According to the old feeling theory of emotion, an emotion is just a feeling: a conscious experience with a characteristic phenomenal character. This theory is widely dismissed in contemporary discussions of emotion as hopelessly naïve. In particular, it is thought to suffer from two fatal drawbacks: its inability to account for the cognitive dimension of emotion (which is thought to go beyond the phenomenal dimension), and its inability to accommodate unconscious emotions (which, of course, lack any phenomenal character). (...) In this paper, I argue that the old feeling theory is in reality only a pair of modifications removed from a highly plausible account of the nature of emotion that retains the essential connection between emotion and feeling. These modifications are, moreover, motivated by recent developments in work on phenomenal consciousness. The first development is the rising recognition of a phenomenal character proper to cognition—so-called cognitive phenomenology. The second is the gathering momentum behind various ‘connection principles’ that specify some connection that a given state must bear to phenomenally conscious states in order to qualify as mental. These developments make it possible to formulate a new feeling theory of emotion, which would overcome the two fatal drawbacks of the old feeling theory. According to the new feeling theory, an emotion is a mental state that bears the right connection to conscious experiences with the right phenomenal character (involving, among other elements, a cognitive phenomenology). (shrink)
In this article, I attempt to resuscitate the perennially unfashionable distinctive feeling theory of pleasure (and pain), according to which for an experience to be pleasant (or unpleasant) is just for it to involve or contain a distinctive kind of feeling. I do this in two ways. First, by offering powerful new arguments against its two chief rivals: attitude theories, on the one hand, and the phenomenological theories of Roger Crisp, Shelly Kagan, and Aaron Smuts, on the other. (...) Second, by showing how it can answer two important objections that have been made to it. First, the famous worry that there is no felt similarity to all pleasant (or unpleasant) experiences (sometimes called ‘the heterogeneity objection’). Second, what I call ‘Findlay’s objection’, the claim that it cannot explain the nature of our attraction to pleasure and aversion to pain. (shrink)
This paper is concerned with the issue of authenticity in Wittgenstein’s philosophy of psychology. In the manuscripts published as Letzte Schriften über die Philosophie der Psychologie – Das Innere und das Äußere, the German term Echtheit is mostly translated as ‘genuineness’. In these manuscripts, Wittgenstein frequently uses the term as referring to a feature of the expression of feeling and emotion: -/- […] I want to say that there is an original genuine expression of pain; that the expression of (...) pain therefore is not equally connected to the pain and to the pretence. (LW II, p. 55) -/- “This weeping gives the impression of being genuine” – so there is such a thing as genuine weeping. […]. (LW II, p. 87) -/- […] Genuineness and falseness are not the only essential characteristics of an expression of feeling. […]. (LW II, p. 90) -/- Wittgenstein contrasts the genuineness of the expressions with the possibility that the expressions are feigned. It seems to me that Wittgenstein is trying to discredit a specific version of the sceptical claim that we do not know other minds. I will refer to it as the sceptical innuendo. The sceptical innuendo says that every expression of feeling and emotion may be pretended. Wittgenstein’s approach to the issue reflects his later interest in the philosophy of psychology and, in particular, the problem of the ascription of psychological states (P-ascriptions) on the basis of someone else’s expression of feeling or emotion. Thus, the attempt to reject the sceptical innuendo is done mainly by means of conceptual and psychological arguments. Let’s look at this short dialogue between the sceptic and Wittgenstein. The former asks „How do you know that someone else is in a certain psychological state?“ Wittgenstein’s first reply is „I know that he is glad because I see him“. But the sceptic cannot be very happy with this reply. The sceptic’s next question is: „How do you know that he is really glad and he is not pretending?“ Wittgenstein’s response is not a direct refutation but is composed of a number of related reasons. These may be summed up in three arguments: -/- (i) A psychological argument from the very nature of the expressions. The expressions are meant to be natural symptoms of someone else’s psychological state (P-state). -/- (ii) A conceptual argument about the nature of pretence. It claims that pretence is a psychological property which is rightly ascribed when an observer has evidence for it. -/- (iii) A psychological argument from genuineness. It claims that we are committed to accept people’s expressions of feeling and emotion as genuine. (shrink)
Robert Kirk uses the notion of "raw feeling" to bridge the intelligibility gap between our knowledge of ourselves as physical organisms and our knowledge of ...
Argues for a category of “cognitive feelings”, which are representationally significant, but are not part of the content of the states they accompany. The feeling of pastness in episodic memory, of familiarity (missing in Capgras syndrome), and of motivation (that accompanies desire) are examples. The feeling of presence that accompanies normal visual states is due to such a cognitive feeling; the “two visual systems” are partially responsible for this feeling.
Psychotic and prodromal states are characterized by distortions of intersubjectivity, and a number of psychopathologists see in the concrete I-You frame of the clinical encounter the manifestation of such impairment. Rümke has coined the term of ‘praecox-feeling’, designated to describe a feeling of unease emanating in the interviewer that reflects the detachment of the patient and the failure of an ‘affective exchange.’ While the reliability of the praecox-feeling as a diagnostic tool has since been established, the explanation (...) and theoretical framing of the phenomena is still lacking. By drawing on enactivist approaches to social cognition, the paper will attempt to provide such an explanation. This is relevant, since such an explanation could contribute to a more precise understanding of the phenomena in question and possibly add to our knowledge regarding the link between experiential vulnerability to psychosis and disturbed I-Thou intersubjectivity. (shrink)
In this paper I review some leading developments in the empirical theory of affect. I argue that (1) affect is a distinct perceptual representation governed system, and (2) that there are significant modular factors in affect. The paper concludes with the observation thatfeeler (affective perceptual system) may be a natural kind within cognitive science. The main purpose of the paper is to explore some hitherto unappreciated connections between the theory of affect and the computational theory of mind.
The article presents a critique of John Searle's attack on computationalist theories of mind in his recent book, The Rediscovery of the Mind. Searle is guilty of caricaturing his opponents, and of ignoring their arguments. Moreover, his own positive theory of mind, which he claims "takes account of" subjectivity, turns out to offer no discernible advantages over the views he rejects.
