I give grounds for taking seriously the possibility that some of the emotions we ascribe do not exist. I build on the premise that the experience of imagining an emotion resembles that of having one. First a person imagines having an emotion. This is much like an emotion, so the person takes herself to be having the emotion that she imagines, and acts or expects a disposition to act accordingly. The view sketched here contrasts possibly impossible emotions such (...) as disembodied passion, blind rage, and Quixotic courage with real ones such as affection, anger, and bravery. Both these real emotions and the states of imagining impossible ones are things that really happen to us. (shrink)

Whether intentional suppression of an unpleasant or unwanted memory reduces the ability to recall that memory subsequently is a contested issue in contemporary memory research. Building on findings that similar processes are recruited when individuals remember the past and imagine the future, we measured the effects of thought suppression on memory for imagined future scenarios. Thought suppression reduced the ability to recall emotionally negative scenarios, but not those that were emotionally positive. This finding suggests that intentionally avoiding thoughts about emotionally (...) negative episodes may inhibit representations of those memories, progressively reducing their availability to recall. (shrink)

Contemporary accounts on fictional emotions, i.e., emotions experienced towards objects we know to be fictional, are mainly concerned with explaining their rationality or lack thereof. In this context dominated by an interest in the role of belief, questions regarding their phenomenal quality have received far less attention: it is often assumed that they feel “similar” to emotions that target real objects. Against this background, this paper focuses on the possible specificities of fictional emotions’ qualitative feel. It (...) starts by presenting what I call the “phenomenological question” about the qualitative feel of fictional emotions (section 1) and by showing that this is irreducible to questions about their cognitive, intentional, evaluative, and embodied nature (section 2). Drawing on some insights from early phenomenologists, the next two sections elaborate criteria to distinguish between real and sham emotions on the one side (section 3) and between genuine and non-genuine emotions on the other (section 4). Finally, I apply this orthogonal distinction to the particular case of fictional emotions (section 5). The paper argues that fictional emotions are neither sham emotions nor quasi-emotions, but full-fledged emotional experiences, despite them displaying the distinctive phenomenology of emotions experienced as non-genuine. In the particular case of fictional emotions, they are non-genuine because our psychology is in fact in a state dominated by aesthetic enjoyment. (shrink)

Can we ever have politics without the noble lie? Can we have a collective political identity that does not exclude or define ‘us’ as ‘not them’? In the Ethics, Spinoza argues that individual human emotions and imagination shape the social world. This world, he argues, can in turn be shaped by political institutions to be more or less hopeful, more or less rational, or more or less angry and indignant. In his political works, Spinoza offered suggestions for how to (...) shape a political imaginary and create collective identities that are more guided by hope than by fear or anger. In this talk, using the framework of Spinoza's theory of emotions, I will investigate how Barack Obama's promise of 'hope' was translated into Donald Trump's rhetoric of hate. Such a transition, from hope to fear is one that would be unsurprising to Spinoza. Spinoza worried about the political and personal effectiveness of hope. He argued that hope can easily be turned into what he called ‘indignatio’ or indignation – an emotion that he believed eroded trust in political institutions and was the limit of state power. Spinoza warned about the danger of governance that relies upon the emotions of anger and hatred. In the Ethics, Spinoza painstakingly reconstructs the way in which individual emotions, ideas and motivations are shaped within social worlds. He argued that emotions based on pain, including hatred and indignation, diminish the power of the individuals who experience them and the political collective in which those individuals reside. Anger, fear and indignation weaken the state. In the second section of the paper, I will set out how the Trump administration’s reliance on the motivational forces of hate and anger risk what Spinoza called indignation. Trump's reliance on exclusionary conceptions of American identity have fanned the flames of racial, ethnic and religious hatred to motivate his base have had widespread social and political effects. I will offer arguments and examples which bear out the Spinozan worries about the effects of anger and indignation on the political and the social. Spinoza’s political works were written not just to explain the worries about an angry and indignant multitude, but also to show how to turn political indignation and anger into a chastened, and perhaps more rational, hope. Finally, I will propose that we may derive from Spinoza participatory, democratic institutions and collective identities that can overcome this indignation. (shrink)

The paper argues that thumos, which is never explicitly mentioned as a part of the soul in the Symposium, plays a major role in the dialogue. In light of the Republic’s characterization of thumos as the source of emotions such as of love of honor, love of victory, admiration for courage, shame, anger, and the propensity to become indignant at real or imaginary wrongs, the paper argues that both Phaedrus’ speech and the speech of Alcibiades are shaped by (...) thumoeidetic motivations. While Phaedrus’ stress on shame, honor, glory and courage aims at proving that Eros inspires virtue, the speech of Alcibiades shows that thumoeidetic motivations are not sufficient to shape a noble character. The dependence on recognition, the ambiguous role played by shame, and the tension between what is admirable and what just happens to be admired are implicit shortcomings in Phaedrus’ speech. When the same themes come back in Alcibiades’ speech they work as negative counterpoints to Phaedrus’ main arguments. Alcibiades’ obsession with power and victory dominates his ambivalent encomium of Socrates. The speech does not reveal who Socrates really is. Rather, it shows how the philosophical life can be misunderstood when reason’s best ally takes over in the souls of men. (shrink)

