R. Hufendiek, Embodied emotions

Imke von Maur

pp. 979-984

in: Phenomenology and the cognitive sciences 16 (5), 2017.

Abstract

In Embodied Emotions Rebekka Hufendiek offers an alternative to cognitivist and non-cognitivist theories of emotions by developing – as the subtitle announces – “a naturalist approach to a normative phenomenon”. Her aim is to neither over-intellectualize emotions, as she thinks cognitivists do by highlighting mind, nurture and culture, nor to be inadequately reductionist, as she claims non-cognitivists tend to be, by highlighting body, nature and evolution. Hufendiek defines emotions as “embodied action-oriented representations that are embedded within a social context”. What makes her theory an original contribution to current debates in the philosophy of emotions and 4-E approaches to the mind is inter alia her externalist explanation of emotions’ normative dimension (i.e. that they can be (in)appropriate): “It is an individual’s environment that is meaningful, and it is the whole organism that is well equipped to respond to the affective affordances in its environment.” (2016, 176)...