This article clarifies my current and seemingly ever-changing position on issues relating to emotions. The position derives from my differential emotions theory and it changes with new empirical findings and with insights from my own and others’ thinking and writing. The theory distinguishes between first-order emotions and emotion schemas. For example, it proposes that first-order negative emotions are attributable mainly to infants and young children in distress and to older individuals in emergency or highly challenging situations. Emotion schemas (...) are defined as emotion feelings interacting with cognition in motivating the decision making and actions of everyday life. (shrink)

Classical Confucian thought is full of discussion of human emotions, reflecting a preoccupation with the inner life-how one ought to feel 'on the inside', as it were. Yet alongside these passages are others that seem, by contrast, to be concerned with matters external to one's emotions and psychology: how one ought to dress, speak, walk, and talk. Yet passages such as these, which draw attention to details of individual expression and comportment, are not at all tangential when it comes to (...) understanding the Confucian perspective on emotions. On the contrary, I argue that they reveal a sophisticated view of emotional life, one that illuminates how our outer appearance and comportment profoundly shape both how we feel and how others around us feel. Looking at emotions in this fashion-both inside and out-gives us not only a deeper appreciation of early Confucian thought but also can serve as a resource for us to reevaluate the way we understand emotions today. {Translated into Korean by Yonghwan Chung}. (shrink)

Wearing facial masks became a common practice worldwide during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study investigated (1) whether facial masks that cover adult faces affect 4- to 6-year-old children’s recognition of emotions in those faces and (2) whether the duration of children’s exposure to masks is associated with emotion recognition. We tested children from Switzerland (N = 38) and Brazil (N = 41). Brazil represented longer mask exposure due to a stricter mandate during COVID-19. Children had to choose a face (...) displaying a specific emotion (happy, angry, or sad) when the face wore either no cover, a facial mask, or sunglasses. The longer hours of mask exposure were associated with better emotion recognition. Controlling for the hours of exposure, children were less likely to recognise emotions in partially hideen faces. Moreover, Brazilian children were more accurate in recognising happy faces than Swiss children. Overall, facial masks may negatively impact children’s emotion recognition. However, prolonged exposure appears to buffer the lack of facial cues from the nose and mouth. In conclusion, restricting facial cues due to masks may impair kindergarten children’s emotion recognition in the short run. However, it may facilitate their broader reading of facial emotional cues in the long run. (shrink)

We often assess emotions as appropriate or inappropriate depending on certain evaluative aspects of the world. Often using the term ‘fittingness’ as equivalent to ‘appropriateness’, many philosophers of emotion take fittingness assessments of emotions to be a broadly representational matter. On this sort of view, an emotion is fitting or appropriate just in case there is a kind of representational match between the emotion and the object, a matching analogous to truth for belief. This view provides (...) an account of the relationship between emotion and value that many have found plausible. In this paper, I argue that the fittingness of emotions should not be understood in representational terms. Rather, as is common in the literature on fittingness, we should interpret the notion in normative terms. After providing four arguments against the representational interpretation, and for a normative interpretation, of emotional fittingness, I discuss two ways to develop the normative picture of emotional fittingness. I also clarify the relevant issues that will have to be tackled by philosophers of emotion in the future, issues which cannot be tackled without attending to action theory and the philosophy of normativity. (shrink)

Most researchers of emotions agree that although cognitive evaluations such as beliefs, thoughts, etc. are essential for emotion, bodily feelings and their behavioral expressions are also required. Yet, only a few explain how all these diverse aspects of emotion are related to form the unity or oneness of emotion. The most prevalent account of unity is the causal view, which, however, has been shown to be inadequate because it sees the relations between the different parts of (...) class='Hi'>emotion as external and contingent. I argue that an adequate account of unity would require internal or conceptual relations between the aspects of emotion, and I suggest that such an account can be found in Aristotle's metaphysics and theory of emotion, and specifically, in his form and matter distinction. After I show that emotions are intentional pleasures and pains or distresses, I argue that the characteristic intentional pleasure and pain of an emotion, along with its other intentional elements , are the form of the emotion, whereas the bodily feelings are its matter. Form and matter constitute a conceptual unity, which cannot be accounted for in conglomeration accounts that see emotions as mixtures of different parts related only through efficient causation. (shrink)

Argues that relations between mind and body are analogous to those between subject matter and style in art.

