dc.description.abstract | According to Basic Emotion Theory (BET), some emotions are innate and universal «affect
programs», i.e., neural programs that, once activated, induce specific manifestations in the
rest of the body (such as the face and the autonomous nervous system). Critics of this view
have emphasized the variability and context-sensitivity of the emotions, arguing that BET
cannot account for them. In this paper I address some of these criticisms, and argue that they
do not succeed in undermining BET. I agree, however, that BET is problematic. Its main
weakness, in my view, is that the empirical evidence traditionally mentioned to support it
does not, in fact, do so. I think an alternative is needed -- one that can account for the shared
biological features of our emotional episodes, but also for their malleability, variability, and
context sensitivity. My proposal is that conceptualizing emotions as self-organizing
dynamical systems provides a suitable alternative to BET that satisfies these desiderata. After
introducing the main concepts of Dynamical Systems Theory, I review existing empirical and
theoretical works in affective science that call for a dynamical systems approach to the
emotions, illustrating its advantages and its ontological implications. | en_GB |