Emotion, Evolution and Rationality

Dylan Evans, Senior Lecturer in Intelligent Autonomous Systems, CEMS, University of the West of England, Bristol, UK Pierre Cruse, Centre de Philosophie des Sciences, Universite Catholique de Louvain, Belgium - The first book to explore the intricate relationship between emotion and rationality - Do emotions hinder or help rational thought? - Includes chapters from leading thinkers in neuroscience, philosophy, and psychology 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 and decision-making. How should we understand the evolutionary role of emotions? And can this explain the relationship between emotions and rationality? Contents PART I - NEUROSCIENTIFIC FOUNDATIONS 1 Antonio Damasio: William James and the modern neurobiology of emotion 2 Andrew Lawrence & Andrew Calder: Homologizing human emotions PART II - EMOTION, BELIEF AND APPRAISAL 3 Finn Spicer: Emotional behaviour and the scope of belief-desire explanation 4 Jesse Prinz: Emotion, psychosemantics and embodied appraisals 5 Paul Griffiths: Towards a 'Machiavellian' theory of emotional appraisal 6 Brian Parkinson: Unpicking reasonable emotions PART III - EVOLUTION AND THE RATIONALITY OF EMOTION 7 Chandra Sripada & Stephen Stich: Evolution, culture and the irrationality of the emotions 8 Gianmatteo Mameli: The role of emotions in ecological and practical rationality 9 Dylan Evans: The search hypothesis of emotion 10 Daniel Nettle: Adaptive illusions: optimism, control and human rationality 11 Christopher Badcock: Emotion versus reason as a genetic conflict PART IV - PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES 12 Jim Hopkins: Conscience and conflict: Darwin, Freud and the origins of human aggression 13 Peter Goldie: Emotion, reason and virtue