Emotional Correctness

Abstract

First, I offer an analytic summary of the 10 main theses in Stephen Asma and Rami Gabriel’s (2019) The Emotional Mind. Second, I raise an objection about Asma and Gabriel’s assumption that the emotions have phenomenal sameness in individual psychology, across species and cultures. Third, I focus and develop a critique of Asma and Gabriel’s objections to evaluating emotions in terms of “correctness,” “aptness,” or “fittingness.” I argue that analyzing correctness is an essential task of normative inquiry in psychology, psychiatry, and moral philosophy, and it is perfectly intellectually respectable and compatible with most genealogies of the emotions.