Abstract
The philosophy of emotion has long been divided over the cognitive nature of emotion. In this paper I argue that this debate suffers from deep confusion over the meaning of “cognition” itself. This confusion has in turn obscured critical substantive agreement between the debate’s principal opponents. Capturing this agreement and remedying this confusion requires re-conceptualizing “the cognitive” as it functions in first-order theories of emotion. Correspondingly, a sketch for a new account of cognitivity is offered. However, I also argue that this new account, despite tacit acceptance by all major theories of emotion, in fact rules out some of the most fundamental and controversial claims of one side of the nature-of-emotion debate, emotional cognitivism.
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Notes
These two senses of having an object could be pried apart, and their exact role in intentionality itself made more precise. For now, however, a rough and ready notion of intentionality will suffice.
In some cases one might understand the non-intentional answer, “Because I’m angry”, to explain action in a causal explanatory sense; e.g. in anger we tend to lash out at objects irrespective of desert. My point here is that an intentional reference is needed if the emotion is to serve as a rational (normative) reason for action. I’m grateful to an anonymous referee for suggesting this clarification.
Obviously not all historical models purport to be non-cognitive; e.g. Stoicism (see esp. Nussbaum 2001).
It is important to see that the type-identity claim is not the weaker “can be differentiated” by content, but the stronger “are differentiated” by content.
Prinz offers perhaps the best comprehensive taxonomy in his Gut Reactions (2004, Chap. 1).
There might be one exception to the sufficiency of my taxonomy. Recently, some emotional cognitivists have offered a variant of the reductive identity or essential constitution claim. The resulting positions, sometimes called quasijudgmentalism, argue that the relevant judgment in each of those basic claims is not a paradigmatic propositional attitude like belief. That is, they distinguish between more traditional emotional cognitivists, who claim that emotions are identical to (or essentially constituted by) assents to certain propositions, and their own position, which claims that emotions are identical to (or essentially constituted by) some other form of propositional attitude short of assent. However, while this is certainly a significant modification, I think it can be reserved from my central discussion for three reasons. First, this distinction is not yet widespread or worked-out in great detail; it certainly isn’t a self-conscious distinction made by classical emotional cognitivists. Second, and part and parcel of the first, later in the paper I try to show that classical emotional cognitivists end up implicitly weakening their position in a way that comes closer to the quasijudgmentalist one anyway. So, my later analysis essentially treats of the quasijudgmental possibility. Finally, because that later analysis will end up challenging the cognitivist position, I think any criticism I make of emotional cognitivism (judgmentalism) will be broad enough to be applied to quasijudgmental variants. Nonetheless, for clarity I make a comment parallel to this one towards the end of the paper (fn. 50) to indicate the stage at which I think my analysis bears on the quasijudgmentalist distinction.
My approach shares some affinities with recent reflections by De Sousa (2004). This is perhaps unsurprising given de Sousa’s effort to steer a middle path of sorts between cognitivism and non-cognitivism. As a result, De Sousa is one of the few who largely avoids lampooning the possible positions.
To be fair, Solomon, at least, in his recent work, thinks he has accounted for some of this modern evidence. Comparison with my ensuing analysis of AP theory, however, makes his effort seem at best half-hearted. See Solomon (2004).
Prominent philosophical AP proponents include Griffiths (1997); DeLancey (2002); and D’Arms and Jacobson (2003). Prinz’s Gut Reactions can also be understood as in sympathy with AP theory, although his positive view of emotions as “embodied appraisals” goes beyond psychological versions of AP theory to the point of reasserting a kind of categorical non-cognitivism. However, I’ll pass over Prinz, whose claim has recently been strongly challenged by Salmela (2006). See also fn. 25.
E.g. Griffiths’ thesis that there is no unified category of “emotion” depends on a moderate account, though Griffiths glosses over this difference with original AP theories. See Griffiths (1997) Chaps. 5 and 9, esp. pp. 100–101. See also DeLancey (2002, pp. 23–28), whose set of “basic emotions” involves implicit endorsement of a tempered account.
Griffiths (1997, p. 77). Griffiths deserves the greatest credit for bringing philosophical attention to AP theory.
DeLancey (2002) makes a similar point; see pp. 31–32.
De Sousa analogized the emotions to modular systems a decade earlier in The Rationality of Emotion (1987); See pp. 65–67, 152–156, 190–195. However, it’s not always clear what work the modularity thesis is doing for De Sousa. At times, De Sousa seems to think emotions end up mimicking modularity. But for Griffiths affect programs don’t mimic modularity, they are modular.
The classic Zajonc article is his 1980 “Feeling and Thinking: Preferences Need No Inferences.”
Ekman was following his mentor Silvan Tomkins who introduced the AP hypothesis in 1962.
See e.g. Ekman and Friesen (1971, pp. 124–129).
Griffiths (1997, p. 93).
Izard (1994) makes a similar argument in a different context.
Ekman (1994, p. 16).
Some theorists make this involvement explicit; e.g. DeLancey (2002, p. 35).
At first blush, something like this seems to inspire Salmela’s (2006) efforts to refashion De Sousa’s perceptual model of emotion without sacrificing essential cognitive content. However, Salmela’s argument ultimately also blends a Dretskian functional analysis. For that reason, I think Salmela would agree with the conclusion of this section, with one important exception. Salmela seems to think there is a “mark” of the cognitive—a single criterion that qualifies a mental state as “cognitive”—namely, what Dretske (1981) calls the “digitialization” of representational content, also more generally referred to as “informational sensitivity”. I describe informational sensitivity in this section (see fn. 27); but in the next section I offer reasons for rejecting any effort to establish the criterion of cognitivity. That said, Salmela ably marshals his functional analysis against Prinz’s recent effort to reassert a categorical emotional non-cognitivism.
See e.g. Pylyshyn (1986).
See e.g., Fodor’s (2000, p. 63) comments when discussing frame and reference problems.
I owe this point to an anonymous reader.
Even an analogue representation, if it eventuates in a response, is a kind of information processing. And if it is objected that information which can’t be manipulated computationally (i.e. that we can’t be sensitive to) doesn’t count as “symbolic” in the first place, then let it be stipulated that I mean something more narrow: a “symbol” is anything that stands for something else.
Sterelny (1990, p. 30).
This view is partly inspired by Morton (1990), who persuasively argues that belief is best analyzed along a three-dimensional coordinate axes (pp. 72–98). I’m grateful to Eric Lormand for suggesting this particular piece of Morton’s work to me, and to David Velleman for invaluable suggestions on how to articulate my particular application of the kind of multidimensional analysis discussed in this section.
I think it possible that these two characteristics sometimes will be explained in reverse combinations.
I also leave open the possibility that other dimensions of cognitivity exist (perhaps some pertaining only to non-emotion mental states), and that some dimensions do not track properties in degrees but properties that simply obtain or not.
Lyons (1980, p. 33) (emphasis added).
Neu (1977).
Solomon (2004), see esp. pp. 76–77.
Interestingly, Griffiths glosses over this fact, treating evaluation-focused accounts as a mere iteration of emotional cognitivism, potentially reducible to a belief-desire account. What I say below might explain this gloss. Nevertheless, given that Griffiths spells out a poignant dilemma facing any belief-desire account, but which is arguably avoided by evaluation-focused accounts, his gloss seems odd (see Griffiths (1997, pp. 30–34). Finally, note that evaluation-focused accounts also dominate psychology, evidenced by the rise of Appraisal Theory. For a recent review, see Ellsworth and Scherer (2003).
Pitcher (1965, p. 336).
Ibid., p. 332; See also p. 335, “An evaluation requires some ‘cognition.’”
Ibid., p. 332.
Ibid., p. 332.
Of course, this would imply that the emotion itself is off-line. But then, wouldn’t this really be a case of “simulated” emotion? Not necessarily. The present argument only entails that the emotion’s cognitive component is off-line. Nothing here entails that, say, its physiological feel has changed. Indeed, ex hypothesi a prototypical affect program would be fully off-line in this sense and yet could still have a robust phenomenology, which is exactly what the evidence about affect program implies.
Pitcher (1965, p. 336).
Ibid., p. 334; and note its explicit repetition on the same page.
Ibid. See esp. pp. 334–335; also p. 337.
As in Pitcher (1965), there are two components of cognition in Lyons’ (1980) account: “the evaluative,” which is primary, but which depends upon “the factual” (see e.g. Lyons, Chap. 4). Moreover, Lyons’ conception of the factual component shows the same range of cognitive states endorsed by Pitcher (see esp. Lyons, p. 71 where Lyons reverts to the notion of “apprehension”; also p. 57 where fear arises from the mere sight of a “ferocious dog”; & pp. 75 and 109–112 where imaginings or illusory objects count).
Lyons (1980, p. 86).
What I argue from this point forward I think largely applies to so-called quasi-judgmentalism. See also fn. 8.
Griffiths (1997) objects that the notion of a unique subjudgmental attitude like “valuing” is mysterious, especially when we could appeal to aspects of modularity to capture the same idea. Interestingly, in one sense I think Griffiths and I agree on this point, given that I will argue the notion of valuings is well analyzed in multidimensional terms, which terms were derived in part from the conception of modularity as applied to emotion processes. What Griffiths misses, however, is that the inclusion of valuings constitutes an admission by the cognitivist of a broader notion of cognitivity. Thus, Griffiths attacks the coherence of “valuing” while I focus on what the commitment to such an attitude reveals about the cognitivist conception of cognitivity itself.
Lyons (1980), p. 77 and p. 71 respectively; See also p. 59 (the “central” evaluation).
“Self-referential” is a somewhat regrettable term, perhaps implying incorrectly a requirement for a literal concept of self. But I follow Nussbaum (2001) in using “self-referential,” no other name for this idea being well established in the literature. See also Arnold (1960) who first introduced the idea. I’m grateful to Phoebe Ellsworth for pointing out Arnold’s place in the development of this idea.
Solomon (2004).
Roberts (2003).
Lyons (1980, p. 78).
Ibid., p. 80.
Lyons (1980) sometimes offers one other solution for cases of seeming implicit evaluation, in the form of “dormant” or “embedded” dispositional emotions that can be “triggered” automatically (p. 86). But this dispositional argument is equally amenable to the multidimensional reanalysis. Indeed, his full description of “embedded” emotion smacks of AP theory and the modularity thesis. See esp. p. 73 & 87.
This assumes the cognitivst isn’t already self-consciously positing a functional analysis of content, in which case there would be no problem accepting my proposal anyway.
In writing this paper, I have benefited from the insight, encouragement, and expertise of David Velleman and Phoebe Ellsworth. For their help, I am deeply grateful. For general comments and suggestions I am also thankful to Stephen Darwall, Elizabeth Anderson, and Adam Kovach. I am indebted to an anonymous reader for pushing me to restructure my paper in a way that frontloaded my argument on intentionality, as well as to rethink various historical platitudes in the theory of emotion regarding intentionality. I am also indebted to a referee at Philosophical Studies for pressing me to make the basic thesis and argumentative strategy of the paper clearer. That pressure led to extensive revisions throughout the paper, but especially the Introduction, Sects. 2, 3.2, and the Conclusion.
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Debes, R. Neither here nor there: the cognitive nature of emotion. Philos Stud 146, 1–27 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-008-9242-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-008-9242-0