This article reports on a study done in Sweden on how the daily press covers the theme of overweight/obesity. It deals with two questions: How is overweight framed in the media? and Which consequences can these framings have on public perceptions of overweight/obesity? The study is limited to media content in Swedish daily newspapers, 1997–2001. In all 1 925 articles from four different papers have been analysed. The study points out that overweight/obesity is most frequently presented as a health problem, (...) however the dominating frame in the news papers is overweight presented as a beauty dilemma. The two ways of constructing overweight comes along with different kind of information that leaves the potential reader with diverse impressions and solutions. The first frame appeals to reason and rationality, the latter mobilizes emotions and affect. When the reporters reduce the health problem to a matter of looks they underestimate the seriousness of this social problem, which might have undesirable effects on public perception of overweight. There are considerable gender dimensions in the coverage and overweight is mostly presented as a female problem. In the articles obese people are often stigmatized and gender stereotypes are frequently reproduced. There is on top of that and abundance of paradoxes in the material, which also makes it hard for the reader to orient herself in the crossfire of messages and gives little advice upon how to solve the problem of overweight. (shrink)

Human emotion,considered in its structure and functionality, can serve as a means of communication,interaction and cooperation in robots with humans.Emotions have to be analyzed as both intrasubjective and intersubjective processes in order to construct androids as human-like robots.Based on a cognitive modeling of emotions and the description of a 'language of mind 'we developed a methodological tool for the representation of situations and the elicitation conditions of emotions.

: In the analytic tradition of the philosophy of emotions the folk notion of adequacy is understood with regard to – at least four – different questions, viz. a moral question, a prudential question, an epistemic question, and a fittingness question. Usually, the fittingness question is treated as being the central one. I have some doubts concerning this assessment, particularly when it comes to substantial – interpersonal or cultural – controversies about whether a specific emotional response is adequate or whether (...) a specific event deserves the emotional responses it triggers. To approach these matters, I recommend first doing without the established distinctions, for they may prematurely tempt us into assessing the adequacy of emotional responses in terms of one of these categories thereby overlooking other features that deserve attention. Instead, I will start with the folk notion of adequacy and then refine stepwise the conceptual landscape to get closer to what the crucial issues of adequacy are. Keywords: Philosophy of Emotions; Emotional Atmospheres; Existential Feelings; Adequacy of Emotional Responses L’adeguatezza delle emozioni e dei sentimenti esistenziali Riassunto: All’interno della tradizione analitica della filosofia delle emozioni la nozione comune di adeguatezza è presa in considerazione in relazione ad almeno quattro diversi problemi: un primo è di carattere morale ; un secondo riguarda la discrezionalità ; un terzo è di tipo epistemico e un quarto concerne l’ appropriatezza. Di solito, all’appropriatezza viene riservata maggiore importanza. Personalmente nutro diversi dubbi su questa valutazione, in particolare quando si tratta di dirimere questioni sostanziali – interpersonali o culturali –, se una data risposta emotiva è adeguata o se un dato evento merita la risposta emotiva che ha innescato. Per affrontare questi problemi, mi sento in primo luogo di suggerire di fare a meno delle distinzioni maggiormente in uso, poiché possono spiprematuramente a valutare l’adeguatezza delle risposte emotive nei termini una delle categorie già menzionate, trascurando quindi altre proprietà degne di attenzione. Intendo invece partire dalla nozione di adeguatezza propria del senso comune e poi gradualmente raffinare il panorama concettuale, per approssimarmi ai problemi fondamentali dell’adeguatezza. Parole chiave: Filosofia delle emozioni; Atmosfere emotive; Sentimenti esistenziali; Adeguatezza delle risposte emotive. (shrink)

Most scholars of emotions concede that although cognitive evaluations are essential for emotion, they are not sufficient for it, and that other elements, such as bodily feelings, physiological sensations and behavioral expressions are also required. However, only a few discuss how these diverse aspects of emotion are related in order to form the unity of emotion. In this essay I examine the co-presence and the causal views, and I argue that neither view can account for the unity (...) of emotions. In particular, both views face the problem of fortuitous connection, and, as a result, they fail to identify and distinguish an emotion from other mental states. Consequently, they fail to account for our first person authority over our emotions. I finally argue that only an internal, conceptual relation between the cognitive/evaluative and affective/physiological aspects of emotion can avoid such problems, and suggest that the Aristotelian distinction of form and matter can provide such internal relation. (shrink)

In this article, I examine whether the possibility exists that in the foreseeable future, robot technology will permit the development of emotional robots. As the title suggests, the content is of a technological as well as of a philosophical nature. As a matter of fact, my aim in writing this paper was that of bridging two distinctive fields in a world where humanity has become accustomed to technological innovations while overlooking any consequential complications arising from such inventions. To this (...) end, I review and commentate on what Anders Sandberg, Paul Thagard, Nikhil Churamani and other thinkers have contributed on the subject matter. The literature review indicates that in the short to the medium term, scientists will only design and engineers will only build robots that will be able to only learn, be trained, or under the most optimistic conditions only simulate human emotions. However, in the long term the possibility exists for technology to advance to such a state so as to permit an entire human brain to be emulated in a robot via a concept named ‘mind uploading’. If one day that becomes a reality, that will be the point where humanity will possibly come closest to creating robots with emotions. (shrink)

