180064 SE Collective Emotions (2015S)

In much of received philosophy, emotions are seen as individual intentional attitudes, bodily states, and action dispositions. Debates in the philosophy of the emotions have been focused on questions concerning the nature of the mental compontent of emotions (e.g., is emotion a sort of perception, or appraisal, is it a value-oriented intentional state, or some other form of cognition), the relation between body and mind in emotion, the role of emotion in the constitution of a self, and the relation between proper emotions and related phenomena such as moods. It is widely recognized that emotions play a basic integrative role in the constitution of the kind of agents we are, as human embodied individuals.
Recent research, however, has shifted its focus to include our social lives as well. A good way to start this line of research is the observation that emotions can be shared between participants, and that some emotions seem to be group emotions. Phenomena such as shared grief, anger, or indignation, or collective enthusiasm obviously play an important role in our social lives, as social psychologists and sociologists have always pointed out. The philosophical task at hand is to explain what shared or collective emotions are, and what role they play in the constitution of groups, and collective identities. A promising way to approach this question is to understand emotions as collective intentional attitudes, that is, attitudes individuals have as a group.
The focus of this course is on recent theories of collective emotions, but the program is open to include selected readings from related areas such as the general philosophy of emotions, collective intentionality analysis, and the philosophy of mass psychology.
Questions addressed in this course include the following:
- What exactly is collective about collective emotions?
- What is the relation between individual and collective emotions?
- What role do collective emotions play in the constitution of collective identities?
- What kinds of collectives and group agents can have emotions - e.g., can business corporations have emotions?