Can Emotion be Modelled on Perception?

Dialectica 65 (1):1-29 (2011)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Perceptual theories of emotion purport to avoid the problems of traditional cognitivism and noncognitivism by modelling emotion on perception, which shares the most conspicuous dimensions of emotion, intentionality and phenomenality. In this paper, I shall reconstrue and discuss four key arguments that perceptual theorists have presented in order to show that emotion is a kind of perception, or that there are close analogies between emotion and perception. These arguments are, from stronger to weaker claims: the perceptual system argument; the argument from noninferential structure; the argument from epistemic role; and the argument from phenomenology. I argue that, while the arguments in favour of assimilating emotion to perception fail, the analogies between emotion and perception are not as close as perceptual theorists suggest even if some emotions resemble perception more than others, thanks to the two-levelled structure of emotional processing

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,221

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Standing up for an affective account of emotion.Demian Whiting - 2006 - Philosophical Explorations 9 (3):261-276.
Self-deception about emotion.Lisa Damm - 2011 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 49 (3):254-270.
The Musical Expression of Emotion: Metaphorical-As versus Imaginative-As Perception.Malcolm Budd - 2012 - Estetika: The European Journal of Aesthetics 49 (2):131-147.
True emotions.Mikko Salmela - 2006 - Philosophical Quarterly 56 (224):382-405.
Emotion Experience and its Varieties.Nico H. Frijda - 2009 - Emotion Review 1 (3):264-271.
Perceptual symbol systems and emotion.Louis C. Charland - 1999 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22 (4):612-613.
Why does music move us?Björn Vickhoff & Helge Malmgren - 2004 - Philosophical Communications.
Feeling is perceiving: Core affect and conceptualization in the experience of emotion.Lisa Feldman Barrett - 2005 - In Lisa Feldman Barrett, Paula M. Niedenthal & Piotr Winkielman (eds.), Emotion and Consciousness. Guilford Press. pp. 255-284.
Explaining action by emotion.Sabine A. Döring - 2003 - Philosophical Quarterly 53 (211):214-230.
Emotion-specific clues to the neural substrate of empathy.Anthony P. Atkinson - 2001 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 25 (1):22-23.

Analytics

Added to PP
2011-02-23

Downloads
219 (#83,657)

6 months
12 (#122,295)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

Emotions as Attitudes.Julien A. Deonna & Fabrice Teroni - 2015 - Dialectica 69 (3):293-311.
Taking the Perceptual Analogy Seriously.Michael Milona - 2016 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 19 (4):897-915.
Emotion.Ronald de Sousa - 2007 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Epistemic perceptualism and neo-sentimentalist objections.Robert Cowan - 2016 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 46 (1):59-81.

View all 42 citations / Add more citations

References found in this work

A treatise of human nature.David Hume & D. G. C. Macnabb (eds.) - 1969 - Harmondsworth,: Penguin Books.
Epiphenomenal qualia.Frank Jackson - 1982 - Philosophical Quarterly 32 (April):127-136.

View all 59 references / Add more references