It is sometimes said that Charles Darwin has a theory of emotional expression, but not a theory of emotion. This paper argues that Darwin does have a theory of emotion. Inspired by David Hartley and Erasmus Darwin, Charles Darwin claims that an emotion is a train of feelings, thoughts, and actions, linked by associations. Whereas Hartley and Erasmus insist that these associations are learned, Charles proposes that some of these associations are inherited. He develops this theory in his private notebooks (...) from 1838–1839 and then assumes it in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872). (shrink)

Structuring Sense explores the difference between words however defined and structures however constructed. It sets out to demonstrate over three volumes, of which this is the first, that the explanation of linguistic competence should be shifted from lexical entry to syntactic structure, from memory of words to manipulation of rules. Its reformulation of how grammar and lexicon interact has profound implications for linguistic, philosophical, and psychological theories about human mind and language. Hagit Borer departs from both language specific constructional (...) approaches and lexicalist approaches to argue that universal hierarchical structures determine interpretation, and that language variation emerges from the morphological and phonological properties of inflectional material. In Name Only applies this radical approach to nominal structure. Integrating research in syntax, semantics, and morphology, the author argues that nominal structure is based on the syntactic realization of semantic notions such as classifier, quantity, and reference. In the process she seeks to do away with lexical ambiguity and type-shifting. Among the topics she considers are the interpretation of proper names, the mass-count distinction, the weak-strong interpretation of quantifiers, partitive and measure phrases, and the structural representation of the definite article. In the process she explores inter-language variation through the properties of the morpho-phonological system. The languages discussed include English, Chinese, Italian, and Hebrew. (shrink)

The purpose of the present work is to analyze Hegel's Unhappy Consciousness in light of the psychoanalytic conceptualization of the relation Subject-Other. The analysis will investigate unhappiness on two counts: its relation to Hegelian dialectic and the possibility of its coming to an end. Examining Hegelian unhappiness through the prism of psychoanalytic thought will allow us to formulate a crucial distinction between the philosophical (Hegelian) and psychoanalytic (Freudian, Lacanian) approaches to unhappiness as they relate to the arch-concepts of knowledge, possibility, (...) negation, and end.The first part of this work will be dedicated to the investigation of these arch-concepts through two main and opposing .. (shrink)

Mark Johnston argues that the identity between water and H2O generates a puzzle: Ice is related to H2O just as water is related to H2O. If water is identical to H2O, so is ice, and we end up with an absurdity: water is ice. This paper suggests a way to preserve the identity between water and H2O without this absurd result.

Name der Zeitschrift: Der Islam Jahrgang: 92 Heft: 2 Seiten: 507-513.

Structuring Sense explores the difference between words however defined and structures however constructed. It sets out to demonstrate over three volumes, of which this is the second, that the explanation of linguistic competence should be shifted from lexical entry to syntactic structure, from memory of words to manipulation of rules. Its reformulation of how grammar and lexicon interact has profound implications for linguistic, philosophical, and psychological theories about human mind and language. Hagit Borer departs from both language specific constructional (...) approaches and lexicalist approaches to argue that universal hierarchical structures determine interpretation, and that language variation emerges from the morphological and phonological properties of inflectional material. The Normal Course of Events applies this radical approach to event structure. Integrating research results in syntax, semantics, and morphology, the author shows that argument structure is based on the syntactic realization of semantic event units. The topics she addresses include the structure of internal arguments and of telic and atelic interpretations, accusative and partitive case, perfective and imperfective marking, the unaccusative-unergative distinction, existential interpretation and post-verbal subjects, and resultative constructions. The languages discussed include English, Catalan, Finnish, Hebrew, Czech, Polish, Russian, and Spanish. (shrink)

Issues concerning UG access for L2 acquisition as formulated by Epstein et al. are misleading as well as poorly discussed. UG accessibility can only be fully evaluated with respect to the steady state gram mar reached by the learner. The steady state for LI learners is self evidently the adult grammar in the speech community. For L2 learners, however, the steady state is not obvious. Yet, without its clear characterization, debates concerning stages of L2 acquisition and direct and indirect UG (...) accessibility cannot be resolved. (shrink)

