Embodied expectations and extended possibilities : reply to Goldie.

Abstract

Although he is generally sympathetic to my larger programme, Goldie- like Myin, De Nul and Crane – holds that my attempt to expose the philosophical damage caused by a misguided commitment to the object-based schema fails to get to the root of problem: i.e. the real impediment to our understanding of the emotions. He says what we want is “a positive account that entails the rejection of any kind of how-it-works account” (Goldie: this volume). It is not enough simply to have a “posiviitve account that entails the rejection of an object-based schema” (Goldie: this volume). This is because, as he sees it, the desire to provide how-it-works accounts – and not merely those of the kind that model experience on ‘objects’ per se – is the true source of our tendency to misunderstand emotional experience.