Navigating the Waters of Emotion with a View Toward Cooperation
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.59123/nv2g8657Keywords:
emotion, language, science, philosophy, psychology, unificationAbstract
What emotions are is a central question in the science of emotion. It is often interpreted as a question about how one should define the theoretical term “emotion.” It is also often interpreted as an invitation to understand the nature of emotions. In this paper, I demonstrate how these two interpretations can be related through an interdisciplinary, pluralist approach to the science of emotion. In doing so, I illustrate the limits of Klaus R. Scherer’s proposed consensual, polythetic working definition with respect to some fundamental concerns in the science of emotion. I use the meta-semantic taxonomy of theories of emotion to argue that once psychological theories of emotion are more clearly delineated along two fundamental concerns—the metaphysical and the meta-semantic—one can trace the logical implications of these fundamental concerns to their implications on the design of empirical research and more clearly understand that the pursuit of knowledge in the science of emotion requires a cooperative effort between those who take emotions to be stars, as well as those who take it to be constellations.
Downloads
References
Armon-Jones, Claire. 1986. “The Thesis of Social Constructionism.” In The Social Construction of Emotions, edited by Rom Harré, 32–56. Basil Blackwell.
Averill, James R. 1980. “A Constructivist View of Emotion.” In Emotion: Theory, Research and Experience, vol. 1, Theories of Emotion, edited by R. Plutchik and H. Kellerman, pp. 305–339. Academic Press. Reprinted in A. G. Halberstadt and S. L. Ellyson, eds. 1990. Social Psychology Readings: A Century of Research, pp. 143-156. McGraw-Hill.
Averill, James R. 1986. “The Acquisition of Emotions During Childhood.” In The Social Construction of Emotions, edited by Rom Harré. Blackwell.
Averill, James R. 1997. “The Emotions: An Integrative Approach.” In Handbook of Personality Psychology, edited by R. Hogan and J. A. Johnson, pp. 513–541. Academic Press.
Averill, James R. 2004. “Everyday Emotions: Let Me Count the Ways.” Social Science Information 43 (4): 571–580. https://doi.org/10.1177/0539018404047703.
Barrett, Lisa F. 2017a. How Emotions are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Barrett, Lisa F. 2017b. “The Theory of Constructed Emotion: An Active Inference Account of Interoception and Categorization.” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 12 (1): 1-23. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsw154.
Boomen, Carlijn van den, Nicolette M. Munsters, and Chantal Kemner. 2019. “Emotion Processing in the Infant Brain: The Importance of Local Information.” Neuropsychologia 126: 62–68. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2017.09.006.
Brooks, Jeffrey A., Junichi Chikazoe, Norihiro Sadato, and Jonathan B. Freeman. 2019. “The Neural Representation of Facial-Emotion Categories Reflects Conceptual Structure.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS 116 (32): 15861–70. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1816408116.
Bozinovski, Stevo. 2018. “Cognition-Emotion Primacy Debate and Crossbar Adaptive Array in 1980-1982.” Procedia Computer Science 145: 105-111. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2018.11.017.
de Sousa, Ronald. 1984. “The Natural Shiftiness of Natural Kinds.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 14 (4): 561-580.
de Sousa, Ronald. 1987. The Rationality of Emotion. The MIT Press.
DiGirolamo, Marissa A., and James A. Russell. 2017. “The Emotion Seen in a Face Can Be a Methodological Artifact: The Process of Elimination Hypothesis.” Emotion 17 (3): 538–546. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000247.
Ekman, Paul. 2003. Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life. Times Books.
Ekman, Paul. “Basic Emotion.” In Handbook of Cognition and Emotion, edited by T. Dalgleish and M. Power, pp. 45-60. John Wiley and Sons.
Fodor, Jerry A. 1994. The Elm and the Expert: Mentalese and Its Semantics. MIT Press.
Gigerenzer, Gerd. 2017. “A Theory Integration Program.” Decision 4 (3): 133–145.
Griffiths, Paul E. 1997. What Emotions Really Are: The Problem of Psychological Categories. Science and Its Conceptual Foundations. University of Chicago Press.
Hibberd, Fiona J. 2019. “What Is Scientific Definition?” The Journal of Mind and Behavior 40 (1): 29–52.
