Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T21:36:50.388Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Emotion, Psychosemantics, and Embodied Appraisals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2010

Jesse Prinz
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

There seem to be two kinds of emotion the rists in the world. Some work very hard to show that emotions are essentially cognitive states. Others resist this suggestion and insist that emotions are noncognitive. The debate has appeared in many forms in philosophy and psychology. It never seems to go away. The reason for this is simple. Emotions have properties that push in both directions, properties that make them seem quite smart and properties that make them seem quite dumb. They exemplify the base impulses of our animal nature while simultaneously branching out into the most human and humane reaches of our mental repertoires. Depending on where one looks, emotions can emerge as our simplest instincts or our subtlest achievements. This double nature makes emotions captivating, but also confounding. Researchers find themselves picking one side at the expense of the other, or packaging seemingly disparate components into unstable unions. I will defend a more integrative approach. For a more thorough treatment, see Prinz (forthcoming).

Type
Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 52 , March 2003 , pp. 69 - 86
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2003

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.)

References

Arnold, M. B. 1960. Emotion and Personality (New York, NY: Columbia University Press).Google Scholar
Bartels, A. and Zeki, S. 2000. ‘The neural basis of romantic love’, NeuroReport, 11, 3829–34.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Clore, G. L. 1994. ‘Why emotions require cognition’, In Ekman, P. and Davidson, R. (eds) The nature of emotion: Fundamental questions (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Critchley, H. D., Mathias, C. J. and Dolan, R. J. 2001. ‘Neural correlates of first and second-order representation of bodily states’, Nature Neuroscience 2001; 4, 207–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Damasio, A. R. 1994. Descartes' Error: Emotion Reason and the Human Brain (New York, NY: Gossett/Putnam).Google Scholar
Damasio, A. R., Grabowski, T. J., Bechara, A., Damasio, H., Ponto, L. L. B., Parvizi, J. and Hichwa, R. D. 2000 ‘Subcortical and Cortical Brain Activity During the Feeling of Self-generated Emotions’, Nature Neuroscience, 3, 1049–56.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dretske, F. 1981. Knowledge and the Flow of Information (Cambridge, MAMIT Press).Google Scholar
Dretske, F. 1988. Explaining Behavior (Cambridge, MA, MIT Press).Google Scholar
Fodor, J. A. 1990. ‘A Theory of Content, I & II’, In A Theory of Content and Other Essays (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).Google Scholar
Freud, S. 1915. ‘The unconscious’, In The Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud, volume 14, James, Strachey (trans.) (London: Hogarth Press).Google Scholar
Griffiths, P. 1997. What emotions really are (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harré, R. 1986. ‘The Social Constructivist Viewpoint’, In Harré, R. (ed.) The Social Construction of Emotions (2–14). Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Hume, D. 1739/1978. A treatise of human nature. Nidditch, P. H. (ed.) (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
James, W. 1884. ‘What is an Emotion?’, Mind, 9, 188–205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
James, W. 1894. ‘The Physical Basis of Emotion’, Psychological Review, 1, 516–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kenny, A. 1963. Action, Emotion and Will (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul).Google Scholar
Lange, C. G. 1885. Om sindsbevaegelser: et psyko-fysiologisk studie. Kjbenhavn: Jacob Lunds. Reprinted in The Emotions, C. G. Lange and W. James (eds), I. A. Haupt (trans.) (Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins Company 1922).Google Scholar
Lazarus, R. 1984. On the primacy of cognition. American Psychologist, 39, 124–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lazarus, R. S. 1991. Emotion and Adaptation. (New York: Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
LeDoux, J. E. 1996. The Emotional Brain (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster).Google Scholar
Nisbett, R. E. and Wilson, T. D. 1977. ‘Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes’, Psychological Review, 84, 231–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nussbaum, M. 2001. Upheavals of thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oatley, K. and Johnson-Laird, P. N. 1987. ‘Towards a cognitive theory of emotions’, Emotions and Cognition, 1, 29–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pitcher, G. 1965. ‘Emotion’, Mind, 74, 324–46.Google Scholar
Prinz, J. J. 2002. Furnishing the Mind: Concepts and Their Perceptual Basis (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prinz, J. J. (forthcoming). Emotional Perception (New York: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Roseman, I. J. 1984. ‘Cognitive Determinants of Emotion: A Structural Theory’, In P., Shaver (ed.) Review of Personality and Social Psychology, Volume 5 (11–36). (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage).Google Scholar
Ross, L., Lepper, M. and Hubbard, M. 1975. ‘Perseverance in self-perception and social perception: Biased attributional processes in the debriefing paradigm’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Scherer, K. R. 1984. ‘On the Nature and Function of Emotion: A Component Process Approach’, In Scherer, K. R. and Ekman, P. (eds) Approaches to Emotion (293–318). (Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum).Google Scholar
Smith, C. A. and Lazarus, R. S. 1993. ‘Appraisal components, core relational themes, and the emotions’, Cognition and Emotion, 7, 233–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Solomon, R. 1976. The Passions: Emotions and the meaning of life, Indianapolis (IN: Hackett Publishing Company).Google Scholar
Speisman, J. C., Lazarus, R. S., Mordkoff, A. M. and Davison, L. A. 1964. ‘The experimental reduction of stress based on ego-defense theory’, Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 68, 367–80.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Strack, F., Martin, L.L. and Stepper, S. 1988. ‘Inhibiting and facilitating conditions of facial expressions. A nonobtrusive test of the facial feedback hypothesis’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 768–77.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zajonc, R. B. 1968. ‘Attitudinal effects of mere exposure’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Monograph Supplement, 9, 1–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zajonc, R. B. 1980. Feeling and thinking: Preferences need no inferences. American Psychologist, 35, 151–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zajonc, R. B. 1984. ‘On the Primacy of Affect’, American Psychologist, 39, 117–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zajonc, R. B., Murphy, S. T. and Inglehart, M. 1989. ‘Feeling and Facial Reference: Implications of the Vascular Theory of Emotion’, Psychological Review, 96, 395–416.CrossRefGoogle Scholar