Emotions can't be satisfied...

Emotion

First published Mon Feb 3, 2003; substantive revision Mon Jan 21, 2013

No aspect of our mental life is more important to the quality and

meaning of our existence than emotions. They are what make life worth

living, or sometimes ending. So it is not surprising that most of the

great classical philosophers—Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, Descartes,

Hobbes, Hume—had recognizable theories of emotion, conceived as

responses to certain sorts of events of concern to a subject,

triggering bodily changes and typically motivating characteristic

behavior. What is surprising is that in much of the twentieth-century

philosophers of mind and psychologists tended to neglect them—perhaps

because the sheer variety of phenomena covered by the word “emotion”

and its closest neighbors tends to discourage tidy theory. In recent

years, however, emotions have once again become the focus of vigorous

interest in philosophy, as well as in other branches of cognitive

science. In view of the proliferation of increasingly fruitful

exchanges between researchers of different stripes, it is no longer

useful to speak of the philosophy of emotion in isolation from the

approaches of other disciplines, particularly psychology, neurology,

evolutionary biology, and even economics. While it is quite impossible

to do justice to those approaches here, some sidelong glances in their

direction will aim to suggest their philosophical importance.

I begin by outlining some of the ways that philosophers have conceived

of the place of emotions in the topography of the mind, particularly

in their relation to bodily states, to motivation, and to beliefs and

desires, as well as some of the ways in which they have envisaged the

relation between different emotions. Most emotions have an intentional

structure: we shall need to say something about what that means.

Psychology and more recently evolutionary biology have offered a

number of theories of emotions, stressing their function in the

conduct of life. Philosophers have been especially partial to

cognitivist theories, emphasizing analogies either with propositional

judgments or with perception. But different theories implicitly posit

different ontologies of emotion, and there has been some dispute about

what emotions really are, and indeed whether they are any kind of

thing at all. Emotions also raise normative questions: about the

extent to which they can be said to be rational, or can contribute to

rationality. In that regard the question of our knowledge of our own

emotions is especially problematic, as it seems they are both the

object of our most immediate awareness and the most powerful source of

our capacity for self-deception. This results in a particularly

ambivalent relation between emotions and morality. I will conclude

with a brief survey of some recent trends, particularly as they affect

and are influenced by the neighboring disciplines in which the study

of emotions has become increasingly prominent.

1. Emotions and the Topography of the Mind

2. Emotions as Feelings

3. Emotions and Intentional Objects

4. Psychological and Evolutionary Approaches

5. Cognitivist Theories

6. Perceptual Theories

7. The Ontology of Emotions

8. Rationality and Emotions

9. Emotions and Self-knowledge

10. Morality and Emotions

11. Summary of Recent Trends and Ramifications into neighboring disciplines

12. Conclusion: Adequacy Conditions on Theories of Emotion

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1. Emotions and the Topography of the Mind

How do emotions fit into different conceptions of the mind? One model,

advocated by Descartes as well as by many contemporary psychologists,

posits a few basic emotions out of which all others are compounded. An

alternative model views every emotion as consisting in, or at least

including, some irreducibly specific component not compounded of

anything simpler. Again, emotions might form an indefinitely broad

continuum comprising a small number of finite dimensions (e.g. level

of arousal, intensity, pleasure or aversion, self- or

other-directedness, etc.). In much the way that color arises from the

visual system's comparison of retinal cones, whose limited sensitivity

ranges correspond roughly to primary hues, we might then hope to find

relatively simple biological explanations for the rich variety of

emotions. Rigid boundaries between them would be arbitrary.

Alternative models, based in physiology or evolutionary psychology,

have posited modular subsystems or agents the function of which is to

coordinate the fulfilment of basic needs, such as mating, affiliation,

defense and the avoidance of predators. (Panksepp 1998, Cosmides and

Tooby 2000).

To date cognitive science does not seem to have provided any crucial

tests to decide between competing models of the mind. An eclectic

approach therefore seems warranted. What does seem well established in

the light of cross-cultural research is that a small number of

emotions have inter-translatable names and universally recognizable

expressions. According to Ekman and Friesen (1989) these are

happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, and disgust (the last two

of which, however, some researchers consider too simple to be called

emotions) (Panksepp 1998). Other emotions are not so easily

recognizable cross-culturally, and some expressions are almost as

local as dialects. But then this is an issue on which cognitive

science alone should not, perhaps, be accorded the last word: what to

a neurologist might be classed as two tokens of the same emotion type

might seem to have little in common under the magnifying lens of a

Marcel Proust.

Other models propose mutually conflicting ways of locating emotion

within the general economy of the mind. Some treat emotion as one of

many separate faculties. For Plato in the Republic, there seems to

have been three basic components of the human mind: the reasoning, the

desiring, and the emotive parts. For Aristotle, the emotions are not

represented as constituting a separate agency or module, but they had

even greater importance, particularly in the moral life, our capacity

for which Aristotle regarded as largely a result of learning to feel

the right emotions in the right circumstances. Hume's notorious dictum

that reason is and ought to be the slave of the passions also placed

the emotions at the very center of character and agency. For Spinoza,

emotions are not lodged in a separate body in conflict with the soul,

since soul and body are aspects of a single reality; but emotions, as

affections of the soul, make the difference between the best and the

worst lives, as they either increase the soul's power to act, or

diminish that power. In other models, emotions as a category are apt

to be sucked into either of two other faculties of mind. They are then

treated as mere composites or offshoots of those other faculties: a

peculiar kind of belief, or a vague kind of desire or will. The Stoics

made emotions into judgments about the value of things incidental to

an agent's virtue, to which we should therefore remain perfectly

indifferent. Hobbes assimilated “passions” to specific appetites or

aversions. Kant too saw emotions as essentially conative phenomena,

but grouped them with inclinations enticing the will to act on motives

other than that of duty.

The revival of philosophical interest in emotions from the middle of

the twentieth century can be traced to an article by Erroll Bedford

(1957), and a book by Anthony Kenny (1963) which argued against the

assumption that emotions are feelings, impervious to either will or

reason. Bedford stressed both the intentionality and the importance of

contextual factors on the nature, arousal and expression of emotions.

