Abstract
In this paper, I provide an analysis of the connection between shared emotions and shared epistemic states and undertakings. In so-doing, I aim to answer the following questions: In what sense do shared emotions help or hinder our epistemic enterprises? How do they shape the way that groups engage in these epistemic undertakings? In my analysis, I stress emotions are correlated with far-reaching changes in cognitive processing. I suggest that we should understand emotions within group contexts as ways of thinking that can facilitate cooperation and create a joint epistemic outlook. Overall, my suggestion thus is that shared emotions should be seen as important for epistemic undertakings because they turn groups into unified epistemic subjects.
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Notes
- 1.
It should be noted that I do not wish to claim that this position is actually a dominant approach within the study on group emotions. Nevertheless, if one assumes that reflections on group emotions take their starting point in the study of individual emotions, this would be a natural place to begin the investigation.
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- 3.
For a recent study that analyses the role positive emotions have for a group’s cooperation with respect to certain epistemic projects, see Candiotto (2017).
- 4.
Brady mentions two additional conditions to explain this claim somewhat further. He suggests that (frequently) shared emotions are the result of contagion (in the sense that one member of the groups catches the emotion from another). In other cases, emotions arise individually, but nevertheless there will be a connection between these individual emotional states in the sense that group members mutually endorse each other’s emotional state (Brady 2016). In other words, there needs to be some level of emotional conformity (over and above group members just happening to be in the same emotional state) for us to be able to speak of shared emotions. In settling for this relatively open position, I leave much of the current debate on these issues aside. For an instructive overview of some recent developments in this field, see Michael (2016).
- 5.
I am assuming that we can do so (in part) by using a simple aggregation function. For a related (but more complex) position on group belief, see List and Pettit (2013).
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There are different ways of spelling this out, of course, depending on one’s overall epistemic position and on the question of how one analyses the epistemic role of perception and the formation of beliefs in groups.
- 7.
Of course, a full-blown analysis of the epistemic role of shared emotions would also need to take other positions into account. In this respect, Brady’s account would be extremely instructive (Brady2016). However, due to limitations in space, I cannot offer a thorough analysis of his view in the course of this paper.
- 8.
In stressing the importance of these activities, I also take up ideas originally voiced by Seumas Miller. In a recent paper, he develops the idea of “joint epistemic action”. According to this view, an epistemic action is an action with an epistemic end (such as knowledge, but also understanding, etc.). Examples of groups engaged in such joint epistemic actions according to Miller are a group of detectives trying to establish the identity of Jack the Ripper or a group of scientists trying to find a cure for cancer (Miller 2014). In this paper, I use the somewhat vaguer notion of an epistemic activity or an epistemic undertaking. This is primarily because there is some debate as to whether the talk of action is sensibly applicable to the realm of the mental (Strawson 2003). More recently, the importance of looking at epistemic activities in group epistemology has also been stressed by Proust, see Proust (2018).
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- 11.
I take up this formulation here, though it should of course be stressed that these are not dilemmas in the strict philosophical sense of the term.
- 12.
In my view these differences are overlooked by Salmela and Nagatsu who already point towards a position similar to the one I am advocating here. In a recent paper, they suggest that “collective emotions lubricate creative processes, speeding imagination and recombination of ideas, thus enabling group flow” (Salmela and Nagatsu 2016). I think, here we need to be more careful in the sense that not all shared emotions will lead to these results, while some emotions (such as shared joy) might indeed do so.
- 13.
For fear this might e.g. be the case where the threat scenario we are facing is very complex in nature. Here, any solution might for instance demand high degrees of creative thinking, while fear fosters ways of thinking that do not exhibit the traits conducive to creative problem-solving.
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Berninger, A. (2019). Group Emotions and Group Epistemology. In: Candiotto, L. (eds) The Value of Emotions for Knowledge. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15667-1_12
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