Barrett, Lisa F., Kristen A. Lindquist. The embodiment of emotion
2008, In Gün R. Semin & Eliot R. Smith (eds.), Embodied grounding: social, cognitive, affective, and neuroscientific approaches. New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 237 - 262
-
Expand entry
-
Added by: Maria Jimena Clavel VazquezAbstract:
Historically, almost all psychological theories of emotion have proposed that emotional reactions are constituted by the body in some fashion, but those theories utilized a common metaphor that the body and mind are separate and independent forces in an emotional episode. Current embodiment theories of the mind challenge this assumption, however, by suggesting that the body helps to constitute the mind in shaping an emotional response. We briefly review new theories of embodied cognition in light of accumulating findings from emotion research, to lay the foundation for novel hypotheses about how the conceptual system for emotion is constituted and used. Finally, we discuss how an embodied perspective can help to usher in a paradigm shift in scientific approaches to what emotions are and how they work
Comment: available in this Blueprint
Colombetti, Giovanna. Enactive Affectivity, Extended
2017, Topoi, 36(3), pp. 445-455
-
Expand entry
-
Added by: Maria Jimena Clavel VazquezAbstract:
In this paper I advance an enactive view of affectivity that does not imply that affectivity must stop at the boundaries of the organism. I first review the enactive notion of "sense-making", and argue that it entails that cognition is inherently affective. Then I review the proposal, advanced by Di Paolo (Topoi 28:9-21, 2009), that the enactive approach allows living systems to "extend". Drawing out the implications of this proposal, I argue that, if enactivism allows living systems to extend, then it must also allow sense-making, and thus cognition as well as affectivity, to extend†- in the specific sense of allowing the physical processes (vehicles) underpinning these phenomena to include, as constitutive parts, non-organic environmental processes. Finally I suggest that enactivism might also allow specific human affective states, such as moods, to extend.Comment: available in this Blueprint
Doyle, Jennifer. Thinking Feeling: Criticism and Emotion
2013, In: Hold It Against Me: Difficulty and Emotion in Contemporary Art. Durham: Duke University Press. 69-89.
-
Expand entry
-
Added by: Rossen VentzislavovSummary: Doyle investigates the emotional dimensions of aesthetic experience in the context of controversial performance art practices. She focuses on sentimentality because it sits at the extreme end not only of the emotional spectrum but also, as a negative, on the art critical radar. Critics' charge against the sentimental is twofold - it enables vicarious experience at the expense of its direct counterpart and it gives a platform to the inauthentic. Furthermore, the overwhelming critical consensus is that the personal itself, manifested in sentimentality or otherwise, is inherently suspect. Emotion is thus framed as detrimental to "serious" art. It is also, and even more damagingly, feminized and drained of its political charge. To counter these assumptions, Doyle uses specific art-historical examples which reveal the richness and importance of emotional interest in the way art is made and experienced.Comment: This text can be used in discussions of emotion and affectivity. While much of its focus is on art, it can be used in more general classes on emotions as well.
Jaggar, Alison M.. Love and knowledge: Emotion in feminist epistemology
1989, Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 32 (2):151 - 176.
-
Expand entry
-
Added by: Chris Blake-Turner, Contributed by: Wayne RiggsAbstract: This paper argues that, by construing emotion as epistemologically subversive, the Western tradition has tended to obscure the vital role of emotion in the construction of knowledge. The paper begins with an account of emotion that stresses its active, voluntary, and socially constructed aspects, and indicates how emotion is involved in evaluation and observation. It then moves on to show how the myth of dispassionate investigation has functioned historically to undermine the epistemic authority of women as well as other social groups associated culturally with emotion. Finally, the paper sketches some ways in which the emotions ofunderclass groups, especially women, may contribute to the development of a critical social theory.
Jones, Janine. Disappearing Black People Through Failures of White Empathy
2022, In McWeeny, J. and Maitra, K. (eds) Feminist Philosophy of Mind. New York: Oxford University Press, pp.86-101
-
Expand entry
-
Added by: Adriana Alcaraz Sanchez and Jodie RussellAbstract:
Empathy is sometimes thought to be, if not a moral panacea for crimes against humanity, then a moral motivator to work against them. This chapter argues that the construction of black people's minds in Manichaean opposition to that of white people's is at the root of white failures of empathy for black people. The chapter maintains that it is primarily due to this Manichaean-structured opposition, grounded in a fundamental difference between white and black fungibility, that white people's ability to successfully perceive or empathize with black people is impeded. This view understands white and black fungibility as established by and derived from the nature of the kinds of minds constructed through anti-black, white-supremacist logics. Black fungibility is derivatively attributed to black bodies and implemented through them. The chapter proposes that rather than seek to empathize with black people, white people aim to self-empathize.Comment (from this Blueprint): Jones' chapter nicely situates problems with models of empathy within the dicussion of understanding racial injustices. As such, this chapter provides a clear, brief introduction to three different ways that empathy might be cashed out, as well as the issues with each from the perspective of where White empathy can, and does, fail. Jones also expands the concept of 'fungibility' to Black and White bodies as part of the diagnosis of why empathy fails, which is a useful tool for unpacking and critiquing other aspects of philosophy of mind, such as the nature of 'reasons' or 'rationality'.