Kenny, reviving some medieval theories of intentionality, urged that

emotions should be viewed as intentional states. He defined a notion

of a formal object of an intentional state as that characteristic that

must belong to something if it is to be possible for the state to

relate to it. This implies an excessively strong logical link between

the state and its object's actual possession of the characteristic in

question. Nevertheless it points to an important condition on the

appropriateness of an emotion to a given object (see Section 3 below).

These papers gave impetus to what became the cognitivist mainstream in

philosophy of emotion, some fairly wide variations going from C.D.

Broad (1971 [1954])‘s “affect-laden judgments” to the “strong desires”

theory advocated by Joel Marks (1982). Among other philosophers

responsible for the revival of interest in emotions, Irving Thalberg

(1977) took as given the cognitive dimension of emotion, and explored

some of the subtleties of the different relations of emotions to their

objects. The Wittgensteinian flavor of Bedford's second point, about

the contextual dependency of emotions, was elaborated into a “social

constructionist” view both by some psychologists and some philosophers

(Harré 1986). On this view, favored later by some feminist

philosophers such as Naomi Scheman (1983) and Sue Campbell (1998),

emotions are not primarily viewed as individual characteristics of the

persons to whom they are attributed, but emerge out of the dynamics of

social interaction. The influence of Wittgenstein, stemming from his

remarks on “seeing-as” (Wittgenstein 1953), was also felt in Robert

Roberts’ (2003) view of emotions as “concern-based construals”.

Twentieth-century Anglo-American philosophy and psychology tended to

incorporate emotions into other, better understood mental categories.

Under the influence of a “tough-minded” ideology committed to

behaviorism, it seemed easier to look for adequate theories of action

or will, as well as theories of belief or knowledge, than to construct

adequate theories of emotion. Economic models of rational decision and

agency inspired by Bayesian theory are essentially assimilative

models, viewing emotion either as a species of belief, or as a species

of desire.

That enviably resilient Bayesian model has been cracked, in the eyes

of many philosophers, by such refractory phenomena as akrasia or

“weakness of will.” In cases of akrasia, traditional descriptive

rationality seems to be violated, insofar as the “strongest” desire

does not win, even when paired with the appropriate belief (Davidson

1980). Emotion is ready to pick up the slack. Recent work, often

drawing support from the burgeoning study of the emotional brain, has

recognised that while emotions typically involve both cognitive and

conative states, they are distinct from both, if only in being

significantly more complex.

It is one thing, however, to recognize the need for a theory of mind

that finds a place for the unique role of emotions, and quite another

to construct one. Emotions vary so much in a number of

dimensions—transparency, intensity, behavioral expression,

object-directedness, and susceptibility to rational assessment—as to

cast doubt on the assumption that they have anything in common.

However, while this variation may have led philosophers to steer clear

of emotions in the past, many philosophers are now rising to the

challenge. The explanatory inadequacy of theories that shortchange

emotion is becoming increasingly apparent, and, as Peter Goldie (2000)

observes, it is no longer the case that emotion is treated as a poor

relation in the philosophy of mind.

2. Emotions as Feelings

The simplest theory of emotions, and perhaps the theory most

representative of common sense, is that emotions are simply a class of

feelings, differentiated from sensation and proprioceptions by their

experienced quality. William James proposed a variant of this view

(commonly known as the “James-Lange” theory of emotion, after James

and Carl G. Lange) according to which emotions are specifically

feelings caused by changes in physiological conditions relating to the

autonomic and motor functions. When we perceive that we are in danger,

for example, this perception sets off a collection of bodily

responses, and our awareness of these responses is what constitutes

fear. James thus maintained that “we feel sorry because we cry, angry

because we strike, afraid because we tremble, and [it is] not that we

cry, strike, or tremble, because we are sorry, angry, or fearful, as

the case may be” (James 1884, 190).

One problem with this theory is that it is unable to give an adequate

account of the differences between emotions. This objection was first

voiced by Walter Cannon (1929). According to James, what distinguishes

emotions is the fact that each involves the perception of a unique set

of bodily changes. Cannon claimed, however, that the visceral

reactions characteristic of distinct emotions such as fear and anger

are identical, and so these reactions cannot be what allow us to tell

emotions apart. The same conclusion is usually drawn from an oft-cited

experiment performed by Stanley Schacter and Jerome Singer (1962).

Subjects in their study were injected with epinephrine, a stimulant of

the sympathetic system. Schacter and Singer found that these subjects

tended to interpret the arousal they experienced either as anger or as

euphoria, depending on the type of situation they found themselves in.

Some were placed in a room where an actor was behaving angrily; others

were placed in a room where an actor was acting silly and euphoric. In

both cases the subjects' mood tended to follow that of the actor. The

conclusion most frequently drawn is that, although some forms of

general arousal are easily labeled in terms of some emotional state,

there is no hope of finding in physiological states any principle of

distinction between specific emotions. The differentiae of specific

emotions are not physiological, but cognitive or something else.

Subsequent research has shown that a limited number of emotions do, in

fact, have significantly different bodily profiles (LeDoux 1996;

Panksepp 1998). However, brain or bodily changes and the feelings

accompanying these changes get us only part way towards an adequate

taxonomy. To account for the differences between guilt, embarrassment,

and shame, for example, a plausible theory will have to look beyond

physiology and common-sense phenomenology.

Another problem with the assimilation of emotions to feeling is that

it tempts one to treat emotions as brute facts, susceptible of

biological or psychological explanation but not otherwise capable of

being rationalized. Emotions, however, are capable of being not only

explained, but also justified—they are closely related to the reasons

that give rise to them. If someone angers me, I can cite my

antagonist's deprecatory tone; if someone makes me jealous, I can

point to his poaching on my emotional property. (Taylor 1975).

Both of these problems—that of differentiating individual emotions,

and that of accounting for emotions' various ties to rationality—can

be traced, at least in part, to a more fundamental oversight. Feeling

theories, by assimilating emotions to sensations, fail to take account

of the fact that emotions are typically directed at intentional

objects. This defect is to some extent mitigated in what might be

regarded as more sophisticated versions of “feeling theories”. Peter

Goldie (2000) is among those who have recently advocated a return to

the close identification of emotions with feelings, on the ground that

the divorce between them was decreed on false premises: feelings, too,

can actually have intentional objects in the world beyond the bounds

of the body (these are what he calls “feelings towards”). Some

emotional feelings are simply bodily feelings and thus, whilst

intentional, do not have this kind of intentionality (Goldie 2009).

