ABSTRACT

Understanding emotions and moral intentions of other people is integral to being human. Humanities scholars have long recognized the complex and ambiguous nature of emotions and morality. People are rarely ‘just’ happy, or sad. Neither are they ‘just’ good or bad people. Despite this, most knowledge about the psychological and neural basis of emotions and moral understanding comes from experiments investigating unidimensional and non-ambiguous emotions and morality. The goal of this paper is twofold. First I want to point out why mixed and ambiguous emotions and morality are a promising research topic for cognitive neuroscientists. Observing or experiencing mixed or ambiguous emotions and morality tends to have a strong impact on humans. This impact is clearly visible in narratives and fiction, and I will argue that narratives make an excellent stimulus to study the effects of emotional and moral ambiguity. Second, I will sketch a model to help guide research in this promising corner of human cognition.

摘要

理解他人的情绪和道德意图是人类不可或缺的一部分。人文学者早就认识到情感和道德的复杂性和模糊性。人们很少“只是”快乐或悲伤。他们也不“只是”好人或坏人。尽管如此，大多数关于情绪和道德理解的心理和神经基础的知识都来自调查单维和明确的情绪和道德的实验。本文的目标是双重的。首先，我想指出为什么混合和模棱两可的情绪和道德是认知神经科学家有前途的研究课题。观察或体验混合或模棱两可的情绪和道德往往会对人类产生强烈影响。这种影响在叙事和小说中清晰可见，我会争辩说，叙事是研究情感和道德歧义影响的极好刺激。其次，我将勾勒出一个模型来帮助指导对人类认知这一充满希望的领域的研究。