Embodiment, Emotion, and Cognition

by Michelle Maiese

The book begins with the view that human consciousness is essentially embodied and that our conscious experience of the world is structured by our lived bodily dynamics. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in the animate, bodily-engaged dynamics of emotional experience. Because the essential factor in all emotion is conscious desire, emotions help to disclose a world of meaning and importance. They do so by focusing our attention, helping us to home in on salient facts, and allowing us to affectively frame our surroundings in accordance with what we care about. Cognitive processes of appraisal, sense-making, and interpretation therefore are not detached, intellectual processes, as some theorists suppose, but instead are infused with affect. Because emotions play such a crucial role in self-consciousness, moral evaluation, and social cognition, disruptions in emotive, bodily consciousness can lead to severe psychological impairments. Disorders such as schizophrenia, psychopathy, and autism powerfully illustrate this.

273 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 21, 2010