Goldie resists both reductive theories which regard emotions as mere

compounds of belief and desire, and “add-on theories” that view them

as beliefs and desires plus something else — such as feelings, for

example. Only if we understand the crucial component of feeling in

emotion are we likely to understand the large nugget of truth in the

traditional view of emotions as often irrational and disruptive.

Furthermore, Goldie holds that certain primitive emotions, on the

analogy of cognitively impenetrable perceptual illusions, influence

action tendencies without the mediation of propositions or concepts

(Goldie 2003).

3. Emotions and Intentional Objects

What does a mood, such as free-floating depression or euphoria, have

in common with an episode of indignation whose reasons can be

precisely articulated? The first seems to have as its object nothing

and everything, and often admits of no particular justification; the

second has a long story to tell, typically involving other people and

what they have done or said. Not only these people, but the relevant

facts about the situations involved, as well as some of the special

facts about those situations, aspects of those facts, the causal role

played by these aspects, and even the typical aims of the actions

motivated by the emotions can all in some context or other be labeled

objects of emotion. The wide range of possible objects is suggested by

the many different ways we fill in ascriptions of emotions. If someone

is indignant, then there is some object o or proposition p such that

the person is indignant at or with o, about p or that p, because of p,

or in virtue of p.

This variety has led to a good deal of confusion. A long-standing

debate, for example, concerns the extent to which the objects of

emotions are to be identified with their causes. This identification

seems plausible; yet it is easy to construct examples in which being

the cause of an emotion is intuitively neither a necessary nor a

sufficient condition for its being its object: if A gets annoyed at B

for some entirely trivial matter, drunkenness may have caused A's

annoyance, yet it is in no sense its object. Its object may be some

innocent remark of B's, which occasioned the annoyance but which it

would be misleading to regard as its cause. In fact the object of the

annoyance may be a certain insulting quality in B's remark which is,

as a matter of fact, entirely imaginary and therefore could not

possibly be its true cause.

The right way to deal with these complexities is to embrace them. We

need a taxonomy of the different sorts of possible emotional objects.

We might then distinguish different types of emotions, not on the

basis of their qualitative feel, but—at least in part—according to the

different complex structures of their object relations. Many emotions,

such as love, necessarily involve a target, or actual particular at

which they are directed. Others, such as sadness, do not. On the other

hand, although a number of aspects of the loved one may motivate

attentional focus, efforts to find a propositional object for love

have been unconvincing. (Kraut 1986; Rorty 1988). Sadness may or may

not focus on a propositional object; regret, by contrast, cannot be

described without specifying such an object. Depression or elation can

lack all three kinds of object. Objectless emotions share many

properties with other emotions, especially in their physiological and

motivational aspects, but they might more properly be classified as

moods rather than full-fledged emotions. Moods typically facilitate

certain ranges of object-directed emotions, but they form a class

apart.

Finally, while different emotions may or may not have these various

sorts of objects, every emotion has a formal object if it has any

object. A formal object is a property implicitly ascribed by the

emotion to its target, focus or propositional object, in virtue of

which the emotion can be seen as intelligible. My fear of a dog, for

example, construes a number of the dog's features (its salivating maw,

its ferocious bark) as being frightening, and it is my perception of

the dog as frightening that makes my emotion fear, rather than some

other emotion. The formal object associated with a given emotion is

essential to the definition of that particular emotion. This explains

the appearance of tautology in the specification any formal object (I

am disgusted because it is disgusting); but it is also, in part, what

allows us to speak of emotions being appropriate or inappropriate. If

the dog obstructing my path is a shitzu, my fear is mistaken: the

target of my fear fails to fit fear's formal object. As we shall see

in section 10 below, appropriateness in this sense does not entail

moral correctness; but it makes the emotion intelligible even when it

is abhorrent. Thus racist disgust, while obviously morally

inappropriate, is nevertheless intelligible in terms of its link to

paradigm cases of disgust.

4. Psychological and Evolutionary Approaches

That emotions typically have formal objects highlights another

important feature of emotional experience which feeling theories

neglect, and which other psychological theories attempt to

accommodate: emotions involve evaluations. If someone insults me and I

become angry, his impertinence will be the aspect of his behavior that

fits the formal object of anger: I only become angry once I construe

the person's remark as a slight; the specific nature of my emotion's

formal object is a function of my appraisal of the situation. Magna

Arnold introduced the notion of appraisal into psychology,

characterizing it as the process through which the significance of a

situation for an individual is determined. Appraisal gives rise to

attraction or aversion, and emotion is equated with this “felt

tendency toward anything intuitively appraised as good (beneficial),

or away from anything intuitively appraised as bad (harmful).” (Arnold

1960, 171). Subsequent appraisal theories accept the broad features of

Arnold's account, and differ mainly in emphasis. Richard Lazarus

(1991) makes the strong claim that appraisals are both necessary and

sufficient for emotion, and sees the identity of particular emotions

as being completely determined by the patterns of appraisal giving

rise to them. Nico Frijda (1986) takes the patterns of action

readiness following appraisals to be what characterize different

emotions, but departs from Arnold in not characterizing these patterns

solely in terms of attraction and aversion. Klaus Scherer and his

Geneva school have elaborated appraisal theories into sophisticated

models that anatomize different emotions in terms of some eighteen or

more dimensions of appraisal. Emotions turn out to be reliably

correlated, if not identified, with patterns of such complex

appraisals. (Scherer et al., 2001). Appraisal theories can be

described as taking a functional approach to emotion, insofar as

appraisals lead to reactions whose function is to deal with specific

situation types having some significance for an individual (Scherer

2006). This approach suggests that the space of emotions can be

conceptualized as multidimensional. In practice, however, so-called

dimensional theories simplify the problem of representation by

reducing these to just two or three (Russell 2003). Typically these

include ‘arousal’ and ‘valence’. This is handy, but tends to flatten

out many distinct ways in which one might classify emotional valence

as ‘positive’ or ‘negative’. Emotional valence, like value in general,

can be assessed in several overlapping dimensions of appraisal: an

emotional experience might be hedonically disagreeable, but positive

as a health indicator; or it might be positive in a short-term

perspective, but negative in the longer term, as attested by the motto

“no pain, no gain.” I say more in section 11 below about recent

explorations and rehabilitations of “negative” emotions.

