Emotion and affect in the space of reasons

Authors

  • Peter Olen Lake Sumter State College

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.4454/philinq.v10i1.392

Keywords:

Wilfrid Sellars, behaviorism, rationality, emotion, affect

Abstract

Wilfrid Sellars’s conception of “the space of reasons” makes critical assumptions about what constitutes persons and human uniqueness. Specifically, Sellars assumes that being human is defined through rationality. Although unique to Sellars, defining humans through rationality is an assumption not without its problems. I trace historical and contemporary issues with ignoring emotion and affect in our definition of persons and attempt to reconcile Sellars’s commitment to behaviorism with a seeming conflict between rationality and emotion.

References

Barrett, Lisa, 2018, How Emotions are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, New York.

Binkley, Robert, 1965, “A Theory of Practical Reason”, in The Philosophical Review, 74: 423-448.

Brandom, Robert, 1994, Making It Explicit: Reasoning, Representing, and Discursive Commitment, Harvard University Press, Cambridge.

de Laguna, Grace, 1919, “Emotion and Perception from the Behaviorist Standpoint”, in The Psychological Review, 26: 409-227.

de Laguna, Grace, 1927, Speech: Its Function and Development, Indiana University Press, Bloomington.

de Laguna, Grace, 1963, “The Person”, in The Review of Metaphysics, 17: 171-186.

Diaz, Rodrigo and Reuter, Kevin, 2021, “Feeling the Right Way: Normative Influences on People’s Use of Emotion Concepts”, in Mind and Language, 36: 451-470.

Dixon, Thomas, 2012, “Emotion”: The History of a Keyword in Crisis, in Emotion Review, 4: 338-344.

Gilbert, Margaret, 2014, “How We Feel”, in von Scheve, Christian and Salemla, Mikko, eds. Collective Emotions, Oxford University Press, Oxford: 18-30.

Helm, Bennett, 2014, “Emotional Communities of Respect” in von Scheve, Christian and Salemla, Mikko, eds. Collective Emotions, Oxford University Press, Oxford: 47-59.

Hindriks, Frank and Sauer, Hanno, 2020, “The Mark of the Moral: Beyond the Sentimentalist Turn”, in Philosophical Psychology, 33: 569-591.

Koons, Jeremy, 2019, The Ethics of Wilfrid Sellars, Routledge, New York.

McDowell, John, 1994, Mind and World, Harvard University Press, Cambridge.

Olen, Peter, 2016, Wilfrid Sellars and the Foundations of Normativity, Palgrave Macmillan, London.

Olen, Peter, 2018, “The Varieties and Origins of Wilfrid Sellars’s Behaviorism” in Corti, Luca and Nunziante, Antonio, eds. Sellars and the History of Modern Philosophy, Routledge, New York: 178-196.

Olen, Peter, forthcoming, “Perspectivism and Behaviorism: A Response to Katzav”, in Australasian Philosophical Review.

Olen, Peter and Turner, Stephen, 2015, “Durkheim, Sellars, and the Origins of Collective Intentionality”, in British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 23: 954-975.

Russell, James, 2021, “Psychological Construction of Episodes Called Emotions”, in History of Psychology, 24: 116-120.

Sellars, Wilfrid, 1949/2005, “Language, Rules and Behavior”, in Pure Pragmatics and Possible Worlds: The Early Essays of Wilfrid Sellars, ed. by J. Sicha, Ridgeview Publishing Company, Atascadero: 117-134.

Sellars, Wilfrid, 1951, “Obligation and Motivation”, in Philosophical Studies, 2: 21-25.

Sellars, Wilfrid, 1956/2000, “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind”, in deVries, Willem and Triplett, Tim, eds. Knowledge, Mind, and the Given: Reading Wilfrid Sellars’s “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind”, Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis: 205-276.

Sellars, Wilfrid, 1962/1963, “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man” in Science, Perception and Reality, Ridgeview Publishing Company, Atascadero: 1-40.

Sellars, Wilfrid, 1965, “Imperatives, Intentions, and the Logic of ‘Ought’”, in Castaneda, Hector-Neri and Nakhnikian, George, eds. Morality and the Language of Conduct, Wayne State University Press, Detroit: 159-218.

Sellars, Wilfrid, 1967, Science and Metaphysics: Variations on Kantian Themes, Ridgeview Publishing Company, Atascadero.

Tolman, Edward, 1923, “A Behavioristic Account of the Emotions”, in Psychological Review, 30: 217-227.

Tolman, Edward, 1932, Purposive Behavior in Animals and Men, University of California Press, Berkeley.

Tuomela, Raimo, 2013, Social Ontology: Collective Intentionality and Group Agents, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Watson, John, 1919, “A Schematic Outline of the Emotions”, in Psychological Review, 26: 165-196.

Downloads

Published

2022-03-04

Issue

Section

Focus