Abstract
Several colleagues recently told me that they are rereading William James on emotion. Smart idea. James articulated as yet unanswered questions at the heart of affective science. With the understandable exception of Charles Darwin, William James is the scientist from the 19th century whose ideas most continue to stimulate theoretical debate and empirical research. All theories of emotion today assume Darwinian evolution; only some theories are Jamesian, others anti-Jamesian. James was perhaps the first to spell the word is with all capital letters when he stated what he meant by emotion: Emotion IS a perception. When subsequent writers endorsed or debated James by redefining emotion, controversy ensued. This special section does not resolve the controversies, but does expose them in the clearest form yet. It challenges parts of the received view of James: that he defined emotion as visceral activity, that his definition allowed emotion researchers to abandon the armchair for the physiology laboratory, and that the visceral theory was refuted by Walter Cannon. This special section discusses whether current treatments of James interpret him correctly, whether there are really two Jamesian theories, and whether he proposed basic emotions. Deigh (2014) drops back in history to examine the ideas James simply presupposed and those he sought to overturn. Deigh also moves forward to critique today’s Jamesian revival. Dror (2014) moves forward in history to consider Cannon and the James– Cannon (peripheralist–centralist) debate that dominated emotion research in the first part of the 20th century and continues today. Ellsworth (2014) argues that James proposed an appraisal rather than basic emotion theory. Laird and Lacasse (2014) reply to Cannon’s refutation of James, present a modern version of James’s theory, and review modern evidence supporting that version. Reisenzein and Stephan (2014) critique that modern evidence and comment on each of the other articles. The authors reply.
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