Inquire about purchasing the book | Table of Contents | Annotated Bibliography | Class on Nature of Mind
These are excerpts and elaborations from my book "The Nature of Consciousness"
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Nature vs nurture The US psychologist Paul Ekmanargued that emotions are basic,
universal and hard-wired. All humans share the same emotions. His study of
facial expressions of emotion across cultures convinced him that they are not
determined by society: they are determined by biology. The US neurologist Paul MacLeansupported that theory based on
the fact that we all share the regions of the brain that account for emotions. However, it seems self-evident that emotions differ
from society to society. Either cultures shape emotions or viceversa: people
from different regions of the world sometimes collide because they have a
different repertory of values, and they have different ideas about which
actions are offensive or polite. One solution is to assume that there exists a hard
core of basic emotions shared by everybody and a less rigid "fruit"
of emotions that are created by culture. The British philosopher Peter Goldiecalled it the
"avocado-pear" model and argued against it. He instead proposed a
"clay model": there is a window of opportunity when emotions can be
shaped, and later they become hard-wired and immutable. The Australian philosopher Paul Griffithsproposed that emotion (as well
as the rest of what we call "mind") is the result of the interaction
between genetic and environmental inputs. The US anthropologist Clifford Geertz, on the other hand, argued that, essentially, emotions are cultural
artifacts. So did the New Zealand-born philosopher Rom Harre and the US
anthropologist Catherine Luz(The Anthropology of Emotions
, 1986). According to them, emotions are not universal: they are shaped by
culture and socially constructed. Back to the beginning of the chapter "Emotion" | Back to the index of all chapters |
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