Nussbaum, Martha. Emotions as Judgments of Value and Importance
2004, In Robert C. Solomon (ed.), Thinking About Feeling: Contemporary Philosophers on Emotions. Oxford University Press
-
Expand entry
-
Added by: Andrea BlomqvistAbstract: Nussbaum argues for a cognitivist theory of emotions, whereby an emotion is similar to a judgement. An emotion has an intentional object which is being evaluated as e.g. bad for one. On her view, our emotional reactions to different situations are connected to the idea of eudaimonia, and emotions could be seen as a guide to a flourishing life. As such, Nussbaum aims to explain how certain emotions feel like they're tearing us apart (e.g. grieving a dead family member), since they are literally bad for us. She thus departs from the Jamsian tradition whereby the psychological component of an emotion is emphasised (or emotions are sometimes reduced to physiological responses), and argues instead that the physiological response is not a necessary component of an emotion.Comment: This paper offers a good introduction into the cognitivist theories of emotions and their basic claims. It would be good to pair with non-cognitivist theories such as William James's or Jesse Prinz's.
Piredda, Giulia. What is an affective artifact? A further development in situated affectivity
2020, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 19(3), pp. 549-567
-
Expand entry
-
Added by: Maria Jimena Clavel VazquezAbstract:
In this paper I would like to propose the notion of "affective artifact", building on an analogy with theories of cognitive artifacts (cf. Casati 2017; Fasoli 2018; Heersmink, 2013, 2016; Hutchins 1999) and referring to the development of a situated affective science (cf. Colombetti 2014; Colombetti and Krueger 2015; Colombetti and Roberts 2015; Griffiths and Scarantino 2009). Affective artifacts are tentatively defined as objects that have the capacity to alter the affective condition of an agent, and that in some cases play an important role in defining that agent's self.The notion of affective artifacts will be presented by means of examples supported by empirical findings, by discussing a tentative definition and classification, and by considering several related but differing notions (cf. Colombetti and Krueger 2015; Heersmink 2018). Within the framework of situated affectivity, the notion of affective artifacts will represent a further step in the enterprise of understanding how the environment helps us scaffold our affective processes. I will conclude that affective artifacts play a key role in the philosophy of cognitive science, the philosophy of technology and in the debate about the self.Comment: available in this Blueprint
Scrutton, Tasia. Divine Passibility: God and Emotion
2013, Philosophy Compass 8(9): 866-874.
-
Expand entry
-
Added by: Emily PaulAbstract: While the impassibility debate has traditionally been construed in terms of whether God suffers, recent philosophy of religion has interpreted it in terms of whether God has emotions more generally. This article surveys the philosophical literature on divine im/passibility over the last 25 years, outlining major arguments for and against the idea that God has emotions. It argues that questions about the nature and value of emotions are at the heart of the im/passibility debate. More specifically, it suggests that presuppositions about the dichotomy between emotions and reason (or the 'heart and the head') have negatively impacted the debate. It contends that the debate can only move forward in response to serious reflection on our affects as we experience them, aided by historical and anthropological as well as contemporary philosophical perspectivesComment: A great paper to use when teaching non-classical conceptions of God. Could follow a lecture on the 'omni' God who is immutable, impassible, etc. It could also be interesting as a gateway to feminist Philosophy of Religion - i.e. the classical conceptions of God are typically 'masculine'
Sherman, Nancy. Taking Responsibility for our Emotions
1999, Social Philosophy and Policy 16(2): 294.
-
Expand entry
-
Added by: John BaldariAbstract: We often hold people morally responsible for their emotions. We praise individuals for their compassion, think less of them for their ingratitude or hatred, reproach self-righteousness and unjust anger. In the cases I have in mind, the ascriptions of responsibility are not simply for offensive behaviors or actions which may accompany the emotions, but for the emotions themselves as motives or states of mind. We praise and blame people for what they feel and not just for how they act. In cases where people may subtly mask their hatred or ingratitude through more kindly actions, we still may find fault with the attitude we see leaking through the disguise.Comment: Use this text as a recommended reading to compliment the earlier work on The Fabric of Character.
Can’t find it?
Contribute the texts you think should be here and we’ll add them soon!