Cochrane’s Nativism

The aim of this commentary is to draw out a feature of Cochrane’s view not made explicit in his book and to invite him to say a bit more about it. The topic is nativism about emotion: the view that our emotions are systems/mechanisms/programs hardwired into our brains by evolution, and purpose built to generate certain expressive, physiological and behavioural responses. I argue Cochrane’s nativism is on the surface more attractive than standard nativist views of emotion, as it extends beyond the realm of basic emotions to include more complex emotional phenomena, including sentiments. But the main worry is that it does so at the expense of preserving what was plausible about such views in the first place.