This study examined the effects of emotional subject matter and descriptive style in short story excerpts on text (e.g. rich in meaning) and reader response-oriented (e.g. liking) ratings. Forty-eight subjects, including equal numbers of trained and novice male and female students, read two examples of each text twice and either generated or received interpretations between readings in a within-subjects design. In general, intellectual challenge slowed the pace of reading, whereas suspense-based arousal increased it. Emotional subject matter had a (...) more powerful effect than descriptive style on both cognitive (challenging, rich in meaning) and affective (expressive, personally relevant) scales and were read more quickly. Generating interpretations fostered subjective reactions to the Emotional excerpts (images), whereas Descriptive texts were less amenable to subjective responses. Consistent effects were also found for background and gender. As in everyday life, subject matter had a dominant effect in engaging a person's involvement. (shrink)

Reason and emotion are often cast as opposites. Yet emotion comes in a wide array of manifestations and has a variety of relations with its supposed opposite. Understanding emotion better is key to grasping how jurisprudence casts the relation between psychology and judicial decision making. Jurisprudents disagree on whether and when (lack of) emotion is a problem for decision makers in the justice system. The aim of this paper is to shed light on unarticulated assumptions in (...) mainstream legal theory concerning this disagreement. The paper plots the different positions jurisprudents hold concerning the role of emotion in judicial decision making, regardless of where they stand on matters such the nature of law. The paper substantiates the claim that legal theorists often take an irrationalist approach to emotion but occasionally develop an alternative account that is closer to a cognitivist approach, the prime example of which is the claim that equity requires practical reasoning. Emotions are then cast as skills to be appreciated. The paper concludes that jurisprudence adopts a simplistic view of emotion. The study of the role of emotion has been hampered by the tendency to view emotions reductively. My classificatory effort warrants the conclusion that lack of emotion – understood as a skill in cognitivist terms – constitutes a problem for justice. (shrink)

What are emotions? What role do they play in our lives? Are emotions irrational responses or essential to theoretical and practical reasoning? Do they help us achieve goals? How do emotions feel? Because emotions occupy such a central place in our lives they have increasingly come under philosophical scrutiny. Today a complex body of thought exists on emotion, offering competing accounts of the interrelation between emotion, cognition, and feeling. The Philosophy of Emotion opens with a clear overview (...) of theories of emotion from Darwin and Freud to contemporary analysis in philosophy of mind and moral psychology. The book goes on to examine why emotions matter to us, exploring the connections with thought, judgment, sensation, moral value, aesthetic value, action, and the question of our responsibility for our emotions. The Philosophy of Emotion presents a comprehensive introduction to philosophical approaches to the emotions and the search to explain how and why emotions are valuable. (shrink)

The principal claim defended in this thesis is that for Aristotle arousing the emotions of others can amount to giving them proper grounds for conviction, and hence a skill in doing so is properly part of an expertise in rhetoric. We set out Aristotle’s view of rhetoric as exercised solely in the provision of proper grounds for conviction and show how he defends this controversial view by appeal to a more widely shared and plausible view of rhetoric’s role in the (...) proper functioning of the state. We then explore in more detail what normative standards must be met for something to qualify as “proper grounds for conviction”, applying this to all three of Aristotle’s kinds of “technical proofs”. In the case of emotion, meeting these standards is a matter of arousing emotions that constitute the reasonable acceptance of premises in arguments that count in favour of the speaker’s conclusion. We then seek to show that Aristotle’s view of the emotions is compatible with this role. This involves opposing the view that in Rhetoric I.1 Aristotle rejects any role for emotion-arousal in rhetoric. It also requires rejecting the view of Rhetoric II.2-11 on which, for Aristotle, the distinctive outlook involved in emotions is merely how things “appear” to the subject. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Secret History of Emotion: From Aristotle's ‘Rhetoric’ to Modern Brain ScienceMichael J. HydeThe Secret History of Emotion: From Aristotle's ‘Rhetoric’ to Modern Brain Science. Daniel M. Gross. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Pp. x + 194. $35.00, Hardcover.The twofold goal of this book is clearly stated by its author: "to reconstitute by way of critical intellectual history a deeply nuanced, rhetorical understanding of (...) class='Hi'>emotion that prevailed until the triumph of psychophysiology; second, to show by way of literary and philosophical example how this rhetorical perspective helps us read anew the emotional complex of modernity, whether early or late" (8). Gross' appreciation of the function of emotion emphasizes a phenomenological orientation that is inspired by Martin Heidegger's unpublished 1924 lecture course on Aristotle's Rhetoric. Gross recently co-edited with Ansgar Kemmann a book of original essays dedicated to a critical assessment of this lecture course (Gross and Kemmann 2006). In concluding her contribution to the book, the well-known Renaissance scholar Nancy S. Struever maintains that the course "remains, arguably, the best twentieth-century reading of Aristotle's Rhetoric" (Struever 2006: 127). Gross advances this reading with his creative and insightful assessment of his topic.This advance unfolds as Gross, abiding by phenomenology's well-known critique of the matter, takes issue with the reductive psychophysiology of emotion that Descartes first proposed and that informs latter-day sciences of the mind and the brain. Gross turns to the research program of the distinguished cognitive scientist Antonio Damasio as a way of arguing "how brain science of emotion goes awry when it blunders into social fact" (29). The reductionism of science, in other words, misses the forest for the trees. Admitting that Damasio is open to inquiries outside the boundaries of neurobiology, Gross nevertheless takes particular issue with Damasio's model for such a project: Edward O. Wilson's, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. Indeed, Wilson never gives rhetoric a nod when he acknowledges the worth of the humanities in his book.This slight, coming from Wilson, Damasio, and other scientists, fuels Gross's enthusiasm for turning to Aristotle's analysis of the pathe in book two of the Rhetoric. With Aristotle's discussion of "anger" in mind, for example, Gross emphasizes how we live in "a contoured world of emotional investments, where some people have significantly more liabilities than others" (3). [End Page 326]The point warrants elaboration: "The contours of our emotional world have been shaped by institutions such as slavery and poverty that simply afford some people greater emotional range than others, as they are shaped by publicity that has nothing to do with the inherent values of each human life and everything to do with technologies of social recognition and blindness" (4). Gross links this Aristotelian based social-psychological insight with such early modern philosophers, psychologists, and cultural critics as Thomas Hobbes, David Hume, William Perfect, and then with such contemporary intellectuals as Judith Butler. Gross' discussion of this linkage enables him to argue a key point in his overall project: the constitutive power of emotions depends not on how the social passions originate in a moral sense equally shared by all, but rather on the "uneven distribution" of these passions in our social and political lives.Gross makes much of how the rhetoric of this uneven distribution is at work in such particular cases as Aristotle's apathetic slave, Seneca's angry tyrant, Hobbes's resentful preacher, Sarah Fielding's humble hero, and Adam Smith's compassionate spectator. Gross's intellectual acumen shines as he weaves together these cases and expands on their implications for developing a rhetorical understanding of emotion. For example, in chapter three ("Virtues of Passivity in the English Civil War"), Gross offers a critical assessment of Michael Walzer's classic The Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Origins of Radical Politics in order to show how the emotional makeup of passivity, too often "relegated to a diminished femininity" (87), not only informs the virtue of humility, but also helps it serve rhetorically "the most dramatic revolutionary ends" (110). Additional extended case studies emphasize the specific emotions of apathy, pride, pity... (shrink)