We contribute to the growing literature on white fragility by examining how the distinctively emotional manifestations of white fragility (which we dub ‘emotional white fragility’) make it more difficult for white people to have constructive, meaningful thoughts and conversations about race. We claim that emotional white fragility typically involves a failure of emotion regulation, or the ability to manage one’s emotions in real time. We suggest that this lack of emotion regulation can contribute to an unjust distribution of burdens that (...) can further entrench moral damage in the context of relationships as well as help support large-scale patterns of white supremacy. Given the serious implications of emotional white fragility, we suggest a number of emotion regulation techniques that one can deploy to mitigate the potential harms wrought by emotional white fragility. (shrink)

A recalcitrant emotion is an emotion that we experience despite a judgment that seems to conflict with it. Having been bitten by a dog in her childhood, Jane cannot shake her fear of dogs, including Fido, the cute little puppy that she knows to be in no way dangerous. There is something puzzling about recalcitrant emotions, which appear to defy the putatively robust connection between emotions and judgments. If Jane really believes that Fido cannot harm her, what is she afraid (...) of? This article seeks to show how recalcitrant emotion is possible. I argue that reductive theories that identify emotions with judgments, desires, or some combination thereof, cannot explain the possibility of emotional irrationality without contradiction. I then show that the appeal to sui generis attitudes also fails to solve the puzzle of recalcitrant emotions, and diagnose this failure as stemming from a misleading analogy between emotions and perceptions, and in particular, between recalcitrant emotions and perceptual illusions. The solution can be found in a different analogy: between emotions and actions; more specifically, between recalcitrant emotions and weakness of the will, akrasia. Like akratic actions, recalcitrant emotions entail responding to reasons, but to inferior reasons. Irrational but non-contradictory emotions are possible just as weakness of will is possible. (shrink)

In this chapter, we explore three social functions of emotion, which parallel three interpretations of Herman Melville's Bartleby. We argue that emotions can serve as commitment devices, which nudge individuals toward social conformity and thereby increase the likelihood of ongoing cooperation. We argue that emotions can play a role in Machiavellian strategies, which help us get away with norm violations. And we argue that emotions can motivate social recalibration, by alerting us to systemic social failures. In the second half of (...) the chapter, we then argue that emotions guide behavior by attuning us to our social environment through a process of error-driven learning. We suggest that their most basic social function is to reveal tensions between individuals and social norms; and we contend that because emotions are socially scaffolded, they leave open multiple strategies for resolving such tensions. Specifically, we argue that differences in conceptualization, as well as differences in circumstance, can generate emotions that nudge us toward cooperation, lead us to adopt Machiavellian strategies, or motivate us to engage in forms of social recalibration. Bartleby’s despair signaled a mismatch between his expectations and the expectations of Wall Street, and each of these three strategies could have moderated his misery. (shrink)

This paper argues that the passages on practical spirit within Hegel's 'Psychology' are able to enrich the picture of Hegel's account of intentional action by providing us with a genuine discussion of 'subjective action.' This kind of intentional activity is not yet part of moral or legal philosophy, and it is neutral as regards the question how an action becomes actually manifest in the world as a 'deed', potentially causing unintended consequences. Instead, subjective action consists in the teleological, end-pursuing action (...) of an agent acting on drives and wilfully choosing ends, which are practical as the causa finalis of an agent's doing. Thus, the 'Psychology' investigates intentional action from the first-personal perspective of the mental activity of the subject. It is legitimately part of subjective rather than objective spirit and its socially mediated normativity is psychological rather than moral. (shrink)

A clever argument purports to show that we can directly perceive the emotions of others: (1) some emotional expressions are parts of the emotions they express; (2) perceiving a part of something is sufficient for perceiving the whole; (3) therefore, perceiving some emotional expressions is sufficient for perceiving the emotions they express. My aim in this paper is to assess the extent to which contemporary psychological theories of emotion support the first premise of this argument.

Matching in observational studies faces complications when units enroll in treatment on a rolling basis. While each treated unit has a specific time of entry into the study, control units each have many possible comparison, or “pseudo-treatment,” times. Valid inference must account for correlations between repeated measures for a single unit, and researchers must decide how flexibly to match across time and units. We provide three important innovations. First, we introduce a new matched design, GroupMatch with instance replacement, allowing maximum (...) flexibility in control selection. This new design searches over all possible comparison times for each treated-control pairing and is more amenable to analysis than past methods. Second, we propose a block bootstrap approach for inference in matched designs with rolling enrollment and demonstrate that it accounts properly for complex correlations across matched sets in our new design and several other contexts. Third, we develop a falsification test to detect violations of the timepoint agnosticism assumption, which is needed to permit flexible matching across time. We demonstrate the practical value of these tools via simulations and a case study of the impact of short-term injuries on batting performance in major league baseball. (shrink)

This paper explores three cases of Do-It-Yourself, open-source technologies developed within the diverse array of topics and themes in the communities around the Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science. These cases focus on aerial mapping, water quality monitoring and civic science practices. The techniques discussed have in common the use of accessible, community-built technologies for acquiring data. They are also concerned with embedding collaborative and open source principles into the objects, tools, social formations and data sharing practices that emerge (...) from these inquiries. The focus is on developing processes of collaborative design and experimentation through material engagement with technology and issues of concern. Problem-solving, here, is a tactic, while the strategy is an ongoing engagement with the problem of participation in its technological, social and political dimensions especially considering the increasing centralization and specialization of scientific and technological expertise. The authors also discuss and reflect on the Public Lab’s approach to civic science in light of ideas and practices of citizen/civic veillance, or “sousveillance”, by emphasizing people before data, and by investigating the new ways of seeing and doing that this shift in perspective might provide. (shrink)

What does bodily pain have in common with mental pain? According to “evaluativism,” both are representations of something bad. This paper puts forward three claims. First, that evaluativism vis-à-vis bodily pain is false for it renders it irrational to take painkillers. Second, that evaluativism vis-à-vis mental pain is true. Third, that this difference between bodily and mental pain stems from the fact that only the latter is normative, that is, based on reasons. The normative difference between bodily and mental pain (...) implies that mental pains are not bad, while bodily pains are not representations. (shrink)

RésuméL'idée d'un “monde des images” situé quelque part entre les mondes immatériel et matériel est un pivot de la spéculation eschatologique dans l'Islam médiéval tardif. Comme cela a déjà été reconnu, le concept a été inauguré par al-Suhrawardī. Cependant, ses fondements plus proprement philosophiques et en particulier la notion d'images “suspendues” – des images dotées d'un statut en quelque manière objectif plutôt que purement mental ou subjectif – méritent d’être davantage clarifiés; et c'est ce que cet article entend faire. Puisque (...) le concept de “formes suspendues”, tout en étant appliqué par al-Suhrawardī à des questions eschatologiques dans le dernier traité de sa Philosophie de l'illumination, apparaît pour la première fois dans une discussion sur la vision spéculaire, j'examine assez en détail la conception avicennienne de la vision spéculaire telle qu'elle est présentée dans le Shifāʾ, ouvrage contre lequel al-Suhrawardī réagit. J'entreprends ensuite une reconstruction détaillée de deux paragraphes de la Philosophie de l'illumination en accordant une attention particulière à la question du statut ontologique des images “suspendues” ou “auto-subsistantes” ainsi qu’à l'idée selon laquelle les miroirs servent non pas de lieux dans lesquels les images résideraient, mais de lieux où elles deviennent manifestes. (shrink)

'May one be pardon’ d and retain the offence?’ asks King Claudius in his tormented monologue in Hamlet. Forgiveness appears incompatible with the retention of the offence, both in the sense of enjoying its consequences and in the sense of the subsistence of the attitude which underlay the offensive act. There are, however, views which allow for, even admire, an attitude of forgiveness towards people who have ‘retained’ their offense in some way. This idea of forgiveness is harder to justify, (...) since no change has taken place in the agent. We suggest that the concept of toleration can serve as an illuminating clue in such an analysis. The tolerant attitude involves a certain kind of reconciliation with people who not only have done something wrong in the past, but insist on sticking to their objectionable conduct in the present and the future. Tolerance, in other words, is not conditioned by repentance or by commitment to behavioral transformation; it is a kind of unconditional ‘forgiveness’ in advance. (shrink)

I expand upon Kristie Dotson's concept of “epistemic violence” by identifying another type of epistemic violence that arises in the context of nonverbal communication. “Emotional misperception,” as I call it, occurs when the following conditions are met: A misreads B's nonlinguistic expression of emotion, owing to reliable ignorance, harming B.