Abstract: The ‘feeling theory of emotion’ holds that emotions are to be identified with feelings. An objection commonly made to that theory of emotion has it that emotions cannot be feelings only, as emotions have intentional objects. Jack does not just feel fear, but he feels fear-of-something. To explain this property of emotion we will have to ascribe to emotion a representational structure, and feelings do not have the sought after representational structure. In this paper I seek to defend (...) the feeling theory of emotion against the challenge from the object-directed emotions. (shrink)
There is a view of the emotions (I might tendentiously call it ‘cognitivism’) that has at present a certain currency. This view is of the emotions as playing an essential role in our gaining evaluative knowledge of the world. When we are angry at an insult, or afraid of the burglar, our emotions involve evaluative perceptions and thoughts, which are directed towards the way something is in the world that impinges on our well-being, or on the well-being of those that (...) matter to us. Without emotions, we would be worse off, prudentially and morally: we would not see things as they are, and accordingly we would not act as we should. Emotions are, according to this view a Good Thing. No wonder we have evolved as creatures capable of emotion.[1]. (shrink)
Champions of virtue ethics frequently appeal to moral perception: the notion that virtuous people can “see” what to do. According to a traditional account of virtue, the cultivation of proper feeling through imitation and habituation issues in a sensitivity to reasons to act. Thus, we learn to see what to do by coming to feel the demands of courage, kindness, and the like. But virtue ethics also claims superiority over other theories that adopt a perceptual moral epistemology, such as (...) intuitionism – which John McDowell criticizes for illicitly “borrow[ing] the epistemological credentials” of perception. In this paper, I suggest that the most promising way for virtue ethics to use perceptual metaphors innocuously is by adopting a skill model of virtue, on which the virtues are modeled on forms of practical know-how. Yet I contend that this model is double-edged for virtue ethics. The skill model belies some central ambitions and dogmas of the traditional view, especially its most idealized claims about virtue and the virtuous. While this may be a cost that its champions are unprepared to pay, I suggest that virtue ethics would do well to embrace a more realistic moral psychology and a correspondingly less sublime conception of virtue. (shrink)
According to the increasingly popular perceptual/representational accounts of pain (and other bodily sensations such as itches, tickles, orgasms, etc.), feeling pain in a body region is perceiving a non-mental property or some objective condition of that region, typically equated with some sort of (actual or potential) tissue damage. In what follows I argue that given a natural understanding of what sensory perception requires and how it is integrated with (dedicated) conceptual systems, these accounts are mistaken. I will also examine (...) the relationship between perceptual views and two (weak and strong) forms of representationalism about experience. I will argue that pains pose very serious problems for strong representationalism as well. (shrink)
Feelings not only have a place, they also have a time. Today, one can speak of a multifaceted renaissance of feelings. This concerns philosophy itself, particularly, ethics. Every law-based morality comes up against its limits when morals cease to be only a question of legitimation and begin to be a question of motivation, since motives get no foothold without the feeling of self and feeling of the alien. As it is treated by various social theories and psychoanalysis, the (...) self is not formed through the mere acquisition or change of roles, but rather through a process that is susceptible to crises, a process shaped by affective bonds and separations. Learning, which is the theme of pedagogy, loses its hold whenever it is confronted by disinterest and listlessness. In neurobiology, the increased significance of those zones of the brain that are connected with the realization of feelings makes the brain, accordingly, no mere apparatus that processes data, but a living organ that selects and “evaluates” what is “important.” Finally, cross-cultural comparison shows the extent to which the one-sided preference for understanding and willing, which is the mark of Western rationalism, arises from a typical, not to mention a highly masculine attitude toward the world and life, as many different studies on gender difference stress (In reference to this perspective, see Seethaler, Gefühle und Urteilskraft. Ein Plädoyer für die emotionale Vernunft, 1997). The following reflections provide a historical orientation directed toward a new determination of feelings. This new determination of feelings is phenomenological and takes the pathetic character of experience, nourished by the corporeality of experience as its point of departure. (shrink)
Kant's only aesthetic work apart from the Critique of Judgment , Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime gives the reader a sense of the personality and character of its author as he sifts through the range of human responses to the concept of beauty and human manifestations of the beautiful and sublime. Kant was fifty-eight when the first of his great Critical trilogy, the Critique of Pure Reason , was published. Observations offers a view into the (...) mind of the forty-year-old Kant. (shrink)
This text addresses a problem that is not sufficiently dealt with in most of the recent literature on emotion and feeling. The problem is a general underestimation of the extent to which affective intentionality is essentially bodily. Affective intentionality is the sui generis type of world-directedness that most affective states – most clearly the emotions – display. Many theorists of emotion overlook the extent to which intentional feelings are essentially bodily feelings. The important but quite often overlooked fact is (...) that the bodily feelings in question are not the regularly treated, non-intentional bodily sensations (known from Jamesian accounts of emotion), but rather crucial carriers of world-directed intentionality. Consequently, most theories of human emotions and feelings recently advocated are deficient in terms of phenomenological adequacy. This text tries to make up for this deficit and develops a catalogue of five central features of intentional bodily feelings. In addition, Jesse Prinz’s embodied appraisal theory is criticized as an exemplary case of the misconstrual of the bodily nature of affective experience in naturalistic philosophy of mind. (shrink)
Arguments over whether emotions and moods are feelings have demonstrated confusion over the concept of a feeling and, in particular, what it is that feelings can—and cannot—do. I argue that the causal and explanatory roles we assign emotions and moods in our theories are inconsistent with their being feelings. Sidestepping debates over the natures of emotions and moods I frame my arguments primarily in terms of what it is emotions, moods and feelings do. I provide an analysis that clarifies (...) the role feelings can play in our psychology that is consistent with current psychological and neurological data. (shrink)
Henry Allison's “Incorporation Thesis” has played an important role in recent discussions of Kantian ethics. By focussing on Kant's claim that “a drive [Triebfeder] can determine the will to an action only so far as the individual has incorporated it into his maxim,” (Rel 19, translation slightly modified) Allison has successfully argued against Kant's critics that desire-based non-moral action can be free action. His work has thus opened the door for a wide range of discussions which integrate feeling (...) into moral action more deeply than had previously been considered “Kantian”. (shrink)
The study of the feeling of knowing may have implications for some of the metatheoretical issues concerning consciousness and control. Assuming a distinction between information-based and experience-based metacognitive judgments, it is argued that the sheer phenomenological experience of knowing (''noetic feeling'') occupies a unique role in mediating between implicit-automatic processes, on the one hand, and explicit-controlled processes, on the other. Rather than reflecting direct access to memory traces, noetic feelings are based on inferential heuristics that operate implicitly and (...) unintentionally. Once such heuristics give rise to a conscious feeling that feeling can then affect controlled action. Examination of the cues that affect noetic feelings suggest that not only do these feelings inform controlled action, but they are also informed by feedback from the outcome of that action. (shrink)
Earlier versions of the four articles which follow were presented at a book panel session, on Rachel Cohon's Hume's Morality: Feeling and Fabrication, at the Hume Society meetings in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in August 2009.I am deeply grateful to Lívia Guimarães and Donald L. M. Baxter for planning this session, and to Elizabeth S. Radcliffe and Don Garrett for serving as my critics. I have been asked to begin by summarizing my book in a few minutes.Hume's Morality: Feeling (...) and Fabrication (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), is primarily an analytical, interpretive work about two main issues: the nature of ethical evaluation, according to Hume, and the artificial virtues. The book has two parts: "Feeling Virtue" .. (shrink)
David-Ménard examines the problem of the genesis of Kant's moral philosophy. The separation between Kantian practical reason and the inclinations of sense which it regulates is shown by the author to originate in Kant's attempt to regulate his own tendency to hypochondria. Her argument links the themes from two of Kant's precritical works which attest to this tendency-"An Essay on the Maladies of the Mind" and Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime-to the final form of (...) the critical philosophy. (shrink)
Hume's project, in Book 3 of the Treatise, of showing that virtue and vice are discerned by feeling, not reason, is notorious for its contradictions. Armies of Humean scholars have fought valiantly, ingeniously, but unsuccessfully, to resolve them, and in the first half of Hume's Morality, Cohon shows herself an admirably doughty follower in their footsteps. The second half concerns Hume's division between natural and artificial virtues. We learn how self-interest is redirected, and moral sentiment strengthened to provide artificial (...) virtues with the motives they lack naturally, so as to enable them to facilitate impersonal co-operation, though a particular virtuous act may benefit no-one. The author explains why .. (shrink)
Hume's Morality: Feeling and Fabrication 1 is a most useful and agreeable book. It contains a wealth of analysis, argument, and insight about many of the most central elements of the moral theory of one of the greatest moral philosophers in human history: David Hume. The book is well-conceived, well-argued, stimulating, informative, clear, precise, thorough, balanced, nuanced, and ingenious, while evincing—especially in its concluding chapter, when considering possible extensions of Hume's theory—a certain subtle but pleasing "warmth in the cause (...) of virtue." As Hume would be the first to recognize, these traits of the book are indications of the personal merit of its author: Rachel Cohon. Indeed, if Cleanthes .. (shrink)
Why, oh why do we keep conflating this question, which is about the uncertainty of sensory information, with the much more profound and pertinent one, which is about the functional explicability and causal role of feeling?
