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Commitment and attunement

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Abstract

Heidegger’s view of attunement, and evolutionary theories of emotion, would appear to be wholly independent accounts of affects. This paper argues that we can understand the phenomenology of attunement and the evolutionary functionalist theory of emotions as distinct perspectives on those same emotions. The reason that the two perspectives are distinct is that some affects can act as commitment mechanisms, and this requires them to be experienced in a way that obscures their ultimate functional role. These perspectives are potentially mutually consistent, however, and being aware of both may provide insight for productive research programs. Although there are conflicts between the methods and background assumptions of these two approaches, I argue that we should allow these conflicts to stand if the outcome of interaction is productive.

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Notes

  1. Interpretationism in the philosophy of mind (Davidson (1963, 1976) and Dennett (1971)) is an influential form of motivation instrumentalism. Those defending internalism regarding moral reasoning and moral motivations often adopt a kind of instrumentalism about desires as a way to ensure (albeit by definition) that there is a “conceptual” link between reasons and these motivations (e.g., see Nagel 1970: 27ff). In other disciplines, examples include some interpretations of revealed preference theory (Samuelson 1948). Such views are deflationary, revisionary to the point of eliminativism, and render the science of motivation incapable of making predictions; but showing this requires significant space so here I will assume realism rather than refute instrumentalism.

  2. For a discussion of the problem of the lack of clarity in Heidegger’s discussions of attunement, see Freeman forthcoming/2015.

  3. This terminology is unfortunate because “cognitive” is often used to mean representational, and the opponents of the cognitivist theory of emotion agree that emotions are representational. In rest of this paper, I will only use the term “cognitive” and its cognates to refer to the cognitive theory of emotions, in which the content of the emotion makes the emotion the kind it is. No other association of “cognitive” should be assumed.

  4. Implicit here is a notion of what normally deserves to be fled, where the meaning of “normal” is teleological, and requires a theory of biological teleology; this can be accomplished using a evolutionary approach like the kind found in Millikan; see DeLancey 2002, 2007.

  5. For the record, I do not believe that there is anything like the philosopher’s notion of desire, or the economist’s notion of preference. This is worth mentioning since many philosophers just assume that a two-state theory of mind (belief and desire) is nearly complete. I use “preference” and “desire” in this paper as folk terms, without endorsing that there is a single kind of mental event that is a preference or a desire.

  6. Examples of post-functional fear are discussed in DeLancey 2002.

  7. Some of these behaviors have been called also “expressive behaviors,” but I will use the term “displaced” to avoid any confusion also with those expressive behaviors that have an obvious function, such as facial expressions. For a discussion of more complex expressive behaviors, which might also be called by some displaced behaviors, and which make use of symbolic connections, see Kovach and DeLancey 2005.

  8. There are interesting neuroscientific results that corroborate this claim. They include Sanfey et al. 2003; Koenigs and Tranel 2007; Singer et al. 2009; Kirk et al. 2011.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, Campus Center, State University of New York at Oswego, Oswego, NY, 13126, USA

    Craig DeLancey

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DeLancey, C. Commitment and attunement. Phenom Cogn Sci 13, 579–594 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-014-9372-0

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