emotions are perceptions of changes in bodily state. We don’t cry because we are sad, we are sad because we perceive our bodily state in the condition of crying. The emotion of fear, in this view, is constituted by (interoceptive) perception of a whole gamut of bodily responses set off by the organism recognising danger in its environment. For James, the perception of bodily changes as they occur is the emotion: ‘We feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble, and not that we cry, strike, or tremble, because we are sorry, angry, or fearful.’
