The Epistemology of Reason and Affect

Contemporary investigators interested in the relationship between mind and brain and in the associated questions of knowledge. experience, and consciousness have for the most part cantered on higher order cognitive functions what Oakley and Jenkins (1996) in the above quotation termed serious mental functions-and have eschewed the detailed consideration of emotion. Historically, however, emotion more than other psychological phenomena has been intimately connected with the my tedious ‘“mind stuff’ of subjective experience. As B.F. Skinner (1953, p. 257) noted, such “private events•· are outside the realm of objective observation: They are defined by their ‘“limited accessibility (to the community) but not, so far as we know, by any special structure or nature.”