Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T03:21:55.221Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

What Emotions Really Are (In the Theory of Constructed Emotions)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Jeremy Pober
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Recently, Lisa Feldman Barrett and colleagues have introduced the Theory of Constructed Emotions (TCE), in which emotions are constituted by a process of categorizing the self as being in an emotional state. The view, however, has several counterintuitive implications: for instance, a person can have multiple distinct emotions at once. Further, the TCE concludes that emotions are constitutively social phenomena. In this article, I explicate the TCE*, which, while substantially similar to the TCE, makes several distinct claims aimed at avoiding the counterintuitive implications plaguing the TCE. Further, because of the changes that comprise the TCE*, emotions are not constitutively social phenomena.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 85 , Issue 4 , October 2018 , pp. 640 - 659
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

This article has benefited from the input of an unusually large number of people. I thank Lisa Feldman Barrett for piquing my interest in her work, as well as Matt Barker, Agnieszka Jaworska, Adam Kovach, Christopher Masciari, and Jim Sparrell for helpful discussions and comments. I especially thank Alex Madva, Carlos Montemayor, and Eric Schwitzgebel for comments on multiple earlier drafts of this article, as well as two anonymous reviewers for Philosophy of Science.

References

Barrett, Lisa Feldman. 2006. “Solving the Emotion Paradox: Categorization and the Experience of Emotion.” Personality and Social Psychology Review 10:20–46.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Barrett, Lisa Feldman 2009a. “The Future of Psychology: Connecting Mind to Brain.” Perspectives in Psychological Science 4:326–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barrett, Lisa Feldman 2009b. “Variety Is the Spice of Life: A Psychological Construction Approach to Understanding Variability in Emotion.” Cognition and Emotion 23:1284–1306.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barrett, Lisa Feldman 2012. “Emotions Are Real.” Emotion 12:413–29.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Barrett, Lisa Feldman 2014. “The Conceptual Act Theory: A Precis.” Emotion Review 6:292–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barrett, Lisa Feldman 2017. “The Theory of Constructed Emotion: An Active Inference Account of Interoception and Categorization.” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 12:1–23.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Barrett, Lisa Feldman, Wilson-Mendenhall, Christine D., and Barsalou, Lawrence W. 2015. “The Conceptual Act Theory: A Road Map.” In The Handbook of Psychological Construction, ed. Barrett, Lisa Feldman and Russell, James A., 83–110. New York: Guilford.Google Scholar
Barsalou, Lawrence W. 1999. “Perceptual Symbol Systems.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22:577–660.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Barsalou, Lawrence W. 2009. “Simulation, Situated Conceptualization, and Prediction.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B 364:1281–89.Google ScholarPubMed
Bechtel, William. 2009. “Explanation: Mechanism, Modularity, and Situated Cognition.” In Cambridge Handbook of Situated Cognition, ed. Robbins, Philip and Aydede, Murat, 155–70. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Boyd, Richard C. 1991. “Realism, Anti-foundationalism, and the Enthusiasm for Natural Kinds.” Philosophical Studies 61:127–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carey, Susan, and Spelke, Elizabeth. 1996. “Science and Core Knowledge.” Philosophy of Science 63:515–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carruthers, Peter. 2017. “Valence and Value.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. doi:10.1111/phpr.12395.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cullison, Andrew. 2010. “What Are Seemings?” Ratio 23:260–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ekman, Peter. 1984. “Expression and the Nature of Emotion.” In Approaches to Emotion, ed. Scherer, Klaus and Ekman, Peter, 319–43. New York: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Griffiths, Paul. 1997. What Emotions Really Are: The Problem of Psychological Categories. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Helm, Bennett W. 2007. Emotional Reason: Deliberation, Motivation, and the Nature of Value. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hurley, Susan. 1998. “Vehicles, Contents, Conceptual Structure, and Externalism.” Analysis 58:1–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Izard, Carroll E. 1997. “Emotions and Facial Expressions: A Perspective from Differential Emotions Theory.” In The Psychology of Facial Expression, ed. Russell, James A., Dols, Fernández, and Miguel, José, 57–77. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Izard, Carroll E. 2007. “Basic Emotions, Natural Kinds, Emotion Schemas, and a New Paradigm.” Perspectives on Psychological Science 2:260–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kovach, Adam, and DeLancey, Craig. 2005. “On Emotions and the Explanation of Behavior.” Nous 39:106–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kripke, Saul. 1980. Naming and Necessity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