_Kant: How is it possible for something even to be a thought (of mine)? What are the conditions for the_ _possibility of experience (veridical or illusory) at all?_
That's not the right question either. The right question is not even an epistemic (...) one, about "thought" or "knowledge" (whether veridical, illusory, or otherwise) but an "aesthesiogenic" one: How and why are there any feelings at all? (shrink)
It is “easy” to explain doing, “hard” to explain feeling. Turing has set the agenda for the easy explanation (though it will be a long time coming). I will try to explain why and how explaining feeling will not only be hard, but impossible. Explaining meaning will prove almost as hard because meaning is a hybrid of know-how and what it feels like to know how.
In Koriat's paper ''The Feeling of Knowing: Some Metatheoretical Implications for Consciousness and Control,'' he asserts that the feeling of knowing straddles the implicit and explicit, and that these conscious feelings enter into a conscious control process that is necessary for controlled behavior. This assertion allows him to make many speculations on the nature of consciousness itself. We agree that feelings of knowing are produced through a monitoring of one's knowledge, and that this monitoring can affect the control (...) of behavior such as whether or not to search memory for an answer. Further, we believe that monitoring of performance with a strategy can also affect cognition control and strategy selection; however, we also believe that frequently this monitoring and control occurs without conscious awareness. Feeling of knowing has received an inordinate amount of attention because it lies behind the highly recognizable tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon that represents one of the rare cases of conscious monitoring. There are other feelings of knowing which are much more common and are not accompanied by conscious awareness. These are evident in the early selection of a strategy for answering a problem. In our view, the research on feeling of knowing will not resolve the question of whether consciousness is merely epiphenomenal. (shrink)
Hume's project, in Book 3 of the Treatise, of showing that virtue and vice are discerned by feeling, not reason, is notorious for its contradictions. Armies of Humean scholars have fought valiantly, ingeniously, but unsuccessfully, to resolve them, and in the first half of Hume's Morality, Cohon shows herself an admirably doughty follower in their footsteps. The second half concerns Hume's division between natural and artificial virtues. We learn how self-interest is redirected, and moral sentiment strengthened to provide artificial (...) virtues with the motives they lack naturally, so as to enable them to facilitate impersonal co-operation, though a particular virtuous act may benefit no-one. The author explains why .. (shrink)
The work ‘Thinking and Feeling’ edited by Robert C. Solomon may be considered as a landmark in the history of the philosophy of the emotions. The work also has assembled together some of the best minds in the Anglo American Traditions. The central focus in this work is to mediate between the physiological arousal theories of emotions and the cognitive appraisal theories of emotions. My article is an attempt to mediate from my Asian background and in specific terms using (...) the Buddhist perspectives on emotion studies, to find answers, a subject on which I have worked over several decades. The Buddha has discouraged people in attempting to find ultimate answers to the body- mind relationships, but use pragmatic and practical perspectives for a two way interactionism. Thus, in the Buddhist analysis the mental and the cognitive, as well as bodily and the physiological are recognised, thus giving room for a holistic understanding of emotions concepts. In fact, Buddhism expects the body, feelings, perceptions, interpretations, and evaluations as facets of emotion concepts. The second point is the domination of the metaphor of reasons as the charioteer in managing unruly emotions in the West. But Buddhism introduces the factor of ‘mindfulness’ as an important ally in the management of emotions. My personal work in therapy and counselling has helped me to explore new dimensions for managing emotions through mindfulness practice. (shrink)
This study examines the history of the psychoanalytic theory of mysticism, starting with the seminal correspondence between Freud and Romain Rolland concerning the concept of "oceanic feeling." Providing a corrective to current views which frame psychoanalysis as pathologizing mysticism, Parsons reveals the existence of three models entertained by Freud and Rolland: the classical reductive, ego-adaptive, and transformational (which allows for a transcendent dimension to mysticism). Then, reconstructing Rolland's personal mysticism (the "oceanic feeling") through texts and letters unavailable to (...) Freud, Parsons argues that Freud misinterpreted the oceanic feeling. In offering a fresh interpretation of Rolland's mysticism, Parsons constructs a new dialogical approach for psychoanalytic theory of mysticism which integrates culture studies, developmental perspectives, and the deep epistemological and transcendent claims of the mystics. (shrink)
Seeking to unlock the secrets of consciousness, neuroscientists have been studying neural correlates of sensory awareness, such as meaningless randomly moving dots. But in the natural world of species' survival, “raw feelings” mediate conscious adaptive responses. Merker connects the brainstem with vigilance, orientating, and emotional consciousness. However, depending on the brain's phylogenetic level, raw feeling takes particular forms. (Published Online May 1 2007).
An ethological analysis suggests that effort and protection actions, which are expressions of distress, are comparable with pain expressions. Distress occurs with uncontrollable pain, and the expressions are ritualized pain responses with exaggerated features and lower thresholds. Pain is a sensory-motor feeling state with aversive motivational (hedonic) value. Distress is an emotional state of failure of pain responses to control the pain.
Emotional feeling can be defined as the affective constituent of emotions representing a subjective experience such as, for example, feeling love or hate. Several recent neuroimaging studies have focused on this affective component of emotions thereby aiming to characterise the underlying neural correlates. These studies indicate that the orbitomedial prefrontal cortex is crucially involved in the processing of emotional feeling. It is the aim of this paper to analyse the extent to which the present state of the (...) art in neuroscience enables emotional feeling to be related to specific brain regions. In the first step, methodological and theoretical problems in the investigation of emotional feeling will be discussed leading to the characterisation of a “twofold gap.” This gap represents (a) the theoretical difficulties encountered in transforming vivid subjective experience into a theoretical psychological concept, and (b) the problems of implementing such a concept by performing empirical studies. Based on these considerations we suggest approaches for future empirical studies. In the second step, a group of functional neuroimaging studies focusing on the affective constituent of emotions will be discussed in detail with regard to the theoretical problems outlined in the first step. (shrink)
The mind/body problem is the feeling/function problem (Harnad 2001). The only way to "solve" it is to provide a causal/functional explanation of how and why we feel..