Based on the analysis of the accumulated experimental data and on the informational concepts of the Informational Model of Consciousness (IMC), in this article is presented an informational modeling of the operability of the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC). Examination of the experimental results obtained with the modern non-destructive, high spatial resolution investigation tools to study the functional characteristics of the PCC and associate metabolic processes, shows mainly that this is involved in the large scale default mode network (DMN), composed primarily (...) by PCC, medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), and the inferior parietal lobe (IPL), displaying an increased activity under passive task conditions (i.e. negative mode). This operability mode is in an opposing balance with attention and task performances mode, acting thus as a disruption process. One of the main conclusions is that the PCC cognitive orientation is primarily focused on the self person or on the “self” (I) projected from others, in “daydreaming” or “mind-wandering" wakeful rest, involved in present or future virtual projects. In spite of these advances, the particular role and specific functions of PCC are not yet fully understood, PCC remaining an enigmatic/contradictory structure of the brain, not included up to date in any brain model, so the PCC informational modeling presented here in terms of IMC covers this lack. IMC assigns to the brain the fundamental role of informational processor, composed by various operating structures according to specific objectives synthetically expressed by seven main cognitive centers of “self" (I) as: Iknow (memory), Iwant (decision), Ilove (emotions), Iam (self-status), Icreate (genetic transmission), Icreated (genetic inheritance), Ibelive (info-selection), assuring the info-connectivity with the body and external/internal world, the adaptability (learning process) and survival. It is deduced in this way that the specific behavior of PCC according to its intermediary architectural position between the vital central region of the brain, connecting the mind with the external/internal reality, is that of a moderator/integrator hub/informational YES/NO switcher from the external/awake captured focusing information to the internal accumulated experience of life, used as a valid reference. Therefore, the specific operability of PCC in terms of cognitive centers is that of an informational switcher, mainly operating with Iknow/Iwant to explore the self-status reflected in Iam, within day-dreaming/imaginary virtual sceneries. (shrink)

“Myth” comprises the first chapter of the book, The Logic of the Imagination, by Miki Kiyoshi. In this chapter Miki analyzes the significance of myth (shinwa) as possessing a certain reality despite being “fictions.” He begins by broadening the meaning of the imagination to argue for a logic of the imagination that involves expressive action or poiesis (production) in general, of which myth is one important product. The imagination gathers in myth material from the environing world lived by the social (...) collectivity. Its formation of images (Bilder) expresses the pathos of a people vis-à-vis their environment, but myth also contains elements of logos in the form of intellectual representations and figures. And their combination becomes expressed externally by stimulating and guiding action. In this way Miki argues that myths contain both emotive and kinetic elements, which by moving people to action, are capable of making history. Thus rooted in the symbiosis between individual and social and between society and environment, myth possesses a “historical creativity.” And he also argues that myths can be present with a sense of reality at any epoch in history, even today, wherever and whenever their primeval power is felt to function, “drawing out” a new reality, a new world, out of the natural world. (shrink)

A collaborative article by the Editorial Collective of Social Imaginaries. Investigations into social imaginaries have burgeoned in recent years. From ‘the capitalist imaginary’ to the ‘democratic imaginary’, from the ‘ecological imaginary’ to ‘the global imaginary’ – and beyond – the social imaginaries field has expanded across disciplines and beyond the academy. The recent debates on social imaginaries and potential new imaginaries reveal a recognisable field and paradigm-in-the-making. We argue that Castoriadis, Ricoeur, and Taylor have articulated the (...) most important theoretical frameworks for understanding social imaginaries, although the field as a whole remains heterogeneous. We further argue that the notion of social imaginaries draws on the modern understanding of the imagination as authentically creative. We contend that an elaboration of social imaginaries involves a significant, qualitative shift in the understanding of societies as collectively and politically-instituted formations that are irreducible to inter-subjectivity or systemic logics. After marking out the contours of the field and recounting a philosophical history of the imagination, the essay turns to debates on social imaginaries in more concrete contexts, specifically political-economic imaginaries, the ecological imaginary, multiple modernities and their inter-civilisational encounters. The social imaginaries field imparts powerful messages for the human sciences and wider publics. In particular, social imaginaries hold significant implications for ontological, phenomenological and philosophical anthropological questions; for the cultural, social, and political horizons of contemporary worlds; and for ecological and economic phenomena. The essay concludes with the argument that social imaginaries as a paradigm-in-the-making offers valuable means by which movements towards social change can be elucidated as well providing an open horizon for the critiques of existing social practices. (shrink)

