A tese cognitivista da emoção como juízo de valor
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Data
2024-11-21
Autores
Feitoza, Estela Altoé
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Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo
Resumo
This research analyzes Martha Nussbaum's thesis that identifies emotion with value judgment, and also evaluate the limitations and possibilities of her theoretical model, when situated within the broader context of contemporary debate, given that it endorses a cognitive nature for emotion in its evaluative domain. The analysis of Upheavals of Thought showed that Nussbaum defends the intelligibility of emotions based on a common structure, defined exclusively by their cognitive elements: belief (or perception), evaluation, and intentionality. These together, according to a reinterpretation of the ancient Stoics, function as a type of value judgment that may or may not have propositional content. Thus, emotion is defined through its evaluative function of valuing people, situations, and objects on which the subject depends, as highly significant for his existence. It is through their intentional objects contents, that emotions are made intelligible and accessible to the emotional subject, who is supposed to be able to identify and correct them, in case they are inappropriate to circumstances. However, to allow emotions to infants and nonhuman animals, Nussbaum deflates the notion of judgment and argues that they both evaluate cognitively the world through perception of the salience of the environment. To this end, it loosens notions of cognition and intentionality to different levels of sophistication. She understands that emotions have a temporal development that should not be ignored in their episodic occurrences, which are always combined with patterns of agent development, habituation, evolutionary pressures, and the context of events. Infants' incipient cognitive assessments emerge from early attachment relationships with their caregivers and support the development of later emotions. However, they have undifferentiated content, which is incompatible with her preliminary notion of judgment, generating conceptual tension, which makes the identity between emotion and value judgment improbable in infants. By denying that non-cognitive elements are necessary to define emotion, Nussbaum fails to prioritize the felt, bodily and desirable character of emotion and ends up situating herself in the clash between cognitivism and non-cognitivism, which proves counterproductive for the practical understanding of emotions. Even though it is not possible to define emotion as exclusively cognitive in Nussbaum's terms, the possibility that perception, cognition, emotion and values do not have clear boundaries in emotional episodes suggests pointing to a much more complex and reciprocal relationship than the simple opposition between cognitivism and non cognitivism is capable of capturing, which would be more beneficial to be analyzed in light of other paradigms on cognition.
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Emoções , Cognição , Juízo , Avaliação , Nussbaum , Emotion , Cognition , Evaluation , Judgment