Philosophy of emotions

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Philosophy of emotions

• Opening lecture 29.10.08
• Mikko Salmela
• mikko.salmela_at_helsinki.fi

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Schedule

• 29.10. Introductory lecture 10 problems in the
  analysis of emotion (Solomon) An overview into
  philosophy of emotions since James
• 5.11. Emotions and culture Reading Mallon
  Stich The Odd Couple The Compatibility of
  Social Construction and Evolutionary Psychology
• 12.11. The primacy of affect and cognition in
  emotion Reading Prinz Emotion, Psychosemantics,
  and Embodied Appraisals
• 19.11. Emotions and rationality Reading
  Greenspan Emotions, Rationality, and Mind/Body
• 26.11. Emotional affectivity Reading Goldie
  Emotions, Feelings, and Intentionality
• 3.12. Emotions, agency, and responsibility
  Reading Solomon On the Passivity of the Passions
• 10.12. Emotions and ethics Reading Haidt
  Joseph Intuitive Ethics How Innately Prepared
  Intuitions Generate Culturally Variable Virtues

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10 problems in the analysis of emotion

• What counts as an emotion?
• Anger, fear, jealousy, joy what about love
  (serene marital love, love of justice)?
• Should long-term, relatively calm emotions be
  called emotions?
• Hume violent vs. calm passions
• Are moods emotions? (duration, aboutness)
• Occurrent vs. dispositional emotions
• No homogenous category (physicality
  circumstances control)

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10 problems in the analysis of emotion

• 2. Which emotions are basic?
• Examples
• Descartes wonder, love, hatred, desire, joy, and
  sadness
• Spinoza desire, joy, sadness
• Watson fear, anger, love (dependency)
• Izard joy, sadness, anger, fear, disgust,
  contempt, guilt, shame, surprise
• Questions about basic emotions
• universal or culturally specific?
• innate or learned?
• atomistic components or complex structures?

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10 problems in the analysis of emotion

• 3. What are emotions about (intentionality)?
• Some situation, person, object or state of
  affairs (that need not exist)
• Intentionality vs. intensionality
• Intentionality-with-a-t is a property of mental
  acts or states
• Intensionality-with-an-s is a semantic property
  (opaqueness) of linguistic descriptions.
• Actual vs. formal object of emotion (Kenny)
• Formal object is the evaluative category under
  which the actual object falls as an object of
  that emotion type (e.g. fear - being dangerous
  anger - being offensive).
• A logical requirement rather than an empirical
  one.

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10 problems in the analysis of emotion

• 4. Explanation of emotions causal vs.
  intentional
• Causal necessary and sufficient conditions
• transparent
• Intentional rationality from the subjects point
  of view
• opaque

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10 problems in the analysis of emotion

• 5. Rationality of emotions
• Paradox emotions appear to be both rational and
  irrational.
• Types of rationality attached to emotions
• Functional adaptiveness (psychology)
• Strategic rationality (Sartre, Solomon Frank)
• Epistemic rationality
• Emotional intelligence (Salovey Mayer)

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10 problems in the analysis of emotion

• 6. Emotions and ethics
• Historical connections
• Aristotelian virtue ethics
• British moral sentiment theorists
• Religious virtues and vices
• Positive vs. negative emotions various criteria
• Ethical desirable or undesirable behaviour
• Hedonic pleasant or painful tone
• Cognitive appraisal about something desirable or
  undesirable
• Coherent patterns of emotions as detectors of
  personal values, either moral or nonmoral (Helm).

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10 problems in the analysis of emotion

• 7. Emotions and culture
• Paradox unlearned, uneducatable, and universal
  as part of our evolutionary heritage vs.
  culturally learned insofar as involve concepts
  and beliefs.
• Empirical evidence for both evolutionary and
  constructivist views universally recognizable
  facial expressions vs. culturally specific
  emotion-repertoires

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10 problems in the analysis of emotion

• 8. Emotions and expression
• Ekman universal basic emotions
  culture-specific display rules
• What kind of behavior counts as expression?
• purposive action
• non-purposive behavior
• facial expressions

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10 problems in the analysis of emotion

• 9. Emotions and responsibility
• Paradox emotions appear both active and passive
• Emotions happen to us (linguistic metaphors)
• Yet some control of expressions and exposure to
  eliciting situations
• Emotion management by purposive interpretation of
  situations (a question of authenticity).
• Responsibility for emotional beliefs.

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10 problems in the analysis of emotion

• 10. Emotions and knowledge
• Changing emotions through adequate knowledge
• Problem beliefs essential to emotions are not
  always easily uncovered and changed (Freud).
• The apparent object of emotion may not be the
  real one, or we may mistake about the identity of
  emotion.
• Emotions as means of self-knowledge.

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AN OVERVIEW INTO PHILOSOPHY OF EMOTIONS SINCE
JAMES

• James-Lange theory Emotions as feelings of
  bodily
• changes
• The received view of emotion in modern philosophy
  and psychology (Descartes, Hume, James).
• William James (1842-1910) My thesis is that
  the bodily changes follow directly the PERCEPTION
  of the exciting fact, and that our feeling of the
  same changes as they occur IS the emotion.
  (What is an Emotion, 1884).
• Common sense eliciting event ? feeling-state ?
  bodily changes
• James eliciting event ? bodily changes ?
  feeling-state
• Emotion without characteristic bodily symptoms is
  a cold and neutral state of intellectual
  perception.

