Abstract
The long-standing debate between cognitive and feeling theories of emotion stems, in part, from the assumption that cognition and thought are abstract, intellectual, disembodied processes, and that bodily feelings are non-intentional and have no representational content. Working with this assumption has led many emotions theorists to neglect the way in which emotions are simultaneously bodily and cognitive-evaluative. Even hybrid theories, such as those set forth by Prinz (2004) and Barlassina and Newen (2013), fail to account fully for how the cognitive and bodily elements of emotion are integrated. As a result, such accounts are unable to provide an adequate characterization of the intentionality or phenomenology of emotions. I will argue that an enactive account of emotions, one which characterizes them as a way of engaging with and making sense of one’s surroundings, can help us to overcome this false dichotomy between cognitive and body elements. What I call ‘affective framing’ is at the core of emotional experience. It is the way in which we engage with and appraise our surroundings in and through bodily feelings of caring, so that the bodily and cognitive elements of emotion necessarily are fused. The notion of affective framing not only helps to clarify the relationship between bodily and cognitive elements of emotion, but also offers a useful way to make sense of both the intentional directedness and phenomenal character of emotional experience.
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Notes
Although I do maintain that emotions have an essential component, I do not claim that it is possible to reduce emotion to this component.
One obvious objection to this sort of account is that some emotions appear to lack a clear intentional object. I do recognize that in some instances, there might be free-floating emotional experience, such as a mood that is not about anything in particular. However, even these phenomenal states are intentional in some minimal sense to the extent that they involve directedness toward and engagement with the world.
I suspect that the content of emotions is nonconceptual. However, an examination of the nature of nonconceptual content, and an argument for the claim that emotions have such content, is beyond the scope of this paper. For a discussion of nonconceptual content, see, e.g., Cussins (2003), Poellner (2003), and Peacocke (2001).
Although the desiderative bodily feelings of affective framing do typically occur outside of reflective self-awareness, they are part of our lived bodily experience.
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Maiese, M. How can emotions be both cognitive and bodily?. Phenom Cogn Sci 13, 513–531 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-014-9373-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-014-9373-z