Our views of sensation, of feeling, and of attention determine, if we are logical, the whole further course of our psychological thought and exposition. ...
Musing in Florence in June of 1858, Nathaniel Hawthorne said of himself, "I am sensible that a process is going on--and has been, ever since I came to Italy--that puts me in a state to see pictures with less toil, and more pleasure, and makes me more fastidious, yet more sensible of beauty where I saw none before." This is a book devoted to the reflective analysis of the enterprise in which many of us, like Hawthorne, find ourselves engaged: the (...) cultivation of our taste. Charles Wegener writes for and from the standpoint of thoughtful amateurs, those who, loving the beautiful and the sublime, wish to become more fully the sort of person to whom these goods reliably disclose themselves. Here traditional aesthetic analysis is redirected to a search for the norms that tell us how we use our intelligence, our imagination, and our senses in becoming "more fastidious, yet more sensible," exploring such concepts as disinterestedness, catholicity, communicability, austerity, objectivity, and authority. Finally, Wegener discusses questions about the relation of our aesthetic lives to other activities, norms, and human goods, arguing that taste, far from being a mere grace or luxury, is a necessary expression of that freedom which is at once the fruit and the condition of all culture. "This book should be required reading for anyone concerned with aesthetic education, for this is exactly what it is about, and I have come across no more searching investigation of the topic."--Hugo Meynell, Journal of Aesthetic Education "Using the analysis of aesthetic experience found in Kant's Critique of Judgment as a point of departure, Wegener has written a remarkably intelligent book which presents meaningful encounter with art as the "discipline of taste and feeling. The book reads not simply as an exposition but as a conversation in which the author thoughtfully and meticulously explores with the reader those norms that structure and define aesthetic experience. . . . The book occupies an important place in contemporary aesthetic discussion."--M. Feder-Marcus, Choice. (shrink)
This paper sets out to explore connections between a number of plausible claims concerning education in general and moral education in particular: (i) that education is a matter of broad cultural initiation rather than narrow academic or vocational training; (ii) that any education so conceived would have a key concern with the moral dimensions of personal formation; (iii) that emotional growth is an important part of such moral formation; and (iv) that literature and other arts have an important part to (...) play in such emotional education. It is argued here that what is needed for a clear view of the moral educational relevance of literature and the arts is a conception of moral education that does justice to the interplay between the cognitive and the affective in moral life, and that a non?relativist Aristotelian ethics of virtue holds out the best prospect for such a moral education of reason and feeling. (shrink)
Antonio R. Damasio , The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness . This is clearly a must-read book for anyone wanting a neurologist's perspective on one of the greatest of the unsolved mysteries, human consciousness and the ways in which it exceeds that of the other apes. By the author of Descartes' Error.
Robert Kirk uses the notion of "raw feeling" to bridge the intelligibility gap between our knowledge of ourselves as physical organisms and our knowledge of ...
In this book Mark Wynn argues that the landscape of philosophical theology looks rather different from the perspective of a re-conceived theory of emotion. In matters of religion, we do not need to opt for objective content over emotional form or vice versa. On the contrary, these strategies are mistaken at root, since form and content are not properly separable here - because 'inwardness' may contribute to 'thought-content', or because (to use the vocabulary of the book) emotional feelings can themselves (...) constitute thoughts; or because, to put the point a further way, in religious contexts, perception and conception are often infused by feeling. Wynn uses this perspective to forge a distinctive approach to a range of established topics in philosophy of religion, notably: religious experience; the problem of evil; the relationship of religion and ethics, and religion and art; and in general, the connection of 'feeling' to doctrine and tradition. (shrink)
(1)Four varieties of primitive affect are distinguishable, characterised by (a) strain, and (b) relaxation in response to a favourable situation, and by (c) strain, and (d) relaxation in response to one unfavourable. Exhilaration, gladness and interest arise from (a); ease, bliss and contentment from (b); uneasiness, distress and repugnance from (c), depression, sadness and apathy from (d). (2)These affects are due to (i) the organic harmony or discord induced by the environment; wherewith are evoked (ii) innately purposive patterns of out-going (...) locomotor and organic activity, partly self-controlled and producing organic sensations; the latter again induce (iii) organic harmony or discord. Self-activity is “affected” by (i), (ii) and (iii). An innate basis is afforded by (i) and (ii) for the affect, which is completely developed by (iii) derived from actual expression. (3)Instincts are integrated from different higher and lower reflexes, emotions from different instincts, sentiments from different emotions organized within progressively higher systems and subjected to control and inhibition, which are important determinants of the accompanying feeling. In the lowest reflexes the self is “affected” only by (iii). The higher reflexes are accompanied by the affects evoked as described above in (2). Instincts, emotions and sentiments are accom panied by their special feelings depending on the integration of dispositions to lower feelings and on (ii) and (iii). (shrink)
This paper describes the semiotic approach to organism in two proto-biosemiotic thinkers, Susanne K. Langer and Hans Jonas. Both authors develop ideas that have become central terms of biosemiotics: the organism as subject, the realisation of the living as a closed circular self, the value concept, and, in the case of Langer, the concept of symbol. Langer tries to develop a theory of cultural symbolism based on a theory of organism as a self-realising entity creating meaning and value. This paper (...) deals mainly with what both authors independently call “feeling”. Both authors describe “feeling” as a value-based perspective, established as a result of the active self interest manifested by an organic system. The findings of Jonas and Langer show the generation of a subject pole, or biosemiotic agent, under a more precise accent, as e.g. Uexküll does. Their ideas can also be affiliated to the interpretation of autopoiesis given by the late Francisco Varela (embodied cognition or “enactivism”). A synthesis of these positions might lead to insights how symbolic expression arises from biological conditions of living. (shrink)
Friedrich Schleiermacher is known as the theologian who said that the essence of Christian faith is a state of mind called 'the feeling of absolute dependence'. In this respect, Schleiermacher's reputation owes much to the influential translation of his dogmatics prepared by Mackintosh, Stewart and others. I argue that the translation is misleading precisely as to the terms which Schleiermacher uses in order to refer to the religious state of mind. I also show that the translation obscures a problem (...) of some substantive depth regarding what Schleiermacher thought to be the nature of pious feeling. (shrink)
The translation of Schleiermacher's key phrase ‘das schlechthinnige Abhängigkeitsgefühl’ is a matter of some contention. It has been suggested that the traditional translation (‘feeling of absolute dependence’) is in fact inaccurate and that it should be replaced with the accurate ‘absolute feeling of dependence’. This change would have serious implications for our understanding of Schleiermacher's theology. This essay examines the case for and against a change of translation. It concedes that the change is demanded if one (...) strictly adheres to the rules of grammar but that there are several reasons for putting those rules to one side and holding firm to the traditional translation. (shrink)
Emotional feeling can be defined as the affective constituent of emotions representing a subjective experience such as, for example, feeling love or hate. Several recent neuroimaging studies have focused on this affective component of emotions thereby aiming to characterise the underlying neural correlates. These studies indicate that the orbitomedial prefrontal cortex is crucially involved in the processing of emotional feeling. It is the aim of this paper to analyse the extent to which the present state of the (...) art in neuroscience enables emotional feeling to be related to specific brain regions. In the first step, methodological and theoretical problems in the investigation of emotional feeling will be discussed leading to the characterisation of a “twofold gap.” This gap represents (a) the theoretical difficulties encountered in transforming vivid subjective experience into a theoretical psychological concept, and (b) the problems of implementing such a concept by performing empirical studies. Based on these considerations we suggest approaches for future empirical studies. In the second step, a group of functional neuroimaging studies focusing on the affective constituent of emotions will be discussed in detail with regard to the theoretical problems outlined in the first step. (shrink)
Wollstonecraft's early works express a coherent view of moral psychology, moral education and moral philosophy which guides the construction of her early fiction and educational works. It includes a valuable account of the relation between reason and feeling in moral development. Failure to recognize the complexity and coherence of the view and unhistorical readings have led to mistaken criticisms of Wollstonecraft's position. Part I answers these criticisms; Part II describes and textually supports her view.
