Part V: Philosophy of Mind

Chapter 16

Study questions for What are Emotions?

  1. Give examples of your own of complex emotions, and state which (if any) of the basic emotions may be involved in forming the complex state.
  2. Give examples of your own of emotions that appear to be mostly culturally based and emotions that seem to have a strong evolutionary component.
  3. Use a search engine to find additional examples of ancient cultures where women were in charge or where men and women were equal. Determine to what extent these types of cultures provide a challenge to the argument for the claim that women are more emotionally jealous than men.
  4. What are the two components of emotions, according to contemporary feeling theories?
  5. What sort of evidence is there for cognitive theories of emotions?
  6. What is the problem of fiction?
  7. Give examples of your own of cases in which emotions are good reasons for action and cases in which they are bad reasons for action.
  8. What do people with damages to ventromedial prefrontal cortex tell us about emotions?

Multiple Choice Questions

Weblinks for What are emotions?

de Sousa, Ronald (2013). ‘Emotion’. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring), ed. Edward N. Zalta, http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2013/entries/emotion/. [An excellent overview of the set of issues raised in this chapter.]

Johnson, Gregory (2009). ‘Theories of Emotion’. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://www.iep.utm.edu/emotion/. [An excellent overview of the different theories of emotions, including those presented by psychologists.]

Introductory further reading for What are emotions?

Brogaard, Berit (2015). On Romantic Love. Oxford University Press. [This is a mainstream book discussing the philosophy of emotions, with a particular focus on love.]

Deonna, Julien, and Teroni, Fabrice (2012). The Emotions: A Philosophical Introduction. Routledge. [This is a succinct and very readable introduction to the philosophy of emotions.]

Advanced further reading for What are emotions?

Goldie, Peter (ed.) (2010). The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Emotions. Oxford University Press. [A comprehensive treatment of the different issues that have arisen in the philosophy of emotions.]

Greenspan, Patricia (1988). Emotions and Reasons: An Inquiry into Emotional Justification. Routledge, Chapman and Hall. [An accessible account of how emotions can serve as reasons for our actions.]

Griffiths, Paul (1997). What Emotions Really Are: The Problem of Psychological Categories. University of Chicago Press. [A book-length criticism of philosophers working on the philosophy of emotions failing to take data from evolutionary biology into account.]

Nussbaum, Martha (2001). Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. Cambridge University Press. [A book-length defence of a cognitive theory of emotions.]

Prinz, Jesse (2004). Gut Reactions: A Perceptual Theory of Emotions. Oxford University Press. [An accessible defence of a contemporary version of the feeling theory, with lots of evidence from the sciences.]

Solomon, R. C. (ed.) (2004). Thinking about Feeling: Contemporary Philosophers on Emotions. Oxford University Press. [A comprehensive edited collection discussing the set of issues pertaining to emotions covered in this chapter.]