The Rationality of Emotion

Download or read book The Rationality of Emotion written by Ronald De Sousa and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1990-03-14 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this urbane and witty book, Ronald de Sousa disputes the widespread notion that reason and emotion are natural antagonists. He argues that emotions are a kind of perception, that their roots in the paradigm scenarios in which they are learned give them an essentially dramatic structure, and that they have a crucial role to-play in rational beliefs, desires, and decisions by breaking the deadlocks of pure reason.The book's twelve chapters take up the following topics: alternative models of mind and emotion; the relation between evolutionary, physiological, and social factors in emotions; a taxonomy of objects of emotions; assessments of emotions for correctness and rationality; the regulation by emotions of logical and practical reasoning; emotion and time; the mechanism of emotional self-deception; the ethics of laughter; and the roles of emotions in the conduct of life. There is also an illustrative interlude, in the form of a lively dialogue about the ideology of love, jealousy, and sexual exclusiveness. A Bradford Book.