The paper focuses on the issue of truth-telling in non-fictional narratives of (in)justice. Based on examples of rape narratives, domestic abuse narratives, human trafficking narratives and asylum seeker narratives, I examine the various difficulties in telling the truth in such stories, particularly those related to various culturally conditioned ideas of how the world works, which at the same time form the basis of, among other things, legal discourse and officials’ decision-making processes. I will also demonstrate that such culturally conditioned ideas, (...) which are the basis of official discourse, can be considered within the category of both the social imaginary of the just world in the Taylorian sense of the term, and the social master narrative, which in the case of stories of (in)justice is often based on the just world hypothesis. (shrink)

Emotion detection and management have emerged as pivotal areas in humancomputer interaction, offering potential applications in healthcare, entertainment, and customer service. This study explores the use of deep learning (DL) models to enhance emotion recognition accuracy and enable effective emotion regulation mechanisms. By leveraging large datasets of facial expressions, voice tones, and physiological signals, we train deep neural networks to recognize a wide array of emotions with high precision. The proposed system integrates emotion recognition with adaptive management strategies that (...) provide personalized feedback and interventions based on detected emotional states. Our approach surpasses traditional machine learning methods, demonstrating superior performance in real-time applications. (shrink)

It is controversial whether virtual reality should be considered fictional or real. Virtual fictionalists claim that objects and events within virtual reality are merely fictional: they are imagined and do not exist. Virtual realists argue that virtual objects and events really exist. This metaphysical debate might appear important for some of the practical questions that arise regarding how to morally evaluate and legally regulate virtual reality. For instance, one advantage claimed of virtual realism is that only by taking virtual objects (...) and events to be real can we explain our strong emotional reactions to certain virtual actions, as well as their potential immorality. This paper argues that emotional reactions towards, and wrongs within, virtual reality are consistent with its being merely fictional. The emotional and ethical judgments we wish to make regarding virtual reality do not provide any grounds for preferring virtual realism. (shrink)

Until recently, philosophers and psychologists conceived of emotions as brain- and body-bound affairs. But researchers have started to challenge this internalist and individualist orthodoxy. A rapidly growing body of work suggests that some emotions incorporate external resources and thus extend beyond the neurophysiological confines of organisms; some even argue that emotions can be socially extended and shared by multiple agents. Call this the extended emotions thesis. In this article, we consider different ways of understanding ExE in (...) philosophy, psychology, and the cognitive sciences. First, we outline the background of the debate and discuss different argumentative strategies for ExE. In particular, we distinguish ExE from cognate but more moderate claims about the embodied and situated nature of cognition and emotion. We then dwell upon two dimensions of ExE: emotions extended by material culture and by the social factors. We conclude by defending ExE against some objections and point to desiderata for future research. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider the potential implications of the observation that epistemic judgment seems to be less emotional than moral judgment. I argue that regardless of whether emotions are necessary for blame, blaming emotions do play an important epistemic role in the moral domain. They allow us to grasp propositions about moral blameworthiness and thereby to appreciate their significance in a special way. Further, I argue that if we generally lack blaming emotions in the epistemic domain, (...) then we are unable to grasp propositions about epistemic blameworthiness. As a result, regardless of one’s theory of epistemic blame, there emerges a tension between the claim that we are epistemically blameworthy for our epistemic failings and the claim that we do not feel epistemic blaming emotions. (shrink)

In this paper, we draw on developmental findings to provide a nuanced understanding of background emotions, particularly those in depression. We demonstrate how they reflect our basic proximity (feeling of interpersonal connectedness) to others and defend both a phenomenological and a functional claim. First, we substantiate a conjecture by Fonagy & Target (International Journal of Psychoanalysis 88(4):917–937, 2007) that an important phenomenological aspect of depression is the experiential recreation of the infantile loss of proximity to significant others. Second, we (...) argue that proximity has a particular cognitive function that allows individuals to morph into a cohesive dyadic system able to carry out distributed emotion regulation. We show that elevated levels of psychological suffering connected to depressive background emotions may be explained not only in terms of a psychological loss, but also as the felt inability to enter into dyadic regulatory relations with others—an experiential constraint that decreases the individual’s ability to adapt to demanding situations. (shrink)

Emotions often misfire. We sometimes fear innocuous things, such as spiders or mice, and we do so even if we firmly believe that they are innocuous. This is true of all of us, and not only of phobics, who can be considered to suffer from extreme manifestations of a common tendency. We also feel too little or even sometimes no fear at all with respect to very fearsome things, and we do so even if we believe that they are (...) fearsome. Indeed, instead of shunning fearsome things, we might be attracted to them. Emotions that seem more thought-involving, such as shame, guilt or jealousy, can also misfire. You can be ashamed of your big ears even though we can agree that there is nothing shameful in having big ears, and even though you judge that having big ears does not warrant shame. And of course, it is also possible to experience too little or even no shame at all with respect to something that is really shameful. Many of these cases involve a conflict between one’s emotion and one’s evaluative judgement. Emotions that are thus conflicting with judgement can be called ‘recalcitrant emotions’. The question I am interested in is whether or not recalcitrant emotions amount to emotional illusions, that is, whether or not these cases are sufficiently similar to perceptual illusions to justify the claim that they fall under the same general heading. The answer to this depends on what emotions are. For instance, the view that emotions are evaluative judgments makes it difficult to make room for the claim that emotional errors are perceptual illusions. Fearing an innocuous spider would simply amount to making the error of judging that the spider is fearsome while it is in fact innocuous. This might involve an illusion of some sort, but it certainly does not amount to anything like a perceptual illusion. In this chapter, I argue that recalcitrant emotions are a kind of perceptual illusion.. (shrink)

