The 17th-century philosopher René Descartes’s radical new understanding of psychological phenomena is usually presented very inaccurately in psychological literature. Two extreme examples are Damasio’s (1994) Descartes’ Error and Wilson’s (2002) Strangers to Ourselves. These two much-cited books contrast the “great” philosopher’s naive mistakes with recent research on, respectively, the relation among emotions, reason, and the brain (Damasio) and the adaptive functions of unconscious processes (Wilson). Both authors do that without referring to either Descartes’s voluminous works on physiology and psychology or the extensive historical research on his works. This article shows that these distinguished scholars’ influential books are historically very misleading. Contrary to what they claim, most of Descartes’s many explanations of psychological phenomena are embodied. He was in particular engaged in understanding the relation among emotions, reason, and the brain. According to the models of understanding Descartes put forward in the 1640s, the author argues that Descartes’s Vision would have been an appropriate title for Damasio’s book. Wilson contrasts throughout his book new insights from recent research on the adaptive unconscious with the familiar caricature of Descartes’s views in the psychological literature. The author shows that Descartes, in fact, to a large extent anticipated Wilson’s argumentation for the necessity of the adaptive unconscious. He concludes that Descartes should be considered the pioneer behind many of the models of understanding presented in Wilson’s book. The author substantiates his conclusions by explicitly contrasting the argumentation and views in Descartes’s own writings with Damasio’s and Wilson’s many incorrect claims. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)
...More
Article
Allocca, Nunzio;
(2017)
L’errore di Damasio: cervello, emozione e cognizione in Descartes
(/isis/citation/CBB952893823/)
Chapter
Clarke, Desmond;
(2007)
La théorie des passions selon Louis de la Forge
(/isis/citation/CBB001022504/)
Article
Tilmouth, Christopher;
(2007)
Generosity and the Utility of the Passions: Cartesian Ethics in Restoration England
(/isis/citation/CBB001030512/)
Article
Hatfield, Gary;
(2007)
Did Descartes Have a Jamesian Theory of the Emotions?
(/isis/citation/CBB001035167/)
Book
Dolores Martín-Moruno;
Beatriz Pichel;
(2019)
Emotional Bodies: The Historical Performativity of Emotions
(/isis/citation/CBB360532357/)
Book
Lagerlund, Henrik;
(2002)
Emotions and Choice from Boethius to Descartes
(/isis/citation/CBB000301676/)
Article
Myrna Gabbe;
(2016)
Aristotle on the Metaphysics of Emotions
(/isis/citation/CBB003321381/)
Chapter
Maisano, Scott;
(2007)
Infinite Gesture: Automata and the Emotions in Descartes and Shakespeare
(/isis/citation/CBB000774724/)
Article
Paola Giacomoni;
(2018)
The Light of the Emotions: Passions and Emotions in Seventeenth-Century French Culture
(/isis/citation/CBB641156448/)
Article
Schickela, Joel A.;
(2011)
Descartes on the Identity of Passion and Action
(/isis/citation/CBB001211010/)
Book
Alberti, Fay Bound;
(2010)
Matters of the Heart: History, Medicine, and Emotion
(/isis/citation/CBB001231144/)
Article
Lloyd, Genevieve;
(2000)
The Emotions in the Seventeenth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB000111547/)
Book
Lund, Mary Ann;
(2010)
Melancholy, Medicine and Religion in Early Modern England: Reading “The Anatomy of Melancholy”
(/isis/citation/CBB001220196/)
Article
Joel P. Sodano;
(2017)
Uneasy Passions: The Spectator's Divergent Interpretations of Locke's Theory of Emotion
(/isis/citation/CBB728783237/)
Article
Weisser, Olivia;
(2013)
Grieved and Disordered: Gender and Emotion in Early Modern Patient Narratives
(/isis/citation/CBB001200321/)
Chapter
Judovitz, Dalia;
(2005)
Spiritual Passion and the Betrayal of Painting in Georges de la Tour
(/isis/citation/CBB000651244/)
Book
Paster, Gail Kern;
Rowe, Katherine;
Floyd-Wilson, Mary;
(2004)
Reading the Early Modern Passions: Essays in the Cultural History of Emotion
(/isis/citation/CBB000470199/)
Book
Danijela Kambaskovic;
(2014)
Conjunctions of Mind, Soul and Body from Plato to the Enlightenment
(/isis/citation/CBB417702291/)
Article
Greenberg, Sean;
(2010)
Malebranche on the Passions: Biology, Morality and the Fall
(/isis/citation/CBB001035118/)
Chapter
Morgan, Dawn;
(2008)
The Motions of Laughter: Allegory and Physiology in Walter Charleton's Natural History of the Passions (1674)
(/isis/citation/CBB000952948/)
Be the first to comment!