Recently it has been argued that we cannot intend at will. Since intentions cannot be true or false, our involuntariness cannot be traced to “the characteristic of beliefs that they aim at truth”, as Bernard Williams convincingly argues. The alternative explanation is that the source of involuntariness is the shared normative nature of beliefs and intentions. Three analogies may assimilate intentions to beliefs vis-à-vis our involuntariness: first, beliefs and intentions aim at something; second, beliefs and intentions are transparent to the (...) true and the good respectively; third, beliefs and intentions are answers to questions other than that of whether to endorse them. The purpose of this paper is to argue that attempts to ground involuntariness in normativity rather than truth imply that we cannot act at will. I assume that actions are the paradigm case of doing something at will, and utilize this assumption as a restriction on any account of our inability to believe at will: it should not be possible to generalize it to actions. Any account of doxastic involuntarism that implies that we cannot act at will is false—if we cannot act at will, what can we do at will? I close by offering a notion of doing something at will that is based on Williams’ insight that truth—rather than reason—matters to our inability to believe at will. (shrink)

This paper offers a reading of key passages in Hegel’s Philosophy of Spirit, which can serve as the basis for an argument to discuss the shortcomings of two contemporary readings of Hegel’s notion of ‘second nature’. It investigates two micro-processes which Hegel discusses within his Philosophy of Spirit, the process of transition from sound to speech and the process of transition from natural will to ethical will. Thereby, the text is able to mark the differences between mere habit, second nature (...) of an ethical agent, and self-mediated self-determination of spirit. Second nature is neither a falling back into nature and therefore a limitation of human freedom, nor is it a notion that in itself could explain the process of Bildung as Hegel sees it. Instead, second nature should be understood within the framework of freedom as practical self-determination which allows spirit to relate to itself as other through its product. (shrink)

Hegel’s “Philosophy of Spirit” applies two different notions of ‘social practice’ – one as a condition of possibility for intentional action and another one as the living actuality within which an action is initiated and takes place. Both notions go hand in hand with their own logically distinct form of normativity – social normativity and the normativity of right. Whereas the first one can already be understood from the standpoint of subjective spirit, the second notion is at home in objective (...) spirit or Hegel’s Rechtsphilosophie. Stressing this distinction has consequences not only for a more differentiated account on Hegel’s philosophy of action, but also for an interpretation of ethical life – which should not be equated with the first notion of social practice. In order to mark the importance of ethical life for Hegel’s Rechtsphilosophie, the relevance of objectivity for objective spirit needs to be highlighted, which according to Hegel cannot be derived from a process of inner transformation of changing attitudes of the acting subject towards the norms of her action. (shrink)

"Hegel’s Philosophical Psychology" draws attention to a largely overlooked piece of Hegel’s philosophy: his substantial and philosophically rich treatment of psychology at the end of the 'Philosophy of Subjective Spirit', which itself belongs to his main work, the "Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences". This volume makes the case that Hegel’s approach to philosophy of mind as developed within this text can make an important contribution to current discussions about mind and subjectivity, and can help clarify the notion of spirit within (...) Hegel’s larger philosophical project. Scholars from different schools of Hegelian thought provide a multifaceted overview of Hegel’s 'Psychology': Part I begins with an overview of Hegel’s 'Philosophy of Subjective Spirit', which outlines both its historical context and its systematic context within Hegel’s philosophy of subjective spirit. Parts II and III then investigate the individual chapters of the sections on psychology: the theoretical mind and the practical and free mind. The volume concludes by examining the challenges which Hegel’s 'Psychology' poses for contemporary epistemological debates and the philosophy of psychology. Throughout, the volume brings Hegel’s views into dialogue with 20th- and 21st-century thinkers such as Bergson, Bourdieu, Brandom, Chomsky, Davidson, Freud, McDowell, Sellars, Wittgenstein, and Wollheim. (shrink)

