Ronald de Sousa

Bio: Ronald de Sousa is an academic researcher from University of Toronto. The author has contributed to research in topics: Rationality & Valence (psychology). The author has an hindex of 13, co-authored 68 publications receiving 1818 citations.

The rationality of emotion

Abstract: 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.Ronald de Sousa teaches philosophy at the University of Toronto. A Bradford Book.

The rationality of emotions

Abstract: Ira Brevis furor, said the Latins: anger is a brief bout of madness. There is a long tradition that views all emotions as threats to rationality. The crime passionnel belongs to that tradition: in law it is a kind of “brief-insanity defence.” We still say that “passion blinds us;” and in common parlance to be philosophical about life's trials is to be decently unemotional about them. Indeed many philosophers have espoused this view, demanding that Reason conquer Passion. Others — from Hume to the Emotivists — have appeared to reverse this hierarchy (“reason is and ought to be nothing but the slave of the passions).” But those philosophers who refuse to join in the general denigration of emotion as irrational usually share the presupposition that the role of rationality is limited to the calculation of means. In so far as emotions (often confused with desires) are concerned with the determination of ends, they remain, on this view, beyond the pale of rationality. Modern decision theorists have worked out schemes to assess the rationality of desires, as well as actions, against the background of beliefs and other desires.1 But these schemes leave no room at all for emotions, except, by implication, as disrupters of the rational process.

The Good and the True

Abstract: My target in this paper is a certain dogma about the rationality of wants. The dogma is that the formal conditions for the consistency of wants mirror the formal conditions for the consistency of beliefs. In so far as the relation of wanting to the good is analogous to the relation of believing to the true, this amounts to the doctrine that the 'structure of the good' is analogous to the 'structure of the true'. The good, like the true, can never conflict with itself: hence it is as irrational to want contraries as to believe them. I shall refer to this doctrine as 'the Unity of the Good'. A few impressionistic historical reminders should suffice to show that it has behind it much of our philosophical tradition. In Plato's middle Dialogues, all good things have a single cause and exemplar in the Form of the Good. The connection of the Unity of the good with the unity of the true is attested by Plato's penchant for the doctrine that the virtues are all one, and that the one which they all are, is knowledge. In Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, some doubts are expressed about the unity of the Form of the Good, on the ground that 'good' can be predicated in all the categories. One might try to infer from this that Aristotle thought two goods might conflict, where they belong to different categories: but I do not see how to work this out. In any case, Aristotle appears to settle for an architectonic view of the organization of ends, which is another version of the Unity of the Good. Conflicts are seen to be merely apparent as soon as one takes account of the subordination of all ends to the comprehensive political good [NE Io94b.]. Perhaps as a consequence, Aristotle has bequeathed us a smooth way of getting around the most striking class of counterexamples to the unity of the good: I refer to his explanation of Tragedy as springing from the hero's 'tragic flaw'. (A more plausible view of Tragedy is Hegel's, who sees it as a 'collision' of right with right.) In Aristotle, however, there is no logical link between the Unity of the Good and epistemology: though it happens that the Political Good has something to do with securing the peaceful pursuit of

Perceptual symbol systems.

Abstract: Prior to the twentieth century, theories of knowledge were inherently perceptual. Since then, developments in logic, statis- tics, and programming languages have inspired amodal theories that rest on principles fundamentally different from those underlying perception. In addition, perceptual approaches have become widely viewed as untenable because they are assumed to implement record- ing systems, not conceptual systems. A perceptual theory of knowledge is developed here in the context of current cognitive science and neuroscience. During perceptual experience, association areas in the brain capture bottom-up patterns of activation in sensory-motor areas. Later, in a top-down manner, association areas partially reactivate sensory-motor areas to implement perceptual symbols. The stor- age and reactivation of perceptual symbols operates at the level of perceptual components - not at the level of holistic perceptual expe- riences. Through the use of selective attention, schematic representations of perceptual components are extracted from experience and stored in memory (e.g., individual memories of green, purr, hot). As memories of the same component become organized around a com- mon frame, they implement a simulator that produces limitless simulations of the component (e.g., simulations of purr). Not only do such simulators develop for aspects of sensory experience, they also develop for aspects of proprioception (e.g., lift, run) and introspec- tion (e.g., compare, memory, happy, hungry). Once established, these simulators implement a basic conceptual system that represents types, supports categorization, and produces categorical inferences. These simulators further support productivity, propositions, and ab- stract concepts, thereby implementing a fully functional conceptual system. Productivity results from integrating simulators combinato- rially and recursively to produce complex simulations. Propositions result from binding simulators to perceived individuals to represent type-token relations. Abstract concepts are grounded in complex simulations of combined physical and introspective events. Thus, a per- ceptual theory of knowledge can implement a fully functional conceptual system while avoiding problems associated with amodal sym- bol systems. Implications for cognition, neuroscience, evolution, development, and artificial intelligence are explored.

