The Cognitive/Noncognitive Debate in Emotion Theory: A Corrective From Spinoza

An intractable problem that characterizes the contemporary philosophical discussion of emotion is whether emotions are fundamentally cognitive or noncognitive. In this article, I will establish that this problem arises from the influence of an underlying philosophical anthropology that entails a mind/body “split” ultimately inherited from Cartesianism, and further show that it can be fruitfully addressed by adopting a contemporary construal of the self and emotions derived from the philosophy of a key critic of Descartes’ dualism, Spinoza