Other theories consider the function of emotions more broadly, and

ask, not why we should have particular emotions on specific occasions,

but rather why we should have specific emotion types at all. This

question is often given an evolutionary answer: emotions (or at least

many of them) are adaptations whose purpose is to solve basic

ecological problems facing organisms (Plutchik 1980; Frank 1988).

Darwin (1998[1896]) himself was concerned not so much with the

question of how our emotions might have evolved, but rather why they

should have the forms of expression that they do. Emotional

expressions, he thought, once served particular functions (e.g. baring

teeth in anger to prepare for attack), but now accompany particular

emotions because of their usefulness in communicating these emotions

to others. Paul Ekman (1972), inspired by Darwin's approach, takes

emotional expressions to be important parts of “affect

programs”—complex responses found in all human populations, which are

controlled by mechanisms operating below the level of consciousness.

Much research has been done on this group of emotions (usually listed

as happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, and disgust) and

scientifically-minded philosophers often restrict their discussions of

emotion to the affect programs, since these are those best understood

of all emotional phenomena (Griffiths 1997; DeLancey 2001; Prinz

2004). However, the affect program model leaves out a good deal. In

particular, it ignores those emotions which involve higher cognitive

processes, such as jealousy, envy, and Schadenfreude. It is these

sorts of emotions which many philosophers have made the focus of their

own theories of emotion. The research program of evolutionary

psychology (Cosmides et al. 2000) goes some way to filling this

lacuna, and emphasizes the modularity that is likely to result on the

plausible speculation that different social and psychological

emotional functions have been shaped relatively independently by

natural selection. Whether emotions function as “mental modules”,

however, remains a topic of debate (Faucher and Tappolet 2006). In any

case, the mechanisms elaborated by natural selection in the context of

competitive survival, dominance, mating and affiliation are not

necessarily harmonious. Philosophers, for their part, have devoted a

good deal of attention to the analysis of more subtle differences

between “higher” emotions. (Ben-Ze'ev 2000). This has led many

philosophers to stress cognitive aspects of emotions.

5. Cognitivist Theories

Most contemporary philosophical theories of emotion resemble

psychological appraisal theories, characterizing emotions primarily in

terms of their associated cognitions. But there are several different

ways of understanding the cognitions involved. While appraisal

theorists generally allow that the cognitive processes underlying

emotion can be either conscious or unconscious, and can involve either

propositional or non-propositional content, cognitivists typically

claim that emotions involve propositional attitudes. Many emotions are

specified in terms of propositions: one can't be angry with someone

unless one believes that person guilty of some offense; one can't be

envious unless one believes that someone else has something good in

her possession. Some proponents of cognitivism universalize this

feature, and maintain that any emotion must involve some sort of

attitude directed at a proposition.

The most parsimonious type of cognitivist theory follows the Stoics in

identifying emotions with judgments. Robert Solomon (1980), Jerome Neu

(2000) and Martha Nussbaum (2001) take this approach. My anger at

someone simply is the judgment that I have been wronged by that

person. Other cognitivist theories introduce further elements into

their analyses. Emotions have been described as sets of beliefs and

desires (Marks 1982), affect-laden judgments (Broad 1971; Lyons 1980),

and as complexes of beliefs, desires, and feelings (Oakley 1992).

Cognitivist theories have faced criticism along a number of fronts.

Various confusions in the very concept of “cognition” have been

alleged to blur most conceptions that invoke that term (Power and

Dalgliesh 2008; Debes 2009). John Deigh (1994) has objected that the

view of emotions as propositional attitudes has the effect of

excluding animals and infants lacking language. Others have argued

that if emotions always involve the standard propositional attitudes,

namely belief and desire, then an account of the rationality of

emotions will collapse into an account of what it is for those

standard propositional attitudes to be rational: but emotional

rationality is not reducible to the rationality of beliefs or desires

(Lyons 1980; de Sousa 1987; Ben-Ze'ev 2000; Goldie 2000; Helm 2001;

Elster 2003). Another criticism, stressed by Wollheim (1999) draws

upon a difference between transient mental states and mental

dispositions. Emotions, like beliefs and desires, can exist either as

occurrent events (jealousy of a rival at a party) or as persisting

modifications of the mind (a tendency to feel jealousy). However,

dispositional beliefs have a straightforward connection with their

occurrent manifestations: if I have a standing belief that the world

is round, for example, then I will assent to this proposition on

particular occasions. Sincere avowal of desires also counts as

evidence for underlying dispositions, though the connection is not as

tight. Dispositional emotions, on the other hand, do not have

tailor-made forms of expression, but can be manifested in a whole

diverse range of behavior. In some cases, what might be held to be

dispositional emotions are not necessarily dispositions to undergo a

specific occurrent emotion of the same name. Love, for example, while

it can be manifested in amorous feelings, is sometimes expressed in

any of a practically unlimited variety of occurrent emotions —

including longing, grief, jealousy, rage, and other less than pleasant

occurrent feelings.

A frequent objection made to cognitivist theories is the “fear of

flying” objection: propositional attitudes are neither necessary nor

sufficient for the existence of an emotion, since I may be well aware

that flying is the safest means of transport and yet suffer fear of

flying. (Stocker 1992). I may feel a twinge of suspicion towards my

butler, and yet believe him to be utterly trustworthy; conversely, I

may judge that he is up to no good, and yet feel nothing in the way of

emotion. These examples suggest an analogy with perceptual illusions,

which a correct belief sometimes quite fails to dispel. Such

“recalcitrant emotions” seem to offer pretty conclusive evidence

against the assimilation of at least some emotions either to judgement

or to belief (D'Arms and Jacobson 2003; Brady 2009).

A cognitivist might reply that this objection merely establishes that

the propositional content of emotion (like the propositional content

of perception) differs from the propositional content of belief, not

that emotions have no propositional content at all. It remains that

even if perceptions necessarily have propositional content, they

cannot be assimilated to belief: so it seems to be with emotion.

Furthermore, it is not obvious that the content of perceptions or

emotions are exhausted by their propositional content (Peacocke 2001).

Similarly several theorists insist that experiences of emotion have

content beyond any propositional content. (Goldie 2000; Wollheim 1999;

Charland 2002; Tappolet 2003).

