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Feeling is believing: recalcitrant emotion & Spinozan belief formation

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Abstract

In this paper, I defend the judgementalist theory of emotion against the argument from recalcitrant emotions. Judgementalism holds that a necessary condition for being in an emotional state is that an evaluative belief is formed. Recalcitrant emotions are emotions that contradict endorsed beliefs and judgements. The argument from recalcitrant emotions states that a judgementalist explanation of recalcitrant emotions results in the absurd conclusion that one would hold two contradictory beliefs. I argue that emotion involves a so-called Spinozan belief-forming process: a process which automatically generates beliefs, without taking all available information into account. The generated beliefs might contradict something one already believes, as the so-called Fragmentation of Belief Hypothesis predicts. Thus the judgementalist explanation of recalcitrant emotions does not lead to an absurd conclusion and therefore the argument from recalcitrant emotions is refuted.

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Notes

  1. Greenspan cites the following works as exemplary of the view she wishes to attack: (Bedford, 1957; Green, 1972; Neu, 1977; Solomon, 1978). She takes (Lyons, 1980) to be a borderline case. A more recent example of judgementalism is (Nussbaum, 2001).

  2. Grzankowski himself argues that judgementalism is not refuted by the argument from recalcitrant emotions. (See also Grzankowski, 2020).

  3. One could make a further distinction between “ballistic” and automatic (Mandelbaum, 2015). For an analysis of “automaticity”, see (Moors & De Houwer, 2006).

  4. Note that “emotion” is not necessarily synonymous with “emotional experience”. One can for instance argue that emotions might occur unconsciously. An emotional experience will then only occur when the emotion is conscious. Or one might argue that an emotional experience is only one element of an emotional process, with many other components. Therefore, one can distinguish between “constitutive of emotion” and “constitutive of emotional experience”. I will mainly focus on “emotion”. In Sect. 6, I will discuss emotional experience and emotional phenomenology.

  5. This idea resembles “appraisal theory”. Appraisal theory is a theory that originated in the psychology of emotion (Lazarus, 1991; Moors, 2013; Robinson, 2005; Scherer, 1984, 2009). It could be seen as the “psychologist’s version” of judgementalism. Appraisal theorists claim that emotion has several components. An evaluative judgement (appraisal) is an essential component of the emotion, and it also gives rise to the other components of the emotion. The emotional experience emerges out of these different components. Most appraisal theorists, however, focus more on the cognitive process underlying the emotion than on emotional experience. I will not discuss appraisal theory in detail.

  6. For clarification of what makes the judgements “evaluative”, see (Nussbaum, 2001, 19–32).

  7. Also called “Fragmentation of the Mind”.

  8. Also called “belief fixation”.

  9. The names of these BFPs obviously refer to ideas of Descartes (1641/1988; 1644/1988) and Spinoza (1677/1991). I believe it is better to state that Descartes and Spinoza inspired Gilbert (1991) to distinguish between these two types of BFPs, rather than stating that these ideas are literally formulated by Descartes and Spinoza. Huebner (2009) describes in greater detail how the original ideas of Descartes and Spinoza relate to Gilbert’s distinction.

  10. Persisting contradictory beliefs are not necessarily a sign of mental illness. Mandelbaum and Quilty-Dunn (2015) refer to a series of studies by Johnson and Seifert (Johnson & Seifert, 1994; Seifert, 2002) which aim to show that people can have persistent contradictory beliefs. The participants of one of these studies read a text about a fire. It first states that the fire was caused by cans of oil paint. In the next sentence, this information is corrected: there were no cans of oil paint. After reading the text, the participants have to answer some questions. There was a tendency amongst the participants to report both that the cans caused the fire and that the text mentioned that there were no cans. This indicates that the participants are capable of having persistent contradictory beliefs.

  11. For interesting accounts of delusions that make use of the idea of Spinozan BFP, see (Bongiorno, forthcoming; Flores 2021).

  12. One of the most important books of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is (Beck, 1975). For a discussion of the philosophical roots of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, see (Robertson, 2019). Stoicism is named as its main philosophical inspiration, which is, in fact, judgementalism avant la lettre (Nussbaum, 2001).

  13. For the following paragraphs, I depend heavily on Clark’s (1999) overview article.

  14. This is Gilbert’s and Quilty-Dunn’s (2019) interpretation of Reid. For a more recent defense of the so-called doxastic theory of perception, see (Glüer, 2009).

  15. However, see (Quilty-Dunn, 2020), for an excellent defense of this view.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the following people for their valuable feedback: Andrea Blomkvist, Claudia Gâlgău, Gerardo Viera, Stacie Friend, Alex Grzankowski, Nicolas Porot, Bence Nanay, Eric Mandelbaum, an anonymous referee and audiences at several conferences and seminars. This work was supported by the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) Junior Postdoctoral Fellowship (1217120 N).

Funding

Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) Junior Postdoctoral Fellowship 1217120N. This research was funded by Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) Junior Postdoctoral Fellowship 1217120N.

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  1. Centre for Philosophical Psychology - Department of Philosophy, University of Antwerp - Faculty of Arts and Philosophy, 2000, Antwerp, Belgium

    Kris Goffin

  2. Research Group of Quantitative Psychology and Individual Differences, KU Leuven - Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Leuven, Belgium

    Kris Goffin

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Goffin, K. Feeling is believing: recalcitrant emotion & Spinozan belief formation. Synthese 200, 520 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-022-03980-9

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