Jia, Shan, Shuo Wang, Chuanbo Hu, Paula J. Webster, and Xin Li. 2021. “Detection of Genuine and Posed Facial Expressions of Emotion: Databases and Methods.” Frontiers in Psychology 11: 580287–580287. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.580287.
Keinänen, Markku. 2015. “A Trope Nominalist Theory of Natural Kinds.” In Nominalism About Properties: New Essays, edited by Ghislain Guigon and Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra, pp. 156–74. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315724874.
Keltner, Dacher, and Jonathan Haidt. 1999. “Social Functions of Emotions at Four Levels of Analysis.” Cognition and Emotion 13 (5): 505–521. doi:10.1080/026999399379168.
Kollareth, Dolichan, Mariko Kikutani, and James A. Russell. 2019. “Shame is a Folk Term Unsuitable as a Technical Term in Science.” In Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Shame: Methods, Theories, Norms, Cultures, and Politics, edited by Cecilea Mun, pp. 3-26. Lexington Books.
Kripke, Saul A. (1972) 1980. Naming and Necessity. Harvard University Press.
Krys, Kuba, C., Melanie Vauclair, Colin A. Capaldi, Vivian Miu-Chi Lun, Michael Harris Bond, Alejandra Domínguez-Espinosa, Claudio Torres, et al. 2016. “Be Careful Where You Smile: Culture Shapes Judgments of Intelligence and Honesty of Smiling Individuals.” Journal of Nonverbal Behavior 40 (2): 101–16. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-015-0226-4.
Lazarus, Richard S. 1990. “Constructs of the Mind in Adaptation.” In Psychological and Biological Approaches to Emotion, edited by Nancy L. Stein, Bennett Levanthal, and Tom Trabasso, pp. 3-19. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Lazarus, Richard S. 1991. Emotion and Adaptation. Oxford University Press.
Nelson, Charles A, and Jukka M Leppänen. 2009. “Tuning the Developing Brain to Social Signals of Emotions.” Nature Reviews: Neuroscience 10 (1): 37–47. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn2554.
Lindquist, Kristen A., Joshua Conrad Jackson, Joseph Leshin, Ajay B. Satpute, and Maria Gendron. 2022. “The Cultural Evolution of Emotion.” Nature Reviews: Psychology 1: 669–681. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-022-00105-4.
Mandler, George. (1975) 1984. Mind and Body: Psychology of Emotion and Stress. W.W. Norton and Company.
Mandler, George. 1990. “A Constructivist Theory of Emotion.” In Psychological and Biological Approaches to Emotion, edited by N. L. Stein, B. B. Leventhal, and T. Trabasso, pp. 21–44. Erlbaum.
Mun, Cecilea. 2014. “A New Foundation for the Disciplines of Philosophy and Psychology Unification without Consilience.” Dissertation. Arizona State University.
Mun, Cecilea. 2016. “Natural Kinds, Social Constructions, and Ordinary Language: Clarifying the Crisis in the Science of Emotion.” Journal of Social Ontology 2 (2): 247-269. https://doi.org/10.1515/jso-2015-0051.
Mun, Cecilea. 2021. Interdisciplinary Foundations for the Science of Emotion: Unification without Consilience. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71194-8.
Mun, Cecilea. 2022. “The Science of Emotion: Mind, Body, and Culture.” Philosophies 7 (6): 144. https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies7060144.
Nussbaum, Martha C. 2001. Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. Cambridge University Press.
Nussbaum, Martha C. 2016. Anger and Forgiveness: Resentment, Generosity, and Justice. Oxford University Press.
Panksepp, Jaak. 1998. Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions. Oxford University Press.
Panksepp, Jaak. 2008. “Carving ‘Natural’ Emotions: ‘Kindly’ from Bottom-Up but Not Top-Down.” Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology 28 (2): 395–422. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0092065.
Prinz, Jesse J. 2004. Gut Reactions: A Perceptual Theory of Emotion. Oxford University Press.
Pugmire, David. 1994. “Real Emotion.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 54 (1): 105-122.
Putnam, Hilary. 1973. “Meaning and Reference.” The Journal of Philosophy 70 (19): 699–711. https://doi.org/10.2307/2025079. Accessed 22 Aug 2018.
Reisenzein, Rainer. 2022. “Tasks for a Theoretical Psychology of Emotion.” Cognition and Emotion 36 (2), 171–187. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2021.1992356.
