The Emotions

A Philosophical Introduction

Julien Deonna, Fabrice Teroni

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781135733513
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Filosofia
• Subtopic: Storia e teoria della filosofia

The emotions are at the centre of our lives and, for better or worse, imbue them with much of their significance. The philosophical problems stirred up by the existence of the emotions, over which many great philosophers of the past have laboured, revolve around attempts to understand what this significance amounts to. Are emotions feelings, thoughts, or experiences? If they are experiences, what are they experiences of? Are emotions rational? In what sense do emotions give meaning to what surrounds us?

The Emotions: A Philosophical Introduction introduces and explores these questions in a clear and accessible way. The authors discuss the following key topics:

• the diversity and unity of the emotions
• the relations between emotion, belief and desire
• the nature of values
• the relations between emotions and perceptions
• emotions viewed as evaluative attitudes
• the link between emotions and evaluative knowledge
• the nature of moods, sentiments, and character traits.

Including chapter summaries and guides to further reading, The Emotions: A Philosophical Introduction is an ideal starting point for any philosopher or student studying the emotions. It will also be of interest to those in related disciplines such as psychology and the social sciences.

1 Homing in on the emotions

The philosophy of emotions seeks to develop a systematic theory of the phenomena we refer to by terms such as ‘fear’, ‘envy’, ‘anger’, ‘sadness’, ‘joy’, ‘embarrassment’, ‘shame’, ‘jealousy’, ‘remorse’, ‘boredom’, ‘nostalgia’, ‘pride’, ‘regret’, ‘admiration’, ‘compassion’, ‘disgust’, ‘amusement’, ‘indignation’, ‘hope’, which fall under the generic label of ‘emotions’. We know it when we are undergoing emotions, often we know which emotion we have, and we know how to ascribe them to others and why we ascribe them. Still, the fact that this intuitive knowledge is easily available should not make us think that emotions are simple phenomena. Let us start, then, by introducing what are often thought to be the central features of the emotions, features we shall illustrate by considering how the emotions contrast with other affective phenomena and, more generally, other psychological states. Doing so will not only furnish some preliminary insights into the nature of emotions, but will also put us in a position to briefly present some of the main issues with which we shall be concerned in this book. The first of these core features concerns the role of feelings in the emotions (their phenomenology), the second the fact that emotions are directed towards objects (their intentionality), and the third the sorts of standards to which the emotions are answerable (their epistemology).

Phenomenology

Consider the following everyday expressions: we say we are ‘in the grip of panic’, ‘struck by fear’, ‘overcome with joy’, ‘oppressed by shame’, ‘overwhelmed by sorrow’. These locutions suggest that emotions are reactions we passively undergo. The term ‘passion’, which used to refer to what are now known as emotions, testifies to that fact. So are the many participial adjectives designating emotions (e.g., ‘horrified’, ‘astonished’, ‘troubled’, ‘vexed’). In the emotions, we seem to be acted on, and this typically manifests itself to us through bodily agitations or disturbances – a feature to which the very term ‘emotion’ alludes. The crucial point for present purposes, however, is that these bodily disturbances are felt. This is why the term ‘feeling’ is never far away when there is talk of the emotions.

What are these bodily disturbances or agitations that we are said to be feeling during emotional episodes? Emotions are generally held to involve bodily sensations or feelings. Anger, for example, may lend itself to a description in terms of a configuration of sensations caused inter alia by the following elements: an accelerating heart rate, quickened breathing, an increased blood pressure, a rush of adrenaline. Such descriptions will also refer to the sorts of kinesthetic sensations and muscular feedback characteristic of the particular emotion that is experienced – compare for instance the muscular relaxation in relief with the muscular tension typical of anger. To the kinds of sensations just described, we may also add the sensations of pleasure and displeasure often referred to as hedonic qualities or tones. There are after all emotions that feel good, like joy or admiration, and others that do not, like fear or sadness.

