The redefinition of the concept of judgment in the cognitive explanation of emotions

Abstract

One of the central tenets of the cognitive model of explanation of the emotions is the claim that every emotion is a judgment, a claim that leads to what I will call the problem of restrictivity, that is, the fact that such a model seems to deny us the possibility of attributing emotions to entities that lack (temporarily or structurally) the capacity to make judgments. The aim of the article will be to review the strategies to which two of the authors that have more radically and systematically defended the cognitive model (Robert Solomon and Martha Nussbaum) resort in their writings when faced with the problem of restrictivity. I will suggest that such strategies lead the cognitive model to a dilemma that it can only escape at the price of losing its specificity as a model of explanation of the emotions.