Christine Tappolet (Université de Montréal) publie un nouvel article intitulé « Foundations of Emotion » dans l’ouvrage collectif Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science (OECS) (MIT Press), dirigé par M. C. Frank & A. Majid (2025). 

Résumé

Emotions are typically felt experiences, which often involve strong motivations and are caused by things that are of concern to individuals, such as dangers. Emotions play a central role in people’s lives. They determine, at least in part, whether a person’s life goes well or not, positive emotions being essential to well-being, whereas negative emotions, such as despair, being the mark of ill-being. Emotions also play an important role in determining what people think and do. Whether this influence makes for more or less rationality is still a matter of debate. The question of what emotions are also remains highly controversial. Although emotion theorists mostly agree on the typical characteristics of emotions, they disagree on the nature of emotions. Three main approaches are currently prominent: feeling theories, motivational theories, and evaluative theories. Another possibility is to opt for a hybrid theory, according to which emotions involve a mix of different components.