The Relationship Between Affect and Rationality According to Lisa Feldman Barrett (PDF)

Seminar paper from the year 2020 in the subject Philosophy - Philosophy of the present, grade: 1,0, Bielefeld University (Abteilung Philosophie), course: Konstruieren wir Emotionen?, language: English, abstract: The focus of this paper will lie on the relationship between affect and rationality, as described by Barrett. More specifically, I am going to discuss whether it is plausible to believe that affect subjugates rationality. My goal is to show that it indeed is credible to believe that there is necessarily a dependency between affect and rationality.

To argue for this, I will proceed as follows: First, I will give an overview on Barrett's emotion-theory in chapter two. Then, I will concentrate on the term 'affect' in chapter three. I will dis-cuss what affect means, where Barrett places it in her theory and what consequences we (may) derive from it. For these two parts I will focus on the fourth chapter ("The Origin of Feeling") of her book "How Emotions Are Made" (2018) because she outlines the main idea of her proposal here. Accordingly, the first part of this paper is mainly reconstructive and about identifying the underlying beliefs that lead Barrett to her assumptions.

Outlining the consequences of affect will lead over to the critical approach to Barrett's claims: In this step, I will explain why and how affect's consequences connect to a person's capability of rationality. To discuss the plausibility of the made assumptions I will attend to the model homo economicus in chapter four and five. Thereby I will focus on the definition(s) of rationality used in connection with this model and discuss the model in context with Barrett's theory.

I chose homo economicus because Barrett herself argues against it. I am also interested in examining homo economicus because I want to know whether Barrett is justified in rejecting the model. Finally, I will draw a conclusion based on the acquired information in this paper in chapter six. In this conclusion I will elaborate whether I was successful in arguing for the plausibility of a necessary dependency between affect and rationality.