Università Roma Tre

What is an emotion?
History of an idea from natural philosophy to neuroscience


PROGRAM

Module 1 - Introduction to the course, sense of history, ethics, politics and social factors of the sciences of the mind and the brain

• Why study the history of the science of the mind.
• Politics, ethics and sciences of the mind and brain. What relationships?


Module 2 - Passions, affections, emotions, feelings. The universe of discourse on human emotional processes. Critical analysis and introductory history

• Categories for defining the concept of Emotion.


Module 3 - Psyche, emotions and body in Greek thought
The philosophers of nature and emotions
• Passions, Psyche and body in Plato
• Aristotle and the passions.
• Emotions in Stoicism.
• A medicine of the passions: Hippocrates.


Module 4 - Brain, mind, passions and diseases from the Alexandrian medical school in Galen


Module 5 - The scientific revolution, the birth of modern science and new research on the mind and brain


Module 6 - Brain, mind and passions between the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution
• Body and emotions from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance
• Descartes: the passions of the soul, body and mechanism

Module 7 - Theories of passions, body and reason in the eighteenth century
• Hobbes
• Spinoza
• Pascal
• The emotions and the body in French materialism between the 1700s and 1800s


Module 8 - Philosophy, psychology and ethics of affective states in British empiricism and associations

• Psychology, philosophy and ethics of affective states in British empiricism and associations
• John Locke, David Hartley, Adam Smith, David Hume
• Association, emotion and movement in James Mill
• Associations, mental chemistry, utilitarianism and emotions


Module 8 - The definition of the psychological category of emotion: Thomas Brown

• Thomas Brown: movement, emotion and knowledge and the definition of emotions as a psychological category


Module 9 - Emotions and Evolutionism

• From fixism to evolutionism
• Lamarck and Spencer emotions as the engine of evolution
• Evolution, emotions and knowledge. Spencer and the hypothesis of evolutionary epistemology
• Darwin's evolutionism
• The expression of emotions and emotions as adaptive tools


Module 10 - The dawn of the neurophysiology of emotions and emotional behavior
• Bell, Magendie, Flourens, Marshall Hall, Alexander Bain


Module 11 - Williams James and the psychophysiological breakthrough in the study of emotions. Advent and development of somatic theories of emotions

• The advent of the biology of emotions and experimental studies on affective processes: Somatic theories of emotions and critical developments.
• What is an emotion? William James
• The theory of Giuseppe Sergi
• Emotions, evolution and knowledge. John Dewey's pragmatism


Module 12 - The localization of emotions in the brain

• Theoretical-critical notes on localization (phrenology, neophrenology)
• Mosso, Cannon, Hess, bard, Olds Milner, Delgado, the case of Phineas Gage
• Kluwer Bucy, Weiskrantz and the amygdala
• Side emotions
• Frontal emotions .. between Leonardo Bianchi, Moniz, Bechara and Damasio
• Localize emotions critical notes ... new phrenology? ...

Module 13 - The return to an integrationist vision of emotions and the psycho-evolutionary synthesis

• Papez, MacLean, Pribram and the outline of the idea of ​​the somatic marker, Plutchik, Damasio
• Return to the expressions of emotions, Ekman's evolutionism


Module 14 - The birth of the neuropharmacology of emotions
• The discovery of neurotransmitters
• The neurotransmitters of the emotional brain
• Neuropeptides and emotions


Module 15 - Emotions, stress, and illness. The naturalization of psychosomatics short history


Module 16 - Disturbing passions, language and self-control: The case of addictions

Testi da studiare per la parte istituzionale:
• Riccardo Luccio, Dall'anima alla mente: Breve storia della psicologia, Editori Laterza
• Luciano Mecacci: Storia della psicologia: Dal Novecento a oggi, Editori Laterza
capitoli da studiare:
capitolo IV: La prospettiva comportamentista
capitolo V: La prospettiva cognitivista
capitolo VII: La prospettiva biologica e neuroscientifica
capitolo VIII: Il dibattito contemporaneo

Testo da studiare per la parte monografica sulla storia delle emozioni:
• Keith Oatley, Breve storia delle emozioni, Il mulino, Bologna.

Dispense del docente