Philosophy of Emotion: James-Lange Theory, Rationality, and Natural Kinds

This set of flashcards covers vocabulary and conceptual frameworks regarding the James-Lange theory of emotion, rational assessability, the comparative analysis of anger and envy, and the debate over emotions as natural kinds.

James-Lange Theory

Directly identifying emotions as the felt perception of bodily changes triggered by an exciting stimulus, such as feeling sorry because we cry or afraid because we tremble.

Disembodied Emotion

What James describes as a nonentity or a cold and neutral state of intellectual perception that remains if bodily states are removed from the emotional experience.

Upstream Rationality

A distinction made by Teroni referring to whether the cognitive base or initial perceptual stimuli provide good reasons for the emotion.

Downstream Rationality

A distinction by Teroni referring to whether the effects of an emotion, such as subsequent judgments and behavior, make rational sense.

Blob-emotions

Teroni's term for natural responses to restricted stimuli that are impervious to additional evidence, functioning as pre-rational responses outside the rational/irrational frame upstream.

Recalcitrant Emotions

Emotions that persist despite contrary judgments, such as fearing a safe rollercoaster, which serves as a feature of the James-Lange theory where bodily responses and cognitive judgments diverge.

Misfit Principle

Grzankowski's principle stating that if one has an emotion while judging its formal object as absent, they are guaranteed to violate either a truth norm (judgment is false) or a fittingness norm (emotion is unfitting).

Fittingness

The normative standard for assessing whether an emotion correctly tracks its formal object, such as whether an object is actually dangerous in the case of fear.

Appraisal Theory

A framework where emotions are responses to how a situation is evaluated relative to a subject's goals, concerns, and well-being.

Formal Object

The specific property or evaluative rule defining what an emotion tracks, such as dangerousness for fear, offensiveness for anger, and a superior advantage in a self-relevant domain for envy.

Envy

A social emotion characterized by Smith & Kim as a painful feeling of inferiority, hostility, and resentment resulting from a comparative or relational status differential.

Schadenfreude

Taking pleasure in the misfortune of others, which is an state empirically linked to prior feelings of envy according to Smith et al. (1996).

Natural Kind

A category that exists independent of human conceptual activity, requiring a $1\text{-to-}1$ neural or biological substrate that remains consistent across cultures.

Emotional Anaesthesia

A clinical condition where a patient reports functioning intellectually but lacking the faculty of feeling, used by James to support the idea that bodily resonance is necessary for emotion.

Feedback Loop Principle

The James-Lange concept that voluntarily performing the bodily manifestations of an emotion, such as posture or expressions, produces or intensifies the actual felt emotional state.