Studies in the Evolutionary Psychology of Feeling

Chapter 2: PREFACE

Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

Philosophy & Ethics Psychiatry/Psychology Science - Biology

About This Book

A sequence of analytical essays applies principles of biological evolution to trace the origins, differentiation, and functions of feeling and emotion; it examines introspection's corroboration of evolutionary hypotheses and critiques existing theories of pleasure and pain. Topics include primitive consciousness, fear as a foundational emotion and its later differentiation, relations between representation and affect, desire, attention, self-feeling, retrospective emotions such as despair and surprise, aesthetic and literary responses, ethical sentiment, and expressive behavior. The work combines theoretical argument, philosophical critique, and psychological analysis to propose an evolution-based framework for understanding emotional life.

PREFACE

This work does not profess to be a treatise on the subject of feeling, but merely a series of studies, and rather tentative ones at that. I have attempted to deduce from the standpoint of biologic evolution the origin and development of feeling, and then to consider how far introspection confirms these results. I am well aware that I traverse moot points—what points in psychology are not moot?—and I trust that the position taken will receive thorough criticism. I should be very glad to have new facts adduced, whatever way they may bear. I have no theory to defend, but the results offered are simply the best interpretation I have as yet been able to attain.

Some of the material of this book has appeared during the last ten years in the pages of Mind, Monist, Science, Philosophical Review and Psychological Review, but my contributions to these periodicals have in many cases been largely re-written.

Hiram M. Stanley.

Lake Forest, Illinois, U S.A.