For mainstream analytic philosophy of mind, the explanatory gap between first- and third-person accounts of consciousness derives from the inaccessibilityof special, “experiential” properties of conscious minds. Within this framework, panpsychism is simply the claim that these special properties are everywhere. In contrast, process panpsychism understands the explanatory gap in terms of the particularity of feeling. While the particularity of feeling cannot be captured by third-person accounts, for this very reason it is amenable to understanding consciousness as an evolutionary (...) process. Thus it may turn out that the elusiveness of feeling is essential to its functionality. (shrink)
This paper argues that a recurrent mistake is made about Scottish moral philosophy in the 18th century with respect to its account of the relation between morality and feeling. This mistake arises because Hume is taken to be the main, as opposed to the best known, exponent of a version of moral sense theory. In fact, far from occupying common ground, the other main philosophers of the period—Hutcheson, Reid, Beattie—understood themselves to be engaged in refuting Hume. Despite striking surface (...) similarities, closer examination reveals a deep difference between Hume's and Reid's conception of ‘the science mind’ which marked the philosophy of the period. Properly understood, this difference shows that mainstream Scottish moral philosophy, far from subscribing to Hume's dictum about morality being ‘more properly felt than judged of’, held that morality is ‘more properly judged than felt of’. (shrink)
The mind/body problem is the feeling/function problem (Harnad 2001). The only way to "solve" it is to provide a causal/functional explanation of how and why we feel..
Consciousness is a central theme of Susanne Langer's three-volume work Mind: An essay on human feeling. Langer proposes an evolutionary history of consciousness in order to establish a biological vocabulary for discussing the subject. This vocabulary is based on the qualities of organic processes rather than generic material objects. Her historical scenario and new terminology suggest that Langer views the “cash value” of consciousness in terms of symbolic thinking and aesthetics. This paper provides an overview of Langer's proposed evolutionary (...) scenario of consciousness, along with an examination of her process-oriented philosophy of mind. It is suggested that Langer's basic ideas are importantly similar to those present in dynamical systems theory. As research on consciousness in dynamical systems theory is still young, researchers in this field may find in Langer's work ideas for future exploration, particularly in its connection with aesthetics. (shrink)
Abstract and Introduction This paper argues that morality is largely to do with reason and little to do with feelings or affections. In the first section it is argued that there is a necessary connection between the idea of the moral life and the existence of creatures capable of reflection and judgment. The argument is extended in Section Two to include the notions of reason and justification. The nature of justification is examined in Section Three, and these three sections taken (...) together lead up to, and I hope substantiate, the claim that morality is largely and most significantly a rational business. Section Four, more negatively, sketches a characterization of four different ways of talking about feelings or affective states and suggests that they are all inadequate bases of moral judgment. The proper place to look for affective considerations bearing upon moral judgment is indicated briefly in the final section together with a hint of the author's position on moral principles. Nothing is said directly about moral education but it would follow from the arguments of the paper that moral education is best seen as the development of certain kinds of knowledge and reasoning rather than the cultivation of certain kinds of feeling. (shrink)
Despite the 300 years of philosophy separating them. Spinoza and Heidegger are committed to a unifying vision of the human and the natural. Such a perspective encourages a renewed understanding of the place of feelings in environmental studies. Neither untrustworthy reactions nor neutral readings of environmental stimuli, human feelings are the basic way in which we encounter the world. The primordial character of emotions in both Spinoza and Heidegger follows from their commitment to the unity of reality. An understanding of (...) both thinkers opens up being. feeling. and environnlent as the proper subject matter of ecology. Environmental studies will begin to advance again when it dedicates itself to the potential riches of such a unitive vision. (shrink)
This paper investigates man's feeling of law, i . e. the perception of law, the comprehension of law and its influence on human activity, in the countries that have historically belonged to the Orthodox tradition. Consciousness of law is based, firstly, upon a concept of law, and, secondly upon a certain attitude to law, i.e. the place of this concept in everyday life and human activity. The paper treats those elements of the Orthodox outlook that constituted certain inherent mechanisms (...) of culture, and thus greatly influenced the process of formation of the feeling of law in the countries of the Orthodox culture. These elements include interaction of the Orthodox Church and the State, then the problem of the meaning of life according to the Orthodox doctrine, and finally the way personality is perceived and treated in the Orthodox outlook. The paper also considers particular features of the Orthodox outlook as they were exposed in the course of the cultural history of Orthodox countries. (shrink)
Starting again of thesis that the value appear to us like value in self, transcendental, and value for somebody, this paper enlarging upon idea that the value is object of knowledge but different of any others objects of the reality. The knowledge of value involve a emotional constituent and other rational constituent. Advancing the judgement of value, the feeling of value is essential for detection and to converted the being of value into reality of life and culture. This part (...) of value feeling do not put in danger the unity and eternity of value and it is very important for the knowledge and the intercultural communication in the world. (shrink)
All human beings have spontaneous needs for happiness, self-understanding and love. In Feeling Good: The Science of Well Being, psychiatrist Robert Cloninger describes a way to coherent living that satisfies these strong basic needs through growth in the uniquely human gift of self-awareness. The scientific findings that led Dr Cloninger to expand his own views in a stepwise manner during 30 years of research and clinical experience are clearly presented so that readers can consider the validity of his viewpoint (...) for themselves. The principles of well-being are based on a non-reductive scientific paradigm that integrates findings from all the biomedical and psychosocial sciences. Reliable methods are described for measuring human thought and social relationships at each step along the path of self-aware consciousness. Practical mental exercises for stimulating the growth of self-awareness are also provided. The methods are supported by data from brain imaging, genetics of personality, and longitudinal biopsychosocial studies. -/- Feeling Good: The Science of Well-Being will be of value to anyone involved in the sciences of the mind or the treatment of mental disorders. It will also interest theologians, philosophers, social scientists, and lay readers because it provides contemporary scientific concepts and language for addressing the perennial human questions about being, knowledge, and conduct. (shrink)
How do our feelings for others shape our attitudes and conduct towards them? Is morality primarily a matter of rational choice, or instinctual feeling? Joseph Duke Filonowicz takes the reader on an engaging, informative tour of some of the main issues in philosophical ethics, explaining and defending the ideas of the early-modern British sentimentalists. These philosophers - Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume, and Smith - argued that it is our feelings, and not our 'reason', which ultimately determine how we judge what (...) is good or bad, right or wrong, and how we choose to act towards our fellow human beings. Filonowicz draws on contemporary sociology and evolutionary biology as well as present-day moral theory to examine and defend the sentimentalist view and to challenge the rationalistic character of contemporary ethics. His book will appeal to readers interested in both history of philosophy and current ethical debates. (shrink)
This article revisits Oman's idea that an intuitive felt knowledge of the divine underlies the articulate knowledge found in faith and theology. Such feeling, Oman claims, is analogous to ordinary perception and gives rise to the attempt to evaluate, understand, and respond to the divine. Theology is the formalized attempt to respond to the intuition of the divine. The article argues that Oman's emphasis on the experiential and experimental character of theology is helpful, but that his analysis of the (...) logic of faith requires reformulation. (shrink)
