This is the first edited volume about affective minds, a title reflecting our conviction that in order to understand how the human mind works we cannot ignore its affective aspects. Although cognitive science as an integrated approach to studies of the mind has achieved some remarkable success by treating the mind as an information processing system and emphasizing the roles of domain-specific knowledge in its operation, breakthroughs to a deeper understanding of the mind's mechanisms, functions, and origins require us to take "emotions" into account.
What kinds of emotions are examined varies considerably among the chapters, from biological software producing fear, anger and other basic emotions to socioculturally shaped self-related and moral emotions. However, each group of authors investigates particular exemplars of emotions deeply in relation with cognition. How relationships between cognition and emotion are specified also varies, for instance emotion may be conceptualized as a pattern of activation of cognitive components constituting the mind, as modifying or modulating the cognitive system so that it can promptly process urgent matters, or as enriching cognition and thus human life rather than being adaptive in terms of survival.
This volume as a whole constitutes a forum for scholars from a variety of disciplines, in which studies of the cognition-emotion relationships provide them with a vantage point to unite seemingly very different approaches. Its theorization at mental-representational levels is tied to neuroscience and comparative animal studies on the one hand, and social and behavioral sciences on the other. In addition, enhanced understandings of affective minds are to serve practical purposes such as improving social organizations, artificial systems and artifacts. The contributors explore this challenging theme of affective minds, using a variety of perspectives, methods and concepts.
What kinds of emotions are examined varies considerably among the chapters, from biological software producing fear, anger and other basic emotions to socioculturally shaped self-related and moral emotions. However, each group of authors investigates particular exemplars of emotions deeply in relation with cognition. How relationships between cognition and emotion are specified also varies, for instance emotion may be conceptualized as a pattern of activation of cognitive components constituting the mind, as modifying or modulating the cognitive system so that it can promptly process urgent matters, or as enriching cognition and thus human life rather than being adaptive in terms of survival.
This volume as a whole constitutes a forum for scholars from a variety of disciplines, in which studies of the cognition-emotion relationships provide them with a vantage point to unite seemingly very different approaches. Its theorization at mental-representational levels is tied to neuroscience and comparative animal studies on the one hand, and social and behavioral sciences on the other. In addition, enhanced understandings of affective minds are to serve practical purposes such as improving social organizations, artificial systems and artifacts. The contributors explore this challenging theme of affective minds, using a variety of perspectives, methods and concepts.
