Zachar, Peter
(2025)
Constituting Emotional Phenomena
— A Mach-Influenced Empiricist Perspective.
Passion, 3.
pp. 23-34.
Abstract
Using the philosophical writings of Ernst Mach as a backdrop, I explore how concepts and classifications partly
constitute the phenomena studied in the science of emotion by selecting features from a larger population of
features. This process of selection is a matter of decision and is not inevitable, but it promotes populating
concepts with empirical content. The openness of empirical concepts suggests that this selectionist
constituting does not characterise only the early stages in the development of a science because background
and foreground shifts are potentially ongoing. The theory of psychological construction, which contends that
emotional episodes are constructed on the fly out of shifting sets of components, exemplifies this selectionist
sense of constituting to the extent that it advocates for a resemblance nominalism, similar to that of Locke, in
which selection is involved in naming kinds. Examples of constituting can be seen in changing definitions of
whether animals experience emotion and in the choice of causal models.
| Item Type: |
Published Article or Volume
|
| Creators: |
|
| Keywords: |
essentialism, nominalism, open concepts, operational definition, psychological construction,
scientific conventionalism |
| Depositing User: |
Dr. Peter Zachar
|
| Date Deposited: |
15 Sep 2025 10:57 |
| Last Modified: |
15 Sep 2025 10:57 |
| Item ID: |
26641 |
| Journal or Publication Title: |
Passion |
| DOI or Unique Handle: |
10.59123/ar2xyw29 |
| Date: |
28 August 2025 |
| Page Range: |
pp. 23-34 |
| Volume: |
3 |
| URI: |
https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/26641 |
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