More generally, and independently of any specification of how their felt character should be described, the emotions are said to have a phenomenology: there is a ‘what-it-is-like’-ness to the experience of any emotion. This seems to be what we are referring to when we talk generally of ‘the feeling of anger’ or ‘the feeling of shame’. Now, while it is easy to approach the phenomenology of the emotions through its dimension of bodily disturbance, it goes without saying that felt agitations of the body do not seem to be particularly salient in the phenomenology of many emotions – think for instance of regret or contentment. Similarly, the idea that all emotions are intrinsically either pleasant or unpleasant is less than straightforward. While many think that anger is unpleasant and that hope is pleasant, this is far from obvious. To complicate matters further, the phenomenology of the emotions might lend itself to very different descriptions depending on whether the subject's attention is focused on what he feels or is directed elsewhere, for instance on the situation that triggers his emotion.

An important task we shall take up in this book then concerns the role and nature of feelings, especially bodily and hedonic feelings, within emotions. The fact that phenomenology is a central feature of the emotions is reflected in the fact that just knowing that someone is angry, afraid or ashamed is already to be in possession of a substantial amount of psychological information about him, and this is so even when one does not know what he is angry about, afraid or ashamed of (e.g., Roberts 2003: 146). Yet, can we identify the emotions with some aspect of their felt character, be it bodily sensations or hedonic tones? These issues, and more generally the question as to how we should conceive of the phenomenology of the emotions and its roles, will be the center of our discussions in Chapters 6 and 7. As we shall see, while there have been many attempts to identify emotions with phenomenological features; these attempts seem to rule out the possibility of unfelt emotions and run the risk of placing too much emphasis on the qualities of the emotional experience itself at the expense of what these experiences are experiences of. Indeed, while it is true that the emotions are affective phenomena that seem to be partly characterized by what it is like to have them, another of their central features consists in the fact that they are directed towards various aspects of the world. It is to this central feature of the emotions that we now turn.

Intentionality

We said that emotions are reactions. This raises the question as to what they are reactions to. A good starting point is to consider the way we speak of the emotions. A cursory overview of our linguistic practices in this area brings to light the fact that emotions seem to be always about something. One can always ask, for instance, what Bernard is angry about (e.g., ‘he is angry at Arthur because he insulted him’), what he is afraid of (e.g., ‘a stock-market crash’), who he is jealous of (e.g., ‘Max, who is dating Mary’). This is part of what philosophers have in mind when they call emotions intentional phenomena. This is simply a term of art for saying that the emotions are about something, and should not be understood as suggesting that they are states we deliberately or intentionally enter into. Rather, as we have seen, the opposite seems to be the case. It is worth observing that claiming that emotions have intentional objects in the sense just defined is not, or not merely, to claim that they have causes or triggers. While the object of an emotion is also often its cause, it does not have to be. The object of Bernard's jealousy is Max, but its cause is, say, Mary's praise of Max's humor. Note as well that to say that emotions always have objects is not to say that these objects are the focus of attention for the duration of the emotion – John is worried about his exam, but his attention is presently focused on checking whether his bike is locked – nor even that the subject is always clear about what these objects are, as we shall see in our discussion of the various senses in which emotions can be said to be unconscious in Chapter 2.

The language of emotions also reveals that they can have different sorts of objects. This is reflected in the fact that emotion-related verbs can take a variety of grammatical complements. Take the following examples: ‘Bernard fears that his life is in danger’, ‘Mary hopes that the economy will improve’, ‘Alison regrets that Jacob did not come to the party’. In these three cases, the emotion-related verb is followed by a propositional complement. However, there are also cases such as ‘Bernard fears the lion’, ‘Mary admires Max’, and ‘Jeffrey despises sexists’, where the verb takes a nominal complement. Although most emotion verbs can take either nominal or propositional complements, there are some notable exceptions: ‘admire’ standardly requires a direct object, and ‘hope’ a that-clause. It is often easy to transform a construction involving a propositional complement into one with a nominal complement (‘Bernard fears for his life’, ‘Mary hopes for an improvement in the economy’), but transformations in the other direction are often not possible. For example, sentences of the form ‘Mary admires the fact that Max is/did F’ are not only grammatically infelicitous, but it is not clear that Mary's admiration for Max could be captured in terms of a single proposition, or even a collection of propositions.

