Abstract
In Chap. 7, I argued that the philosophy and psychology of emotion can be understood as sharing the same object of inquiry, especially insofar as one accepts that the intentionality of emotions is an essential defining feature of what emotions are. This speaks to the possibility of unifying at least two disciplines in the science of emotion with respect to the fundamental base for interdisciplinary inquiry in the science of emotion (Basee) (Chap. 4), my proposed alternative notion of intentionality (Chap. 6), the fundamental intentionality thesis of emotion (FITe) (Chap. 7), and the evaluative, epistemic, and ontological rationality of emotions (Chap. 8), which lends support to the alpha-omega principle for interdisciplinary inquiry for the science of emotion (α-ωe) (Chap. 1) and the principle of meta-semantic deep perspective taking as fruitful principles for interdisciplinary inquiry. Yet, the framework of meta-semantic pluralism is also constituted by the thesis of semantic dualism, which proposes that a materialistic language and a mentalistic language need not be collapsed into the other even if they are metaphysically equivalent, and so far my arguments have yet to establish that a materialistic theory can be unified with a mentalistic theory without collapsing the distinction between the language of a materialistic theory and the language of a mentalistic theory. In other words, I have yet to demonstrate that materialistic and mentalistic theories of emotion are or can be fundamentally about the same metaphysical object of inquiry as presupposed by the alpha-omega principle for interdisciplinary inquiry for the science of emotion (α-ωe), and that this can be done without necessarily reducing the language of one theory to the other’s. I do so in this chapter (Chap. 9) by first providing my rationale for my strategy to do so, and I argue in the remaining sections for collapsing the dualistic mind-body distinction between materialistic noncognitive theories in philosophy, such as Jesse J. Prinz’s (Gut Reactions: A Perceptual Theory of Emotion. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004) perceptual embodied appraisal theory of emotion, and mentalistic cognitive theories in philosophy, such as Martha C. Nussbaum’s (Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001) cognitive-evaluative theory of emotion, without necessarily requiring one to subsume the other’s theoretical, conceptual, or linguistic framework. I will, however, suggest what I would refer to as “corrections” to at least some of the inferences made within each framework.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
- 2.
As is typically the case with philosophical writing, the mutually inclusive disjunction (“or”) is used throughout, unless stated otherwise or indicated by the use of the phrase “either, or.”
- 3.
Throughout this monograph, I use superscripts (e.g., semantic dualisme ) to indicate the context in which a particular term should be understood (e.g., the context of emotion in which one should consider semantic dualism).
- 4.
Although Prinz’s theory can be more narrowly described as a physicalist theory of emotion, with respect to metaphysical concerns about the mind and its relation to the body, compared to its characterization as a materialistic theory, I continue to speak in terms of a “materialism” rather than “physicalism” since materialism represents a broader, more encompassing category of theories.
- 5.
A semantic-dualist theory of mind, including emotions, would necessarily entail this conclusion; cf. Daly 2019.
- 6.
This can be understood as the conclusion that can be generally inferred from the history of psychological debates regarding whether or not emotions are cognitions (read Davidson and Ekman 1994).
- 7.
This does not entail the possibility that human beings will in fact be able to accurately specify these neural correlates, but it also does not deny this possibility.
- 8.
One might also consider the arguments Huddleston (2012) gives for what he referred to as “naughty beliefs.” Helton (2020), in contrast, argues that mental states with un-revisable contents are not beliefs, although she does not address in her argument the kinds of beliefs that I speak of here: those that are regarded to be paragons of rational beliefs.
- 9.
Slaby ([2007] 2008) makes a similar point about Prinz’s account, although his explanation also does not acknowledge the significance of valence in such explanations.
- 10.
Although I arrived at this conclusion independently, one can also read Carruthers 2018, for additional arguments in favor of this claim.
- 11.
This understanding of an emotion’s hedonic valence may also be similar to what Cholbi (2020) refers to as an emotion’s “normative valence.”
- 12.
By the “character of the representations of emotion elicitors,” I mean something like the representational sense of a particular calibration file, which would be given by an aggregated abstraction of features other than the elicitor that would also be represented as aspects of the representations of the elicitors in an elicitation file (e.g., context, some kind of relation to the self, and an evaluative stance).
- 13.
Read Johnson 2017, on the metaphorical reasoning of emotions.
- 14.
For a similar critical discussion of such cognitivist responses to the phenomena of ineducable or recalcitrant emotions, read Mun 2019.
- 15.
Nussbaum’s response may be interpreted as similarly suggesting that one’s fear upon looking down into a precipice is an ontologically irrational, yet evaluatively rational experience of fear. Such a response, however, is insufficient for countering the criticism regarding the epistemic irrationality of recalcitrant emotions. What is needed is an explanation that connects the ontological irrationality and evaluative rationality with the epistemic irrationality of such emotional experiences, while also acknowleding these three distinct kinds of emotional rationality.
References
Blackburn, Simon. 1998. Ruling Passions: A Theory of Practical Reasoning. New York: Oxford University Press.
Burge, Tyler. 2003. Perceptual Entitlement. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research LXVII (3): 503–548.
———. 2010. Origins of Perception. Disputatio 4 (29): 1–38.
———. 2014. Perception: Where the Mind Begins. Philosophy 89 (3): 385–403.
Carruthers, Peter. 2018. Valence and Value. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research XCVII (3). https://doi.org/10.1111/phpr.12395.
Cavanagh, J. F., and A. J. Shackman. 2014. Frontal Midline Theta Reflects Anxiety and Cognitive Control: Meta-Analytic Evidence. Journal of Physiology—Paris. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jphysparis.2014.04.003. Epub ahead of print.
Cholbi, Michael. (Forthcoming) 2020. Grief: A Philosophical Guide. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Daly, Chris. 2019. Why Reduction Is Underrated. History of Philosophy and Logical Analysis 22 (1): 121–136. https://doi.org/10.30965/26664275-02201008.
Damasio, Antonio R. 1994. Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. New York: P. G. Putnam.
Davidson, Richard J., and Paul Ekman. 1994. Richard J. Davidson and Paul Ekman: Afterwards. In The Nature of Emotion: Fundamental Questions, Question 5: What Are the Minimal Cognitive Prerequisites for Emotion? ed. Paul Ekman and Richard J. Davidson, 232–234. New York: Oxford University Press.
Deigh, John. 1994. Cognitivism in the Theory of Emotion. Ethics 104 (4): 824–854.
Dretske, Fred I. (1981) 1999. Knowledge and the Flow of Information. David Hume Series. Stanford: CSLI Publications.
Feinstein, Justin S., Ralph Adolphs, Antonio Damasio, and Daniel Tranel. 2011. The Human Amygdala and the Induction and Experience of Fear. Current Biology 21: 34–38. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.CUB.2010.11.042.
Galvani, Aloysii [Luigi]. 1791. De Viribus Electricitatis in Motu Musculari: Commentarius. Bononiae (Bologna): Ex Typographia Instituti Scientiarium.
Greenspan, Patricia. 1988. Emotions and Reasons. New York: Routledge.
Gross, Cornelius, Xiaoxi Zhuang, Kimberly Stark, Sylvie Ramboz, Ronald Oosting, Lynn Kirby, Luca Santarelli, Sheryl Beck, and René Hen. 2002. Serotonin1a Receptor Acts During Development to Establish Normal Anxiety-Like Behavior in the Adult. Nature 416: 396–400.
Gross, James J., and Kevin N. Ochsner. 2008. Cognitive Emotion Regulation: Insights from Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. Current Directions in Psychological Science 17 (2): 153–158.
Gross, James J., Gal Sheppes, and Heather L. Urry. 2011. “Emotion Generation and Emotion Regulation: A Distinction We Should Make Carefully.” Cognition and Emotion Lecture at the 2010 SPSP Emotion Preconference. Emotion and Cognition 25 (5): 765–881.
Helton, Grace. 2020. If You Can’t Change What You Believe, You Don’t Believe It. Nôus 54 (3): 501–526. https://doi.org/10.1111/nous.12265.
Huddleston, Andrew. 2012. Naughty Beliefs. Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition 160 (2): 209–222.
Johnson, Mark. 2017. Embodied Mind, Meaning, and Reason: How Our Bodies Give Rise to Understanding. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
LeDoux, Joseph. 2003. The Emotional Brain, Fear, and the Amygdala. Cellular and Molecular Neurobiology 23 (4): 727–738.
Lin, T., S. Vaisvaser, E. Fruchter, R. Admon, I. Wald, D. Pine, Y. Bar-Haim, T. Hendler. 2014. A Neurobehavioral Account for Individual Differences in Resilience to Chronic Military Stress. Psychological Medicine: 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291714002013.
Mula, Marco, Stefano Pini, and Giovanni B. Cassano. 2007. The Neurobiology and Clinical Significance of Depersonalization in Mood and Anxiety Disorders: A Critical Reappraisal. Journal of Affective Disorders 99 (1–3): 91–99. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2006.08.025.
Mun, Cecilea. 2016. The Rationalities of Emotion. Phenomenology and Mind 11: 48–57. https://doi.org/10.13128/Phe_Mi-20105.
———. 2019. Book Review on “Knowing Emotions: Truthfulness and Recognition in Affective Experience”. Philosophical Quarterly 69 (277): 869–871. https://doi.org/10.1093/pq/pqz001.
Nussbaum, Martha C. 2001. Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Okon-Singer, Hadas, Talma Hendler, Luiz Pessoa, and Alexander J. Shackman. 2015. The Neurobiology of Emotion-Cognition Interactions: Fundamental Questions and Strategies for Future Research. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 9 (58): 1–14.
Pollock, John L. 2006. Thinking About Acting: Logical Foundations for Rational Decision Making. New York: Oxford University Press.
Prinz, Jesse J. 2002. Furnishing the Mind: Concepts and Their Perceptual Basis. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
———. 2004. Gut Reactions: A Perceptual Theory of Emotion. New York: Oxford University Press.
Richardson, Deborah S. 2014. Everyday Aggression Takes Many Forms. Current Directions in Psychological Science 23 (3): 220–224.
Sanders, Laura. 2011. Amygdala Gone, She Knows No Fear. Science News 179 (2): 14. https://doi.org/10.1002/scin.5591790215.
Shackman, A. J., T. V. Salomons, H. A. Slagter, A. S. Fox, J. J. Winter, and R. J. Davidson. 2011b. The Integration of Negative Affect, Pain, and Cognitive Control in the Cingulate Cortex. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 12: 154–167. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn2994.
Shapiro, Lawrence. 2010. Embodied Cognition. London: Routledge. ProQuest eBook Central. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/unlv/detail.action?docID=574654
Slaby, Jan. (2007) 2008. Affective Intentionality and the Feeling Body. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 7 (4): 429–444.
Stocker, Michael, and Elizabeth Hegeman. 1996. Valuing Emotions. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Tappolet, Christine. 2016. Emotions, Values, and Agency. Oxford Scholarship Online. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199696512.001.0001.
Thompson, Evan. (1991) 2016. Introduction to Revised Edition. In The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience, ed. Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch, Rev. ed., xvii–xxxiii. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Tversky, Amos, and Dale Griffin. 1991. Endowment and Contrast in Judgments of Well-being. In Subjective Well-being: An Interdisciplinary Perspective, International Series in Experimental Social Psychology, ed. Fritz Strack, Michael Argyle, and Norbert Schwarz, 101–118. New York: Pergamon Press.
Varela, Francisco J., Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch. (1991) 2016. The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience, Rev. Ed. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Appendices
Appendix A
Meta-semanticref taxonomy of theories of emotion. The above are the four categories of the meta-semanticREF taxonomy of theories of emotion, along with representative theories of emotion presented as perspectival functions for the meaning of the word “emotion”
Appendix B
The scale of emotional rationality. Rationality is structured along two axes: intentionality and recalcitrance. Since the higher levels of rationality will involve more information integration, more components will be involved, and this is what explains why warrant can be more flexible (i.e., responsive) at the higher levels. At the most basic level of ontological rationality, the information integration will involve more modular mechanism(s), which explains why there would be less responsiveness to alternative evidence with respect to warrant
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Mun, C. (2021). Knowing Once More, but with Feeling. In: Interdisciplinary Foundations for the Science of Emotion. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71194-8_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71194-8_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-71193-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-71194-8
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)