Emotion

Abstract

The disciplinary diversity of the recent literature on emotions is indicative of the many dimensions of human life that emotions touch. Neuroscientists and other physiologists study them because emotions have rather specific neurological, neurochemical, and other bodily correlates. Anthropologists and historians study them because their character and the popular understanding of them can vary significantly from culture to culture and age to age. Evolutionary psychologists study emotions because at least the most basic ones have defensive and reproductive functions in supporting species survival. Experimental and social psychologists study them, often, with respect to their behavioral outputs, where “behavior” covers a wider class of movements than what philosophers call “actions,” for example emotions’ spontaneous facial expressions. Clinical psychologists study emotions because they impinge on social functioning and psychological well‐being. Legal theorists study them because of their connection to the legal responsibility of defendants and their roles in the judgments of judges and juries. Specialists in religion study emotions because many or all religious experiences have emotional characteristics. Emotions interest philosophers in virtually all of the above connections, and in the ways these interrelate. Each of these disciplinary domains will tend to favor its own kinds of theories about what an emotion is – neuroscientists neurological models, anthropologists social regulation models, evolutionary psychologists biological survival models, etc. – but even theorists sharing the same discipline often offer many competing models. After surveying a few “scientific” models, Ronald de Sousa comments, “It should be clear from this partial sampling that … emotions theory has not unequivocally emerged from the methodological chaos that entitles it to be called philosophy” (2010: 103).

Virtuous Insightfulness

“…According to the perceptual model of emotional experience (e.g., Elgin 1999;Prinz 2004;Roberts 1988;Johnston 2001) emotional experience constitutes reason or evidence for evaluative judgement in a similar way to the way in which perceptual experience constitutes reason or evidence for empirical judgement 42 . One class of evaluative judgments are epistemic evaluations.…”