LeDoux, Joseph. 1996. The Emotional Brain. New York: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
LeDoux, Joseph 2012. “Rethinking the Emotional Brain.” Neuron 73:653–76.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
LeDoux, Joseph 2015. “Afterword: Emotional Construction in the Brain.” In The Psychological Construction of Emotion, ed. Barrett, Lisa Feldman and Russell, James A., 459–64. New York: Guilford.Google Scholar
Lindquist, Kristen A., and Barrett, Lisa Feldman. 2008. “Constructing Emotion: The Experience of Fear as a Conceptual Act.” Psychological Science 19:898–903.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lindquist, Kristen A., Wager, Tor D., Kober, Hedy, Bliss-Moreau, Eliza, and Barrett, Lisa Feldman. 2012. “The Brain Basis of Emotion: A Meta-analytic Review.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 35:121–43.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mallon, Ron. 2003. “Social Construction, Social Roles, and Stability.” In Socializing Metaphysics, ed. Schmitt, Frederick, 327–53. Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Markus, Hazel Rose, and Kitayama, Shinobu. 1991. “Culture and the Self: Implications for Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation.” Psychological Review 98:224–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marr, David. 1982. Vision. New York: Freeman.Google Scholar
Mesquita, Batja. 1993. “Cultural Variations in Emotions: A Comparative Study of Dutch, Surinamese, and Turkish People in the Netherlands.” PhD diss., University of Amsterdam.Google Scholar
Oddie, Graham. 2005. Value, Reality and Desire. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pace, Michael. 2017. “Experiences, Seemings, and Perceptual Justification.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 95:226–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pober, Jeremy M. 2013. “Addiction Is Not a Natural Kind.” Frontiers in Psychiatry 4:123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prinz, Jesse J. 2004. Gut Reactions. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Putnam, Hilary. 1975. “The Meaning of ‘Meaning.’” Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 7:215–71.Google Scholar
Rosaldo, Michelle. 1980. Knowledge and Passion: Ilongot Notions of Self and Social Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Russell, James A. 2003. “Core Affect and the Psychological Construction of Emotion.” Psychological Review 110:145–72.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Salmon, Wesley C. 1984. “Scientific Explanation: Three Basic Conceptions.” In PSA 1984: Proceedings of the 1984 Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, vol. 2, 293–305. East Lansing, MI: Philosophy of Science Association.Google Scholar
Scarantino, Andrea. 2009. “Core Affect and Natural Affective Kinds.” Philosophy of Science 76:940–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scarantino, Andrea 2012. “How to Define Emotions Scientifically.” Emotion Review 4:358–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Searle, John R. 1995. The Construction of Social Reality. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Spelke, Elizabeth S. 2003. “What Makes Us Smart: Core Knowledge and Natural Language.” In Language in Mind: Advances in the Study of Language in Thought, ed. Gentner, D. and Goldin-Meadow, S., 277–311. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Spelke, Elizabeth S., and Kinzler, Katharine D. 2007. “Core Knowledge.” Developmental Science 10:89–96.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Thomasson, Amie. 2003. “Realism and Human Kinds.” Philosophical and Phenomenological Research 67:580–609.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wierzbicka, Anna. 2009. “Language and Metalanguage: Key Issues in Emotion Research.” Emotion Review 1:3–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, Robert A., Barker, Matthew J., and Brigandt, Igno. 2007. “When Traditional Essentialism Fails: Biological Natural Kinds.” Philosophical Topics 35:189–215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson-Mendenhall, Christine D., Barrett, Lisa Feldman, Simmons, W. Kyle, and Barsalou, Lawrence W. 2011. “Grounding Emotion in Situated Conceptualization.” Neuropsychologia 49:1105–27.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ylikoski, Petri. 2013. “Causal and Constitutive Explanation Compared.” Erkenntnis 78:277–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar