a behaviorist strongaccountstrong of emotions and feelings making sense of.pdfVIP

Behavior and Philosophy, 39/40, 1-16 (2011). © 2011 Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies A BEHAVIORIST ACCOUNT OF EMOTIONS AND FEELINGS : MAKING SENSE OF JAMES D. LAIRD ’S FEELINGS : THE PERCEPTION OF SELF Eric P. Charles The Pennsylvania State University, Altoona Michael D. Bybee St. John’s College, Santa Fe Nicholas S. Thompson Clark University ABSTRACT: In Feelings: The Perception of Self , Laird deftly synthesizes decades of research supporting the self-perception theory of emotion and feeling, providing an account of these phenomenon that is compatible with radical behaviorism. Beginning with William James, Laird builds a system in which “emotions” are ways of acting in situations and “feelings” are responses to those environment–behavior pairings. However, Laird sometimes hesitates to present the strong conclusions that flow from his evidence and his premises. The evidence leads forcefully to the conclusion that behaviors cause feelings and that feelings are simply another form of behaving. This puts Laird’s work squarely in the behaviorist lineages that grow out of James’s work and includes the efforts of Holt, F. Allport, Tolman, Gibson, Skinner, and the emerging Radical Embodied Cognitive Science. Key words: radical behaviorism, emotion, feeling, self-perception, embodied cognition Laird’s Feelings : The Perception of the Self is an important book for readers of Behavior a