To Wittgenstein’s late thought is often attributed a form of cultural or epistemic relativism, according to which truths are relative to the criteria of justification valid within a linguistic community. This paper aims to show that this attribution lies largely on a misinterpretation of Wittgenstein’s ideas on the relation between language-games and forms of life. In the first section are presented the grounds for some relativist readings of Wittgenstein’s thought. In the second section, through the analysis of some passages of (...) the Tractatus and On Certainty, it is argued that, although Wittgenstein insisted on the “ungroundedness” of our language-games, he did not mean that any epistemic attitude, as long as it is endorsed by a community, is as valid as any other one. Rather, it is possible to show that some games better apply to our world and appear thus as more objective, so that there can be a difference in the validity of world-picures, contrary to what the epistemic relativist holds. In the third and final section, it is claimed that the different communities that appear in Wittgenstein’s examples are not actual or existing alternative possibilities, but an imaginary anthropology that Wittgenstein uses to enlighten how we, humans, work with our language-games. So, it is not possible to attribute him the idea that different games underly different forms of life, as some relativist authors do. It is concluded that Wittgenstein was not likely to be a cultural relativist. (shrink)

Our senses provide us with information about the world, but what exactly do they tell us? I argue that in order to optimally respond to sensory stimulations, an agent’s doxastic space may have an extra, “imaginary” dimension of possibility; perceptual experiences confer certainty on propositions in this dimension. To some extent, the resulting picture vindicates the old-fashioned empiricist idea that all empirical knowledge is based on a solid foundation of sense-datum propositions, but it avoids most of the problems traditionally (...) associated with that idea. The proposal might also explain why experiences appear to have a non-physical phenomenal character, even if the world is entirely physical. (shrink)

It may seem that when you have an emotional response to a perceived object or event that makes it seem to you that the perceived source of the emotion possesses some evaluative property, then you thereby have prima facie, immediate justification for believing that the object or event possesses the evaluative property. Call this view ‘dogmatism about emotional justification’. We defend a view of the structure of emotional awareness according to which the objects of emotional awareness are derived from other (...) experiences such as bodily sensation, inner awareness, sensory perception, memory, and imagination. On this basis, we argue that dogmatism about emotional justification is an untenable position, regardless of whether the special feature of an immediate justifier that makes it an immediate justifier is its presentational phenomenology or its evidence insensitivity. (shrink)

Recent thinking within philosophy of mind about the ways cognition can extend has yet to be integrated with philosophical theories of emotion, which give cognition a central role. We carve out new ground at the intersection of these areas and, in doing so, defend what we call the extended emotion thesis: the claim that some emotions can extend beyond skin and skull to parts of the external world.

According to the perceptual theory of emotions, emotions are perceptions of evaluative properties. The account has recently faced a barrage of criticism recently by critics who point out varies disanalogies between emotion and paradigmatic perceptual experiences. What many theorists fail to note however, is that many of the disanalogies that have been raised to exclude emotions from being perceptual states that represent evaluative properties have also been used to exclude high-level properties from appearing in the content of (...) perception. This suggests that emotions are perceptions of high level properties and perceptual theorists can marshal the arguments used by proponents of high-level perception to defend the perceptual theory. This paper therefore defends an account of emotion as high-level perception. (shrink)

We commonly appeal to emotions to explain human behaviour: we seek comfort out of grief, we threaten someone in anger and we hide in fear. According to the standard Humean analysis, intentional action is always explained with reference to a belief-desire pair. According to recent consensus, however, emotions have independent motivating force apart from beliefs and desires, and supplant them when explaining emotional action. In this paper I provide a systematic framework for thinking about the motivational structure of (...) emotion and show how it is consistent with the Humean analysis. On this picture, emotions are not reducible to beliefs and desires, instead their primary motivational force comes from their role as modulators of desires—they control the strength of our occurrent desires. Emotions therefore motivate actions through the belief-desire system instead of overriding it. (shrink)

Emotion terms such as “sad”, “happy” and “joyful” apply to a wide range of entities. We use them to refer to mental states of sentient beings, and also to describe features of non-mental things such as comportment, nature, events, artworks and so on. Drawing on the literature on polysemy, this paper provides an in-depth analysis of emotion descriptions. It argues that emotion terms are polysemous and distinguishes seven related senses. In addition, the paper applies the analysis to shed light on (...) a long-standing debate in philosophy of music concerning emotion descriptions of music. (shrink)

