Juan R. Loaiza

• PhD
• Professor at Alberto Hurtado University

One important question in emotion science is determining what emotions there are. To answer this question, researchers have assumed either that folk emotion concepts are unsuitable for scientific inquiry, or that they are constitutive or explanatorily significant for emotion research. Either option faces a challenge from the cultural variability of...

En este texto, sostengo que el estudio psicológico del sesgo implícito puede beneficiarse de los enfoques de segunda persona. Específicamente, muestro que las aproximaciones experimentales dominantes basadas en el Test de Asociación Implícita (IAT por su sigla en inglés) presuponen un internalismo según el cual la posesión de un sesgo implícito se...

Sostengo que la controversia entre la teoría de las emociones básicas y el construccionismo psicológico yace en diferencias sobre el rol de los conceptos cotidianos de emoción en el ámbito científico. Para esto, analizo las discusiones en torno a la universalidad de las expresiones faciales y a la existencia de correspondencias neurofisiológicas pa...

In the last decades there has been a great controversy about the scientific status of emotion categories. This controversy stems from the idea that emotions are heterogeneous phenomena, which precludes classifying them under a common kind. In this article, I analyze this claim—which I call the Variability Thesis—and argue that as it stands, it is p...

Functionalism as a philosophical position has been recently applied to the case of emotion research. However, a number of objections have been raised against applying such a view to scientific theorizing on emotions. In this article, I argue that functionalism is still a viable strategy for emotion research. To do this, I present functionalism in p...

Munch-Jurisic’s account of perpetrator disgust raises important new questions concerning the complexity of emotions and their connection with moral actions. In this commentary, we discuss this account by applying some of the author’s ideas to the case of anger. We suggest that just as the relations between disgust and moral action are much more nua...

In our daily lives, we attribute emotions to non-human animals. However, the ontological commitments this implies are still in discussion. Particularly, philosophers still debate whether considerations about the mechanisms underlying emotions are necessary or not to attribute emotions to non-human animals. Here, I argue that such considerations are...

I argue that the controversy between Basic Emotion Theory and Psychological Constructionism lies in differences regarding the role of folk concepts of emotion in the scientific domain. To do so, I analyze the discussions surrounding the universality of facial expressions and the existence of neurophysiological correspondences for each emotion. I sh...

In the last decades there has been a great controversy about the scientific status of emotion categories. This controversy stems from the idea that emotions are heterogeneous phenomena, which precludes classifying them under a common kind. In this article, I analyze this claim—which I call the Variability Thesis—and argue that as it stands, it is p...

In this dissertation, I address the question of how to construct scientific theories of emotions that are both conceptually sound and empirically fruitful. To do this, I offer an analysis of the main challenges scientific theories of emotions face, and I propose a meta-theoretical framework to construct scientific concepts of emotions as explicatio...

In the XVII century, William Molyneux asked John Locke whether a newly-sighted person could reliably identify a cube from a sphere without aid from their touch. While this might seem an easily testable question, answering it is not so straightforward. In this paper, I illustrate this question and claim that some distinctions regarding the concept o...

Is it possible to study emotions scientifically? Some authors hold that such enterprise is not possible, and that we should eliminate concepts of emotion from scientific inquiry. Others hold that instead of eliminating them, we should revise them in order to define them in scientifically useful ways. The problem, however, is that empirical evidence...

I propose a reading of Berkeley's Essay towards a New Theory of Vision in which Molyneux-type questions as thought experiments instead of arguments. First, I present the general argumentative strategy in the NTV, and provide grounds for the traditional reading. Second, I consider some roles of thought experiments, and classify Molyneux-type questio...

Agnes Moors (this issue) argues for the eliminativism of discrete emotion categories. She presents four objections against classical theories of emotion, such as affect program theory, which emphasizes emotional embodiment. These objections, however, do not refute discrete emotions. In this commentary we defend discrete emotion categories, arguing...

This article argues that in the Cartesian Cosmology it is not clear how we can talk about or refer to individual bodies in the context of a compact universe. It defends that the concept of individual body inside of this Cosmology can be built as a fiction of the spirit. This concept can be constructed as the extension that is locked up in a maximal...