In Emotions, Values & Agency, Christine Tappolet develops a sophisticated, perceptual theory of emotions and their role in wide range of issues in value theory and epistemology. In this paper, we raise three worries about Tappolet's proposal.

Scheler developed the fundamentals of his theory of emotions and values wanting to overcome the common-sensical empiricist and the critical rationalist approaches to ethics. Both refused that there are laws of essence as regards the character, deployment, evolution, and interconnection/opposition of the emotions and their relatedness to values. Scheler distinguished between mere feeling states and the intentional feelings of something (principally of values). Moreover, he claimed that a normative inner organization of intentional emotive phenomena can be discovered. Thus, a corresponding (...) phenomenological ethics of values, based on the ‘rationality’ of the emotive life itself, appears possible for the first time. After a comprehensive elucidation of Scheler’s and phenomenology’s approach to the matter, I critically reconstruct in some detail Scheler’s analysis of emotions as intentional experiences. I examine the way in which Scheler understands intentionality and the way in which he silently applied it in the case of emotive experiences. He articulates three relevant proposals. Intentional feeling functions are turned toward feeling states as their intentional objects. He also suggests that, e.g., a snow-covered mountain, whose beauty has amazed someone, is also an intentional correlate of this amazement as intentional feeling. Scheler finally maintains his fundamental thesis that values are the intentional objects of intentional emotive phenomena. However, he does not develop a clear and coherent analysis of how the three candidates for the place of the intentional object of an emotion intermingle or are otherwise interconnected. In the end, I survey some other closely related problems, regarding his understanding of reduction and of the status of values, and attempt to trace them all back to Scheler’s phenomenological realism. This examination, however, shows that we can use the latter’s analyses as preparation for a demythologized, this time, concrete phenomenological theory of emotions and values, in the direction of a future critical transcendental and persuasive phenomenological praxeology. (shrink)

Rolls demonstrates how reward/punishment systems are key mediators of cognitive appraisal, and this suggests a fundamental, causal role for emotion in thought and behaviour. However, this causal role for emotion seems to drop out of Rolls's model of consciousness, to be replaced by the old idea that emotion is essentially epiphenomenal. We suggest a modification to Rolls's model in which cognition and emotion activate each other reciprocally, both in appraisal and consciousness, thus allowing emotion to (...) maintain its causal status where it matters most. (shrink)

Some emotional representations seem to be unreliable. For instance, we are often afraid when there is no danger present. If emotions such as fear are so unreliable, what function do they have in our representational system? This is a problem for representationalist theories of emotion. I will argue that seemingly unreliable emotional representations are reliable after all. While many mental states strike an optimal balance between minimizing inaccurate representations and maximizing accurate representations, some emotional representations only aim at maximizing (...) accuracy. They detect important phenomena such as danger based on little evidence, which will lead to a lot of false alarms. When it matters, however, these emotional representations will detect danger and other important phenomena. Often, one is better scared (and wrong) than sorry. (shrink)

Osiurak and Reynaud highlight a major omission of models of cumulative technological culture. I propose an additional problematic omission: pride. By taking this emotion into account, we can address the question of why humans seek to learn, teach, and innovate – three processes essential to cumulative technological culture. By fostering achievement, prestige, and social learning, pride provides a pivotal piece of the puzzle.