Olympe de Gouges is known primarily for La Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne (1791), which is her response to the Declaration of the Rights of Man, adopted in 1789 by the National Assembly. Carol Sherman's book, Reading Olympe de Gouges, turns our attention away from normative principles of La Déclaration and directs it toward the ways that de Gouges's other texts challenge the normativity of the dominant social imaginaries of the time. Sherman’s book is required (...) reading for anyone wanting to participate in the debates about whether de Gouges deserves a place the Panthéon, but also in broader discussions about the history of feminism and the French Revolution. (shrink)

The overreliance on verbal models and theories in psychology has been criticized for hindering the development of reliable research programs (Harris, 1976; Yarkoni, 2020). We demonstrate how the conceptual space framework can be used to formalize verbal theories and improve their precision and testability. In the framework, scientific concepts are represented by means of geometric objects. As a case study, we present a formalization of an existing three-dimensional theory of emotion which was developed with a spatial metaphor in mind. Wundt (...) posits that the range of human emotion can be represented along three axes of basic emotions (pleasure/displeasure, excitement/inhibition, tension/relaxation), just as color vision can be represented using three basic colors. We use dimensions to represent basic emotions, points to represent emotional states, and regions to represent broader emotional concepts. We then compare our formalization to an existing structuralist formalization of Wundt’s theory. Further, we discuss the empirical predictions that our formalization generates, such as comparisons of similarity and intensity. We conclude by demonstrating how the tools developed in the conceptual space framework can be used to formulate a theory of emotion based on empirical observation. (shrink)

Those arguing for the existence of non-propositional content appeal to emotions for support, although there has been little engagement in those debates with developments in contemporary theory of emotion, specifically in connection with the kind of mental states that emotional experiences are. Relatedly, within emotion theory, one finds claims that emotional experiences per se have non-propositional content without detailed argument. This paper argues that the content of emotional experience is propositional in a weak sense, associated with aspectual experience and (...) correctness conditions. Furthermore, it provides an interpretation of purely-objectual emotional experiences which satisfies this weak view of propositional content. (shrink)

Are feelings an essential part or aspect of emotion? Cases of unconscious emotion suggest that this is not the case. However, it has been claimed that unconscious emotions are better understood as either (a) emotions that are phenomenally conscious but not reflectively conscious, or (b) dispositions to have emotions rather than emotions proper. Here, I argue that these ways of accounting for unconscious emotions are inadequate, and propose a view of emotions as non-phenomenal attitudes (...) that regard their contents as relevant to one's motivations. (shrink)

Theories of emotional justification investigate the conditions under which emotions are epistemically justified or unjustified. I make three contributions to this research program. First, I show that we can generalize some familiar epistemological concepts and distinctions to emotional experiences. Second, I use these concepts and distinctions to display the limits of the ‘simple view’ of emotional justification. On this approach, the justification of emotions stems only from the contents of the mental states they are based on, also known (...) as their cognitive bases. The simple view faces the ‘gap problem’: If cognitive bases and emotions (re)present their objects and properties in different ways, then cognitive bases are not sufficient to justify emotions. Third, I offer a novel solution to the gap problem based on emotional dispositions. This solution (1) draws a line between the justification of basic and non-basic emotions, (2) preserves a broadly cognitivist view of emotions, (3) avoids a form of value skepticism that threatens inferentialist views of emotional justification, and (4) sheds new light on the structure of our epistemic access to evaluative properties. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend the view that our knowledge of our desires is inferential and based on the consciousness we have of our emotions, and on our experiences of pain and pleasure.

This book analyzes the uses of emotive language and redefinitions from pragmatic, dialectical, epistemic and rhetorical perspectives, investigating the relationship between emotions, persuasion and meaning, and focusing on the implicit dimension of the use of a word and its dialectical effects. It offers a method for evaluating the persuasive and manipulative uses of emotive language in ordinary and political discourse. Through the analysis of political speeches and legal arguments, the book offers a systematic study of emotive language in argumentation, (...) rhetoric, communication, political science and public speaking. (shrink)

In both psychology and philosophy, cognitive theories of emotion have met with increasing opposition in recent years. However, this apparent controversy is not so much a gridlock between antithetical stances as a critical debate in which each side is being forced to qualify its position in order to accommodate the other side of the story. Here, I attempt to sort out some of the disagreements between cognitivism and its rivals, adjudicating some disputes while showing that others are merely superficial. Looking (...) at evidence from neuroscience and social psychology, as well as thought experiments and theoretical arguments, I conclude that it is necessary to acknowledge both that emotions have intentional content and that they involve somatic agitation. I also point out some of the more promising directions for future research in this area. (shrink)