There are two ways of dealing with Kant's derogatory position on music. Either it is claimed that Kant's opinion is a result of biographical factors, or Kant is regarded as a mere predecessor of a more successful music aesthetics. While the first way mistakes Kant's personal preferences for a philosophical argument about the nature of sound, the second approach underestimates the close connection between his music aesthetics and his whole philosophical system. Against these approaches the article defends the proposition that (...) Kant's (like any other) music aesthetics can only be understood with reference to the concepts of „time“ and „movement“ in order to elucidate the ontology of sound objects. (shrink)

A fundamental concept of a philosophy of music is that of sound. Any investigation of this concept has to be ontologically as well as epistemically adequate. The main proposition of the article is that sounds can only be understood ontologically if we take into consideration their main characteristic of being strictly shapeless and lacking content, an insight that we can learn from Kant. In contradiction to Kant, sounds can be epistemologically characterized as objects that can only be re-presented if the (...) hearer co-presents their temporal extension. The argument is developed through a discussion of the work of P. F. Strawson, G. Evans, R. Scruton, and H. Riemann. (shrink)

Can we read emotions in faces? Many studies suggest that we can, yet skeptics contend that these studies employ methods that unwittingly help subjects in matching faces with emotions. Some studies present subjects with posed faces, which may be more exaggerated than spontaneous ones. And some studies provide subjects with a list of emotion words to choose from, which forces them to interpret faces in specific emotion terms. I argue that the skeptics’ challenge rests on a false assumption: that once (...) subjects leave the lab, they no longer receive help in matching faces with emotions. I contend that people receive as much help in the wild as they do in the lab. People unconsciously amplify their spontaneous expressions in the presence of others, thereby making them easier to read. And people teach children to interpret faces in the same specific emotion terms found in the experimenters’ word lists. I argue that we are good at readings emotions in faces because we can normally count on a little help from our friends. (shrink)

According to the Perceptual Analysis of Emotional Expression, behaviors express emotions by making them perceptually manifest. A smile is an expression of joy because an observer who sees a smile can see joy. A pout is an expression of grief because an observer who sees a pout can see grief. And a growl is an expression of anger because an observer who hears a growl can hear anger. The idea is not simply that expressions can enable the perception of emotion, (...) but that expressions essentially do so. In the course of defending this analysis against challenges, I develop a novel account of the relationship between language and expression. (shrink)

William P. Alston argues in “Expressing” (1965) that there is no important difference between expressing a feeling in language and asserting that one has that feeling. My aims in this paper are (1) to show that Alston's arguments ought to have led him to a different conclusion—that “asserting” and “expressing” individuate speech acts at different levels of analysis (the illocutionary and the locutionary, respectively)—and (2) to argue that this conclusion can solve a problem facing contemporary analyses of expressing: the “no (...) show tell” problem, or the problem of accounting for utterances that report feelings truly without expressing them. Alston's paper made an important contribution 50 years ago, and a reimagining of it can make another important contribution today. (shrink)

I offer a novel view of the mechanisms underlying the spontaneous facial expression of emotion. According to my Social Amplification View, facial expressions result from the interplay of two processes: an emotional process that activates specific facial muscles, though not always to the point of visible contraction, followed by a social cognitive process that amplifies these activations so that they may function more effectively as social signals. I argue that SAV outperforms both the Neurocultural View and the Behavioral Ecology View, (...) as well as previously proposed syntheses of these views, in accounting for various empirical findings. (shrink)