These features of the language of emotions reflect the rich variety of the emotions’ intentional objects. In some cases, the emotions are or even have to be attitudes towards specific states of affairs, e.g., regret. In other cases, they are attitudes we take towards specific objects or events that do not seem reducible to an attitude taken towards a state of affairs involving that object, or a collection of such states. Beliefs, but – as we shall see – also desires, do not seem to exhibit the same richness.

Now, whatever type of object emotions have, the fact that they always have one helps distinguish them from another very important class of affective phenomena, i.e. moods. Moods, like emotions, have a characteristic phenomenology. There clearly is something it is like to be in a downcast or a grumpy mood. And, while moods typically last longer than emotions, they need not always do so. Unlike emotions, however, and this is the principled distinction between these two types of affective phenomena, moods do not appear to be intentional in that they never target specific objects. This is why it does not make sense to restrict the attribution of a mood to specific objects or kinds of objects. One is in a gloomy, grumpy or joyful mood, never gloomy or grumpy about Mike or about the rich. This is reflected in the fact that attributions of moods (e.g., Alison is grumpy) are informative and complete without specification of any object, whereas attributions of emotions (e.g., Alison is angry) may, as we have seen, be informative but remain incomplete as long as the object is not specified. Of course, as the standard metaphor goes, our moods ‘color’ our attitudes in general, and have close connections with emotions in particular, which complicates matters further. Moods often cause emotions (and vice-versa) of the same affective color (someone in a bad mood will tend to feel mainly negative emotions) and moods commonly crystallize in the form of emotional episodes that will target specific objects (Alison's grumpiness does not have Mike as an object but may well lead to her being angry at him). Similarly, grumpiness may be the result of a series of negative emotions.

If emotions differ from moods in virtue of being intentionally directed at specific objects, how do they come to have the objects they have? A first observation is that emotions can equally well be directed at objects, events, or states of affairs with which the subject is presently in perceptual contact (‘Ben is afraid of this lion’), with which she had previously been in perceptual contact (‘Mary regrets having met Ben in the Jungle’), with which she has never been in such contact (‘Louis is disappointed that Napoleon lost the Battle of Waterloo’), and also with states of affairs with which perceptual contact is impossible (‘Rebecca hopes she will travel to Atlantis’). Here we have an important difference between emotions and perceptions. Perceptions are answerable to a causal constraint according to which the perceived objects and properties have to be causally responsible for the occurrence of the perceptual experience. Sam sees the blueness of this vase only if this vase and its blueness cause his visual experience. When such a constraint is not satisfied, he does not see the vase but only seems to see it. And this does not seem true in the case of emotions, or at least certainly not true of all of them. Do we want to say for instance that Ben only seems to be afraid if he has mistaken Bernard passing in a bedsheet for a ghost?¹

In answer to the question of how emotions come to have the objects they have, we must then acknowledge, and this is our second observation, that there is no generic answer to that question, for emotions necessarily rely on other mental states in order to be intentionally directed at something. Emotions, unlike perceptions, are always grounded in some other mental state that is also about the object the emotion is directed at. Perception gives us direct access to the relevant objects and facts in the sense that it does not call for the presence of another mental state directed at these very objects and facts, whereas emotions must latch on to information provided by other mental states. And these mental states, which we shall call the cognitive bases of emotions, can be of radically different types.