Some emotional representations seem to be unreliable. For instance, we are often afraid when there is no danger present. If emotions such as fear are so unreliable, what function do they have in our representational system? This is a problem for representationalist theories of emotion. I will argue that seemingly unreliable emotional representations are reliable after all. While many mental states strike an optimal balance between minimizing inaccurate representations and maximizing accurate representations, some emotional representations only aim at maximizing (...) accuracy. They detect important phenomena such as danger based on little evidence, which will lead to a lot of false alarms. When it matters, however, these emotional representations will detect danger and other important phenomena. Often, one is better scared (and wrong) than sorry. (shrink)

Population surveys of emotion offer great potential to understand subjective wellbeing, though most do not reveal how emotions other than happiness and satisfaction impact on daily lives. This article presents a case study analysis of data from Kahneman and Krueger’s Princeton Time and Affect Survey to demonstrate that the choice of emotions or affects measured in surveys does matter in determining wellbeing in contexts such as those in which gender plays an important role. It finds that that tiredness (...) and interest comprise a large part of American women’s but not men’s unpleasant education, unpaid housework, and childcare. The article concludes by suggesting that the most appropriate method for establishing a “minimum” set of emotions is to conduct survey-based “audits” of emotions experienced in daily activities. (shrink)

In 1902, the Calabrian brigand Giuseppe Musolino was tried on several counts of murder and many crimes of lesser magnitude. While the tale of the brigand’s 1898 false conviction, imprisonment, escape and then revenge sparked a national debate about the political and cultural meaning of brigandage, the trial came to focus on Musolino’s emotional state at the time of his crimes. Was he a cold-blooded and calculating killer who manipulated southerners into believing he was a folk hero? Or was he (...) an angry, passionate and insane murderer victimized by his own feelings? Both jurists and scientists weighed in to determine his culpability. By turning a political question of banditry or brigandage into a psychological question of morbid or criminal emotions, the trial politicized the criminal character. This article examines the perspectives on emotions that shaped Musolino’s trial, and how psychiatric knowledge came to challenge legal notions of insanity and culpability. It argues that the determination of emotions as motives served to de-legitimize the rationale and political motives of the defendant, in turn politicizing his emotions and character. At the same time, the cause of Musolino’s crime and his culpability represented the failures of national unification and the ongoing tensions between the North and South of Italy. The introduction of psychiatric expertise into the criminal court pushed judgement and punishment to examine increasingly who a person was as opposed to what that person had done. The court’s definition of who a person ‘was’, was a matter of how that person felt. (shrink)

In this essay, I want to raise certain questions about the nature of emotions, about the similarities and differences in human psychology , and about the relation of psychological inquiry to ethics . The core of my thesis, which I have argued now for almost twenty-five years, is that emotions are a form of cognition, a matter of “ideas”, or in the current lingo, ideation. David Hume, rather famously, analyzed several “passions”, notably pride, in terms of “impressions” and “ideas”. (...) While he held onto the traditional view that emotions were essentially sensations , he also elaborated an account of emotions defined by a complex of idea, for example, the idea of self and of achievement in pride. Moreover, such ideas are relevant to ethics. For Hume, in particular, morals are a matter not of reason but of “sentiment”, thus bringing the understanding of emotions squarely into the arena of ethical discourse. Which opens the question whether different cultures with different ideas might have a very different conception and/or experience of pride as well as any number of different emotions. One might also ask, not very fruitfully, whether different cultures have different sensations, impressions or “affects”, but the promise of cross cultural emotions research clearly seems to lie on the side of “ideas”, in terms of different ways of seeing, different ways of conceiving, different ways of carving up and evaluating the world. (shrink)

To elucidate the distinct effects of relationship conflict and task conflict, we investigated the intensity of the two types of conflict on emotional exhaustion and work engagement. Furthermore, we examined how cooperative vs. competitive conflict-handling styles moderate the relationship between the two types of conflict and emotional exhaustion and work engagement. We also examined the role of emotion regulation as a covariate to control its effects on the study variables. Utilizing two separate 2 × 2 between-subject experimental designs, we (...) recruited 120 employees from several companies in Austria. The results suggest that higher levels of both RC and TC are positively related to emotional exhaustion and negatively to work engagement. A cooperative conflict management style moderated the effects of both RC and TC on work engagement. The results suggest decoupling RC and TC and examining the interplay between the intensity of intragroup conflict types and conflict management styles provides insights into the connection between the levels of conflict, conflict management, emotional exhaustion, and work engagement. Additionally, it supports the usage of distraction as a viable regulation strategy for managing the effects of high levels of RC on emotional exhaustion. (shrink)

