Interdisciplinary Foundations for the Science of Emotion : Unification without Consilience

In this book, Cecilea Mun introduces an innovative meta-framework for conducting interdisciplinary research in the science of emotion, broadly construed, as well as a framework for a particular kind of theory of emotion. She provides new solutions and arguments in support of an embodied cognitive approach to resolving a wide range of problems, including those concerning skepticism, the place of ordinary intuitions for the science of emotion, intentionality, the rationality of emotions, naturalizing knowledge, and the debate between philosophical cognitive and noncognitive theories of emotion. Her solutions include a revolutionary, unifying, interdisciplinary taxonomy of theories of emotion, which allows one to understand the discourse in the science of emotion as a debate between four fundamental types of theories: realism, instrumentalism, eliminativism, and eliminative-realism. Her original proposal for a conception of intentionality that makes sense of our ordinary intuitions is also combined with her comprehensive account of rationality to articulate a groundbreaking understanding of the structure of human rationality. All of the contributions made herein, together, provide the foundations for a profound understanding of emotions, including as a kind of embodied language.