Phenomenology Of Emotions Research Articles

How emotions grasp value

AbstractIt's plausible that we only fully appreciate the value of something, say a painting or a blameworthy action, when we have a fitting emotional response to it, such as admiration or guilt. But exactly how and why do we grasp value through emotion? I propose, first, that a subject S phenomenally grasps property P only if what it is to be P is manifest in the phenomenal character of S's experience. Second, following clues from the Stoics, I argue that the phenomenal character of emotional experience is constitutively linked with its having directive content. More precisely, emotional experience directs us both to adopt a maxim for action – take certain characteristic kinds of action for an emotion‐specific end – and to treat something about the object as a presumptively decisive reason to take such action for such end. If we assent to what the experience proposes (or rational control gets bypassed), we are motivated to take the relevant action and have a corresponding evaluative belief. This picture of emotional cognition yields a natural conception of the evaluative fittingness conditions of emotions without the problematic assumption that they have a presentational phenomenology. Instead, it is precisely in virtue of the directive and valenced phenomenology of emotion that values are only fully manifest in emotional experience, since values are essentially action‐ and attitude‐guiding properties.

Isolating primitive emotional phenomenology in the ‘lab’ of fiction

ABSTRACT There is an important debate in the philosophy of mind that has roots in the phenomenological tradition, namely: what are the primitive forms of consciousness, that is, what are the fundamental ingredients or aspects of consciousness. This paper wants to contribute to partially answering this general question by providing an answer to a required sub-question within this question: is emotional phenomenology fundamental? I will answer in the affirmative and will offer an argument focused on contemplative emotions elicited by fiction. Another type of contemplative emotions, namely, esthetic emotions, have been invoked in the literature but I will argue that the phenomenology of emotions elicited by fiction, given their continuity and sameness in kind with the phenomenology of garden variety emotions, are more dialectically efficient vis-à-vis the debate on the irreducibility of emotional phenomenology.

Correction to: The afterlife of fictional media violence. A genetic phenomenology of emotions following Husserl and Freud

Correction to: The afterlife of fictional media violence. A genetic phenomenology of emotions following Husserl and Freud

The afterlife of fictional media violence. A genetic phenomenology of emotions following Husserl and Freud

The afterlife of fictional media violence. A genetic phenomenology of emotions following Husserl and Freud

How Many Emotions Does Film Studies Need?

A look at current emotion research in film studies, a field that has been thriving for over three decades, reveals three limitations: (1) Film scholars concentrate strongly on a restricted set of garden-variety emotions—some emotions are therefore neglected. (2) Their understanding of standard emotions is often too monolithic—some subtypes of these emotions are consequently overlooked. (3) The range of existing emotion terms does not seem fine-grained enough to cover the wide range of affective experiences viewers undergo when watching films—a number of emotions might thus be missed. Against this background, the article proposes at least four benefits of introducing a more granular emotion lexicon in film studies. As a remedy, the article suggests paying closer attention to the subjective-experience component of emotions. Here the descriptive method of phenomenology—including its particular subfield phenomenology of emotions—might have useful things to tell film scholars.

A Digital Picture to Hold Us Captive?

In this article I investigate online misinformation from a media philosophy perspective. I, thus move away from the debate focused on the semantic content, concerned with what is true or not about misinformation. I argue rather that online misinformation is the effect of an informational climate promoted by user micro-behaviours such as liking, sharing, and posting. Misinformation online is explained as the effect of an informational environment saturated with and shaped by techno-images in which most users act automatically under the constant assault of stirred emotions, a state resembling what media philosopher Vilém Flusser has called techno-magical consciousness. I describe three ways in which images function on social media to induce this distinctive, uncritical mode of consciousness, and complement Flusser’s explanation with insights from the phenomenology of emotions.

Taking social ontology seriously: An interview with Jack Katz

This interview with Jack Katz offers an inspiring statement about how to study social life. It starts with a discussion of Katz’s three-dimensional social ontology; social life is constituted in embodied interactions in which people adjust to others and create transcendent meanings. Contrasting the ontology with anthropology’s ontological turn, we note that social ontology is about generating empirically accurate descriptions capturing the flow of social life. This leads to a critical discussion of sociology’s pre-occupation with explanans-driven theorizing. Touching upon macro–micro relationships, we consider what a phenomenology of collective emotions would look like. This brings us to emotional transformations, notably the notion of ‘falling’, an important theme in Katz’s work. The interview continues with advice of how to think beyond given categories, to consider the validity of ethnographic description and to look for the absurd. Finally, we conclude that ethnography has the potential to appeal to mass audiences.

