Journal of Philosophy of Emotion Podcast · Journal of Philosophy of Emotion

JPE Book Symposium: Emotion: The Basics, Part 1

·1 hr 18 min·5 clips

Brady argues decision-making is “imbued with emotion so much so that effective decisions would be nigh on impossible without it.”

1. Journal of Philosophy of Emotion Podcast: JPE Book Symposium, Emotion: The Basics, Part 1, centers on Michael Brady’s book and the commentaries it draws. 2. Michael Brady appears as the book’s author and main respondent, and Aaron Ben-Ze’ev, Charles Starkey, and Paneel Reyes-Cardenas are the named commentators whose papers challenge and extend his views. 3. The episode asks what Emotion: The Basics is for: an introduction to emotion that still makes a case for emotion’s value in epistemology, action, social life, morality, and art. 4. Brady says emotions are studied by psychology, neuroscience, history, and philosophy, which makes the topic broad before philosophy even enters the discussion. 5. He contrasts biologically basic accounts of emotion with socially constructed accounts and says philosophers disagree about whether the core issue is definition or practical function. 6. Brady describes the book as written for college and university readers, academic researchers, and curious general readers who want a basic introduction. 7. He says the writing had to balance accessibility with enough detail for readers without much philosophy background. 8. Brady argues that the book emphasizes the positive contribution of emotion, including cases where emotion runs counter to rational thinking and deliberation. 9. He also says the book does not claim people should always follow their heart rather than their head, and he calls that a “recipe for disaster.” 10. Chapter 1 surveys feeling, cognitive, and perceptual theories and says no single theory explains all the things people count as emotions. 11. Chapter 2 uses curiosity as an example of an emotion with epistemic value because it moves people to seek information at relatively little cognitive cost. 12. Chapter 2 also stresses emotional attention as a way to gain “vital information” and evaluative understanding about ourselves and the world. 13. Chapter 3 rejects the idea that ideal decision-making should be free from emotion and says Antonio D’Amesio’s work shows decisions are “imbued with emotion.” 14. Chapter 3 then turns to motivation and uses remorse to argue that feelings matter more than a simple belief-desire model suggests. 15. Chapter 4 moves to the social domain and says emotions support cooperative behavior, personal relationships, and political movements. 16. Chapter 4 names Robert Frank, love, pride, indignation, and solidarity when explaining commitment problems, cooperation, and social change. 17. Chapter 5 argues that emotion is centrally involved in morality and art, and Brady says that without emotion people would not develop morally or engage fully with art, literature, and music. 18. Aaron Ben-Ze’ev praises Brady’s balance but disputes his classification of emotional components and theories, proposing a different scheme built around cognition, evaluation, motivation, and feeling. 19. Charles Starkey reads Brady’s book as accessible to non-specialists and then argues for a binding model of emotion that links affective arousal, cognition, and relational theme information. 20. Paneel Reyes-Cardenas presents the book as a demanding but constructive introduction, and listeners interested in philosophy of emotion, virtue, and epistemology will get the most from it.

As heard by us

A careful look at why emotion is more than feeling, and how it can still be judged rationally.

Part 1 of the Journal of Philosophy of Emotion's Summer Podcast Edition gives Michael Brady's Emotion, The Basics a measured hearing. It moves through what emotions are, why they count as general evaluations, and how their rationality can be judged without forcing them into a…

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A clean map of emotion before the argument starts to fork.

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