Terror may have dire implications for the public’s behavior. According to Kirschenbaum :1–33, 2006), in order to minimize the expected impact of a terror incident the public has to adopt a “survival strategy”. According to the underlying research hypothesis of the study, the longer the terror incidents continue, the more the public accepts the possibility that it will be in this situation for the long term; therefore, the extent of its deviation from its ordinary consumer behavior steadily declines after each (...) terror incident. By using daily trade data and an Event Studies econometric methodology, we found the existence of an adaptation trend among the consumer public. Thus, over time, the Israeli public internalized the realization that if it wishes to sustain a reasonable standard of living, it must minimize the disparity between its consumer economic behavior before a terror event and its behavior afterwards. Announcing more assassinations of terrorists was found to calm the public’s fears, when fears are judged by a return to more normal consumption patterns. Another finding is the existence of variance in the pace of this adaptation as a dependency of the type of good consumed: consistently, the adaptation is faster in regard to non-durable goods than to durable goods. This outcome is subject to interpretation, since durable goods may be viewed as “half-consumption goods, half-capital goods,” it stands to reason that capital goods would be more strongly affected than consumption goods. (shrink)

The controversy over the interpretative issue—is Thomas Reid a perceptual direct realist?—has recently had channelled into it a host of imaginative ideas about what direct perception truly means. Paradoxically enough, it is the apparent contradiction at the heart of his view of perception which keeps teasing us to review our concepts: time and again, Reid stresses that the very idea of any mental intermediaries implies scepticism, yet, nevertheless insists that sensations are signs of objects. But if sensory signs are not (...) mental intermediaries, what are they? Hasn't Reid merely swapped the common ‘sensation’ for the notorious ‘idea’, ending up with indirect realism?1 Current imaginative strategies answer negatively: Reid's sensory sign does not contradict direct perception, and those who think otherwise merely fail to understand what it means. (shrink)

Primitivism is the view that colors are sui generis properties of physical objects. The basic insight underlying primitivism is that colours are as we see them, i.e. they are categorical properties of physical objects—simple, monadic, constant, etc.—just like shapes. As such, they determine the content of colour experience. Accepting the premise that colours are sui generis properties of physical objects, this paper seeks to show that ascribing primitive properties to objects is, ipso facto, ascribing to objects irreducible dispositions to look (...) coloured, and that anything that primitive redness can do, the non-reductive disposition to look red can do just as well. What makes primitivism suspect is not the commitment to sui generis properties, but instead the claim that colours are more than dispositions. Since, as I show, whatever primitivism appeals to for the purpose of arguing that colours are more than dispositions—objectivity, explanation, causation, phenomenology, constancy, etc.—can also be invoked... (shrink)

A speaker wishes to persuade a listener to take a certain action. The conditions under which the request is justified, from the listener’s point of view, depend on the state of the world, which is known only to the speaker. Each state is characterized by a set of statements from which the speaker chooses. A persuasion rule specifies which statements the listener finds persuasive. We study persuasion rules that maximize the probability that the listener accepts the request if and only (...) if it is justified, given that the speaker maximizes the probability that his request is accepted. We prove that there always exists a persuasion rule involving no randomization and that all optimal persuasion rules are ex-post optimal. We relate our analysis to the field of pragmatics. (shrink)

Richard Wollheim claims that speech acts express emotions always in virtue of how they are said and never solely in virtue of what they say. However, it would seem to follow that we cannot express our emotions in writing, since texts preserve what we wish to say without recording how we would wish to say it. I argue that Wollheim’s thesis in fact sheds new light on how authors can and do express their emotions in writing. In short, an author (...) must employ a variety of techniques within appropriate contexts to substitute for the non-verbal behaviours that would express her emotions physically. This substitution constitutes a ‘virtual expression’ just in case it empowers readers to vividly imagine the production of these behaviours. (shrink)

Charles Sanders Peirce famously distinguishes between three types of sign, depending on how the sign refers to its object. An "icon" refers by resemblance. An "index" refers by a physical connection. And a "symbol" refers by habit or convention. Peirce allows for signs to refer in more ways than one—onomatopoeias refer both by resemblance and by convention, for instance 1—but he insists that there are no further ways in which signs can refer to their objects.In this paper I shall argue (...) that emotional expressions—e.g. cries of sadness, laughs of amusement, and scowls of anger—refer to emotions neither by... (shrink)