In the previous post, I discussed Lisa Feldman Barrett’s critique of the “classical theory of emotions.” I covered reasons to reject the idea that there is a simple set of crisply delimited, universal, basic emotions or the idea that such emotions have universal modes of facial expression or invariant physiological or neural “fingerprints.” In this post, I would like to sketch Barrett’s positive account—of how the brain, in interaction with human culture and the environment, constructs emotions. A word is needed first, though, about the metaphor of “construction.” It is a complex metaphor. It’s a metaphor that can pull us in many different directions. It tugs at other none-too-crisp distinctions we are familiar with, such as the distinction between finding something and making something, or the distinction between simple parts versus complexes of many different parts. It reminds of how we tend to think of some things as natural and others as manufactured—or artificial,...