Efforts to bridge emotion theory with neurobiology can be facilitated by dynamic systems (DS) modeling. DS principles stipulate higher-order wholes emerging from lower-order constituents through bidirectional causal processes cognition relations. I then present a psychological model based on this reconceptualization, identifying trigger, self-amplification, and self-stabilization phases of emotion-appraisal states, leading to consolidating traits. The article goes on to describe neural structures and functions involved in appraisal and emotion, as well as DS mechanisms of integration by which they interact. These mechanisms (...) include nested feedback interactions, global effects of neuromodulation, vertical integration, action-monitoring, and synaptic plasticity, and they are modeled in terms of both functional integration and temporal synchronization. I end by elaborating the psychological model of emotion–appraisal states with reference to neural processes. (shrink)

Emotion processing is known to be impaired in psychopathy, but less is known about the cognitive mechanisms that drive this. Our study examined experiencing and suppression of emotion processing in psychopathy. Participants, violent offenders with varying levels of psychopathy, viewed positive and negative images under conditions of passive viewing, experiencing and suppressing. Higher scoring psychopathics were more cardiovascularly responsive when processing negative information than positive, possibly reflecting an anomalously rewarding aspect of processing normally unpleasant material. When required to experience emotional (...) response, by ‘getting into the feeling’ of the emotion conveyed by a negative image, higher factor 1 psychopathic individuals showed reduced responsiveness, suggesting that they were less able to do this. These data, together with the absence of corresponding differences in subjective self-report might be used to inform clinical strategies for normalising emotion processing in psychopathic offenders to improve treatment outcome, and reduce risk amongst this client group. (shrink)

Our reasons for emotions such as sadness, anger, resentment, and guilt often remain long after we cease experiencing these emotions. This is puzzling. If the reasons for these emotions persist, why do the emotions not persist? Does this constitute a failure to properly respond to our reasons? In this paper we provide a solution to this puzzle. Our solution turns on the close connection between the rationality of emotion and the rationality of attention, together with the (...) differing reasons to which attention and emotion are properly responsive. (shrink)

In this article I propose to reframe debates about ideals of emotion in medicine, abandoning the current binary setup of this debate as one between ‘clinical detachment’ and empathy. Inspired by observations from my own field work and drawing on Sky Gross’ anthropological work on rituals of practice as well as Henri Lefebvre’s notion of rhythm, I propose that the normative drive of clinical practice can be better understood through the notion of attunement. In this framework individual types of (...) class='Hi'>emotions are not, as such, appropriate or inappropriate, but are evaluated depending on their synchronicity with the specific rhythms of the practice. To set up this proposal, I show how typical arguments about emotions in medicine—what I call emotion-entity focused frameworks—are insufficient. I then draw on ethnographic observations from two orthopaedic departments and interviews with medical practitioners to show (1) how clinical practice is driven by rhythmicity, shaped in the case of orthopaedic surgery by a clinical aim of efficient, controlled intervention, and (2) how clinicians continuously refer to this drive and the flow of rhythms when evaluating inappropriate or problematic emotion. I argue that the use of a rhythm framework rather than ideals of detachment or empathy allows for a sensitivity to the complexity and situation-dependent elements of emotional ideals in clinical practice; and I end by proposing the term ‘attuned concern’—which stresses the importance of regulation and adjustment to circumstances rather than of maintaining a constant distance/involvement—as a more fitting alternative to ‘clinical detachment’. (shrink)

In this paper, my aim is to bring together contemporary psychological literature on emotion regulation and the classical sentimentalism of David Hume and Adam Smith to arrive at a plausible account of empathy's role in explaining patterns of moral judgment. Along the way, I criticize related arguments by Michael Slote, Jesse Prinz, and others.

This chapter examines two premises of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) - that emotions are caused by beliefs and that those beliefs are represented in the mind as words or images. Being a philosophical examination, the chapter also seeks to demonstrate that these two premises essentially are philosophical premises. The chapter begins with a brief methodological suggestion of how to properly evaluate the theory of CBT. From there it works it way from examining the therapeutic practice of capturing the mental representations (...) that supposedly elicit emotional reactions to examining the assumption that emotions are caused by beliefs. The chapter ends by briefly pointing to some consequences of what has been said to the practice of CBT. (shrink)

For a long time the dominant view on the nature of blame was that to blame someone is to have an emotion toward her, such as anger, resentment or indignation in the case of blaming someone else and guilt in the case of self-blame. Even though this view is still widely held, it has recently come under heavy attack. The aim of this paper is to elaborate the idea that to blame is to have an emotion and to defend the (...) resulting emotion account of blame. (shrink)

Our emotions can be revealing. They can not only reflect our character traits and our judgments, but they can also tell us things about ourselves that we do not fully realize or may not want to admit. In this chapter, I am particularly interested in how we relate to what I will call alienated emotions: emotional experiences that are unusual, surprising, or even disturbing. What, if anything, do our alienated emotions tell us about who we are? I (...) argue here that alienated emotions lead to important questions about the ethics of self-interpretation. (shrink)

