Waubonsee Community College

What emotions really are, the problem of psychological categories, Paul E. Griffiths

Label
What emotions really are, the problem of psychological categories, Paul E. Griffiths
Language
eng
Bibliography note
Includes bibliographical references (pages 259-276) and index
Illustrations
illustrations
Index
index present
Literary Form
non fiction
Main title
What emotions really are
Nature of contents
bibliography
Oclc number
35990240
Responsibility statement
Paul E. Griffiths
Series statement
Science and its conceptual foundations
Sub title
the problem of psychological categories
Summary
Paul E. Griffiths argues that most research on the emotions has been as misguided as Aristotelian efforts to study "superlunary objects"--Objects outside the moon's orbit. Such subjects exist, of course, but studying them as a group produces no useful results because they share no traits other than an arbitrarily defined location. Similarly, Griffiths show that "emotion", as currently defined, groups together psychological states of very different, and thus not comparable, kinds. According to Griffiths, theoretical research on emotions took a wrong turn by not fully exploring the relevant empirical evidence. Griffiths provides a detailed overview of this material, drawing on ethology, evolutionary biology, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and anthropology of the emotions. He identifies and assesses the relative merits of three main theoretical approaches - affect program theory, evolutionary psychology, and social constructionism
Table Of Contents
1. Introduction -- 2. Philosophy and Emotion -- The Poverty of Conceptual Analysis -- 3. The Psychoevolutionary Approach to Emotion -- 4. Affect Programs and Emotion Modules -- 5. The Higher Cognitive Emotions: Some Research Programs -- 6. The Social Construction of Emotion -- 7. Natural Kinds and Theoretical Concepts -- 8. Natural Kinds in Biology and Psychology -- 9. What Emotions Really Are -- 10. Coda -- Mood and Emotion
Content
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