This is reflected in the fact that emotions can indifferently be directed at the past (‘Ben regrets not having gone to the party’), the present (‘Rosetta is embarrassed by her behavior’) and the future (‘Arthur hopes that the weather will hold up’). Certain types of emotions tend to be directed at one or another of these temporal determinations (this is especially true of the past, remorse and nostalgia being two examples of emotions always directed at the past), but most emotions can, it seems, be about events across the temporal spectrum. Hope can for instance be about past events as when Ben hopes that his letter arrived at its destination. Emotions directed at the past will typically be based on the subject's memories but may also have testimony as their cognitive base, emotions directed at the present are typically based on perception, and emotions directed at the future are often grounded in imagination-based expectations of the relevant event. But of course the content of the relevant cognitive bases and so the content of the emotion might not be temporally indexed at all, as when I enjoy imagining visiting Rome. Note furthermore that some emotions require that the subject believes certain things concerning their object (‘Ben regrets not having gone to the party’ requires that Ben believes that he did not go), whereas others require the absence of these beliefs (‘Ben hopes that he will go to the party’ implies that he is uncertain whether or not he will go). Certain emotional episodes (‘Ben fears that Nina went to the party without him’) depend on some measure of uncertainty concerning the occurrence of the events in question. The fact that emotions essentially involve cognitive bases will play a crucial role in assessing different accounts of what emotions are.

We have seen that the emotions are always directed at objects that are provided by their cognitive bases. To refer to these objects provided by the cognitive bases of emotions, we shall use the term of art ‘particular objects’, without implying by this that our emotions are always about ordinary material objects – we can worry about the state of the environment or admire a theory. Now, acknowledging that emotions have particular objects may still not seem to provide an exhaustive characterization of the intentionality of emotions. Indeed, emotions do have intentional objects that are provided by their cognitive bases, but they also seem to represent these objects in a characteristic way. Suppose Jane is sad because England lost to Germany. It is right to say that her sadness concerns the result of the match, but it is fair to add that this result is, from Jane's perspective, a bad thing. Jane takes England's defeat to be a bad thing, whereas a supporter of Germany takes it to be a good thing. Not only does she take the result to be bad, she takes it to be bad in a specific way – not in a despicable way (she would have felt contempt), nor in an offending way (she would have felt anger), but in a sad way (for she feels sadness). Emotions – or so some philosophers and psychologists tend to believe – connect with specific kinds of evaluations that make up different kinds of emotions. As we shall have ample opportunity to observe, it is indeed illuminating to think of sadness as being connected to the evaluation of its object as a loss, of anger as connected to an evaluation of it as offensive, of fear as connected to the threatening, of admiration as connected to the beautiful, etc. This would make a lot of sense given that our susceptibility to feel emotions seems intimately connected with our tendency to make evaluative judgments. For instance, I may judge someone to be offensive as a result of the anger I feel towards him.

There seem to be, then, at least two central aspects to the intentionality of the emotions, one linked to the fact that they have particular objects provided by their bases, the other linked to the fact that they seem intimately connected to evaluations of these objects. A crucial theme of this book concerns how we should understand the relations between these two aspects of the intentionality of emotions and whether or not their intentionality can be illuminated by appealing to their phenomenology.

Epistemology

These two aspects of the intentionality of the emotions allow us to consider and criticize them from a variety of different perspectives. First, and as a direct consequence of their being directed at particular objects and connected with types of evaluations, emotions are subject to standards of correctness. If Leonard is afraid of Fido, a friendly and docile dog, we would tell him that the dog poses no danger and would consider his fear inappropriate. Some such standards seem to apply to all the emotions, though perhaps not – as we shall shortly see – to all affective phenomena. In this respect, emotions are similar to many cognitive states such as beliefs and perceptual experiences. All these states have conditions of correctness, i.e. they have a content in the light of which it is possible to assess whether they fit the facts or not (e.g., Searle 1983). The fact that emotions are assessed as correct or incorrect depending on whether or not they fit the facts has prompted philosophers to talk about them as having the mind-to-world direction of fit – they aim, as it were, at representing the world as it is – and we shall see later in this chapter that this allows u...