Breakdowns in embodied emotive cognition

pp. 185-234

in: Michelle Maiese, Embodiment, emotion, and cognition, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011

Abstract

In the previous chapters, I have argued that our essentially embodied desire-based emotions and affective framing processes constitute essential parts of the necessary foundation for our sense of self, our ability to engage in moral evaluation, and our capacity for social cognition. It follows naturally from this account that impaired affective framing results in disruptions to these cognitive processes. Because desire-based emotions and the bodily feelings they essentially involve are linked to value and significance, diminished emotion yields a world stripped of much of its felt importance. As I argued in Chapters 4 and 5, it seems that there is no such thing as fully functional cognition stripped of affect, because the absence of emotion constitutes a state of "cognitive and behavioral paralysis' and is likely the mark of a 'sick soul" (Ratcliffe, 2005b, p. 188).