Name: ESTELA ALTOÉ FEITOZA
Publication date: 21/11/2025
Examining board:
Name |
Role |
|---|---|
| DENIS COITINHO SILVEIRA | Examinador Externo |
| FLÁVIO WILLIGES | Examinador Externo |
| JORGE LUIZ VIESENTEINER | Presidente |
Summary: This research analyzes Martha Nussbaum's thesis that identifies emotion with value judgment,
and also evaluate the limitations and possibilities of her theoretical model, when situated within
the broader context of contemporary debate, given that it endorses a cognitive nature for
emotion in its evaluative domain. The analysis of Upheavals of Thought showed that Nussbaum
defends the intelligibility of emotions based on a common structure, defined exclusively by
their cognitive elements: belief (or perception), evaluation, and intentionality. These together,
according to a reinterpretation of the ancient Stoics, function as a type of value judgment that
may or may not have propositional content. Thus, emotion is defined through its evaluative
function of valuing people, situations, and objects on which the subject depends, as highly
significant for his existence. It is through their intentional objects contents, that emotions are
made intelligible and accessible to the emotional subject, who is supposed to be able to identify
and correct them, in case they are inappropriate to circumstances. However, to allow emotions
to infants and nonhuman animals, Nussbaum deflates the notion of judgment and argues that
they both evaluate cognitively the world through perception of the salience of the environment.
To this end, it loosens notions of cognition and intentionality to different levels of
sophistication. She understands that emotions have a temporal development that should not be
ignored in their episodic occurrences, which are always combined with patterns of agent
development, habituation, evolutionary pressures, and the context of events. Infants' incipient
cognitive assessments emerge from early attachment relationships with their caregivers and
support the development of later emotions. However, they have undifferentiated content, which
is incompatible with her preliminary notion of judgment, generating conceptual tension, which
makes the identity between emotion and value judgment improbable in infants. By denying that
non-cognitive elements are necessary to define emotion, Nussbaum fails to prioritize the felt,
bodily and desirable character of emotion and ends up situating herself in the clash between
cognitivism and non-cognitivism, which proves counterproductive for the practical
understanding of emotions. Even though it is not possible to define emotion as exclusively
cognitive in Nussbaum's terms, the possibility that perception, cognition, emotion and values
do not have clear boundaries in emotional episodes suggests pointing to a much more complex
and reciprocal relationship than the simple opposition between cognitivism and non-
cognitivism is capable of capturing, which would be more beneficial to be analyzed in light of
other paradigms on cognition.