6. Perceptual Theories

A crucial mandate of cognitivist theories is to avert the charge that

emotions are merely “subjective.” But propositional attitudes are not

the only cognitive states. A more basic feature of cognition is that

is has a “mind-to-world direction of fit.” The expression is meant to

sum up the contrast between cognition and the conative orientation, in

which success is defined in terms of the opposite, world-to-mind,

direction of fit (Searle 1983). We will or desire what does not yet

exist, and deem ourselves successful if the world is brought into line

with the mind's plan.

A view ascribing to emotions a true mind-to-world direction of fit,

inspired by the model of perception, would involve a criterion of

success that depended on correctness with respect to some objective

property. To take this approach is to give a particular answer to a

question posed long ago in Plato's Euthyphro (the question, as

originally put forward, concerned the nature of piety, but it extends

to values in general): Do we love X—mutatis mutandis for the other

emotions—because X is lovable, or do we declare X to be lovable merely

because we love it? The first alternative is the objectivist one,

encouraged by the analogy of perception. It requires that we define

clearly the relevant sense of ‘objectivity’. Specifically it promises

a valid analogy between some of the ways in which we can speak of

perception as aspiring to objectivity and ways in which we can say the

same of emotion.

Emotions are sometimes said to be subjective in this sense: that they

merely reflect something that belongs exclusively and contingently to

the mind of the subject of experience, and therefore do not co-vary

with any property that could be independently identified. This charge

presupposes a sense of “objective” that contrasts with “projective,”

in something like the psychoanalytic sense. In terms of the analogy of

perception, to say that emotions are universally subjective in this

sense would be to claim that they resemble hallucinations more than

veridical perceptions. The perceptual system is capable of the sort of

functioning-in-a-vacuum that leads to perceptual mistakes. Similarly,

emotions may mislead us into “hasty” or “emotional” judgments (Solomon

1984). On the other hand, the lack of perceptual capacities can be a

crippling handicap in one's attempt to negotiate the world: similarly

a lack of adequate emotional responses can hinder our attempts to view

the world correctly and act correctly in it (Nussbaum 1990, Thomas

1989). This explains why we are so often tempted to take seriously

ascription of reasonableness or unreasonableness, fittingness or

inappropriateness, for common emotions. Unfortunately it is unclear

how the alleged objective properties identified by emotions might be

identified independently.

Closely related to the question of the cognitive aspect of emotions is

the question of their passivity. Passivity has an ambiguous relation

to subjectivity. In one vein, impressed by the bad reputation of the

“passions” as taking over our consciousness against our will,

philosophers have been tempted to take the passivity of emotions as

evidence of their subjectivity. In another vein, however, it has been

noted that the passivity of emotions is sometimes precisely analogous

to the passivity of perception. How the world is, is not in our power.

So it is only to be expected that our emotions, if they actually

represent something genuinely and objectively in the world, should not

be in our power either: we can no more arbitrarily choose to

experience an emotion than we can adopt a belief at will. (Gordon

1987).

If the view that emotions are a kind of perception can be sustained,

then the connection between emotion and cognition will have been

secured. But there is yet another way of establishing this connection,

compatible with the perceptual model. This is to draw attention to the

role of emotions as providing the framework for cognitions of the more

conventional kind. de Sousa (1987) and Amélie Rorty (1980) propose

this sort of account, according to which emotions are not so much

perceptions as they are ways of seeing—species of determinate patterns

of salience among objects of attention, lines of inquiry, and

inferential strategies (see also Roberts 2003). Emotions make certain

features of situations or arguments more prominent, giving them a

weight in our experience that they would have lacked in the absence of

emotion. Consider how Iago proceeds to make Othello jealous. He

directs Othello's attention, suggests questions to ask, and insinuates

that there are inferences to be drawn without specifying them himself.

Once Othello's attention turns to his wife's friendship with Cassio

and the lost handkerchief, inferences which on the same evidence would

not even have been thought of before are now experienced as

compelling: “Farewell, the tranquil mind….”

This account does not identify emotions with judgments or desires, but

it does explain why cognitivist theorists have been tempted to make

this identification. Emotions set the agenda for beliefs and desires:

one might say that they ask the questions that judgment answers with

beliefs and evaluate the prospects that may or may not arouse desire.

As every committee chairperson knows, questions have much to do with

the determination of answers: the rest can be left up to the facts. In

this way emotions could be said to be judgments, in the sense that

they are what we see the world “in terms of.” But they need not

consist in articulated propositions. Much the same reasons motivate

their assimilation to desire. As long as we presuppose some basic or

preexisting desires, the directive power of “motivation” belongs to

what controls attention, salience, and inference strategies preferred.

Some philosophers suggest that the directive power which emotions

exert over perception is partly a function of their essentially

dramatic or narrative structure (Rorty 1988). A particularly subtle

examination of the role of narrative in constituting our emotions over

the long term is to be found in (Goldie 2012). It seems conceptually

incoherent to suppose that one could have an emotion—say, an intense

jealousy or a consuming rage—for only a fraction of a second (Wollheim

1999). One explanation of this feature of emotions is that a story

plays itself out during the course of each emotional episode, and

stories take place over stretches of time. de Sousa (1987) has

suggested that the stories characteristic of different emotions are

learned by association with “paradigm scenarios.” These are drawn

first from our daily life as small children and later reinforced by

the stories, art, and culture to which we are exposed. Later still,

they are supplemented and refined by literature and other art forms

capable of expanding the range of one's imagination of ways to live.

Paradigm scenarios involve two aspects: first, a situation type

providing the characteristic objects of the specific emotion-type

(where objects can be of the various sorts mentioned above), and

second, a set of characteristic or “normal” responses to the

situation, where normality is determined by a complex and

controversial mix of biological and cultural factors. Once our

emotional repertoire is established, we interpret various situations

we are faced with through the lens of different paradigm scenarios.

When a particular scenario suggests itself as an interpretation, it

arranges or rearranges our perceptual, cognitive, and inferential

dispositions.

A problem with this idea is that each emotion is appropriate to its

paradigm scenario by definition, since it is the paradigm scenario

which in effect calibrates the emotional repertoire. It is not clear

whether this places unreasonable limitations on the range of possible

criticism to which emotions give rise. What is certain is that when a

paradigm scenario is evoked by a novel situation, the resulting

emotion may or may not be appropriate to the situation that triggers

it. In that sense at least, then, emotions can be assessed for

rationality.

This brings up normative issues about emotions, which will be

addressed in sections 8–10 below. First, however, I consider what one

might conclude about the nature or “ontology” of emotions.

7. The Ontology of Emotions

What, in the end, are emotions? What do they ultimately consist in? A

variety of possible answers to this “ontological” question suggest

themselves in the light of the above account. They might be

physiological processes, or perceptions of physiological processes, or

neuro-psychological states, or adaptive dispositions, or evaluative

judgments, or computational states, or even social facts or dynamical

processes. In fact most philosophers would assent to most of these

descriptions while regarding all as partial. In view of the

acknowledged complexity of emotional functions, it seems wise to

rephrase the question not in terms of ontology, but in terms of levels

of explanation. The trichotomy first introduced by David Marr (1982)

remains an excellent starting point. At the computational level (which

most would now call the functional level), we need to identify the

emotions' basic teleology: what they are for. This will be appropriate

even if one believes, as some traditionally have, that emotions

actually represent the breakdown of smoothly adaptive functions such

as thought, perception, and rational planning. For in that case the

emotions will be understood precisely in terms of their failure to

promote the smooth working of the cognitive and conative functions.

Such a failure will trigger a descent to a lower level of explanation,

adverting to the counterproductive exercise of mechanisms at the

algorithmic and implementational levels. The first—-more or less

equivalent to the design level of (Dennett 1971)—refers to the

sub-functions that natural selection has set up to perform the

functions said to be disrupted by emotion. The second designates the

actual neuro-physiological processes whereby, in animals built on a

specific plan such as mammals or humans such as we, these

sub-functions are normally carried out.

This trichotomy has been reinterpreted in various ways, but it still

serves. It is generally agreed that the simpler emotions, those whose

expression and recognition Ekman (1972, 1989) has shown to be

universal, are driven by the basic needs of organisms such as mating,

defense or avoidance of predators, and social affiliation. All complex

mammals require swift, relatively stereotyped responses to these

challenges. These are the “affect programs” favored by Ekman (1972,

1989), DeLancey (2001) and particularly Griffiths (1997), to be “what

emotions really are.” Opinions divide as to whether the same sort of

functional analysis can be applied to a wider range of what Griffiths

has called the “cognitively penetrable” emotions. Placing severe

constraints on what is to count as a “natural kind”, Griffiths argued

that Ekman's six basic affect programs, and only they, form natural

kinds: the others, he claimed, are for the moment beyond the reach of

useful scientific investigation. Each affect program comprises a

coordinated syndrome of responses (which we attribute to the

algorithmic level) implemented at the physiological (hormonal and

neurological), muscular-skeletal, and expressive levels in ways that

owe their uniformity to homology, that is to say their common

ancestral origin. Other emotions, however, bear only relations of

analogy with these and don't count as natural kinds either singly or

as a class.

Against this Charland (2002) has argued that a sufficient level of

homology can be found to unite at least the basic emotions as a class,

and that we should regard emoters, and hence their emotions, as a

natural kind. Relying on Panksepp (1998, 2000), Charland argues that

the integrated mechanism of seven basic emotions (Panksepp's list

differs slightly from Ekman's) are implemented by distinct circuits

forming natural kinds not only in the human but more widely in the

mammalian brain. Emoters form a distinct kind in view of their

ancestral organization in terms of certain basic functions, the

specific algorithms that contribute to those functions, and their

implementation in terms of physiological, expressive, hormonal, and

motivational processes. This is sufficient not only to justify

treating the specific emotions as natural kinds, but to treat emotion

in general as a natural kind (Charland 1995, 1997). This view seems to

require that we regard emotions as a set of processes distinguished at

all three levels of explanation. Emotions in general should then be

viewed as a genus of processes typically involving five different

component aspects or components, comprising subjective feeling,

cognition, motor expression, action tendencies or desire, and

neurological processes (Scherer 2005). On this view, individual

emotions would owe their specific identity to all five components: the

subfunctions they are designed to serve; their perceptual or quasi

judgmental component, their associated desires, their mode of

expression, and their characteristic physiological implementation.

Another way of organizing the various approaches might appeal to the

dominant theoretical models on which they rest. It has often been said

that in the history of the philosophy of mind, every epoch has tended

to redefine its subject matter in terms of the most fashionable

technological metaphor. The notion of emotions as “springs of action”

alludes to the once fashionable model of clockwork. The dominant

metaphor in Freud's early work was hydraulic. (Freud 1895). What does

this observation lead us to expect for emotions?

At the more remote level of explanation, we have seen that theories

favored by cognitive science are likely to appeal to evolutionary

ideas. But at more proximate levels, three dominant contemporary

models might be expected to lay claims on emotion theory: physiology,

computation, and dynamical systems.

Physiological processes are conceded by all philosophers to be

involved in clearly prototypical cases of emotion. But no philosopher,

for fear perhaps of defining themselves out of relevant competence,

has been willing to concede that emotions just are physiological

processes. Instead they are held to be complexes in which physiology

plays a part at the level of implementation of some higher-level

process. The higher-level process in which an emotion consists owes

its overall structure to functional needs, and typically comprises, in

addition to physiological aspects, behavioural, expressive, and

phenomenological, components.

Computational theories of emotion seem to have been particularly

attractive to psychiatrists and psychoanalysts. They were broached

early by a couple of psychoanalysts turned hackers (Peterfreund 1971),

(Shank and Colby 1973) and played an important role in the theoretical

elaborations of John Bowlby's work on the mechanisms and psychological

consequences of early separation and loss. (Bowlby 1969–1980). These

works attempted to model Freudian concepts of the dynamics of

conscious and unconscious mental life in computational terms. Colby

even constructed a simulation of a paranoid patient, “Parry”, which

famously fooled some psychiatrists. The key idea was to set up

second-order parameters that acted on the first-order modules of

perception, belief and desire, thus regulating or disrupting the

operation of perceptual and action programs. From the sidelines, de

Sousa (1987) suggested that connectionist systems or analog models

stand a better chance of modeling emotion than those based on

classical von Neuman-type digital computation, but that suggestion

hasn't gone anywhere. From the point of view of computational theory,

the prevailing wind, backed by both evolutionary speculation and

neurological findings on control systems and relatively independent

affect-programs, has tended to favour modular conceptions of emotion

rather than holistic ones. (Charland 1995, Robinson 2005).

