Emotion, Evolution and Rationality

by Evans, Dylan; Cruse, Pierre

• ISBN13: 9780198528982
• ISBN10: 0198528981
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-06-17
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

For thousands of years, many Western thinkers have assumed that emotions are, at best, harmless luxuries, and at worst outright obstacles to intelligent action. In the past decade, however, scientists and philosophers have begun to challenge this 'negative view of emotion'. Neuroscientists,psychologists and researchers in artificial intelligence now agree that emotions are vital to intelligent action. Evolutionary considerations have played a vital role in this shift to a more positive view of emotion. This book brings together some of the leading thinkers about emotion from a variety of disciplines. In a series of fascinating and challenging essays, they examine the role that evolutionary considerations can play in helping us to understand the role of emotions in rational thought anddecision-making. How should we understand the evolutionary role of emotions? And can this explain the relationship between emotions and rationality?

Table of Contents

Contributors	ix
Introduction	xi
Part I: Neuroscientific foundations
1. William James and the modern neurobiology of emotion	3	(12)
Antonio R. Damasio
2. Homologizing human emotions	15	(36)
Andrew D. Lawrence and Andrew J. Calder
Part II: Emotion, belief, and appraisal
3. Emotional behaviour and the scope of belief-desire explanation	51	(18)
Finn Spicer
4. Which emotions are basic?	69	(20)
Jesse Prinz
5. Towards a 'Machiavellian' theory of emotional appraisal	89	(18)
Paul E. Griffiths
6. Unpicking reasonable emotions	107	(26)
Brian Parkinson
Part III: Evolution and the rationality of emotion
7. Evolution, culture, and the irrationality of the emotions	133	(26)
Chandra Sekhar Sripada and Stephen Stich
8. The role of emotions in ecological and practical rationality	159	(20)
Matteo Mameli
9. The search hypothesis of emotion	179	(14)
Dylan Evans
10. Adaptive illusions: optimism, control, and human rationality	193	(16)
Daniel Nettle
11. Emotion versus reason as a genetic conflict	209	(16)
Christopher Badcock
Part IV: Philosophical perspectives
12. Conscience and conflict: Darwin, Freud, and the origins of human aggression	225	(24)
Jim Hopkins
13. Emotion, reason, and virtue	249	(20)
Peter Goldie
Index	269