Ruphy, Stéphanie. 2010. “Are Stellar Kinds Natural Kinds? A Challenging Newcomer in the Monism/Pluralism and Realism/Antirealism Debates.” Philosophy of Science 77 (5): 1109–20. https://doi.org/10.1086/656544.
Russell, James A. 2003. “Core Affect and the Psychological Construction of Emotion.” Psychological Review 110 (1): 145-172. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.110.1.145.
Russell, James A. 2009. Emotion, Core Affect, and Psychological Construction. Cognition and Emotion 23: 1259–1283. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699930902809375.
Russell, James A. 2010. Descriptive and Prescriptive Definitions of Emotion. Emotion Review 2: 377–378. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073910374667.
Russell, James A. 2012. Introduction to the Special Selection: On Defining Emotion. Emotion Review 4 (4): 337. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073912445857.
Satpute, Ajay B., Erik C. Nook, Sandhya Narayanan, Jocelyn Shu, Jochen Weber, and Kevin N. Ochsner. 2016. “Emotions in ‘Black and White’ or Shades of Gray? How We Think About Emotion Shapes Our Perception and Neural Representation of Emotion.” Psychological Science 27 (11): 1428–42. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797616661555.
Saxen, Frerk, Philipp Werner, and Ayoub Al-Hamadi. 2017. “Real Vs. Fake Emotion Challenge: Learning to Rank Authenticity from Facial Activity Descriptors.” IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision Workshops (ICCVW), 3073–78. IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICCVW.2017.363.
Scarantino, Andrea. 2012. “How to Define Emotions Scientifically.” Emotion Review 4: 358–368. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073912445810.
Scarantino, Andrea, and Paul Griffiths. 2011. “Don't Give Up on Basic Emotions.” Emotion Review 3 (4): 444–454. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073911419745.
Schachter, Stanley, and Jerome E. Singer. 1962. “Cognitive, Social, and Physiological Determinants of Emotional State.” Psychological Review 69: 379–399. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0046234
Scherer, Klaus R. 1982. “Emotion as a Process: Function, Origin and Regulation.” Social Science Information/Information sur les Sciences Sociales 21: 555–570.
Scherer, Klaus R. 1987. “Toward a Dynamic Theory of Emotion: The Component Process Model of Affective States.” Geneva Studies in Emotion and Communication. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/4c23/c3099b3926d4b02819f2af196a86d2ef16a1.pdf
Scherer, Klaus R. 2000. “Psychological Models of Emotion.” In The Neuropsychology of Emotion, edited by J. Borod, 137-162. Oxford University Press.
Scherer, Klaus R. 2001. “Appraisal Considered as a Process of Multilevel Sequential Checking.” In Appraisal Processes in Emotion: Theory, Methods, Research, edited by Klaus R. Scherer, Angela Schor, and Tom Johnstone. Oxford University Press.
Scherer, Klaus R. 2005. “What Are Emotions? And How Can They Be Measured?” Social Science Information 44: 695–729.
Scherer, Klaus R. 2009. “Emotion as Emergent Processes: They Require a Dynamic Computational Architecture.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 364: 3459–3474. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2009.0141.
Scherer, Klaus R. 2012. “Neuroscience Findings Are Consistent with Appraisal Theories of Emotion; but Does the Brain ‘Respect’ Constructionism?” Commentary to “The Brain Basis of Emotion: A Meta-Analytic Review”. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 35: 163–164.
Scherer, Klaus R. 2019. “Towards a Prediction and Data Driven Computational Process Model of Emotion.” IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing. Early Access. https://doi.org/10.1109/TAFFC.2019.2905209.
Scherer, Klaus R. 2022a. “Preamble.” Cognition and Emotion 36 (2): 154–170. DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2021.1973378.
Scherer, Klaus R. 2022b. “Theory Convergence in Emotion Science is Timely and Realistic.” Cognition and Emotion 36 (2): 154–170. DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2021.1973378.
Tahko, Tuomas E. 2021.Unity of Science. Cambridge University Press.
Wundt, Wilhem. 1987. Outlines of Psychology. Translated by Chalres Hubbard Judd. Leipzig, Germany: Whilhelm Englemann.
Zachar, Peter. 2022. “The Psychological Construction of Emotion – A Non-Essentialist Philosophy of Science.” Emotion Review 14 (1): 3–14. https://doi.org/10.1177/17540739211058715.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Cecilea Mun
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