Emotions have long been of interest to philosophers and have deep historical roots going back to the Ancients. They have also become one of the most exciting areas of current research in philosophy, the cognitive sciences, and beyond. -/- This book explains the philosophy of the emotions, structuring the investigation around seven fundamental questions: What are emotions? Are emotions natural kinds? Do animals have emotions? Are emotions epistemically valuable? Are emotions the foundation for (...) value and morality? Are emotions the basis for responsibility? Do emotions make us better people? -/- In the course of exploring these questions, the book also discusses cutting-edge empirical research on emotion, feminist approaches to emotions and their value, and methodological questions on how to theorize about the emotions. The book also contains in-depth discussions of specific emotions like compassion, disgust, anxiety, and curiosity. It also highlights emerging trends in emotion research. (shrink)

Can we experience emotion without the feeling of accelerated heartbeats, perspiration, or other changes in the body? In his paper “What is an emotion”, William James famously claimed that “if we fancy some strong emotion and then try to abstract from our consciousness of it all the feelings of its bodily symptoms, we find we have nothing left behind” (1884, p. 193). Thus, bodily changes are essential to emotion. This is known as the Subtraction Argument. The Subtraction Argument is still (...) used to support Embodied theories of emotion. Proponents of Disembodied theories, however, have different intuitions regarding the role of bodily changes in the experience of emotion. In order to advance this debate, I conducted a series of studies testing people’s intuitions regarding the Subtraction Argument. Results show that, against James’ claims, most people consider that their hypothetical (Study 1) and actual (Study 2) emotions persist in the absence of bodily feelings. Furthermore, Study 1 found that participants’ responses were not related to individual differences in reflection or interoceptive awareness. These results pose a problem for Embodied theories of emotion and challenge extant explanations for the persistence of emotional experience in cases of impaired interoception. (shrink)

In order to uncover the inner workings of our capacities, we look to ‘effects’. Most of us have the capacity to distinguish between spoken ‘ba’ and ‘fa’ sounds. One thought is that this is achieved through aural sensitivities that detect changes in vibration picked up by the eardrum. But the McGurk Effect suggests that there is more to the story. Without changing the incoming vibrations, sound experience can be modulated by showing a video of a mouth making a ‘ba’ sound (...) or a ‘fa’ sound with a consistent sound overlaid. We learn that our overall auditory experiences are at least in part determined by visual cues in addition to what’s first picked up by our eardrums. The McGurk Effect gives us a hint into the inner workings of audition and helps us better understand the capacity to discriminate sounds of a certain sort. -/- In the present paper, the focus is on emotional capacities and a well known effect – recalcitrance. Recalcitrant emotions, such as fearing the dog even though one knows that the dog is harmless or being angry with one’s partner even when one realises it was only in a dream that the partner was nasty, have played the role of effect in much theorising about emotions. But in my view, we’ve stayed a bit too close to home, aiming to fit the effect into a paradigm – the representationalist paradigm – that isn’t fit for purpose. I will use this criticism as a launching off point to introduce a different way of thinking about emotions that is better suited to making sense of recalcitrance. I will argue that emotions are transitions between representational states rather than being representational states themselves. The view is better suited to make sense of recalcitrance and, at the end of the paper, I will offer reasons for thinking that main points that speak in favour of a representationalist approach to emotion can be recaptured or explained away by the transitions view. (shrink)

Jesse Prinz (2004) argues that emotional feelings (“state emotions”) can by themselves perceptually represent significant organism-environment relations. I object to this view mainly on the grounds that (1) it does not rule out the at least equally plausible view that emotional feelings are non-representational sensory registrations rather than perceptions, as Tyler Burge (2010) draws the distinction, and (2) perception of a relation requires perception of at least one of the relation’s relata, but an emotional feeling by itself perceives neither (...) the subject’s environment, nor in many cases the relevant subject itself. I then explore two ways in which emotional feelings as non-perceptual sensory registrations might still contribute to significant relation representation when associated with representations of the subject and/or its environment. After briefly discussing some difficulties presented by a multimodal, sensory-perceptual view of such representation, I argue in favor of a “cognitive recognition theory” that holds that significant relation instances are represented during emotion occurrences via applications of emotion-type concepts to "incoming" emotional feelings and their associated mental states. (shrink)

I discuss a large number of emotions that are relevant to performance at epistemic tasks. My central concern is the possibility that it is not the emotions that are most relevant to success of these tasks but associated virtues. I present cases in which it does seem to be the emotions rather than the virtues that are doing the work. I end of the paper by mentioning the connections between desirable and undesirable epistemic emotions.

