Investigating the Fundamental Base of Emotion Science

How should we investigate folk emotion concepts for the purposes of anchoring scientific emotion concepts? In this article, I expand on Mun’s ideas on what she calls the fundamental base for interdisciplinary inquiry in the science of emotion. I argue that first-person intuitions should not be part of the object of study for an adequate approach to the fundamental base. This is because they are epistemically unreliable and subject to private language arguments. I propose a pragmatic account of how to investigate the fundamental base, drawing on Haslanger’s distinction between manifest and operative concepts, as well as some of her views on social constructionism and semantics. This pragmatic account covers the relevant sources of evidence considered by Mun, but also calls for an investigation of cultural variations in emotion concepts, scripts and norms. The upshot of the pragmatic account is a more expansive research program that maintains the interdisciplinary spirit of emotion science.