THE REVIEW OF THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE “PHENOMENOLOGY OF EMOTIONS. THE 4th CONFERENCE ON TRADITIONS AND PERSPECTIVES OF THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL MOVEMENT IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE” (October 12-13, 2018, Kaunas, Lithuania)

THE REVIEW OF THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE “PHENOMENOLOGY OF EMOTIONS. THE 4th CONFERENCE ON TRADITIONS AND PERSPECTIVES OF THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL MOVEMENT IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE” (October 12-13, 2018, Kaunas, Lithuania)

Rage inside the machine

According to an influential objection, which Martha Nussbaum has powerfully restated, expressing anger in democratic public discourse is counterproductive from the standpoint of justice. To resist this challenge, this article articulates a crucial yet underappreciated sense in which angry discourse is epistemically productive. Drawing on recent developments in the philosophy of emotion, which emphasize the distinctive phenomenology of emotion, I argue that conveying anger to one’s listeners is epistemically valuable in two respects: first, it can direct listeners’ attention to elusive morally relevant features of the situation; second, it enables them to register injustices that their existing evaluative categories are not yet suited to capturing. Thus, when employed skillfully, angry speech promotes a greater understanding of existing injustices. This epistemic role is indispensable in highly divided societies, where the injustices endured by some groups are often invisible to, or misunderstood by, other groups. Finally, I defuse the most forceful objections to this defense – that anger is likely to be manipulated, that it is epistemically misleading, and that my defense presupposes unrealistic levels of trust – partly by showing that they overlook the systemic character of democratic discourse.

Phenomenology of emotions

This symposium analyses the psychopathological phenomenon “anxiety”, a classical concept, which has returned to be central in the recent psychiatric debate. Some of the most important international phenomenologists will discuss anxiety in the context of major psychopathological areas. Clinical and research insight will be presented in the context of a philosophically deep understanding of the fundamental qualitative features of the psychopathology of anxiety.Disclosure of interestThe authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.

Why Do People Regulate Their Emotions? A Taxonomy of Motives in Emotion Regulation

Emotion regulation involves the pursuit of desired emotional states (i.e., emotion goals) in the service of superordinate motives. The nature and consequences of emotion regulation, therefore, are likely to depend on the motives it is intended to serve. Nonetheless, limited attention has been devoted to studying what motivates emotion regulation. By mapping the potential benefits of emotion to key human motives, this review identifies key classes of motives in emotion regulation. The proposed taxonomy distinguishes between hedonic motives that target the immediate phenomenology of emotions, and instrumental motives that target other potential benefits of emotions. Instrumental motives include behavioral, epistemic, social, and eudaimonic motives. The proposed taxonomy offers important implications for understanding the mechanism of emotion regulation, variation across individuals and contexts, and psychological function and dysfunction, and points to novel research directions.

Empathy, Emotional Sharing and Feelings in Stein’s Early Work

This paper is devoted to the study of the emotions in Edith Stein’s early work On the Problem of Empathy. After presenting her work embedded in the tradition of the early phenomenology of the emotions, I shall elaborate the four dimensions of the emotional experience according to this authoress (depth, reach, duration and intensity), the link between emotions and values and the phenomenon of the living body. I argue that Stein’s account on empathy remains incomplete as long as we ignore the complex phenomenology of emotions underlying her work.

Discourse and intercourse in The Kreutzer Sonata: A Schelerian perspective

This article discusses Tolstoy’s The Kreutzer Sonata as a case study of faulty emotional connections. Analysis centers on the story’s unsympathetic hero, the ideologically motivated wife-murderer Pozdnyshev, whose relationships with others are examined in the context of Max Scheler’s phenomenology of emotions. The article intends to demonstrate that the key moral problem in the tale is not that the hero fails to realize the ideal of neighborly love and compassion, which he preaches, but that this very ideal is deeply flawed. Scheler’s theory of empathy, with its distinction between active, productive empathy and the passive, merely reproductive kind, is highly relevant to Tolstoy’s problematics and is used as a tool of both psychological and philosophical analysis.

Emotions as Psychological Reactions

Sometimes we speak of behaviours and actions as reactions, just as we speak of physical conditions and mental states as reactions. But what do we mean when we say that emotions are reactions? I answer this question by developing an account of emotions as psychological reactions to presentations or representations of states of affairs. I show that this account may provide a novel conceptual framework for explaining aspects of the intentionality, phenomenology and behavioural manifestation of emotions. I conclude by showing that this account is compatible with the view that emotions can be assessed on grounds of justification and correctness.

