The Feeling Body

Description

A proposal that extends the enactive approach developed in cognitive science and philosophy of mind to issues in affective science.

In The Feeling Body, Giovanna Colombetti takes ideas from the enactive approach developed over the last twenty years in cognitive science and philosophy of mind and applies them for the first time to affective science—the study of emotions, moods, and feelings. She argues that enactivism entails a view of cognition as not just embodied but also intrinsically affective, and she elaborates on the implications of this claim for the study of emotion in psychology and neuroscience.

In the course of her discussion, Colombetti focuses on long-debated issues in affective science, including the notion of basic emotions, the nature of appraisal and its relationship to bodily arousal, the place of bodily feelings in emotion experience, the neurophysiological study of emotion experience, and the bodily nature of our encounters with others. Drawing on enactivist tools such as dynamical systems theory, the notion of the lived body, neurophenomenology, and phenomenological accounts of empathy, Colombetti advances a novel approach to these traditional issues that does justice to their complexity. Doing so, she also expands the enactive approach into a further domain of inquiry, one that has more generally been neglected by the embodied-embedded approach in the philosophy of cognitive science.

Giovanna Colombetti’s discussion of these topics effectively integrates scientific research and phenomenological descriptions of lived experience. What results is an insightful and genuinely interdisciplinary discussion of emotion that will be of interest to affective scientists, emotion theorists, phenomenologists, and proponents of enactivism….There are many topics in this thought-provoking book that merit further attention.—Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences—

Colombetti’s book…is a welcome addition the tradition of enactivism that was inaugurated by Varela, Thompson, and Rosch….The novelty of her proposal lies in its thematic focus….Colombetti is interested in exploring the enactive notion of living and lived embodiment.

—New Ideas in Psychology—

Promising and provocative….Colombetti’s book is a valuable contribution to this dialogue, a first sustained argument for enactivism as a unified and coherent understanding of the affects.

—Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews—

An excellent read in enactivism….Colombetti develops her own enactive approach against the backdrop of careful reviews of other theories….a remarkably clear…source of knowledge for all those who wish to learn more about the mind as an embodied and thoroughly living phenomenon.

—Metapsychology—

The Feeling Body is the book that I wish had been available at the beginning of my graduate studies. It will provide an excellent stepping-stone for researchers in this area to develop the nascent area of affectivity and embodiment yet further.

—Constructivist Foundations—Giovanna Colombetti is Associate Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Sociology, Philosophy, and Anthropology at the University of Exeter, UK.US

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