It may be that both views are correct. I'm unfamiliar with the title, does he make distinctions between different kinds of emotions?
In "The Feeling of What Happens", Antonio Damasio writes (p.53):
"Emotions are part of the bioregulatory devices with which we come equipped to survive. That is why Darwin was able to catalog the emotional expressions of so many species and find consistency in those expressions, and that is why, in different parts of the world and across different cultures, emotions are so easily recognized. Surely enough, there are variable expressions and there are variations in the precise configuration of stimuli that can induce an emotion across cultures and among individuals. But the thing to marvel at, as you fly high above the planet, is the similarity, not the difference. It is that similarity, incidentally, that makes cross-cultural relations possible and that allows for art and literature, music and film, to cross frontiers."
Also (page 57):
"But a word of caution is needed here. I really mean what I say when I talk about ranges of stimuli that constitute inducers for certain classes of emotion. I am allowing for a considerable variation in the type of stimuli that can induce an emotion - both across individuals and across cultures - and I am calling attention to the fact that regardless of the degree of biological presetting of the emotional machinery, development and culture have much to say regarding the final product. In all probability, development and culture superpose the following influences on the preset devices: first, they shape what constitutes an adequate inducer of a given emotion; second, they shape some aspect5s of the expression of emotion; and third, they shape the cognition and behavior which follows the deployment of an emotion."
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Date: 2009-01-24 12:29 am (UTC)In "The Feeling of What Happens", Antonio Damasio writes (p.53):
"Emotions are part of the bioregulatory devices with which we come equipped to survive. That is why Darwin was able to catalog the emotional expressions of so many species and find consistency in those expressions, and that is why, in different parts of the world and across different cultures, emotions are so easily recognized. Surely enough, there are variable expressions and there are variations in the precise configuration of stimuli that can induce an emotion across cultures and among individuals. But the thing to marvel at, as you fly high above the planet, is the similarity, not the difference. It is that similarity, incidentally, that makes cross-cultural relations possible and that allows for art and literature, music and film, to cross frontiers."
Also (page 57):
"But a word of caution is needed here. I really mean what I say when I talk about ranges of stimuli that constitute inducers for certain classes of emotion. I am allowing for a considerable variation in the type of stimuli that can induce an emotion - both across individuals and across cultures - and I am calling attention to the fact that regardless of the degree of biological presetting of the emotional machinery, development and culture have much to say regarding the final product. In all probability, development and culture superpose the following influences on the preset devices: first, they shape what constitutes an adequate inducer of a given emotion; second, they shape some aspect5s of the expression of emotion; and third, they shape the cognition and behavior which follows the deployment of an emotion."