scenes, helps to leave viewers in a state of speculation about what the character is thinking and what her thoughts may mean for the ongoing narrative. (shrink)

The traditional sporting games correspond to a set of signs full of meanings, which come to life through the motor behaviors of the players as they participate in its semiotic semantics. As a result of this exchange, interpersonal conflicts may emerge because of each person’s semiotic interpretation of the sociomotor dynamics of the game. This research aimed to analyze the comments of intense negative emotions that arise in conflicts of a praxical nature in a TSG, in its different parts, and (...) in the motor interventions of its protagonists. A total of 160 university students participated in a competitive sociomotor traditional sporting game of cooperation-opposition: the Marro. At the end of the practice, all answered the validated GES-II questionnaire. Subsequently, a content analysis of 480 comments was performed using ATLAS.ti 8.4 software. The conclusion of this work verifies the existence of different levels of meaning in the semiotic experience that originate interpersonal conflicts in traditional sporting games. Considering the multidimensional network of signs and meanings that emerge in any game will help to understand the meaning of the protagonists’ conflictive motor conducts. (shrink)

Psychoanalysis, with Freud as its founder, has vehemently denied the value of religious belief. In this radical book, Neville Symington makes the case that both traditional religion and psychoanalysis are failing because they exist apart and do not incorporate each other's value. Religion needs psychoanalysis so that it can become relevant to people's emotional lives and their most intimate relationships. Psychoanalysis needs religion so that it can contain those core spiritual values which give life meaning. But for a fertile (...) relationship both will need to relinquish excess baggage in the form of creeds, dogma and rituals which only serve to obscure the deeper values which both are attempting to express. The controversial conclusion of this fascinating study is that psychoanalysis is a spirituality-in-the-world, or a mature religion, and inseparable from acts of virtue. (shrink)

Research on the relation between sound and meaning in language has reported substantial evidence for implicit associations between articulatory–acoustic characteristics of phonemes and emotions. In the present study, we specifically tested the relation between the acoustic properties of a text and its emotional tone as perceived by readers. To this end, we asked participants to assess the emotional tone of single stanzas extracted from a large variety of poems. The selected stanzas had either an extremely high, a neutral, or (...) an extremely low average formant dispersion. To assess the average formant dispersion per stanza, all words were phonetically transcribed and the distance between the first and second formant per vowel was calculated. Building on a long tradition of research on associations between sound frequency on the one hand and non‐acoustic concepts such as size, strength, or happiness on the other hand, we hypothesized that stanzas with an extremely high average formant dispersion would be rated lower on items referring to Potency (dominance) and higher on items referring to Activity (arousal) and Evaluation (emotional valence). The results confirmed our hypotheses for the dimensions of Potency and Evaluation, but not for the dimension of Activity. We conclude that, at least in poetic language, extreme values of acoustic features of vowels are a significant predictor for the emotional tone of a text. (shrink)

When we see or hear a spontaneous emotional expression, we usually immediately, effortlessly, and often correctly interpret it to mean happiness, sadness, or some other emotion as well as what this emotion is about. How do we do that? In this article, I evaluate how useful the concepts of natural meaning and probabilistic meaning are when it comes to explaining how we and other animals interpret emotional signs displayed without communicative intentions. I argue that Grice’s notion (...) of natural meaning, because it is a factive relation, is too restrictive for this purpose. I then present the notion of probabilistic meaning. The latter seems adequate for analyzing our ability to interpret non-communicative emotional signs, but it faces several difficulties when it comes to analyzing how we and other animals interpret emotional _signals_, i.e. signs that have the function to communicate emotional information. I present three of these difficulties. En passant, I suggest that a teleosemantic notion may be better suited for these challenges. (shrink)

The Varieties of Religious Experience is an exploration of personal narratives about religious experience, but as one might gather from the epigraph to this article, James treats religion in an eccentric way. He takes religious experience to mean something close to the emotional experience of identity. His central question is how one might discover happiness within oneself and in one's relations with others, or if such happiness seems far distant, how one might achieve a change that will accomplish a new (...) identity. (shrink)

An extensive literature about pictorial representation discusses what is involved when a two-dimensional image represents some specific object or type of object. A smaller literature addresses parallel issues in sculptural representation. But little has been said about the role played by the sculptural material itself in determining the meanings of the sculptural work. Appealing to Nelson Goodman and Catherine Elgin’s discussions of literal and metaphorical exemplification, I argue that the material of which a sculpture is constituted plays key roles in (...) what is represented and how it is represented, in part because we have bodily and emotional responses to the real possibilities the sculptural material creates for us. I discuss examples of contemporary artworks by Melvin Edwards, Kara Walker, Willie Cole, Marc Quinn, Ai Weiwei, Janine Antoni, El Anatsui, Zoe Leonard, and others. (shrink)

The objective of this doctoral dissertation is to interpret the explanation of akrasia that the Dutch philosopher Benedictus Spinoza (1632-1677) gives in his work The Ethics. One is said to act acratically when one intentionally performs an action that one judges to be worse than another action which one believes one might perform instead. In order to interpret Spinoza’s explanation of akrasia, a large part of this dissertation investigates Spinoza’s theory of emotion. The first chapter is introductory and outlines (...) Spinoza’s categorisation of mental states and his conception of the relation between the mind and the body. The second chapter deals with Spinoza’s epistemology and the relation between cognitive mental states and states of the brain. The third chapter argues that Spinoza holds that emotions are non-cognitive mental states that are caused by cognitive mental states. The fourth chapter interprets Spinoza’s discussion of the emotions of Joy and Sadness insofar as they are mental states. The fifth chapter suggests that when Spinoza says that the power of our body is increased or decreased when we are joyful or sad, he means that when we are joyful or sad then, at the same time, our heart and perhaps the organs of our digestive system are affected in such a way that our bodily health is increased or decreased. The sixth chapter points to three problems that concern Spinoza’s definitions of the psychophysical states of pleasure, pain, cheerfulness and melancholy, and offers slightly altered definitions of these states. The seventh chapter interprets the various aspects of Spinoza’s conception of the emotion of Desire, both insofar as it is a state of the mind and insofar it is a state of the body, as well as the relation between the emotion of Desire and man’s striving for self-preservation. The eighth chapter discusses what Spinoza writes on the strength of emotions and the way in which we make value judgments in order to finally interpret why it is, according to Spinoza, that ‘we so often see the better for ourselves but follow the worse’. (shrink)

The improvement of man, of his ideological and political, occupational, and moral qualities, is a most important condition for success in the building of communism. The socialization of the new man as a creatively active, spiritually rich, and harmoniously developed personality is a goal in our Party's program. It is becoming increasingly obvious that the process of socialization means much more than familiarizing a person with the ideological principles and norms of behavior of a citizen of developed socialist society. Socrates (...) long ago was astounded by the illogic of the man who knew what was good but did what was bad. (shrink)

In its treatment of the role of emotion in ethics the argument of the book outlines a new way of packing motivational force into moral meaning that allows for a ...