In this essay, I want to explore the possibility that the success of narrative in stimulating empathy comes from the relation that narrative bears to emotion—where emotion is a kind of proto-narrative that possibly accounts for the structure and range of narratives themselves —and that our familiarity with emotions as micro-narratives results in the motivation of narrative. That is, the resolution of events occurs in terms of feeling rather than other forms of closure, since other forms of closure represent (...) literal endings as, quite simply, the cessation of events whereas emotion achieves its end by being felt or translated in empathetic terms and in ways that endure beyond the formality of the fictive event that ends the narrative. I will be using Kim Scott’s Benang: From the Heart (1999) and Peter Carey’s Jack Maggs (1997) to discuss narrative and emotions, or the role of emotion in motivating narrative events and the role of narrative in conveying and stirring emotion in the reader. (shrink)

We defend a functionalist approach to emotion that begins by focusing on emotions as central states with causal connections to behavior and to other cognitive states. The approach brackets the conscious experience of emotion, lists plausible features that emotions exhibit, and argues that alternative schemes are unpromising candidates. We conclude with the benefits of our approach: one can study emotions in animals; one can look in the brain for the implementation of specific features; and one ends up (...) with an architecture of the mind in which emotions are fully accommodated through their relations to the rest of cognition. Our article focuses on arguing for this general approach; as such, it is an essay in the philosophy of emotion rather than in the psychology or neuroscience of emotion. (shrink)

During much of the past century, it was widely believed that phonemes--the human speech sounds that constitute words--have no inherent semantic meaning, and that the relationship between a combination of phonemes (a word) and its referent is simply arbitrary. Although recent work has challenged this picture by revealing psychological associations between certain phonemes and particular semantic contents, the precise mechanisms underlying these associations have not been fully elucidated. Here we provide novel evidence that certain phonemes have an inherent, non-arbitrary emotional (...) quality. Moreover, we show that the perceived emotional valence of certain phoneme combinations depends on a specific acoustic feature--namely, the dynamic shift within the phonemes' first two frequency components. These data suggest a phoneme-relevant acoustic property influencing the communication of emotion in humans, and provide further evidence against previously held assumptions regarding the structure of human language. This finding has potential applications for a variety of social, educational, clinical, and marketing contexts. (shrink)

The notion of 'freedom' has gained an emblematic character in contemporary political discourse. It is, commonly, viewed as the central value and political goal of modern societies. Similarly, human rights documents conceive of freedom as their founding principle with universal validity. In contradistinction to this prevalent approach to freedom, this paper aims to demonstrate that freedom is, primarily, a political signifier with social-historical variability. One cannot, therefore, simply and uncritically assume that freedom has (or should have) universal validity or transhistorical (...) significance. In the first section of this paper, the structure of the contemporary liberal discourse on freedom is discussed and called into question. In light of Arendt's interpretation of freedom and through her analysis of the public domain, I reflect on the social-historical variability of the meaning of freedom and its inextricable nexus with a particular form of society. In the second section and drawing on Castoriadis, the notion of 'freedom' is approached in view of human signifying practices and imaginary dimension of society. This examination reveals in what way freedom––in the sense of a central social imaginary signification––contributes to the institution of an autonomous mode of society and determines the affective disposition and intentional vector of its inhabitants. (shrink)

How might people be wronged in relation to their feelings, moods, and emotions? Recently philosophers have begun to investigate the idea that these kinds of wrongs may constitute a distinctive form of injustice: affective injustice. In previous work, we have outlined a particular form of affective injustice that we called emotional imperialism. This paper has two main aims. First, we aim to provide an expanded account of the forms that emotional imperialism can take. We will do so by drawing (...) inspiration from William Reddy’s (2001) concept of an emotional regime and investigating ways in which colonial powers of the eighteenth to twentieth centuries sought to impose their emotional regimes on their colonial subjects. Second, we will offer more expansive accounts of both emotional imperialism and affective injustice that can accommodate these additional forms of emotional imperialism. (shrink)

Given the importance of emotions in our everyday lives, it is no surprise that in recent decades the study of emotions has received tremendous attention by a number of different disciplines. Yet despite the many and great advantages that have been made in understanding the nature of emotions, there remains a class of emotional states that is understudied and that demands further elucidation. All contributions to this issue consider either emotions or aspects of emotions that (...) deserve the label ‘neglected’. In doing so, they break new theoretical ground and further our understanding of the nature of the emotions that they consider. The aim of the present paper is to introduce the special issue on neglected emotions by articulating the different ways in which emotions can be said to be neglected. (shrink)

If, as argued in some simulationist accounts, empathy aims at grasping the phenomenal richness of the other’s experience and resonating with it, it is difficult to explain our empathy with emotions that we have never experienced ourselves. According to a long philosophical tradition, imagination is constrained by experience. We have to be acquainted with the qualitative feel of the other’s experience in order to imagine it. A critical view of simulationist accounts would claim that if we cannot imagine how (...) the other feels because we are not acquainted with it, empathy cannot take place. Contrary to such criticism, this paper takes a moderately optimistic view of the simulationist claim. It develops a model to explain how we imagine the other’s emotions by drawing on phenomenal concepts, affective memories, and imaginative scaffoldings. I argue that this model can explain how we empathize with the other’s emotions regardless of whether these are familiar or novel to us. However, in the latter case, the imagined phenomenal quality is not identical but probably only similar to the other’s emotion. This similarity suffices for us to speak about empathy. (shrink)