6. Emotions

Abstract

‘Emotions’ asks: how ought we to understand the emotions? There are a number of body-based theories of the emotions, according to which an emotion is an awareness of certain bodily processesWilliam James presents an ‘subtraction argument’, which is the thought experiment which asks us to imagine what is left of an emotion if we subtract the relevant bodily processes from an emotion. Body-based theories can be contrasted with judgement-based theories, which align emotions with judgements. There are also a number of theories of emotions put forward by proponents of the embodied mind thesis, who see the somatic nervous system, which controls voluntary actions such as reaching and walking, as playing a crucial role in emotion.