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

The present essay, reposing on phenomena of derivation and semantics, will attempt to establish a more objective basis for the syntax of the impersonals. As a matter of syntax, the subject is of vital interest for the living Germanic tongues, and with these the essay begins. It will continue with a discussion of the phenomena of the Latin impersonals, and seek, by the help of living English usage, to establish upon a correct psychological basis the definition and derivation of (...) the least elusive impersonals of emotion in Sanskrit and Latin. (shrink)

The aim of the article is to illustrate concrete problems in the asymmetrical nurse–patient power relationship. It is an ethical demand that the nurse is faced with the challenges that the power in the relation is administered so that the patient's room for action is expanded and trust maintained. It is an essential message in care philosophy, but in clinical practice, success is not always achievable. A hidden and more or less unconscious restriction of the patient's room for action may (...) result in the excesses of care. Three selected aspects: dependence, trust, and power described by the Danish philosopher K.E. Løgstrup and the Norwegian nursing philosopher Kari Martinsen's care philosophy has inspired this empirically based examination of some current barriers in the asymmetrical nurse–patient relationship. On the basis of qualitative interviews with six patients and six nurses, the research thus provides an identifying and problem‐exploratory examination of some current obstacles in which the handling of trust and power reflects the excesses of care. The findings develop three themes. ‘Being a burden’ acknowledges that the balance of power will always tip to the nurse's advantage. The second theme, ‘Doing only what's absolutely necessary’, shows how a fixation with ‘technicalism’ creates a distance between people that may constrain the patient's room for action. The last theme is concerning the nurse's ability to navigate between closeness and distance is essential in avoiding ‘the excesses of care’, paternalism, and overprotectiveness. A situation in which distance takes the upper hand and care turns into paternalism. A different situation would arise if the nurse's emotions became sentimental or intimate with the result that closeness gets the upper hand. To avoid a harmful exercise of power and the excesses of care, the findings have demonstrated that a relationship‐based caring is a demand for situation‐specific sensitive attention skills. (shrink)

It is unclear in the Groundwork exactly what Kant takes to be necessary for an act to be morally good or worthy. Traditionally it has been thought that for Kant there are two conditions: it is 1) done in accord with duty, or the moral law, and 2) done for the sake of duty alone. The second condition is commonly thought to entail that an act is not morally good if the agent has a ‘supporting inclination’ or desire to do (...) what is right — be it an inclination of self-interest, or one stemming from some emotion of ‘fellow feeling,’ such as sympathy, compassion, or love. Recent interpreters, however, claim that Kant is not so strict, because for him the mere presence of a supporting inclination does not necessarily impugn the moral goodness of a dutiful act. The moral goodness of an act in accord with duty is compromised, it is claimed, only if some such supporting inclination is the actual motive for the dutiful act. Moral worth, on this view, requires that duty is the actual motive, and, so long as it is, it doesn’t matter whether there is a supporting inclination or not. Be that as it may, it is clear in the Groundwork that for Kant there is something special about the motive of duty. A common suggestion for what makes it special is that it is more reliable than other motives in producing right action. Although it is debatable whether such reliability is the most important consideration for Kant and contemporary Kantians, there are clear indications that it is for them a matter of concern — perhaps a necessary but not sufficient condition for moral worth. As a result there is a considerable literature on the topic. I think, however, that the treatment in the literature is incomplete because there is a failure to examine the relevant emotions in significant detail, and in particular to consider their complexity and the conditions of their warrant. As a result, both defenses and critiques of the motive of duty in terms of reliability are inadequate as they stand. (shrink)

“Talking Back to Frida: Houses of Emotional Mestizaje” is, in part, a historical meditation on the silencing of three women, Frida Kahlo, Maria Enríquez, a Mexican woman who was sexually assaulted in 1924, and me. Written in an innovative historical fashion that joins techniques drawn from fiction, journalism, and history, the article attempts to understand specific assaults on women’s voices by drawing readers into the historical worlds of the protagonists. “Talking Back” also seeks to respond to Hans Kellner’s incisive theoretical (...) challenge: how do historians’ person histories affect their historical choices? The article’s organization depends on my understanding of language, color, and physicality, as the emotional architecture of the Deep Southern and Mexican places tend to both enclose and partially free the protagonists. The essay begins by leading the reader into my own past in the Deep South, a past where German Jewish and Russian Jewish relatives engaged in a cultural battle over form, personal style, and will. Confronting a German Jewish world where only things—never feelings—seemed to matter, I found solace in the friendship of a black servant. That friendship, in turn, helped prompt a particularly empathic historical voice. The southern section is followed by a journey into Frida Kahlo’s Mexican world. In that world, Kahlo’s severe physical pain and solitude construct inner and outer universes. The people who populate these worlds are friends, lovers, husband, and the Mexican poor. Kahlo’s artistic renditions of these people reflect, the article suggests, both the depth of her love for them and a tendency to use them in response to her despair. Finally, “Talking Back” reconstructs the world of María Enríquez, a Michoacán peasant woman assaulted in public by her former boyfriend. Abandoned by friend, sister, and Catholic women on the way to church, Enríquez develops a voice laced with generosity, cultural insight, and a rare self-possession. (shrink)