Machine generated contents note: Introduction; Chronology; Further reading; Note on the texts; Thoughts on the Occasion of Mr Johann Friedrich von Funk's Untimely Death (1760); Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (1764); Remarks in Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (1764-5); Essay on the Maladies of the Head (1764); Inquiry concerning the distinctness of the principles of natural theology and morality (1764); M. Immanuel Kant's announcement of the programme of his lectures for (...) the winter semester, 1765-6 (1765); Herder's Notes from Kant's Lectures on Ethics (1762-4); Selected notes and fragments from the 1760s; Index. (shrink)
Machine generated contents note: -- Foreword Hugh J. Silverman \ Translator's Introduction \ Author's New Preface \ Abbreviations \ 1. Aesthetics of Life \ 2. Aesthetics of Form \ 3. Aesthetics and Consciousness \ 4. Aesthetics and Action \ 5. Aesthetics and Feeling \ Conclusion: Towards a Theory of Feeling \ Notes \ Bibliography \ Index.
Hume and Rousseau argue that “feeling with and/or for others” is natural and basic to us as human persons. but Royce claims that merely feeling the fleeting impulse of sympathy is not the moral insight itself. Compassion must be both felt and acted upon for it to play the role in morality ascribed by Hume and Rousseau. Why is it so often the case that we fail to feel compassion for others and, even when we do, why do (...) we often fail to act on this basis? There are multiple socially constructed barriers to feeling and acting on compassion, three of which are discussed: null curriculum. stereotyping and privileges. Finally, the Dalai Lama maintains that it is in every person’s own self-interest to develop compassion for others because it is the source of both inner and external peace. (shrink)
This paper focuses on Italian philosopher’s Paolo Virno concept of public intellect. He starts from the analysis of emotions and dispositions as they appear in Martin Heidegger’s work Being and Time, and he undertakes na criticism of Heideggerian distinction between fear and anguish/anxiety. Virno argues that, incontemporary world, this distinction is becoming increasingly blurred, insofar as the so-called ‘substantial communities’ tend to disintegrate and human beings become more exposed to the world as such. This exposition to the world makes one (...) feel any concrete fearful situation as rather an anxiety-ridden situation whereuncertainty and endangerment reigns to its utmost. As a rather spontaneous response to this insecurity of ‘not’feeling-at-home’, Virno sees the emergence of the so-called ‘public intellect’ which contains some elementary linguistic structures that appear as collective. Virno sees public intellect as an outcome of ‘not-feeling-at-home’ that, to some degree, forces people to become thinkers as they are made strangers to this world. (shrink)
We live our lives through our emotions, writes Robert Solomon, and it is our emotions that give our lives meaning. What interests or fascinates us, who we love, what angers us, what moves us, what bores us--all of this defines us, gives us character, constitutes who we are. In True to Our Feelings, Solomon illuminates the rich life of the emotions--why we don't really understand them, what they really are, and how they make us human and give meaning to life. (...) Emotions have recently become a highly fashionable area of research in the sciences, with brain imaging uncovering valuable clues as to how we experience our feelings. But while Solomon provides a guide to this cutting-edge research, as well as to what others--philosophers and psychologists--have said on the subject, he also emphasizes the personal and ethical character of our emotions. He shows that emotions are not something that happen to us, nor are they irrational in the literal sense--rather, they are judgements we make about the world, and they are strategies for living in it. Fear, anger, love, guilt, jealousy, compassion--they are all essential to our values, to living happily, healthily, and well. Solomon highlights some of the dramatic ways that emotions fit into our ethics and our sense of the good life, how we can make our emotional lives more coherent with our values and be more "true to our feelings" and cultivate emotional integrity. The story of our lives is the story of our passions. We fall in love, we are gripped by scientific curiosity and religious fervor, we fear death and grieve for others, we humble ourselves in envy, jealousy, and resentment. In this remarkable book, Robert Solomon shares his fascination with the emotions and illuminates our passions in an exciting new way. (shrink)
According to the Humean theory of motivation, we only have a reason to act if we have both a belief and a pro-attitude. When it comes to moral reasons, it matters a great deal what that pro-attitude is; pure self-interest cannot combine with a belief to form a moral reason. A long tradition regards empathy and sympathy as moral motivators, and recent psychological evidence supports this view. I examine what I take to be the most plausible version of this claim: (...) empathy or sympathy is necessary for someone to be motivated not to harm others. I argue that one can be motivated not to harm others even if one cannot feel either empathy or sympathy. The evidence comes from the clinical population of people with frontal lobe damage. In addition, if empathy is a moral motivator, we have a conflict with moral autonomy. Either empathy morally motivates, but agents are not autonomous, or agents are autonomous and need not be motivated by empathy. Sympathy suffers from two shortcomings as a moral motivator: it is unlikely that we must sympathize with ourselves in order to feel obligated not to harm ourselves, and there appears to be many other considerations that motivate us not to harm others: fear of harming ourselves, reluctance to add to the cycle of violence, and so on. These considerations are more self-centered than empathy or sympathy, but, perhaps for that very reason, they do not conflict with moral autonomy. (shrink)
This paper addresses Bas van Fraassen’s claim that empiricism is a ‘stance’. I begin by distinguishing two different kinds of stance: an explicit epistemic policy and an implicit way of ‘finding oneself in a world’. At least some of van Fraassen’s claims, I suggest, refer to the latter. In explicating his ordinarily implicit ‘empirical stance’, he assumes the stance of the phenomenologist, describing the structure of his commitment to empiricism without committing to it in the process. This latter stance does (...) not incorporate the attitude that van Fraassen takes to be characteristic of empiricism. Thus its possibility serves to illustrate that empiricism as an all-encompassing philosophical orientation is untenable. I conclude by discussing the part played by feelings in philosophical stances and propose that they contribute to philosophical conviction, commitment and critique. (shrink)
How do people ordinarily attribute mental states to other entities? Clearly, people take physical features into account when assessing whether an organism is likely to occupy particular mental states. An eyeless cave fish, for instance, will be thought unlikely to occupy visual states. However according to one recent theory, people use information about physical constitution not only in this piecemeal fashion to determine which mental states an organism is likely to occupy, but also to draw a fundamental distinction between entities (...) that can merely think and entities that can also feel (Knobe & Prinz 2008). According to this view, people recognize a deep discontinuity between phenomenal and intentional states, such that they refrain from attributing feelings and experiences to entities that do not have the right kind of body, though they may attribute thoughts to entities that lack a biological body, like corporations, robots, and disembodied souls. Alternatively, some have denied that there is any deep discontinuity between the physical features that lead us to attribute the two varieties of mental states (Arico et al. 2011). In other words, the cognitive process that leads us to attribute mental states to various entities does not distinguish between the physical features necessary for intentional states and the physical features necessary for phenomenal states. -/- In this paper we examine some of the research that has been used to motivate the discontinuity view. Specifically, we focus on experiments that examine people's intuitions regarding the aptness of various mental state ascriptions to groups. These studies have been taken as evidence that people are more inclined to think of groups as having intentionality than as having phenomenology. This result, combined with the fact that groups obviously lack a single biological body, has been taken as evidence that people use information about physical constitution in fundamentally different ways when attributing the two kinds of states. However, as we explain, these studies support a discontinuous picture of folk metaphysics of mind only on the assumption that the experimental participants are interpreting the relevant group mental state ascriptions in a very specific way. Thus, we empirically investigate how people are interpreting group mental state ascriptions and present evidence that they are not interpreting these ascriptions in a way that supports the discontinuity view. Instead, we argue that people generally interpret group mental state ascriptions distributively, as attributions of mental states to group members, which supervene on, but are not equivalent to, persons. (shrink)