The a Priori Value and Feeling in Max Scheler and Wang Yangming

Following Mou Zongsan’s interpretation of Wang Yangming, this paper investigates the phenomenology of values and moral emotions in Max Scheler and the Confucian learning of heart, especially Wang Yangming. Part I illustrates the meaning of moral emotions in Confucianism and introduces Wang Yangming’s idea of pure knowing (liangzhi 良知). Part II introduces Max Scheler’s idea of a priori value and feeling in order to explain how pure knowing could be both immanent and transcendental, both subjective and objective. Part III explores the phenomena of value and feeling in Confucianism and Wang Yangming, giving a Schelerian interpretation of Wang Yangming’s teaching of four verses. Similar to Max Scheler, Confucian learning of heart affirms the intentional structure between hierarchy of values on the one hand and loving, preferring, and feeling of values on the other hand. This paper intends to clarify the basic structure of Wang Yangming’s thought; therefore, analyses on detailed moral emotions will be left to discussion in the future.

La inscripción de la sorpresa en la fenomenología de las emociones de edmund husserl

In this paper we argue about the inscription of surprise in the of of E. Husserl. But before assuming that E. Husserl addressed the issue of surprise, we ask if he really did it and even, if it is possible to talk about a phenomenology of emotions his work. The paper is thus motivated by two questions: Is surprise an emotion? Did Husserl really develop a phenomenology of emotions? This will take us to, 1) outline a redefinition of surprise, and 2) advance through the path of a that has been a bit reformed by the fact of surprise. This issue will be developed in three stages: I. the husserlian of emotions, II. Is surprise an emotion? III. The surprise, a process.

How can emotions be both cognitive and bodily?

The long-standing debate between cognitive and feeling theories of emotion stems, in part, from the assumption that cognition and thought are abstract, intellectual, disembodied processes, and that bodily feelings are non-intentional and have no representational content. Working with this assumption has led many emotions theorists to neglect the way in which emotions are simultaneously bodily and cognitive-evaluative. Even hybrid theories, such as those set forth by Prinz (2004) and Barlassina and Newen (2013), fail to account fully for how the cognitive and bodily elements of emotion are integrated. As a result, such accounts are unable to provide an adequate characterization of the intentionality or phenomenology of emotions. I will argue that an enactive account of emotions, one which characterizes them as a way of engaging with and making sense of one’s surroundings, can help us to overcome this false dichotomy between cognitive and body elements. What I call ‘affective framing’ is at the core of emotional experience. It is the way in which we engage with and appraise our surroundings in and through bodily feelings of caring, so that the bodily and cognitive elements of emotion necessarily are fused. The notion of affective framing not only helps to clarify the relationship between bodily and cognitive elements of emotion, but also offers a useful way to make sense of both the intentional directedness and phenomenal character of emotional experience.

Study of individual and group affective processes in the crew of a simulated mission to Mars: Positive affectivity as a valuable indicator of changes in the crew affectivity

The success of a long-duration space mission depends on various technical demands as well as on the psychological (cognitive, affective, and motivational) adaptation of crewmembers and the quality of interactions within the crew. We examined the ways crewmembers of a 520-day simulated spaceflight to Mars (held in the Institute for Biomedical Problems, in Moscow) experienced and regulated their moods and emotions. Results show that crewmembers experienced predominantly positive emotions throughout their 520-day isolation and the changes in mood of the crewmembers were asynchronous and balanced. The study suggests that during the simulation, crewmembers experienced and regulated their emotions differently than they usually do in their everyday life. In isolation, crewmembers preferred to suppress and neutralize their negative emotions and express overtly only emotions with positive valence. Although the affective processes were almost invariable throughout the simulation, two periods of time when the level of positive emotions declined were identified. Regarding the findings, the paper suggests that changes in positive affectivity could be a more valuable indicator of human experience in demanding but professional environments than changes in negative affectivity. Finally, the paper discusses the phenomenology of emotions during a real space mission.

Moods and Appraisals: How the Phenomenology and Science of Emotions Can Come Together

In this paper, I articulate Heidegger’s notion of Befindlichkeit and show that his phenomenological account of affective existence can be understood in terms of contemporary work on emotions. By examining Heidegger’s account alongside contemporary accounts of emotions, I not only demonstrate the ways in which key aspects of the former are present in the latter; I also explicate in detail the ways in which our understanding of Befindlichkeit and its relationship to moods and emotions can benefit from an empirically-informed study of emotions.

Motivation, Emotions, and Leadership: The Silent Side of Management

The article argues for considering bodily and emotional dimensions into an extended understanding of demotivation in organization. Based on phenomenal indicators and signs and motivational barriers, demotivation is described as a multidimensional phenomenon. Following an experiential “demotivation-syndrome“, a phenomenology of embodiment and emotions will be outlined, allowing a more comprehensive understanding of demotivation. Finally, some practical implications for preventing and overcoming demotivation are presented. By concluding, some research perspectives of further phenomenological investigations of demotivation will be discussed.