Handbook of Emotions

Abstract: Part 1. Interdisciplinary Foundations. R.C. Solomon, The Philosophy of Emotions. P.N. Stearns, History of Emotions: Issues of Change and Impact. J.E. Stets, J.H. Turner, The Sociology of Emotions. J. Panksepp, The Affective Brain and Core Consciousness: How Does Neural Activity Generate Emotional Feelings? N.H. Frijda, The Psychologist's Point of View. L.S. Greenberg, The Clinical Application of Emotion in Psychotherapy. P.N. Johnson-Laird, K. Oatley, Emotions, Music, and Literature. J. Tooby, L. Cosmides, The Evolutionary Psychology of the Emotions and Their Relationship to Internal Regulatory Variables. R. Loewenstein, G. Loewenstein, The Role of Emotion in Economic Behavior. Part 2. Biological and Neurophysiological Approaches to Emotion. J.E. LeDoux, E.A. Phelps, Emotional Networks in the Brain. J.T. Larsen, G.G. Berntson, K.M. Poehlmann, T.A. Ito, J.T. Cacioppo, The Psychophysiology of Emotion. J. Bachorowski, M.J. Owren, Vocal Expressions of Emotion. D. Matsumoto, D. Keltner, M.N. Shiota, M. O'Sullivan, M. Frank, Facial Expressions of Emotion. J.M. Haviland-Jones, P.J. Wilson, A "Nose" for Emotion: Emotional Information and Challenges in Odors and Semiochemicals. T.D. Wager, L. Feldman Barrett, E. Bliss-Moreau, K. Lindquist, S. Duncan, H. Kober, J. Joseph, M. Davidson, J. Mize, The Neuroimaging of Emotion. A.D. Craig, Interoception and Emotion: A Neuroanatomical Perspective. Part 3. Developmental Changes. L.A. Camras, S.S. Fatani, The Development of Facial Expressions: Current Perspectives on Infant Emotions. M. Lewis, The Emergence of Human Emotions. P.L. Harris, Children's Understanding of Emotion. C. Saarni, The Interface of Emotional Development with Social Context. S.C. Widen, J.A. Russell, Young Children's Understanding of Others' Emotions. A.S. Walker-Andrews, Intermodal Emotional Processes in Infancy. C. Magai, Long-Lived Emotions: A Lifecourse Perspective on Emotional Development. Part 4. Social Perspectives. L.R. Brody, J.A. Hall, Gender and Emotion in Context. R.A. Shweder, J. Haidt, R. Horton, C. Joseph, The Cultural Psychology of the Emotions: Ancient and Renewed. E.R. Smith, D.M. Mackie, Intergroup Emotions. M.L. Hoffman, Empathy and Prosocial Behavior. A.H. Fischer, A.S.R. Manstead, Social Functions of Emotion. Part 5. Personality Issues. R.E. Lucas, E. Diener, Subjective Well-Being. J.E. Bates, J.A. Goodnight, J.E. Fite, Temperament and Emotion. J.J. Gross, Emotion Regulation. K.A. Lindquist, L. Feldman Barrett, Emotional Complexity. Part 6. Cognitive Factors. P. Salovey, B.T. Detweiler-Bedell, J.B. Detweiler-Bedell, J.D. Mayer, Emotional Intelligence. A.M. Isen, Some Ways in which Positive Affect Influences Decision Making and Problem Solving. N.L. Stein, M.W. Hernandez, T. Trabasso, Advances in Modeling Emotion and Thought: The Importance of Development, On-Line and Multilevel Analyses. P.M. Niedenthal, Emotion Concepts. E.A. Kensinger, D.L. Schacter, Memory and Emotion. M. Minsky, A Framework for Representing Emotional States. G.L. Clore, A. Ortony, Appraisal Theories: How Cognition Shapes Affect into Emotion. Part 7. Health and Emotions. M.A. Diefenbach, S.M. Miller, M. Porter, E. Peters, M. Stefanek, H. Leventhal, Emotions and Health Behavior: A Self-Regulation Perspective. M.E. Kemeny, A. Shestyuk, Emotions, the Neuroendocrine and Immune Systems, and Health. N.S. Consedine, Emotions and Health. A.M. Kring, Emotion Disturbances as Transdiagnostic Processes in Psychopathology. Part 8. Select Emotions. A. Ohman, Fear and Anxiety: Overlaps and Dissociations. E.A. Lemerise, K.A. Dodge, The Development of Anger and Hostile Interactions. M. Lewis, Self-Conscious Emotions: Embarrassment, Pride, Shame, and Guilt. P. Rozin, J. Haidt, C.R. McCauley, Disgust. B.L. Fredrickson, M.A. Cohn, Positive Emotions. G.A. Bonanno, L. Goorin, K.G. Coifman, Sadness and Grief.

Individual differences in reasoning: Implications for the rationality debate?

Abstract: Much research in the last two decades has demon- strated that human responses deviate from the performance deemed normative according to various models of decision mak- ing and rational judgment (e.g., the basic axioms of utility theory). This gap between the normative and the descriptive can be inter- preted as indicating systematic irrationalities in human cognition. However, four alternative interpretations preserve the assumption that human behavior and cognition is largely rational. These posit that the gap is due to (1) performance errors, (2) computational limitations, (3) the wrong norm being applied by the experi- menter, and (4) a different construal of the task by the subject. In the debates about the viability of these alternative explanations, attention has been focused too narrowly on the modal response. In a series of experiments involving most of the classic tasks in the heuristics and biases literature, we have examined the implica- tions of individual differences in performance for each of the four explanations of the normative/descriptive gap. Performance er- rors are a minor factor in the gap; computational limitations un- derlie non-normative responding on several tasks, particularly those that involve some type of cognitive decontextualization. Un- expected patterns of covariance can suggest when the wrong norm is being applied to a task or when an alternative construal of the task should be considered appropriate.

Emotional Intelligence: Theory, Findings, and Implications

Abstract: (2004). TARGET ARTICLES: 'Emotional Intelligence: Theory, Findings, and Implications' Psychological Inquiry: Vol. 15, No. 3, pp. 197-215.