William James and John Dewey on Embodied Action-Oriented Emotions

In this paper I present William James’s theory of emotions and the central role it ascribes to the bodily reactions in emotions. I call the claim that there is a distinct pattern of bodily reactions that is constitutive for an emotion type the essential-ingredient view. I discuss some of the famous objections that cognitivists have raised against the feeling theory and characterize the position that cognitivist accounts take with regard to bodily reactions in emotions as the coincidental-byproduct view. With regard to current empirical research from psychophysiology I argue that the coincidental-byproduct view and the essential-ingredient view are both untenable. Yet the Jamesian view can be understood in a broader context as not aiming to find essential ingredients of emotions but rather taking the bodily arousal to be part of an organisms preparing for action. A reinterpretation of James in this manner has already been presented by John Dewey, who also provides a broader framework to think of emotion and perception as being co-constituted by action-tendencies