The Cognitive Theory of Emotions

In this article I shall discuss certain alleged consequences of the "cognitive theory" of emotions. This cognitive conception of emotions has been decisively embraced and most extensively dealt with by Robert C. Solomon in his recent book The Passions. Thus in the present paper I shall be thinking primarily of Solomon's discussion of the cognitive theory, and my quotations will be exclusively from The Passions. First I shall indicate what the theory asserts; then I shall call attention to certain consequences that Solomon takes to follow from it; and last I shall discuss these putative consequences, being specifically concerned to say why I believe that such consequences do not really follow from the cognitive theory of emotions. The cognitive theory is offered as an alternative mainly to such influential views as the various behavioristic, physiological, feeling, and bodily-sensation theories of the emotions. It concedes that emotions may be correlated , or invariably associated, with certain kinds of behavior, physiological disturbances, and sensations; however, it denies that such things constitute emotions. Its fundamental contention is that emotions per se are nothing but judgments of a certain sort. Consider the following statement from The Passions :