Jennifer Greenwood, “Becoming Human: The Ontogenesis, Metaphysics, and Expression of Human Emotionality” (MIT, 2016)
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What is the central argument of Greenwood’s book on the development of emotions?
Hello and welcome to New Books and Philosophy, a podcast channel with the New Books Network. I'm Carrie Figdor, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Iowa. I'm co host of the channel along with Robert Talis, Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. Together we bring you conversations with philosophers about their new books, drawing from a wide range of areas of contemporary philosophical inquiry. Today's interview is with Jennifer Greenwood, Acabet Academic Tutor in Philosophy, Education and Nursing at the University of Queensland in Australia. Her new book, Becoming Human, The Ontogenesis, Metaphysics, and Expression of Human Emotionality, is just out from the MIT Press.
Psychological and philosophical theories of the emotions tend to take the developed adult emotional repertoire as the paradigm case for understanding the emotions. From this standpoint, the emotions are usually distinguished into two categories the basic emotions like fear and happiness, which are widely shared with other species, and the higher cognitive emotions such as shame or pride, which are uniquely human or nearly so. So Greenwood challenges the standard division and related distinctions such as which emotions are innate and which are learned. She examines the development of emotions of emotions from infancy and argues that there is just one natural kind, emotions, which have common precursor states that develop within deeply interactive relationship between the assistance soliciting neonate and the assistance providing caregiver.
She also argues that this deep functional interaction justifies the claim that the emotions are radically wide, they are a case of extended cognition. And she also argues that language, along with sociocultural context generally, mediates the ontogenesis of human emotions. Let's turn to the interview. Hello Jennifer Greenwood, are you there? I am, I am. Hello, Carrie Figtor. Hi, welcome to New Books in Philosophy. Oh, thank you very much for inviting me. Uh I'm very happy to be talking about your new book, uh, Becoming Human The Ontogenesis, Metaphysics and Expression of Human Emotionality. And it's a very interesting book that, you know, kind of takes on the the the topic of the emotions from a you know surprisingly new standpoint, basically from you know how you human emotions develop from the neonate um onward.
Um and as a result of that there's a number of interesting and and some controversial conclusions that you come to regarding uh you know the the division of the emotion, the the typical I should say, division of the emotions into, you know, your basic emotions and then your higher cognitive emotions, and then debates about whether, you know, some of these are innate and some are learned. Um and there's other, you know, uh interesting um issues that come up as well in the in the course of of your account. Um so before we get into the uh the topic itself of the book, um, can you maybe tell us a bit about your background? Um how you came to uh to philosophy? I know I mean I see you had a also have a PhD in in education as well.
Um so how you how you came to uh you know, to philosophy and how you came to write this particular book?
Well, I was uh I was a nurse uh for about twenty five years. Um Finishing up as a professor of nursing and and I'd been a professor for for eight years. Um and my contract was um Uh uh uh basically up for renewal. And uh and and frankly I felt like um I w I needed to change. And I'd always been interested in philosophy ever since um I did my first degree at Excel, uh which was um surprisingly in curriculum studies. But the course coordinator was a philosopher. Um and we had a a philosophy seminar every Friday afternoon and I guess um that's when I uh was was engaged really. And then when I went to do my PhD at Leeds and my supervisor there, Peter Tomlinson, although he was a psychologist. Um he was actually uh very
interested himself in philosophy and he'd actually read philosophy when he was in a seminary at Louvain as a young man.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the central argument of Greenwood’s book on the development of emotions?
0:08–15:33
2
How does Jennifer Greenwood’s personal and professional background shape her view on emotional ontogenesis?
15:33–30:57
3
Why does Greenwood reject the traditional split between basic and higher‑cognitive emotions?
30:57–52:19
4
What are the infant precursor affect‑expressions and how do they signal needs to caregivers?
52:19–1:08:23
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from New Books in Philosophy
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