Max Scheler argues that there is much to learn about reality through faculties that lie beyond the boundary of reason. In his Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values, Scheler explores values (Werte), awareness of which depends primarily on affective receptivity rather than rational perceptionof the world. This essay explores the possibility of affective insight in light of Scheler’s analysis of values. Scheler’s notion of values as moral facts is first examined, next consideration is given to how we learn (...) of values, and then Scheler’s account of how the preference we feel for a given value yields insight into its relative rank is considered. In conclusion, I discuss some reasons for being wary of Scheler’s account, as well as other reasons for being open to it. (shrink)
As its title suggests, this anthology is a collection of papers presented at a conference on feelings and emotions held in Amsterdam in 2001. One of the symposium’s main goals was to draw some of the most prominent researchers in emotion research together and provide a multi-disciplinary ‘snap shot’ of the state of the art at the turn of the century. In that respect it is truly a cognitive science success story. There are articles from a wide range of fields, (...) encompassing, e.g., philosophy, neuroscience, anthropology, sociology, and psychology. Another goal was to emulate a series of conferences of the same name that had taken place in the early parts of the 20th Century. Included in the book are the title pages of these other conferences, which put the symposium in a nice historical context. The conference seems to have met both goals. It does, for instance, offer a vital snap shot of the state of emotions research at the turn of the century, though this does not mean that it is best suited for the annals of history. This volume will provide anyone interested in the cognitive science of the emotions a clear indication of where the field has come from, and insight into where it will be going. (shrink)
The aim of this paper is to cast light upon the moral vision—the vision of what is good and what is obligatory —that governs many if not most of the motion pictures produced in the United States in recent years. I especially have in mind productions such as Pleasantville, Cider House Rules , and American Beauty , and will give special attention to these three movies in what follows. But the phenomenon in question extends far beyond these cases. The basic (...) idea governing these films is now a wide-spread and deep-lying conviction in the contemporary American soul. It is that moral rules and rigorous moral order in life, as traditionally understood, are meaningless or pointless at best, and really are repressive of the best aspects of human relationships, individuality and creativity . What would have traditionally been thought of as moral propriety and human goodness is now generally thought of as arbitrary and as harmful to life, if not downright vicious (at least in its effects), largely because they eliminate or repress feelings , the true elixir of life. (shrink)
The experience of authorship arises when we feel that observed effects (e.g., the onset of a light) are caused by our own actions (e.g., pushing a switch). This study tested whether dysphoric persons’ authorship ascription can be modulated implicitly in a situation in which the exclusivity of the cause of effects is ambiguous. In line with the idea that depressed individuals’ self-schemata include general views of uncontrollability, in a subliminal priming task we observed that dysphoric (compared with nondysphoric) participants experienced (...) lower authorship of action effects when the self-concept was primed. Priming the potential effects of an action just prior to their occurrence, however, increased experiences of authorship in all participants and eliminated the effect of self-concept priming on dysphoric participants’ authorship experiences. These findings suggest that the human mental system seizes on a match between primed and actual action effect to establish a sense of authorship, even in a state of depression when persons have weak self-views of causing behavioral outcomes. r 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. (shrink)
People tend to overestimate emotional responses to future events. This study examined whether such affective forecasting errors occur for feelings of regret, as measured by self-report and subsequent decision-making. Some participants played a pricing game and lost by a narrow or wide margin, while others were asked to imagine losing by such margins. Participants who experienced a narrow loss reported more regret than those who imagined a narrow loss. Furthermore, those experiencing a narrow loss behaved more cautiously in a subsequent (...) gambling task. Thus, the study provides self-report and behavioral evidence for a reversal of the affective forecasting phenomenon for feelings of regret. (shrink)
We explore three types of criticisms of our theory on the development of children's social understanding. We reject suggestions that we offer nothing new to traditional theories of development or recent “social” accounts of “theory of mind.” Second, we take the point that there are grounds for improving our account of dyadic interaction in infancy but reject claims that we have not sufficiently accounted for how we incorporate the notions of criteria and structure into the theory. Third, we accept that (...) the epistemic triangle, as defined, would benefit from an affective dimension and such a formulation could be used to describe the dynamic of developmental change from infancy to beyond early childhood. We still feel that the combination of Wittgenstein, Vygotsky, and Piaget remains as an antidote to the flaws in current “theories of mind” approaches to social understanding. (shrink)
A modern Stoic might say the fact that the universe has kept things going for billions of years suggests that we should pay more attention to its workings as we organise our life. We should definitely not let our feelings overtake us and cause us to lose sight of how well things can work out. Even when they don’t seem to work out, as when the Watchmen fail to stop Ozymandias from saving the world, the universe seems to correct for (...) it. (shrink)
There has been a trend in contemporary ethics to believe that a morally admirable agent would feel negative self?assessing emotions following even the best possible choice in a moral dilemma. A commonly held reason for holding this position is that agents who are well?brought up are trained to feel negative self?assessing emotions when they do something morally forbidden under ordinary circumstances, and that agents acting for the best in a dilemma will nonetheless recognize their deed as morally forbidden. I challenge (...) this view and reach the conclusion that without the further notion that the agent morally failed, negative self?assessing emotions ought to be discouraged in favour of emotions such as grief and sadness, which are negative and self?conscious, but not self?assessing. I then offer some cognitive strategies moral educators could impart to help persons feel emotions that better reflect the nuances of moral dilemmas. (shrink)
This paper works out which conceptual and theoretical preconditions have to be met, among others, in order for a living creature to be able to have a feeling of being alive beyond the mere capacity for sensation. For the emergence of such a feeling, which can be equated with a rudimentary phenomenal consciousness (1.), it is not enough for the organism to be alive (2. a.). Rather it has to be able to conceive its body as a unit (...) and to relate its sensations to this unit (2. b.). Moreover mobility (2. c.), a basic sense of possibility (2. d.) and a rudimentary sense of time (2. e.) are also necessary. The analysis of these preconditions relies primarily on Aristotelian theoretical approaches, encompassing both historical interpretation (3. a.), and systematic work, which includes a look at the current debates in the analytic philosophical tradition (3. b.). (shrink)
In this paper I am going to argue that two commonly held views about perceptual experience are incompatible and that one must be given up. The first is the view that the five senses are to be distinguished by appeal to the kind of experiences involved in perception; the second is the view.
