Emotions and their Expression (2022)

ABOUT

Prof. Gabriel Greenberg [gabriel.greenberg@gmail.com]
PHIL 281: Philosophy of Mind • Winter 2022 • UCLA
Philosophy 386: Graduate Seminar in Philosophy of Mind (Stanford)
When: Wed 2-5
Where: Dodd 325
Office hours: Thurs 1-2

SYLLABUS

This course will investigate the nature of the emotions and how they are expressed. The first half of the seminar will focus on the emotions themselves, from the perspective of neuroscience, cognitive science, philosophy, and feminist theory. The second half of the seminar will focus on the expression of emotions in faces, emoji, emotive language, music, and art.

Course materials (external link)

Part I. Emotions

1. Introduction: emotion and cognition
1/5
On zoom

Handout

No reading

2. Neuroscience
1/12
On zoom

Handout

Reading: Anderson and Adolphs (2018) The Neuroscience of Emotion: A New Synthesis

Chapter 6: "The Neuroscience of Emotion in Rodents"
Chapter 9: "The Neuroscience of Emotion in Humans"
For the idea of emotions as "decoupled" (or "cognitive") reflexes, see pgs. 18-23, pgs. 143-153, and Chapter 3, "Building Blocks and Features of Emotions"
(You can use this reading as the basis for Paper 1)

Recommended:

Dalgleish (2004), "The emotional brain"

3. Cognitive science
1/19
On zoom

Handout

Reading: Ortony, Clore, and Collins (1988) The Cognitive Structure of Emotion

Chapter 2: "The Structure of the Theory"
Chapter 3: "The Cognitive Psychology of Appraisal"
Chapter 5: "Reactions to Events"

Recommended:

Lazarus (1991) "Progress on a cognitive-motivational-relational theory of emotion"
Oatley and Johnson-Laird (2014) "Cognitive Approaches to the Emotions"

4. Philosophy
1/26
On zoom

Presentation: case 1, case 2

Handout

Reading:

Sartre (1939) "Outline of a Phenomenological Theory" from Sketch for a Theory of Emotions
Nussbaum (2004) "Emotions as Judgments of Value and Importance"

Recommended:

James (1884) "What is an emotion?"
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2018), "Emotion"

5. Feminist theory
2/2
On zoom

Presentation: youtube

Handout

Reading

Lorde (1981) "Uses of Anger"
Jagger (1989) "Love and Knowledge: Emotion in Feminist Epistemology"
Fricker (1991) "Reason and Emotion"

Recommended:

Campbell (1994) "Being Dismissed: The Politics of Emotional Expression"

Sunday 2/6: Short Paper Due

Part II. Expression

6. Facial expression
2/9
In person!

Presentation: youtube
Presentation: handout

Handout

Reading:

Russell and Fernandez-Dols (1997) "What does a facial expression mean?"
Smith and Scott (1997) "A Componential Approach to the meaning of facial expressions"

Recommended:

Cowen, Sauter, Tracy, and Keltner (2019) "Mapping the Passions: Toward a High-Dimensional Taxonomy of Emotional Experience and Expression"
Scherer, Mortillaro, Mehu (2017) "Facial Expression Is Driven by Appraisal and Generates Appraisal Inference"

See also:

Wegrzyn, Vogt, Kireclioglu, Schneider, Kissler (2017) "Mapping the Emotional Face: How Individual Face Parts Contribute to Successful Emotion Recognition"
Du, Tao, and Martinez (2014) "Compound Facial Expressions of Emotion"
Medlej, Joumana (2010) A map of emotions and facial expressions

7. Linguistic expression
2/16

Guest lecture: Jessica Rett

Presentation: youtube
Presentation: handout

Handout

Reading:

Potts (2006) "The expressive dimension"
Rett (2021) "The semantics of emotive markers and other illocutionary content"
Warning: The Potts reading explicitly discusses slurs, including the n-word.

Recommended:

Kaplan (1999) "The meaning of ouch and oops"
Ginzburg, Mazzocconi, and Tian (2020) "Laughter as language"
Rett (2021) "A comparison of expressives and miratives"

8. Emoji
2/23

Presentation: handout

Handout

Reading:

Grosz, Greenberg, De Leon, and Kaiser (2021) "A semantics of face emoji in discourse"
Note: Read for the examples and the overall ideas; don't worry about the formal theory.
Skip Sections 3.5 and 4.3, Section 5 is optional.

Recommended: