Abstract
The aim of this chapter is to discuss the relevance that emotions can play in our epistemic life considering the state of the art of the philosophical debate on emotions. The strategy is the one of focusing on the three main models on emotions as evaluative judgements, bodily feelings, and perceptions, following the fil rouge of emotion intentionality for rising questions about their epistemic functions. From this examination, a major challenge to mainstream epistemology arises, the one that asks to provide prominence to the epistemic agent and to her affects. This chapter discusses these implications, also providing an overview of the many alternatives available nowadays in epistemology, arguing for an open, comprehensive, and interdisciplinary approach to emotions in knowledge.
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Notes
- 1.
For a comprehensive overview of the most relevant work that has been done in this field in the last decades, see the second and the third volume of Ben-Ze’ev and Krebs (2018).
- 2.
For the conceptualisation of emotions as misguided judgements at the beginning of our philosophical history, see Sorabji (2000). A prominent topic, widely discussed since the antiquity, is the possible contribution of emotions to akrasia (weakness of the will) and self-deception. Many philosophers, and then psychologists, have been dealing with it until now. Exemplary cases for the contemporary philosophical debate on emotions are Rorty (1987) and Mele (2000).
- 3.
For an academic study on emotional intelligence, see Barrett and Salovey (2002).
- 4.
It is important to mention a significant shift in cognitive science from the interactionist models of the late Nineties to the more recent integrationist models for which emotion and cognition are deeply entangled in our mental life. The integrationist model, first developed in neuroscience, is now assumed by many specific research fields, from developmental psychology (Labouvie-Vief 2015) to theories of learning and skilfull behaviour (Gardiner 2015).
- 5.
But this does not mean that there is a general consensus about what our best science says regarding the emotions. In fact, different research programs have been developed throughout the years and the different results are also reflected in the philosophical conceptualisations about them. Some good exemplarsare de Sousa (1987) on the two systems theory (also called “Two-Track Mind”), Griffiths (1997) and DeLancey (2001) on the evolutionary approach and Ekman’s basic emotions, Prinz (2004) in relation to Damasio’s somatic marker hypothesis, and Thagard (2008) on the interactionist model. For a new account on emotions grounded in the new research program of the predictive mind, see Chapter 5.
- 6.
- 7.
These are not only historical references to our glorious past since many contemporary approaches have renewed the traditions with novel accounts. For example, consider the prominent Neo-Aristotelian tradition in virtue epistemology (Zagzebski 1996) and the sentimentalist philosophy of mind (Slote 2014), or those approaches that are strictly anchored to the phenomenological tradition, as the ones of Matthew Rattcliffe (2008), Thomas Fuchs (2017), and Shaun Gallagher and Dan Zahavi (2008).
- 8.
For an excellent overview on the history of philosophy of emotions see the new edited volume by Cohen and Stern (2017).
- 9.
Recently Joëlle Proust (2018) has highlighted the importance of looking at epistemic activities for grasping the social dimensions of knowledge and thus for developping what it has been called socially extendedepistemology. In this volume, especially in Chapters 11–13, we show how much the understanding of shared/collective emotions matter for this enterprise.
- 10.
It should be noted that this thesis could be assumed in many different ways, from one more apt to relate it to desires and hedonic levels (Helm 2001; Oddie 2005) to the ones that look at affects as the basic components of constructed emotions (Barrett2017). These differences partially depend on the very much debated topic of emotional valence in affective science (for an overview of the issue, see Colombetti2005). The thesis for which emotions disclose values (Johnston 2001) can also be used for explaining the analogy between perception and emotions—as perceptions are directed to objects, emotions are directed to values (Sauer 2012)—and can be articulated within different versions of intentionalism, as it has been recently argued by Vanello (2018). This thesis can be taken in functional terms too, and thus arguing that emotions are not a type of perception, but they function as perceptions (Price 2015).
- 11.
It is important to notice that the topic of the intentionality of emotions related to their fittingness has been one of the most debated since the pioneer book by Kenny (1963).
- 12.
An important contribution to this debate is forthcoming, the Routledge Handbook of phenomenology of emotions (Szanto and Landweer, forthcoming).
- 13.
It is important to notice that one of the main reasons of scepticism regarding a positive role of emotions in knowledge in our philosophical tradition has been exactly their subjective and private dimension that seems to be against the objective standards of knowledge. For an overview of the conceptualisation of emotions as subjective, see Calhoun (2004).
- 14.
This claim, that is strictly related to the cognitive account on the rationality of emotions, has been discussed well beyond the boundaries of the philosophical circles, notably in the Neo-Aristotelian affective turn in education (Nussbaum 1995; Kristjánsson 2018), but also in decision theory and economics (Kirman et al. 2010). But altought this widespread interest, the capacity to be responsible over our emotions is still controversial, especially if emotions are not conceptualized as cognitive, but as unbiden automatic responses that make us lose reason (Elster 1999,2010).
- 15.
It should be noted that the feminist reflection on emotions has been mostly pursued within the field of political philosophy and cultural studies (see, for example, Mendus 2000; Ahmed 2014). However, I think that the prominent research activity pursued by feminist epistemology and philosophy of science can be a valid and challenging reference for addressing the topic of emotions in knowledge too.
- 16.
For an overview of the psychological literature about the role played by the affects in self-disclosure, see Forgas and Moylan (2002).
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Candiotto, L. (2019). From Philosophy of Emotion to Epistemology: Some Questions About the Epistemic Relevance of Emotions. In: Candiotto, L. (eds) The Value of Emotions for Knowledge. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15667-1_1
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