Still, some philosophers and computer scientists have continued to be

interested in integrating computing theory with emotions. Aaron Sloman

has elaborated the sort of ideas that were embryonic in Shank and

Colby into a more sophisticated computational theory of the mind in

which emotions are virtual machines, playing a crucial role in a

complex hierarchic architecture in which they control, monitor,

schedule and sometimes disrupt other control modules. (Wright, Sloman

and Beaudoin 1996). The notion of architecture here adverts to the

complex hierarchy of control of component modular mechanisms. In line

with the three-level schema I have cited from Marr (cf. also (Dennett

1971)), we should understand the approach elaborated in this work as

pertaining both to the functional and to the algorithmic level. It

explicitly eschews hypotheses about implementation. Joining the

growing consensus that emotion phenomena reflect distinct,

successively evolved behavioral control systems, Sloman distinguishes

between a primitive or primary stream rooted in relatively fixed

neuro-physiological response syndromes, a more elaborate control

system bringing in cortical control, as well as a third level,

probably exclusive to humans, which most closely corresponds to the

layer of emotions that we are most concerned with when we think of the

emotional charge of art and literature or of the complexity of social

intercourse. Rosalind Picard (1997) lays out the evidence for the view

that computers will need emotions to be truly intelligent, and in

particular to interact intelligently with humans. She also adverts to

the role of emotions in evaluation and the pruning of search spaces.

But she is as much concerned to provide an emotional theory of

computation as to elaborate a computational theory of emotions. Marvin

Minsky (2006) explores the many-faceted nature of mental life,

including emotions, from a computer modeling point of view. Paul

Thagard (2005; 2006) has elaborated computer models in which emotional

valence interacts with evidential strength to determine a mode of

emotional coherence. There has recently been progress in both

detection and increasingly realistic simulations of emotional

behaviour by robots, and psychological models have been refined to the

point that component models of emotions can give rise to dynamic

computational models, which also function as a testing ground for

hypotheses about the constituents of emotion, particularly in the

framework of “appraisal theories” (Scherer, Bänziger, Tanja and

Roesch, 2010). This inquiry has been pursued with special vigor by the

Swiss Centre for Affective Sciences (SCAS) in Geneva.

Dynamical systems theories have been relatively slow to emerge,

despite their increasingly fashionable status in more central areas of

cognitive science. One remarkable attempt to integrate the perspective

of dynamical systems into understanding of emotional life is that of

(Magai and Haviland-Jones 2002), who draw on dynamical systems theory

to model the elusive combination of unpredictability and patterned

coherence found in the life-long evolution of individuality. Like

predecessors such as Bowlby (1969–1980), they are motivated by a goal

of understanding at the level of conscious experience as well as of

underlying mechanisms: dynamical systems theory is only one of their

tools. It is therefore particularly pertinent to the preoccupations of

those who are interested in the normative dimensions of emotions:

their rationality and their irrationality, their capacity for

enhancing or inhibiting self-knowledge, and their moral implications.

I address these questions in the next three sections.

8. Rationality and Emotions

The clearest notions associated with rationality are coherence and

consistency in the sphere of belief, and optimization of outcomes in

the sphere of action. But these notions are mainly critical ones. By

themselves, they would not suffice to guide an organism towards any

particular course of action. For the number of goals that it is

logically possible to posit at any particular time is virtually

infinite, and the number of possible strategies that might be employed

in pursuit of them is orders of magnitude larger. Moreover, in

considering possible strategies, the number of consequences of any one

strategy is again infinite, so that unless some drastic pre-selection

can be effected among the alternatives their evaluation could never be

completed. This gives rise to what is known among cognitive scientists

as the “Frame Problem”: in deciding among any range of possible

actions, most of the consequences of each must be eliminated a priori,

i.e. without wasting any time on verifying that they are indeed

irrelevant.

That this is not as much of a problem for people as it is for machines

may well be due to our capacity for emotions. As noted earlier,

emotions constitute one of the chief mechanisms whereby attention is

constrained and directed. (Matthews and Wells 1994). This allows them

to frame our decisions in two important ways. First, they define the

parameters taken into account in any particular deliberation. Second,

in the process of rational deliberation itself, they render salient

only a tiny proportion of the available alternatives and of the

conceivably relevant facts. Thus they winnow down to manageable size

the number of considerations relevant to deliberation, and help to

provide, in any particular situation, the indispensable framework

without which the question of rationality could not even be

considered. This suggestion, relabeled the “Search hypothesis of

emotion”, has been elaborated and criticized by Evans (2004), who

argues convincingly that it needs to be buttressed by a positive

theory of precisely what emotional mechanisms are capable of effecting

this task.

In a more pervasive and less easily definable way, the capacity to

experience emotion seems to be indispensable to the conduct of a

rational life over time. Antonio Damasio (1994) has amassed an

impressive body of neurological evidence suggesting that emotions do,

indeed, have this sort of function in everyday reasoning. Subjects in

his studies who, because of injuries sustained to the prefrontal and

somatosensory cortices of the brain, had a diminished capacity to

experience emotion, were severely hindered in their ability to make

intelligent practical decisions. In these ways, then, emotions would

be all important to rationality even if they could not themselves be

deemed rational or irrational.

Nevertheless we should not infer that emotions act consistently as

aids to rational thought and action. Emotions do play an important

role both in determining and in undermining rational thought and

action, particularly in a social context (Greenspan 1988; 2000). Yet

researchers in recent decades have identified a large number of cases

where emotions are indeed guilty of the lapses in rationality imputed

by traditional prejudices of philosophers. Some examples: present

emotional attitudes to future emotions are systematically distorted by

discounting schemes that invert preference orders (Ainslie 1992); we

fail in other ways to estimate correctly what our future emotions and

preferences will be (Gilbert 2006); our assessment of the past, too,

is systematically partial, in that we ignore all but the “peaks” of

unpleasantness or pleasure, and the temporally last segments of time

(Kahneman 2000); subjects misinterpret their own experience of fear as

sexual excitement (Dutton and Aron 1974); and conversely, a mild

stimulus to sexual interest causes men—but not women—to accept

severely disadvantageous rates of discounting (Daly and Wilson 2004).