ABSTRACTNumerous studies have found that shame increases individuals’ anger at others. However, according to recent theories about the social function of shame and anger at others, it is possible that shame controls individuals’ anger at others in specific conditions. We replicated previous findings that shame increased individuals’ anger at others’ unfairness, when others were not aware of the individual’s experience of shameful events. We also found for the first time that shame controlled or even decreased individuals’ anger at others’ unfairness, (...) when others were aware of the individual’s experience of shameful events. The results were consistent when shame was induced by either a recall paradigm or an imagination paradigm, and in either the ultimatum game or the dictator game. This suggests that shame strategically controls individuals’ anger at others to demonstrate that they are willing to benefit others, when facing the risk of social exclusion. Our findings highlight the interpersonal function of... (shrink)

Can we feel emotions about abstract objects, assuming that abstract objects exist? I argue that at least some emotions can have abstract objects as their intentional objects and discuss why this conclusion is not just trivially true. Through critical engagement with the work of Dacher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt, I devote special attention to awe, an emotion that is particularly well suited to show that some emotions can be about either concrete or abstract objects. In responding to a possible (...) objection, according to which we can only feel emotions about things that we take to matter to our flourishing, and thus cannot feel emotions about causally inefficacious abstract objects, I explore how abstract objects can be relevant to human flourishing and discuss someemotions other than awe that can be about abstract objects. I finish by explaining somereasons why my conclusion matters, including the fact that it presents a challenge to perceptual theories of emotion and causal theories of intentionality. (shrink)

In the course of a project on European policy on media and alcohol, a series of structured deliberative discussion sessions with young people (aged 13–25 years) in Sweden were arranged, where young people could communicate and exchange ideas about risks and policy issues connected to alcohol consumption and drinking, as presented in fictional media. The objective was to understand how risks and knowledge about alcohol consumption is acquired by young people and ‘uploaded’ to peers. The discussion sessions applied adapted variants (...) of the Youth Jury approach developed to facilitate the communication of ideas for guidelines and policies stemming from young people’s own perceptions about alcohol and media consumption. When ordinary ‘matters of fact’ information about drinking and alcohol fail to engage young people of today (even if it is understood), using humor, horror and shock seems a justified way in Sweden to get the desired reaction. Many of the jury participants themselves thought so. Social network has become an important way of communication also for temperance nongovernmental organizations and public initiatives, in particular with regard to nudging through emotional engagement and attempting to inspire further ‘peer-to-peer’ communication of this type, as young people ‘click-to-connect’. (shrink)

This paper draws on cognitive psychological theory to explain the role of emotion in the decision-making process of four reluctant, vulnerable witnesses to wrongdoing, who were persuaded to blow the whistle on matters of substantial public interest. It proposes a theoretical explanation for the role of emotion on whistle-blower or witness decision-making, based on the Iterative Reprocessing Model and drawing on appraisal-based theories of cognitive psychology. It concludes that the decision to speak is preceded by an intense emotional (...) episode, probably due to changes in the witnesses’ coping and legitimacy appraisal structures. These changes are most likely a result of interaction with journalists and others during the decision-making process. (shrink)

An important philosophical issue in the study of addiction is what difference the fact that a person is addicted makes to attributions of autonomy (and responsibility) to their drug-oriented behavior. In spite of accumulating evidence suggesting the role of emotional dysregulation in understanding addiction, it has received surprisingly little attention in the debate about this issue. I claim that, as a result, an important aspect of the autonomy impairment of many addicted individuals has been largely overlooked. A widely shared assumption (...) in the philosophical literature is that for addiction to impair a person’s autonomy it has to make them (in some sense) take drugs against their will. So-called “willing addicts” are therefore usually seen as exempted from the autonomy impairment believed to characterize “unwilling addicts”, the latter being those who ‘truly want’ to stop using drugs but find their attempts repeatedly derailed by failures of self-control. In this article, I argue that the association between addiction and emotional dysregulation shows why this assumption is false. Emotional dysregulation is not only consistent with the possibility that many addicts take drugs ‘willingly’, it supports the hypothesis that they use drugs because they truly want to. The article proposes an explanation for why emotional dysregulation should nevertheless be seen as an aspect of their loss of control and an important reason why they have impaired autonomy. I end by exploring some implications of this account for addict’s decision-making capacity when they are prescribed the drugs to which they are addicted. -/- . (shrink)

Research on emotion perception in schizophrenia has focused primarily on the perception of static faces displaying different emotion signals or expressions. However, perception of emotion in daily life relies on much more than just the face. In this article, we review the role of context in emotion perception among people with and without schizophrenia. We argue that not only is context central to the perception of emotion, it in fact helps to construct the perception. Implications (...) for future research on emotion perception are discussed. (shrink)