For many years emotion theory has been characterized by a dichotomy between the head and the body. In the golden years of cognitivism, during the nineteen-sixties and seventies, emotion theory focused on the cognitive antecedents of emotion, the so-called “appraisal processes.” Bodily events were seen largely as byproducts of cognition, and as too unspecific to contribute to the variety of emotion experience. Cognition was conceptualized as an abstract, intellectual, “heady” process separate from bodily events. Although current emotion theory has moved (...) beyond this disembodied stance by conceiving of emotions as involving both cognitive processes (perception, attention, and evaluation) and bodily events (arousal, behavior, and facial expressions), the legacy of cognitivism persists in the tendency to treat cognitive and bodily events as separate constituents of emotion. Thus the cognitive aspects of emotion are supposedly distinct and separate from the bodily ones. This separation indicates that cognitivism’s disembodied conception of cognition continues to shape the way emotion theorists conceptualize emotion. (shrink)
In this paper I present a new argument against internalist theories of practical reason. My argument is inpired by Frank Jackson's celebrated Knowledge Argument. I ask what will happen when an agent experiences pain for the first time. Such an agent, I argue, will gain new normative knowledge that internalism cannot explain. This argument presents a similar difficulty for other subjectivist and constructivist theories of practical reason and value. I end by suggesting that some debates in meta-ethics and in the (...) philosophy of mind might be more closely intertwined than philosophers in either area would like to believe. (shrink)
In recent decades, with advances in the behavioral, cognitive, and neurosciences, the idea that patterns of human behavior may ultimately be due to factors beyond our conscious control has increasingly gained traction and renewed interest in the age-old problem of free will. In this book I examine both the traditional philosophical problems long associated with the question of free will, such as the relationship between determinism and free will, as well as recent experimental and theoretical work directly related to consciousness (...) and human agency. I argue that our best scientific theories indeed have the consequence that factors beyond our control produce all of the actions we perform and that because of this we do not possess the kind of free will required for genuine or ultimate responsibility. I further argue that the strong and pervasive belief in free will, which I consider an illusion, can be accounted for through a careful analysis of our phenomenology and a proper theoretical understanding of consciousness. Indeed, the primary goal of this book is to argue that our subjective feeling of freedom, as reflected in the first-person phenomenology of agentive experience, is an illusion created by certain aspects of our consciousness. So after working to establish that free will is an illusion in the early chapters, I then proceed to give a novel account of just how that illusion is created in the later chapters. I present my illusionist account using one leading theory of consciousness—the higher-order thought (or HOT) theory of consciousness. I maintain that by combining the theoretical framework of the HOT theory with empirical findings in the behavioral, cognitive, and neurosciences, we can come to see that the illusion of free will is created by the particular way our higher-order thoughts make us conscious of our mental states and how our sense of self is constructed within consciousness. (shrink)
Philosophers since Aristotle have explored emotion, and the study of emotion has always been essential to the love of wisdom. In recent years Anglo-American philosophers have rediscovered and placed new emphasis on this very old discipline. The view that emotions are ripe for philosophical analysis has been supported by a considerable number of excellent publications. In this volume, Robert Solomon brings together some of the best Anglo-American philosophers now writing on the philosophy of emotion, with chapters from philosophers who have (...) distinguished themselves in the field of emotion research and have interdisciplinary interests, particularly in the social and biological sciences. The reader will find a lively variety of positions on topics such as the nature of emotion, the category of "emotion," the rationality of emotions, the relationship between an emotion and its expression, the relationship between emotion, motivation, and action, the biological nature versus social construction of emotion, the role of the body in emotion, the extent of freedom and our control of emotions, the relationship between emotion and value, and the very nature and warrant of theories of emotion. In addition, this book acknowledges that it is impossible to study the emotions today without engaging with contemporary psychology and the neurosciences, and moreover engages them with zeal. Thus the essays included here should appeal to a broad spectrum of emotion researchers in the various theoretical, experimental, and clinical branches of psychology, in addition to theorists in philosophy, philosophical psychology, moral psychology, and cognitive science, the social sciences, and literary theory. (shrink)
This paper constitutes a defence of an affective account of emotion. I begin by outlining the case for thinking that emotions are just feelings. I also suggest that emotional feelings are not reducible to other kinds of feelings, but rather form a distinct class of feeling state. I then consider a number of common objections that have been raised against affective accounts of emotion, including: (1) the objection that emotion cannot always consist only of feeling because some emotions (...) - for example, indignation and regret - necessarily have a cognitive component (say, the perception of a lost opportunity in the case of regret); (2) the objection that emotion cannot consist only of feeling because in order to explain how emotions have intentional objects we will have to recognise that emotion consists of cognition; and (3) the objection that emotion cannot consist only of feeling because emotion, but not feeling, can be variously assessed or evaluated. However, I demonstrate how an affective account of emotion might be successfully defended against all of the objections that are cited. (shrink)
Abstract: By briefly sketching some important ancient accounts of the connections between psychology and moral education, I hope to illuminate the significance of the contemporary debate on the nature of emotion and to reveal its stakes. I begin the essay with a brief discussion of intellectualism in Socrates and the Stoics, and Plato's and Posidonius's respective attacks against it. Next, I examine the two current leading philosophical accounts of emotion: the cognitive theory and the noncognitive theory. I maintain that the (...) noncognitive theory better explains human behavior and experience and has more empirical support than the cognitive theory. In the third section of the essay I argue that recent empirical research on emotional contagion and mirroring processes provides important new evidence for the noncognitive theory. In the final section, I draw some preliminary conclusions about moral education and the acquisition of virtue. (shrink)
