Affective Qualia And The Subjective Dimension

Few areas have witnessed the type of growth we have seen in the affective sciences in the past decades. Across psychology, philosophy, economics, and neuroscience, there has been an explosion of interest in the topic of emotion and affect. Comprehensive, authoritative, up-to-date, and easy-to-use, the new Oxford Companion to Emotion and the Affective Sciences is an indispensable resource for all who wish to find out about theories, concepts, methods, and research findings in this rapidly growing interdisciplinary field - one that brings together, amongst others, psychologists, neuroscientists, social scientists, philosophers, and historians. Organized by alphabetical entries, and presenting brief definitions, concise overviews, and encyclopaedic articles (all with extensive references to relevant publications), this Companion lends itself to casual browsing by non-specialists interested in the fascinating phenomena of emotions, moods, affect disorders, and personality as well as to focused search for pertinent information by students and established scholars in the field. Not only does the book provide entries on affective phenomena, but also on their neural underpinnings, their cognitive antecedents and the associated responses in physiological systems, facial, vocal, and bodily expressions, and action tendencies. Numerous entries also consider the role of emotion in society and social behavior, as well as in cognitive processes such as those critical for perception, attention, memory, judgement and decision-making. The volume has been edited by a group of internationally leading authorities in the respective disciplines consisting of two editors (David Sander and Klaus Scherer) as well as group of 11 associate editors (John T. Cacioppo, Tim Dalgleish, Robert Dantzer, Richard J. Davidson, Ronald B. de Sousa, Phoebe C. Ellsworth, Nico Frijda, George Loewenstein, Paula M. Niedenthal, Peter Salovey, and Richard A. Shweder). The members of the editorial board have commissioned and reviewed contributions from major experts on specific topics. In addition to comprehensive coverage of technical terms and fundamental issues, the volume also highlights current debates that inform the ongoing research process. In addition, the Companion contains a wealth of material on the role of emotion in applied domains such as economic behaviour, music and arts, work and organizational behaviour, family interactions and group dynamics, religion, law and justice, and societal change. Highly accessible and wide-ranging, this book is a vital resource for scientists, students, and professionals eager to obtain a rapid, conclusive overview on central terms and topics and anyone wanting to learn more about the mechanisms underlying the emotions dominating many aspects of our lives.

The experience of emotion is a ubiquitous component of the stream of consciousness; emotional qualia interact with other contents and processes of consciousness in complex ways. Recent research has supported the hypothesis that important functional aspects of emotion can operate outside the conscious awareness. Primary types of emotions are found in animals, while secondary, more complex types are involved in interpersonal relationships. Emotions both influence genetic repair mechanisms of individuals and are responsible for group behavior. Many scholars and scientists believe that no scientific or philosophic account of consciousness can be complete without an understanding of the role of emotion.

The most fundamental scientific fact is not the existence of the physical universe, but our awareness of that universe. Not even the most advanced physics, physiology or psychology, however, can explain even the most elementary qualities of our sensory awareness of that universe - qualities such as redness for example. Qualia used to be defined as sensory qualities such as colour and tone. But what if awareness is not an empty receptacle for sensory impressions, but has its own intrinsic sensual qualities - of the sort we experience as the inwardly sensed shape and substantiality of our bodies, the sensed lightness or darkness colour or tone of our moods, or a sensed feeling of warmth or coolness, closeness or distance to another human being? What if such sensual qualities of awareness are intrinsically meaningful - being the felt essence of meaning or sense? is not energetic quanta but qualia in this sense - sensed and sensual qualities of awareness - that are the basic stuff of which the universe is composed. It argues that qualia are not simply qualities of our own human awareness but fundamental units of awareness. Atoms, molecules and cells are recognised as the physical form taken by field-patterns of atomic, molecular and cellular awareness composed of such units. The soul is understood as an ever-changing gestalt of such units, each of which possess characteristics of both unit and field, particle and wave - allowing the soul-qualities of our own awareness to mix and merge with those of all other beings.

This volume is based to a large extent on the understanding of biosemiotic literary criticism as a semiotic-model-making enterprise. For Jurij Lotman and Thomas A. Sebeok, “nature writing is essentially a model of the relationship between humans and nature” (Timo Maran); biosemiotic literary criticism, itself a form of nature writing and thus itself an ecological-niche-making enterprise, will be considered to be a model of modeling, a model of nature naturing. Modes and models of analysis drawn from Thomas A. Sebeok and Marcel Danesi’s Forms of Meaning: Modeling Systems Theory and Semiotic Analysis as well as from Timo Maran’s work on “modeling the environment in literature,” Edwina Taborsky’s writing on Peircean semiosis, and, of course, Jesper Hoffmeyer’s formative work in biosemiotics are among the most important organizing elements for this volume.

First Published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.