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Oh god no. Lisa Barett-Feldman is mostly marketing, I do not see any great additions from her to the debate regarding emotions. Don't get me wrong, the state of affairs of theories of emotion is lamentable. But her views are (mostly) either already established, or obviously wrong. She creates strawmen. "No emotion is tied to a single, objective state in the body" is misleading at best. Of course it is not, no one in the field thought so previously. Stating that emotions are "cultural" explains nothing, and it is also demonstratebly wrong if taken to the absolute. Blind people do show facial expressions very similar to non-blind people (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/978111951934...). Barett-Feldman simply ignores the large amount of evidence for specific, biological foundations of emotions. That is why she is controversial. Also I am not even sure she sees things that differently, just claimes she does. Her view, as I understand it: Specific body experiences (affect) differ in two main qualities, arousal (how strong) and valence (pleasantness). The interpretation of affect as a specific emotion is a culturally influenced cognitive act. Apart from the cultur-thing that is exactly Schachter and Singer's theory on emotion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-factor_theory_of_emotion). Is there a consistent mapping between context factors and affect? If yes, how can you claim that there is no biological, innate basis for emotion? If no, how can she claim that there is a thing called "affect", if you cannot consistently produce the reaction? If all you do is say that affect and emotions are not the same, where is the contribution? Then you are over 2,000 years too late, the old Greeks already had some ideas on that. |