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• Problems with the James-Lange view
• How certain events and objects produce specific
  emotional responses? A recognition or
  classification of the situation involved in
  eliciting perception.
• Identification of specific emotions in terms of
  somatic changes in the viscera and in the
  autonomous nervous system.
• Cannon (1929) same visceral changes in very
  different emotional states and nonemotional
  states.
• Support from contemporary research ANS
  differences between anger, sadness, disgust,
  fear, and happiness (Levenson).
• Recent research has revived James theory with
  certain modifications (Damasio Prinz)

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• The behaviorist interlude
• Background logical behaviorism statements about
  mental states must be transformed into statements
  about the subjects brain states or about his or
  her behavior
• John Watson emotions are hereditary and innate
  pattern-reactions involving profound bodily
  changes best observable in newborn infants
  (absurd).
• Gilbert Ryle B.F. Skinner emotions as
  dispositions of distinct response patterns that
  occur in a law-like manner in certain kind of
  stimulus situations.
• Problems
• Reference to law-like connections between
  behaviour patterns and their eliciting situations
  does not explain this connection.
• Vicious circle can be broken only by reference to
  the agents interpretation of his or her
  situation ? rejection of behaviourism.

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• The Rise of Cognitivism
• historical background Plato, Aristotle, the
  Stoics
• core idea some cognitive mental state (belief,
  thought, evaluative judgment, belief-desire set,
  concern-based construal, etc.) is a necessary
  constituent of emotion.
• cognition distinguishes between different
  emotions 
• Ordinary language philosophy
• Deigh (1994) there is a logic to the concept of
  x such that to say that a person feels x toward z
  implies that the person believes such and such
  about z.
• Bedford (1956) emotion-specific beliefs
  factual beliefs about the context.
• Kenny (1963) formal objects (core relational
  themes in psychology).

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• The two-factor theory of Schachter and Singer
• (1962)
• Emotions involve a physiological component of
  arousal and a cognitive labeling of the arousal
  as a particular emotion.
• A famous experiment cognitive interpretation of
  adrenaline-based general arousal as anger or joy,
  depending on situational cues.
• problems with replication yet very influential
  at its time

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• Contemporary cognitivism
• (1) The nature of emotional cognition
• judgmentalism (belief or assent necessary) vs.
  nonjudgmentalism (thought or perception suffices)
• (2) The role of feeling in emotion
• strong cognitivism (feeling not necessary for
  emotion or it can be analyzed in terms of
  cognition) vs. componential cognitivism (feeling
  is a necessary and irreducible component of
  emotion)
•  

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Judgmentalism

• THE STOIC ORIGIN
• Emotions as categorically false value judgments
  about the goodness or badness of external and
  transient states of affairs.
• ROBERT SOLOMON (1942-2007)
• Emotions are hasty evaluative judgments that lend
  significance to our lives.
• Emotion is a system of several judgments that
  together constitute the emotional scenario.
• Emotions are constitutive judgments that engender
  rather than detect meanings surreality
  ideology

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Judgmentalism (continues)

• MARTHA NUSSBAUM (1947)
• Emotions as dynamic and urgent judgments of value
  about things that are beyond our own control and
  yet important for our flourishing.
• Judgments as both necessary and sufficient for
  emotion.
• THE BELIEF-DESIRE MODEL
• John Searle (1983), Robert Gordon (1987) and O.H.
  Green (1992) evaluative judgments can be further
  analyzed as structures of semantically
  interrelated beliefs and desires
• Beliefs and desires together explain the
  intentionality of emotions both directions of
  fit.
• Rationality rationality of the constituent
  belief and desire

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Nonjudgmentalism

• ROBERT ROBERTS (1942)
• Emotions are concern-based construals that
  qualify as a kind of perception.
• construal is a perceptual event or state in
  which one thing is grasped in terms of something
  else (2003, 76), e.g. gestalt figures
• Concern is built into an emotional construal as
  the terms in which the eliciting situation is
  perceived.
• All emotions, even those of animals and human
  infants, are propositional.

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• Merits of cognitivism
• Intentionality derives from the intentionality
  of constitutive cognitions
• Rationality the rationality of constitutive
  cognitions
• Problems with cognitivism
• A. Internal problems
• Infant and animal emotions recalcitrant adult
  emotions
• Haunt both judgmentalist and nonjudgmentalist
  theories
• B. External problems
• Empirical evidence on noncognitive emotions
• Robert Zajonc (1980) primacy of affect
• Paul Ekman (1977) affect programs
• Joseph LeDoux (1995), Antonio Damasio (1994)
  quick and dirty pathway of emotional processing
  

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Recent developments

• Perceptual cognitivism Goldie (2000) Tappolet
  (2000)
• Intentional-cum-phenomenal content
• Recalcitrance without irrationality
• Perspectival relativity
• Epistemic rationality
• Perceptual noncognitivism Prinz (2004)
• Emotions are perceptions of somatic changes that
  represent matters of concern in the
  organism-environment relationship
• Emotions are cognitive by function but
  noncognitive by nature
• Eliminativism Griffiths (1997)
• Emotions do not constitute a unified theoretical
  category affect programs vs. complex emotions
• Different phylogenies, different adaptive
  functions, different neuroscience, and different
  roles in human psychology