Alexandra Zinck: "Emotions Hold the Self Together"

Self-referential emotions - as a special subgroup of emotions - essentially involve the subject herself as both subject and intentional object. Alexandra Zinck argues that they do not presuppose both a complex theory of mind and a stable self-representation as a basis for self-consciousness.
Instead, pre-forms of self-referential emotions precede and substantially contribute to the development of more elaborate self-representations and to social interaction and mentalizing. The special function of self-referential emotions for self-consciousness is illustrated within an account of the general functions of emotions for self-consciousness.

Alexandra Zinck studied Philosophy, Psychology, and Comparative Literature at the Universities of Berlin and Computational Linguistics at Kings' College London. Having completed a doctorate degree on the topic of "Self-Consciousness and Emotion" in Philosophy at the Universities of Tübingen and Bochum, she is currently doing a Post.Doc in an interdisciplinary project on how we understand other minds. She is particularly interested in how the capacity of understanding others and of understanding oneself are related.

Alexandra Zinck is from the Institut für Philosophie, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany.