ABSTRACT
This chapter explains cognitive theory of mind offers the best framework within which to understand emotion phenomena. It discusses the development of the cognitive theory of emotions through the writing of Aristotle, Aquinas, Spinoza and twentieth-century Anglo-American philosophy. The chapter briefly considers the theories of emotion put forward by two psychological behaviourists, Watson and Skinner, and by one philosophical behaviourist, Gilbert Ryle. Theories of emotion are almost always sub-texts of much larger theories of mind. Those who seek to describe and explain the mind as a cognitive system generally subscribe to a cognitive theory of emotions. Emotions seem to be characterised by physiological disturbance, changes in facial expression, gestures, behaviours, particular types of thoughts, beliefs and desires and a range of other experiences. Platonic philosophy was essentially dualist, with an ethereal soul and an earthly body.
