The Functional Argument

Abstract

In the last two chapters I looked at two different arguments for the thesis that emotions are perceptions of values. I argued in Chapter 2 that an analogy between values and secondary qualities is not successful in establishing this thesis, and I argued in the previous chapter that two arguments from best explanation are not either. In this chapter I want to look at a final attempt to argue once more for the same thesis: the functional argument. Jesse Prinz (2004) develops this argument against the background of teleosemantics, that is the view that the content of mental representations can be explained by reference to the function that this mental representation has. Teleosemantic theories of mental content are undoubtedly controversial, not least because they presuppose externalism about mental content, that is, the view that in order to have intentional mental content we need to be related to the world in the right way. But in order to see where Prinz’s theory takes us, let us assume that it is plausible. For emotions this means that emotions represent value situations (e.g. situations that are dangerous, offensive, or disgusting) because it is the function of emotions to alert us to such situations. The key component of emotions that does all the work is, according to Prinz, the bodily changes we undergo in an emotional episode.