The Role of Meta-representation in the Meta-cognition of Emotion

毫无疑问，情绪在认知中起着重要作用。然而，在哲学和心理学中，关于它们在我们认知结构中的确切构成和作用的共识非常少。这篇论文的重点是我们将情感状态（例如情绪和心情）归因于自己的认知过程：例如，当我们自己的快乐或愤怒发生时，我们如何识别、分类和评估？为了解决这个问题，这项研究将基于“元表征”的最新观点，发展和捍卫一个关于我们如何监控和控制自己情绪的新理论。本文将以自我导向的元表征（我们自己的心理表征的表征）和情绪的元认知为中心，即监测和控制自己的情绪思想、经验和认知。然而，在决定我们如何识别自己的情绪之前，我必须清楚地解释什么是情绪的实例；它们与其他情感状态有何不同，比如情绪和痛苦，情感是否有独立的类别，情感是一种感知形式还是一种评估判断形式，或者两者的结合。它将研究这些问题，特别关注情感在我们的认知结构中扮演的功能角色。该项目的一个主要目的是挑战这样一种说法，即为了掌握一种情感，我们的认知系统必须以某种方式识别所呈现的是情感的表征。换句话说，认知系统仅仅掌握“我对学术感到高兴”是不够的；它还必须以某种方式认识到“这是我对奖学金的快乐的一种表现”。虽然这一立场最初似乎是巴洛克式的，但实际上哲学家彼得·卡拉瑟斯（Peter Carruthers, 2011）为其提供了非常有说服力的论据。本文将结合最近的心理学和哲学研究，重新审视“元表征”的概念，从而产生一种新的情感“元认知”理论。

Emotions undoubtedly play an important role in cognition. There is, however, remarkably little consensus within philosophy and psychology about their exact constitution and role within our cognitive architecture. The focus of this thesis is on the cognitive processes by which we attribute affective states (e.g. emotions and moods) to ourselves: for example, how do we recognise, categorise, and evaluate our own happiness or anger when they occur? In addressing this question, this research will develop and defend a new theory of how we monitor and control our own emotions, based on an updated view of 'meta-representation'. This thesis will centre on self-directed meta-representations (representations of our own mental representations) and metacognition of emotion, that is, the monitoring and controlling of one's own emotional thoughts, experiences, and cognitions. However, before deciding how we recognise ouremotions, I must clearly explain what an instance of an emotion might be; how they differ from other affective states, like moods and pains, whether there are discrete categories of emotion, and whether emotion is a form of perception or a form of evaluative judgement, or perhaps some combination of the two. It will investigate these issues with a particular focus on the functional role emotions play within our cognitive architecture.A primary aim of this project is to challenge the claim that, in order to grasp an emotion, our cognitive system must somehow recognise that what is presented is a representation of the emotion. In other words, it is not enough for the cognitive system to grasp 'I am happy about the scholarship'; it must also somehow recognise 'this is a representation of my happiness about the scholarship'. While this position may initially seem a baroque one, there are in fact very persuasive arguments provided for it by the philosopher Peter Carruthers (2011). This thesis will reconsider the concept of 'meta-representation' in light of recent psychological and philosophical research, and consequently, will produce a new theory of 'meta-cognition' of emotion.