Abstract
In a recent paper in this journal, Alex Grzankowski sets out to defend cognitivism about emotion against what he calls the ‘problem of recalcitrance’ that many contemporary theorists take as a strong reason to reject the view. Given the little explicit discussion we find of it in a large part of the literature, however, it is not clear why exactly recalcitrant emotions are supposed to constitute a problem for cognitivism in the first place. Grzankowski outlines an argument that he thinks is at play in theorists’ widespread rejection of cognitivism, and goes on to answer it on behalf of the cognitivist. In this reply, I argue that Grzankowski is concerned with the wrong argument.
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Notes
The present construal of the problem of recalcitrance better makes sense of the move—made by a few philosophers such as Greenspan (1988)—of weakening cognitivism in such a way that it is a propositional attitude falling short of judgment that is necessary for emotion. If the irrationality of emotion is not a matter of holding contradictory judgments, it might be a matter of holding conflicting attitudes that fall short of being contradictory.
To be fair, Greenspan’s way of putting the problem might have led Grzankowski to focus on the problem he does focus on in his paper. For on her view, cognitivism is problematic because it leads us to violate a principle of ‘logical charity’ in our ascription of beliefs, suggesting that we should see an agent as “functioning quite rationally in general” and thus that we need some special reason “for attributing to him an unacknowledged judgement in conflict with those he acknowledges” (1988, 18), a judgment that arguably must be attributed in order to make sense of the fact that the agent does not consciously assent to the judgment that is thought to be involved in his emotion. Although it is understandable that this would lead Grzankowski to focus on the charge that cognitivism is committed to the irrationality of recalcitrant emotions tout court, I don’t think this is the only way to interpret Greenspan’s complaint. At a minimum, her claim is that we should not attribute to subjects the sort of incoherence attributed by the cognitivist, as this would violate some principle of charity. But this is quite compatible with claiming that some irrationality is still involved, albeit of a sort that is compatible with the subject “functioning quite rationally in general”. Arguably, this is a claim that Greenspan’s own account of emotion—tying emotions to reasons as it does—is amenable to.
For a defense of a sustained analogy between emotions and actions, see Naar (ms.). For anti-cognitivist accounts of the irrationality of recalcitrant emotions that do not draw on such an analogy, see, e.g., Brady (2009), Helm (2001), Tappolet (2010). For a critical discussion of such accounts, see Benbaji (2013, 582–587) and Naar (ms.).
A notorious attempt to meet the challenge is found in Davidson (1970), where he argues (roughly) that weak-willed action involves two very different kinds of evaluative judgment that fail to contradict each other. See Benbaji (2013) for an application of the Davidsonian framework to the case of recalcitrant emotions. Since Davidson’s account of weak-willed action is now widely rejected, an interesting project would be to look at how contemporary accounts might be adapted to the case of recalcitrant emotions. Such a project, however, is work for another time.
As Grzankowski’s own brand of cognitivism—one that claims that recalcitrant emotions are not irrational even if they involve contradictory judgments—conflicts with (1), independent reason should be given against it for his view, interesting as it is, to go through.
This move seems to be the opposite of Döring’s claim that, since irrationality is best conceived of as conflict in judgments, and that it is implausible that recalcitrant emotions necessarily involve this sort of irrationality, then we should conclude that recalcitrant emotions are not irrational (Döring 2014). Another possibility open to the cognitivist is to show that (1)-(3) are in fact consistent with her view, suitably construed.
References
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Acknowledgements
I thank François Jaquet and an anonymous reviewer for comments and discussion on a previous version of this paper.
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Naar, H. The Real Issue with Recalcitrant Emotions: Reply to Grzankowski. Erkenn 85, 1035–1040 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-018-0063-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-018-0063-z