Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Three classical theories of emotion: the feeling, behaviourist and psychoanalytic theories
- 2 A fourth classical theory: the cognitive theory
- 3 The causal–evaluative theory of emotions
- 4 The cognitive and evaluative aspects of emotion
- 5 The appetitive aspect of the emotions
- 6 The objects of emotions
- 7 Physiological changes and the emotions
- 8 Emotions and feelings
- 9 Emotions and behaviour
- 10 Emotion statements
- 11 Emotions and motives
- 12 Emotions and purpose
- 13 Blaming the emotions
- 14 Looking back: a summary
- Bibliography
- Index
7 - Physiological changes and the emotions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Three classical theories of emotion: the feeling, behaviourist and psychoanalytic theories
- 2 A fourth classical theory: the cognitive theory
- 3 The causal–evaluative theory of emotions
- 4 The cognitive and evaluative aspects of emotion
- 5 The appetitive aspect of the emotions
- 6 The objects of emotions
- 7 Physiological changes and the emotions
- 8 Emotions and feelings
- 9 Emotions and behaviour
- 10 Emotion statements
- 11 Emotions and motives
- 12 Emotions and purpose
- 13 Blaming the emotions
- 14 Looking back: a summary
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In this chapter I want to attempt to analyse a particularly neglected area in the philosophy of the emotions, the relations between physiological changes and emotions. I should remark that it is philosophers, not psychologists, who tend to neglect this aspect of the emotions. As I suggested in the introductory chapters, in philosophy the Cartesian view of the emotions has generally held the stage, and in recent years philosophers have concentrated almost exclusively on emotions as if they were purely internal mental events. Thus they have concentrated on puzzles to do with the cognitive and evaluative aspects of the emotions and their relation to the objects of emotions, often, as we have seen, in a way that did not adequately distinguish the evaluative strand from the purely cognitive. Excepting their denial that emotions are feelings, philosophers have had very little to say about the ‘bodily motions’ part of emotions, particularly in recent times, even though, somewhat ironically, it is this very aspect of emotions which distinguishes them from being just beliefs and desires of certain sorts.
So in this and the next chapter I will concentrate on these bodily aspects, the physiological changes and feelings.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Emotion , pp. 115 - 129Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1980