Article contents
Emotions: Rationality Without Cognitivism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 April 2010
Extract
In the aftermath of emotivism and behaviourism, cognitivist theories of emotion became current in both philosophy and psychology. These theories, though varied, have in common that emotions require propositional attitudes such as beliefs or evaluations. Accordingly, cognitivist theories characterize emotions themselves with features of such attitudes, including syntax, semantic meaning, and justifiability.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 25 , Issue 4 , Winter 1986 , pp. 663 - 674
- Copyright
- Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1986
References
1 Solomon, R. C., The Passions (New York: Doubleday, 1976), 187.Google Scholar
2 Lyons, W., Emotion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 57–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3 Lazarus, R. S., “Thoughts on the Relations Between Emotions and Cognition”, in Schererand, K. R.Ekman, P., Approaches to Emotion (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1984).Google Scholar
4 Greenspan, P., “Emotions as Evaluations”, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 62 (1981).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
5 Ibid., 62–63.
6 Malatesta, C. and Izard, C., “Conceptualizing Emotional Development in Adults”, in Malatesta, C. and Izard, C., Emotion in Adult Development (New York: Sage Publications, 1984), 18.Google Scholar
7 Zajonc, R. B., “Feeling and Thinking: Preferences Need no Inferences”, American Psychologist 35 (1980).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
8 Steiner, J. E., “Innate Discriminative Human Facial Expressions to Taste and Smell Stimulation”, Annals of New York Academy of Science (1974).Google Scholar
9 Kunst-Wilson, W. R. and Zajonc, R. B., “Affective Discrimination of Stimuli that Cannot be Recognized”, Science 207 (1980).CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
10 R. B. Zajonc, “On Primacy of Affect”, in Scherer and Ekman, Approaches to Emotion.
11 Maclean, P., “The Triune Brain”, in Rorty, A., Explaining Emotions (Berkeley, CA: University of Califnornia Press, 1980), 20.Google Scholar
12 Nauta, W. J. H. and Haymaker, W., “Retino-Hypothalamic Connections”, in Haymaker, W., Anderson, E. and Nauta, W. J. H., The Hypothalamus (Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1969).Google Scholar
13 Zajonc, R. B., “On Primacy of Affect”, 263.Google Scholar
14 For arguments to this effect, see Sousa, R. de, “The Rationality of Emotions”, Dialogue 18 (1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Simpson, E., Reason Over Passion (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1979)Google Scholar.
15 See Sousa, R. de, “The Rationality of Emotions” and McGuinness, D. and Pribram, K., “The Neuropsychology of Attention: Emotional and Motivational Controls”, in Wittrock, M. C., ed., The Brain and Psychology (New York: Academic, 1980).Google Scholar
16 A feeling module on the lines of the perception module in Fodor, J. A., The Modularity of Mind (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983)Google Scholar seems plausible, but I do not argue so far as to support informational encapsulation of either sensation or feeling.
17 Referred to in: Buck, R., The Communication of Emotion (New York: Guilford Press, 1984).Google Scholar
18 Ibid., 55–58.
19 Simpson, , Reason, 32.Google Scholar
20 Ibid., 33.
21 Schachter, S. and Singer, J. E., “Cognitive, Social, and Physiological Determinants of Emotional State”, Psychological Review 69 (1962).CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
22 Buck, , Communication, 55–58.Google Scholar
23 Ekman, P. and Friesen, W. V., Unmasking the Face (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. 1975).Google Scholar
24 Buck, , Communication, 56.Google Scholar
25 Ibid., 121–130.
26 Pylyshyn, Z. W., “Computation and Cognition: Issues in the Foundation of Cognitive Science”, The Behavioural and Brain Sciences 3 (1980), 127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
27 I would like to thank Ronald de Sousa, Mark Vorobej, and especially Evan Simpson for criticisms and encouragement, as well as Carleton University for providing research leave.
- 9
- Cited by