In a remarkable series of papers, Haugeland lays out what is both a striking interpretation of Heidegger and a compelling account of objectivity and truth. Central to his account is a notion of existential commitment: a commitment to insist that one's understanding of the world succeeds in making sense of the phenomena and so potentially to change or give up on that understanding in the face of apparently impossible phenomena. Although Haugeland never gives a clear account of existential commitment, he (...) claims that it is fundamentally an individual matter. This, I argue, is a mistake that fails to make sense of the public, shared nature of the objective world. Instead, I offer an account of existential commitment as one we undertake *jointly*, and I analyze it (and the corresponding responsibility) in terms of interpersonal rational patterns of reactive attitudes: emotions like resentment, gratitude, indignation, approbation, guilt, and trust. The upshot is that our existential commitment is not only to a shared, objective world but also to each other such that our ability individually to *take* responsibility for our understanding of the world is intelligible only in terms of others' being able to *hold* us responsible for it. (shrink)

Why is it that we respond emotionally to plays, movies, and novels and feel moved by characters and situations that we know do not exist? This question, which constitutes the kernel of the debate on »the paradox of fiction«, speaks to the perennial themes of philosophy, and remains of interest to this day. But does this question entail a paradox? A significant group of analytic philosophers have indeed thought so. Since the publication of Colin Radford's celebrated paper »How Can We (...) Be Moved by the Fate of Anna Karenina?« (1975), the number of proposals to solve, explain, reformulate, dismiss or even revitalize this apparent paradox has continued to proliferate. In line with recent developments in the philosophy of emotion, in this paper I will argue against the sustainability of the paradox, claiming that the only reasonable way to continue our discussions about it consists in using it as a heuristic tool to shed light on problems regarding our involvement with fiction. Against this background, I will then focus on one of the problems related to how our emotional responses to fiction contribute to our appreciation of it. The paper is divided into three main sections. The first section shows the parallel evolution of the paradox of fiction and the analytic philosophy of emotion. Here I claim that, although the paradox is epistemically flawed, since one of its premises is rooted in a limited view on the emotions typical of early cognitiv-ism, the discussions it provokes are still epistemically useful. As Robert Stecker (2011, 295), among others, has pointed out, the paradox was formulated during the heyday of cognitive theories of the emotions in which emotion necessarily requires belief. Today, however, only few authors would endorse this premise. If emotion does not always require belief (as the majority of authors in the contemporary debate admit), let alone belief about the existence of the object towards which it is directed, then there is no reason to speak of a paradox. From this first conclusion, however, it does not follow that the paradox is completely without use from the epistemic point of view. A glimpse at the topics touched on during the discussions about how to solve, reformulate, or negate the paradox reveals their value in shedding light on the interrelation between emotion and fiction. The second section elaborates a phenomenologically inspired cognitive account of the emotions by focusing on their cognitive bases, their influence on Emotion in the Appreciation of Fiction 205 cognitions, and their cognitive function. In this model, emotions are responsible for indicating values, for showing what matters to us, and for being appropriate to their objects. My claim is that this view applies not only to reality, but also to our involvement with fiction. In the final section I draw on this account to focus on one kind of appreciation of fiction which necessarily requires our emotional involvement. Following an idea put forward by Susan Feagin (1996, 1), I employ the concept of »appre-ciation« to refer to a set of abilities exercised with the aim of extracting value from the work. There is a long tradition in aesthetics that condemns any focus on the emotions in the appreciation of art and fiction, and defends the necessity of aesthetic appreciation without emotional influence. To refer to this negative attitude towards the emotions, I will borrow an expression coined by Susan Feagin (2013, 636), who refers to »the intellectualized view of appreciation«. Against this widespread view, I will argue that some aspects of the fiction can only be appreciated with the help of our emotions. The cognitive approach developed in the previous section can explain how the emotions might in fact play a significant role in the appreciation of art and fiction. Attention will be paid to three activities involved in appreciation, for all of which emotion is crucial: processing relevant information about the fictional world, understanding aspects of it, and becoming acquainted with the values it presents. My aim here is to argue that there are particular aspects of the fictional world that can only be appreciated if recipients have the appropriate emotions. (shrink)

The Black Lives Matter movement calls attention to the injustice involved in police killings of blacks and implicitly proposes that a particular emotional attitude--caring about the life of a human being not known personally to oneself--should have been, but was not, present in the police officers involves in these killings. I examine five prominent such killings, but especially Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Tamir Rice [the article was written before the killing of George Floyd] for the character of the (...) moral failing involved in them, focusing especially on the police failure to aid once the subjects were subdued after being shot or taken down. The failure to care about life is not fully captured by three alternative, though complementary, moral failings--stereotyping, implicit bias, and failing to recognize the rights of black people. I then rebut four objections proposed by a police commissioner to my 'black lives matter' moral framework--(1) that shifting from an aggressive mindset toward someone perceived as a potential threat to a caring one is not possible; (2) that we should be concerned about behavior, not emotions; (3) that police officers kill white people also; and (4) that black police officers are sometimes perpetrators of the killings. (shrink)