Paul E. Griffiths argues that most research on the emotions has been as misguided as Aristotelian efforts to study "superlunary objects" - objects...

In this urbane and witty book, Ronald de Sousa disputes the widespread notion that reason and emotion are natural antagonists.

Linking the process of rational decision making to emotions, an award-winning scientist who has done extensive research with brain-damaged patients notes the dependence of thought processes on feelings and the body's survival-oriented regulators. 50,000 first printing.

The distinction between cognitive and perceptual theories of emotion is entrenched in the literature on emotion and is openly used by individual emotion theorists when classifying their own theories and those of others. In this paper, I argue that the distinction between cognitive and perceptual theories of emotion is more pernicious than it is helpful, while at the same time insisting that there are nonetheless important perceptual and cognitive factors in emotion that need to be distinguished. A general representational metatheoretical (...) framework for reconciling cognitive and perceptual theories is proposed. This is the Representational Theory of Emotion (RTE). A detailed case study of Antonio Damasio's important new contribution to emotion theory is presented in defense of the RTE. The paper is intended for readers interested in the foundations of emotion theory and cognitive science. (shrink)

Building on nearly eighty years of scientific work, The Handbook of Emotional Intelligence is the first definitive resource that brings together a stellar panel of academics, researchers, and practitioners, in the field. Sweeping in scope, the text presents information on the most important conceptual models, reviews and evaluates the most valid and reliable methods for assessing emotional intelligence, and offers specific guidelines for applying the principles of Emotional Intelligence in a variety of settings.

How should we understand the emotional rationality? This first part will explore two models of cognition and analogy strategies, test their intuition about the emotional desire. I distinguish between subjective and objective desire, then presents with a feeling from the "paradigm of drama" export semantics, here our emotional repertoire is acquired all the learned, and our emotions in the form of an object is fixed. It is pretty well in line with the general principles of rationality, especially the lowest reasonable (...) principles. Turned to the second part of this side of reasonable. I will inquire how emotional beliefs, desires, and behaviors contribute to the rationality. I will present a very general biological hypothesis: emotions by controlling highlights the characteristics of perception and reasoning, so that we remove the difficulties due in particular to lead to paralysis; they are being simulated by a simplified perception of information, thus limiting our practice and cognitive choice. How are we to understand emotional or axiological rationality? I pursue analogies with both the cognitive and the strategic models, testing them against intuitions about emotional desires. We distinguish two different classes of desires, the subjective and the objective, and propose that emotions have a semantics that derives from "paradigmatic scenarios", in terms of which our emotional repertoire is learned and the formal objects of our emotions fixed. This fits in well with emerging facts about how our emotional capacities develop, and it can also be squared with the general principles of rationality, particularly minimal rationality. In the second part, I return to the perspective of rationality. I ask how emotions contribute to the rationality of beliefs, desires, and behavior. I proffer a very general biological hypothesis: Emotions spare us the paralysis potentially induced by a particular predicament by controlling the salience of features of perception and reasoning; they temporarily mimic the informational encapsulation of perception and so circumscribe our practical and cognitive options. (shrink)

Although emotional intelligence (EQ) training seems to fall right into line with virtue ethics and the reigning cognitive theories of emotion, there is a reason many philosophers are skeptical of such training. Emotional intelligence manuals tend to underplay considerations which philosophers see as essential preludes to theories of emotional cultivation: considering our responsibility for emotions, connecting this responsibility with moral evaluation, and explaining moral-justification of particular emotions in particular contexts. This essay fills in the gap between EQ-theorists and philosophers by (...) outlining the conditions which must be satisfied for an emotion to be morally justified, and hence a proper object of EQ-training. A necessary step in filling in this gap is to show how moral evaluation of the emotions indeed requires responsibility, in spite of recent attacks on this assumption. If successful, this defended position provides a prolegomena to the ideal of emotional intelligence. (shrink)

Although emotional intelligence training seems to fall right into line with virtue ethics and the reigning cognitive theories of emotion, there is a reason many philosophers are skeptical of such training. Emotional intelligence manuals tend to underplay considerations which philosophers see as essential preludes to theories of emotional cultivation: considering our responsibility for emotions, connecting this responsibility with moral evaluation, and explaining moral-justification of particular emotions in particular contexts. This essay fills in the gap between EQ-theorists and philosophers by outlining (...) the conditions which must be satisfied for an emotion to be morally justified, and hence a proper object of EQ-training. A necessary step in filling in this gap is to show how moral evaluation of the emotions indeed requires responsibility, in spite of recent attacks on this assumption. If successful, this defended position provides a prolegomena to the ideal of emotional intelligence. (shrink)

In this new and original book, Claire Armon-Jones examines the concept of affect and various philosophical positions which attempt to define and characterize it: the standard view, the neo-cognitivist view, and the objectual thesis. She contends that these views radically distort our understanding of affect by disregarding modes of affect which fail to conform to the accounts they each employ. Against the standard and neo-cognitivist views she argues that the notions they use to characterize affect are neither necessary nor sufficient; (...) and against the objectual thesis she further argues that affective states exhibit degrees of independence from the concept of an object. She develops a new theory of the varieties of affect that explains their cognitive nature, their felt aspect, their special logic and the relationship between their objectless and object-directed forms. Armon-Jones concludes by suggesting that her arguments call into question certain assumptions about the rationality and moral status of affect and require a revision of the conception of the good in affect. (shrink)

From some perspectives, it seems obvious that emotions and feelings must be both reasonable and morally significant: from others, it may seem as obvious that they cannot be. This paper seeks to advance discussion of ethical implications of the currently contested issue of the relationship of reason to feeling and emotion via reflection upon various examples of affectively charged moral dilemma. This discussion also proceeds by way of critical consideration of recent empirical enquiry into these issues in the literature of (...) so-called emotional intelligence. In this regard, despite ambiguities in their accounts of the relationship of reason to emotion, advocates of emotional intelligence generally incline to therapeutic conceptions of emotional health which are not inconsistent with currently fashionable cognitivist accounts of feeling and emotion. All the same, it is arguable that therapeutic or other strategies which overplay the possibility of cognitive or other resolution of emotional conflict are prey to certain difficulties. First, they underemphasise those passive but identity-constitutive aspects of affect which are not obviously rationally accountable. Secondly, they insufficiently recognise the extent to which emotional conflicts can be significantly implicated in moral diversity. In view of either or both of these points, they may fail to appreciate the moral inappropriateness of attempts to resolve certain forms of emotional conflict or tension. (shrink)