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What someone's behaviour must be like if we are to be aware of their emotions in it
Author(s)
Date Issued
2012-06
Date Available
2013-11-25T16:17:56Z
Abstract
Emotions are manifest in the behaviour that expresses them. This only makes sense if
a piece of emotionally expressive behaviour is taken to be an Aristotelian process of
manifesting or realising emotion. The emotions that are manifest in such processes
can only be perceived if perception too is taken to be an Aristotelian process. I argue
that on plausible assumptions about the nature of emotion this process must itself be
one of emotional engagement with the subject of the perceived emotions. This gives
us something like Gallagher's "Interactive Theory" of how we know other minds. The
question remains as to how we can be aware of other people's emotional states when
we are not interacting with them. The answer is that we are conscious of these
emotions using the same interactive perceptual potentiality that we employ when we
do engage with them emotionally, but we do not employ the full range of possibilities
provided by that potentiality. For this answer to work it is essential that the 3rd-
personal capacity to recognize someone’s emotional state must be seen as a limiting
case of the 2nd-personal capacity to be aware of someone’s emotions by engaging with
them emotionally.
Type of Material
Journal Article
Publisher
Springer
Journal
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences
Volume
11
Issue
2
Start Page
135
End Page
148
Copyright (Published Version)
2012, Springer Netherlands
Language
English
Status of Item
Peer reviewed
This item is made available under a Creative Commons License
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What someone's behaviour must be like penultimate draft (2).pdf
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205.35 KB
Format
Owning collection
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