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Voodoo dolls and angry lions: how emotions explain arational actions

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Abstract

Hursthouse (J Philos 88(2):57–68, 1991) argues that arational actions—e.g. kicking a door out of anger—cannot be explained by belief–desire pairs. The Humean Response to Hursthouse (Smith in Human action, deliberation and causation. Springer, Netherlands, pp 17–41, 1998; Goldie in The emotions: a philosophical exploration. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000a; Goldie in Mind 109(433):25–38, 2000b) defends the Humean model from Hursthouse’s challenge. We argue that the Humean Response fails because belief–desire pairs are neither necessary nor sufficient for causing emotional actions. The Emotionist Response is to embrace Hursthouse’s conclusion that emotions provide an independent source of explanation for intentional actions. We consider Döring’s (Philos Q 53(211):214–230, 2003) feeling-based Emotionist account and argue that it fails to explain arational actions. Finally, we develop our own Emotionist account, grounded in the Motivational Theory of Emotions one of us has developed. On our account, arational actions form a non-homogeneous class, some members of which must be understood as instrumental actions and some members of which must be understood as displacement behaviors of the kind animals display when their motivations are thwarted or in conflict.

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Notes

  1. Hursthouse allows for cases in which the relevant beliefs are instantiated. For example, I may rumple my child’s hair with the belief that this will be a way to express my love to her. This is why on her view some tokens of types [1]–[6] are amenable to a standard Humean explanation.

  2. This understanding of emotions is influenced by Perceptualist theories of emotion, according to which emotions are a species of “affective perceptions” (Damasio 1994; Prinz 2004; Scarantino 2014).

  3. We take this to be a misinterpretation of the end of hatred, which is to hurt the object of one’s hatred, rather than to stop seeing the object of one’s hatred as awful. We will disregard this point in what follows.

  4. Another problematic consequence of Döring’s view is that it seems to preclude the possibility of being motivated by unconscious emotions. This is because, on Döring’s view, affects and feelings are necessarily conscious. This shortcoming, however, may not be fatal. On the one hand, the debate on the very existence of unconscious emotions is unresolved (Hatzimoysis 2007; Berridge and Winkielman 2003, Winkielman and Berridge 2004). On the other hand, affect-based accounts can in principle deal with unconscious emotions if they allow affects themselves to be unconscious (Prinz 2004; Lacewing 2007).

  5. See Gendler (2008) and Benbaji (2012), among others, for reasons to resist the view that recalcitrant emotions involve beliefs.

  6. For a description of other features of MTE, most importantly of how it accounts for the intentionality of emotions and for the type identification of different emotions, see Scarantino (2014).

  7. We thank an anonymous referee for emphasizing this point to us.

  8. We are here focusing on the lack of physical actions characteristic of grief. On the other hand, grief may involve significant mental actions. For a discussion of the complex combination of mental activity and physical passivity characteristic of some emotions involving inaction tendencies, see for instance Jacobs et al.’s (2014) paper on depression.

  9. The full-fledged version of MTE also includes reflexive actions, a point we will disregard in what follows (see Scarantino 2014).

  10. See D’Arms and Jacobson (2006) for a philosophical analysis of emotional regulation, and Gross (1998) for a psychological analysis of emotional regulation.

  11. Researchers of positive emotions have recently emphasized the functional aspects of an undifferentiated readiness to engage with the world, suggesting that it ultimately leads the emoter to “broaden” habitual ways of thinking and acting, and as a result “builds enduring personal resources” (Fredrickson and Cohn 2008, 782).

  12. We thank Achim Stephan for helpful discussions of this point.

  13. We thank an anonymous reviewer for raising this objection.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Achim Stephan and the students of his “Research Seminar: Motivational Theory of Emotions” (Spring 2015) at the University of Osnabrueck, who have provided very helpful feedback on a previous draft of this paper. We also thank an anonymous referee of this journal and Nathan Dahlberg for critiques and suggestions that have helped us sharpen the paper. Finally, Andrea Scarantino thanks the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for funding in the Spring 2015 semester.

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  1. Department of Philosophy and Neuroscience Institute, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Andrea Scarantino

  2. Department of Philosophy, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Michael Nielsen

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Correspondence to Andrea Scarantino.

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Scarantino, A., Nielsen, M. Voodoo dolls and angry lions: how emotions explain arational actions. Philos Stud 172, 2975–2998 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-015-0452-y

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