Abstract
In this chapter I argue that emotions comprise their characteristic phenomenology—their what-it-is-likeness from a first-person point of view. The point is important because it paves the way for how I proceed in Chap. 3, where appealing to the phenomenology of emotion, I argue that emotions are types of bodily feeling states that have no representational or intentional properties of their own. I also take up the question of whether emotions are always conscious. I argue that if emotions are their phenomenal appearances, then that implies that emotions are always conscious. In arguing for that position, I consider a number of objections to the view that emotions are always conscious, some of these taking the form of counterexamples to that view. However, I show why none of the objections raised succeed.
If we fancy some strong emotion, and then try to abstract from our consciousness of it all the feelings of its characteristic bodily symptoms, we find that we have nothing left behind, no ‘mind-stuff’ out of which the emotion can be constituted…
—William James (1884, 193)
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Notes
- 1.
Also, neither consideration should be taken to be a reason to reject a view according to which emotions may depend on the brain or body in some non-constitutive perhaps causal way.
- 2.
This follows even if the fact of emotions being their ways of appearing serves as a premise in an argument showing that emotions are not neural or bodily states. It follows because the fact of emotions being there ways of appearing isn’t sufficient to reject the idea that emotions are neural or bodily states. To establish the falsity of that thesis, we would also need to show that neural or bodily states are not their ways of appearing (but for an argument to that effect, see Whiting 2016, 2018).
- 3.
Is this true of so-called ‘higher cognitive’ emotions, such as guilt and pride, emotions that are widely held to involve cognitive elements in addition to purely bodily sensory ones? Does the experience demonstrate for us that these states are identical with their characteristic way of appearing? I think so. As I will argue at length in Chap. 3, plausibly such states are feelings that qualify as pride or guilt in virtue of being triggered by certain thoughts (thoughts of wrongdoing in the case of guilt and thoughts of personal achievement in the case of pride), where the feelings in question are how they phenomenally appear to us. But suppose the thoughts in question are held to be constituent parts of pride and guilt and not merely individuating causes. Even if that were the case, I think the experience would show us that pride and guilt are their ways of appearing, albeit ways of appearing that are complex in nature, comprising sensory and cognitive elements (again on this point, see Chap. 3).
- 4.
A ‘mental nature or character’ in the sense that the way a rock or tree looks to us embodies a perspective or first-person point of view or has an ‘aspectual shape’ (Searle 1992)—again these being properties of the way a rock or tree looks to us but not of the rock or tree itself. I don’t accept the idea, then, that experience is transparent, that when we attend to the way something looks or appears to us we find ourselves attending directly to the thing that appears to us and its properties (for a discussion of the relevant literature, see Kind 2003). Although I agree that when we attend to a rock (say) we attend directly to the rock and its properties, this is a different act of attention from that we engage in when we attend to how a rock looks or appears to us. Again, this is shown by the fact that when we engage in the latter act of attention, but not the former, we are presented with a perspective or first-person point of view (on this point, see also Kind 2003; Siewert 2004; Whiting 2016).
- 5.
More precisely, the idea that if emotions are the way they feel, then emotions are always how they feel, serves as a reductio of the idea that emotions are whatever play a certain functional or causal role. In other words, emotions cannot be whatever play a certain functional or causal role, because that would have the absurd implication that emotions need not always be how they feel. The implication is absurd because if emotions are how they feel then necessarily emotions are always how they feel. Compare, water cannot be whatever substance it is that plays the water role, as that would imply that water need not always be H2O, where, again, the implication would be absurd because if water is H2O then necessarily water is always H2O.
- 6.
Very briefly, I am strongly inclined to the view that desires are phenomenally conscious mental states that are behavioral dispositions, which in Chap. 4 I define as mental properties whose nature or essence is to cause us to behave in certain ways when certain circumstances obtain. And if this is right then desires look to be phenomenal states that are identified in terms of their causal roles.
- 7.
Michael-John Turp seems to come close to expressing such a view when he writes: “Although it is true that human emotions normally involve bodily feelings, there are also quite ordinary cases in which emotions remain with us long after the violent neurological-hormonal-muscular sensations and concomitant desire to act die down. Emotions can come in short fiery bursts, but they can also be long-lived and mostly unconscious, such as the enduring love of a mother for her child. Of course, some characteristic activity of the nervous system remains, but the same is true of all mental states. A mother does not only love her child when she is conscious of the accompanying feelings. For this reason it is standard to draw a distinction between occurrent emotional episodes and emotional dispositions”. (Turp 2018).
- 8.
Does talk of ‘having’ or ‘possessing’ a standing emotion pick out a genuine property exemplification relation? It is unclear that it does. On the face of it, such talk picks out only a disposition to exemplify a property. Thus, to say that someone has a standing fear of spiders is to say that that person is disposed to exemplify fear in the perceived presence of spiders. One might respond that we should instead think of there being two ways in which a property might be exemplified, namely that something can be exemplified in an occurrent way and something can be exemplified in a dispositional way. However, I’m not sure this is right. If to have a standing fear of spiders is to be disposed to exemplify fear in the perceived presence of spiders, then that implies that the occurrent sense of ‘exemplify’ is the only correct sense of ‘exemplify’, and that although talk of having or possessing a standing emotion may suggest there is a dispositional way an emotion can be exemplified, careful consideration of what it means to possess a standing emotion demonstrates we would be wrong to interpret such talk in this way.
- 9.
One might query whether possessing an alarm call is better thought of as a capacity, rather than a disposition. But in reply, even accepting that capacities are distinct from dispositions (see Chap. 4), the point about birds possessing alarm calls is intended only to demonstrate that from facts about what it is to have a certain property (an alarm call or an emotion, say), we cannot derive facts about the nature of the property itself.
- 10.
Or, at least, emotions that someone tends to replicate or imitate when certain circumstances obtain. I will remain neutral regarding whether one and the same mental state can be occupied on more than one occasion. If mental states are temporally located entities—in the way that events are often considered to be temporally-located entities—then no mental state can be undergone on more than one occasion. But even if that is the case, certainly one and the same mental state can be imitated or replicated on more than one occasion.
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Whiting, D. (2020). Emotions as Conscious Mental States. In: Emotions as Original Existences. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54682-3_2
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