Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-27gpq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-29T00:24:15.730Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Emotions: Rationality Without Cognitivism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2010

Stanley G. Clarke
Affiliation:
Carleton University

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
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1986

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

1 Solomon, R. C., The Passions (New York: Doubleday, 1976), 187.Google Scholar

2 Lyons, W., Emotion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 5758.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, 5558.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.