Week 3

Question 1

Microhistory and its hope

Answer 1

Way of doing history and theory together
Hope: To describe humans lawfully

Question 2

How does psychology describe humans

Answer 2

Static and subject to development

Question 3

What does studying the brain tell us

Answer 3

Tells us about what the mind is doing
Mind is not identical to the brain eg. Brain can have a defect but person is unaware

Question 4

Which argument is better- Neuroscientific or psychological

Answer 4

Generally neuroscientific

Question 5

First brain

Answer 5

500 million yrs ago in flatworms

Question 6

When did modern humans emerge

Answer 6

200-300 thousand years ago

Question 7

Historiography

Answer 7

The doing of history separate from the content of historical discussions
Philosophical engagement with the historical method

Question 8

Emotive

Answer 8

-Isn’t a thing like an emotion might be
-A relation of outward action and an inward sensation
-Translation between ‘what its like’ to be me now, and how its culturally possible for experiences to have meaning (This translation is a loop- The possibility of context constrains and enables how you experience yourself)

Question 9

Core emotions

Answer 9

-Emotives are meaningful and meaning is contextual
-Either core emotions are about lower-level processes than the use of emotion-terms suggests, or “emotion” means something else when psychologists use it
-Some psychologists argue against idea of core emotions (Lisa Feldmann Barrett)

Question 10

History of emotions

Answer 10

Meanings of emotion-terms have changed over time- What it feels to be angry isn’t universal

Question 11

Emotions as a kind of practice

Answer 11

-Emotions aren’t something that happen to us
-They are something we do, we perform our inner life and we share
-Mediated by the context we are in
-What we know and how we know it is relevant (epistemology)

Question 12

Old dichotomies of emotion breakdown

Answer 12

Culture vs biology, Conscious vs unconscious, Nature vs nurture
-There are no functions that can be isolated from context (divisions are pointless)

Question 13

McGrath and old dichotomies

Answer 13

-Stable vs decentred self
-Timeless psychology vs chronically rooted history
-Individual agency vs social construction

Question 14

Core subjective feelings

Answer 14

-Not only are core emotions not stable, neither are lower levels eg. cold and warmth
-Things like hunger and satiation, pain and relief, cold or warmth, homeostasis itself have cultural origins
-Meaning of these feelings are different even though the ‘sensation’ is the same
-Have to see how the action makes sense to the actor before we can observe it empirically
-Bottom up signals are not innately meaningful

Question 15

looking at the nature of affection allows us to

Answer 15

Establish a relationship between scientific and historical enquiry

Question 16

What do critics call the study of emotion

Answer 16

Neuro-turn

Question 17

How does transformations in culture allow changes in biology

Answer 17

Synaptic connections between neurons are formed in response to human activity- Brain is not rigid

Question 18

Baldwin effect

Answer 18

Neurons are wired to a social context

Question 19

How brain responds to psychotropic mechanisms

Answer 19

They trigger neurotransmitters and affect the levels of hormones

Question 20

Examining psychotropics social history allows us to

Answer 20

Examine biology and culture
-Theory that psychotropics imported into Europe laid the biochemical conditions for the explosion of ideas in the enlightenment

Question 21

Change in reading genres

Answer 21

Reading accounts of torture translated to brain changes which brought about empathy and subsequently human rights

Question 22

Neurohistorians understanding of affect

Answer 22

Lies on their approcch to neurosciences

Question 23

2 tiered historiography

Answer 23

Changes in the site of psychotropic consumption on a historical plane while human biochemistry remains stable across time

Question 24

Cogmotions

Answer 24

Integration of emotions and cognitions
-Emotions should not be separated from ideas

Question 25

Emotives are

Answer 25

Historical actors statements about their effective experiences
“Form of speech act who’s performative force mobilises the speakers emotion”
-They display the context of time as they are a publicly recognisable form of affect

Question 26

How affect involves mental control

Answer 26

-Pressure of culture and biology determine which emotives are expressed or repressed
-Cultural practices influence higher order processes in the prefrontal cortex

Question 27

Examples of emotions in history

Answer 27

-Emotional regime repressed self-expression in the royal court of Louis XIV
-People sought emotional refuge in theatres and clubs (Created revolutionary feelings to overthrow this emotional regime)
-Colonists used emotions as forms of power eg. cheerfulness was seen as an elite emotion

Question 28

Basic emotions paradigm

Answer 28

-Intrinsic class of discrete emotions
-Each emotion depends on a distinct neural circuit eg. Ekman faces
-Distinguished by higher conscious affects such as envy
-2 pathways: Rapid and slower higher order path
-Criticised because they dont take into account intentions, meanings, reasoning and beliefs

Question 29

Appraisal theory

Answer 29

-Emotions integrate perceptions and judgements
-Many more displays of emotion that the basic emotions
-People shape their affects based on context
-Dispute that basic emotions are autonomous
-Emotion categories are not discreetly separable

Question 30

Psychological constructivism

Answer 30

-Emotions are events made up of several integrated systems that involve content that is not necessarily emotional
-Emotions are mental events that traverse affective, cognitive and social dimensions of the brain

Question 31

Example of the role of social context in emotions

Answer 31

People in a Namibian tribe didn’t group the Ekman faces into basic emotion categories

Question 32

Who put history of emotions on the map

Answer 32

William Reddy
Wrote “Against constructivism”, putting the brain-body and the world in dynamic relation through his concept of emotives

Question 33

To emote is

Answer 33

To try and give voice to what one feels- Translate a feeling into an expression
-If one fails to find a suitable expression it leads to emotional suffering

Question 34

Emotives as a human effort of conscious self-management

Answer 34

All bodily feelings- Culturally mediated
All cultural expressions- Bodily situated

Question 35

Bioconstructionists

Answer 35

Lisa Feldmann Barrett
See emotions as ephemeral constructions arising from the culturally situated brain

Question 36

Universalists

Answer 36

Ekman and Tomkins
Emotions are hardwired into neural circuitry and are universal

Question 37

Scheer and emotions

Answer 37

Emotions are things that humans do in the world, involving words, concepts as well as physical expressions, gestures and postures

Question 38

How a neurohistorian works

Answer 38

Piecing context, practices and historical dynamics of power together with testimony, description and depiction of experience in historical terms

Question 39

Natural kinds paradigm

Answer 39

-Assumption that each kind of emotion can be identified by a more or less unique signature response (within the body) that is evoked by a distinct causal mechanism (within the brain). As a result, it should be possible to recognise distinct emotions in other people, identify them in oneself, and measure them in the face, physiology and behaviour
-Doesnt answer historical questions to do with the role of emotions in social interaction , or the existence of shared emotions in rites or religious ceremonies, or explain the role played by material culture in shaping our emotions

Question 40

Theoretical efforts addressing the problems of the natural kinds paradigm

Answer 40

-Labanyi’s exploration of the limits of representation and the idea of ‘emotions as practices’
-The work of Sara Ahmed
-‘Scheer’s ‘Are emotions a kind of practice’
-Boddice’s approach

Question 41

Alberti- Emotions as social practice

Answer 41

History of emotions fails to deal with complex emotions

Question 42

Tiedens and Leach-Social Life of Emotions

Answer 42

Emotions as a bridge between the individual and the world
-As a channel through which the individual knows the social world and the social world is what allows people to know emotions
-Individuals depend on social configurations not only to trigger emotions, but to form them
-Experience does not occur prior to the emotions (that colour it), nor are emotions a mere reaction to the world- They constitute each other