The picture is further complicated by the fact that some apparent

irrationalities may serve group cohesion. Thus in the much studied

“ultimatum game”, subjects are generally willing to incur considerable

costs to punish unfair behavior (Oosterbeek, Sloof and van de Kuilen

2004).

But can emotions be assessed for rationality in themselves, rather

than as components of practical strategies? There is a common

prejudice that “feelings,” a word now sometimes commonly used

interchangeably with “emotions,” neither owe nor can give any rational

account of themselves. Yet we equally commonly blame others or

ourselves for feeling “not wisely, but too well,” or for targeting

inappropriate objects. The norms appropriate to both these types of

judgment are inseparable from social norms, whether or not these are

endorsed. Ultimately they are inseparable from conceptions of

normality and human nature. Judgments of reasonableness therefore tend

to be endorsed or rejected in accordance with one's ideological

commitments to this or that conception of human nature. It follows

that whether these judgments can be viewed as objective or not will

depend on whether there are objective facts to be sought about human

nature. On this question there is fortunately no need to pronounce. It

is enough to note that there is no logical reason why judgments of

reasonableness or irrationality in relation to emotions need be

regarded as any more subjective than any other judgments of

rationality in human affairs.

Exactly how one conceives of the nature of emotional rationality will

depend on one's theory of what the emotions are. Cognitivist and

appraisal theories will say that a reasonable emotion is one whose

constituent propositional attitudes or appraisals are reasonable.

Theories which take emotions to be perceptions of objective values

will claim that the target of an appropriate emotion should possess

the value which the emotion presents it as having. Narrative theories

will consider an emotion appropriate if its dramatic structure

adequately resembles that of its eliciting situation.

Of course, these answers to the question of what it is for an emotion

to be reasonable suppose that the relevant notion of rationality is an

epistemic one, and that what appropriate emotions succeed in achieving

is some sort of representational adequacy. This assumes that emotions

are states that we passively undergo. However, the relation of the

emotions to the will is not as clear as the word “passion” might

suggest. Certain philosophers have argued that emotions are more like

actions, for which we must bear responsibility (Sartre 1948; Solomon

1980). If this is true, and emotions are to some extent under our

voluntary control, then emotions will also be assessable for their

strategic rationality.

Close to the issue of emotional rationality lies the question of

whether emotions should be appraised in a dimension of “authenticity”:

once we give up the naive assumption that emotions are simply

“natural” biological states, how should we assess the enhancement of

emotions through chemical means? The ubiquity of prescription drugs

purporting to promote equanimity, relieve depression, and enhance

cognitive powers demands that we take a stance on the broader question

of the desirability of promoting chemical enhancements of our

emotional capacities. Should we welcome such enhancements, whether

with the technological assistance of “big pharma” or by the more

artisanal means of “recreational” drugs? Or should we, in the name of

emotional “authenticity”, insist that emotions are authentic only when

their chemical infrastructure is entirely endogenic? The debate has

barely begun (Kraemer 2011). Whether or not enhancing our emotional

capability is possible or desirable, however, the results may be no

more predictable than when one attempts to call up an emotion at will:

the emotion that is actually triggered may not be the one that was

summoned. If a person is not aware that a substitution has taken

place, then she will be self-deceived about her emotions—an all too

frequent occurrence, worthy of a brief discussion in its own right.

9. Emotions and Self-knowledge

We often make the “Cartesian” assumption that if anyone can know our

emotions it is ourselves. Descartes said it thus: “it is impossible

for the soul to feel a passion without that passion being truly as one

feels it.” Barely a page later, however, he noted that “those that are

most agitated by their passions are not those who know them best”

(Descartes 1984 [1649], 338, 339). In fact, few kinds of

self-knowledge could matter more than knowing one's own repertoire of

emotional responses. At the same time, emotions are both the cause and

the subject of many failures of self-knowledge. Their complexity

entails much potential to mislead or be misled. Insofar as most

emotions involve belief, they inherit the susceptibility of the latter

to self-deception. Recent literature on self-deception has striven to

dissolve the air of paradox to which this once gave rise (Fingarette

1969, Mele 1987). Furthermore, brain scientists have noted the

pervasive nature of self-deception and of different species of

“confabulation”, and they have begun to make progress in unmasking the

underlying neurological processes (Hirstein 2005). But there remain

three distinct sources of self-deception that stem from features of

emotions already alluded to.

The first arises from the connection of emotion with bodily changes.

There was something right in James's claim that the emotion follows

on, rather than causing the voluntary and involuntary bodily changes

which are held to express it. Because some of these changes are either

directly or indirectly subject to our choices, we are able to pretend

or dissimulate emotion. That implies that we can sometimes be caught

in our own pretense. Sometimes we identify our emotions by what we

feel: and if what we feel has been distorted by a project of

deception, then we will misidentify our own emotions.

A second source of self-deception arises from the role of emotions in

determining salience among potential objects of attention or concern.

Poets have always known that the main effect of love is to redirect

attention: when I love, I notice nothing but my beloved, and nothing

of his faults. When my love turns to anger I still focus on him, but

now attend to a very different set of properties. This suggests one

way of controlling or dominating my emotion: think about something

else, or think differently about this object (Greenspan 2000). But

this carries a risk. It is easier to think of something than to avoid

thinking about it; and to many cases of emotional distress only the

latter could bring adequate relief. Besides, one is not always able to

predict, and therefore to control, the effect that redirected

attention might produce. This familiar observation alerts us to the

role of the unconscious: if among the associations that are evoked by

a given scene are some that I can react to without being aware of

them, then I will not always be able to predict my own reactions, even

if I have mastered the not altogether trivial task of attending to

whatever I choose. Where the unconscious is, self-deception

necessarily threatens.

This brings us to the third source of emotional self-deception: the

involvement of social norms in the determination of our emotions. This

possibility arises in two stages from the admission that there are

unconscious motivations for emotions. First, if I am experiencing an

emotion that seems altogether inappropriate to its occasion, I will

naturally confabulate an explanation for it. A neurotic who is

unreasonably angry with his wife because he unconsciously identifies

her with his mother will not rest content with having no reason for

his anger. Instead, he will make one up. Second, the reason he makes

up will typically be one that is socially approved (Averill 1982).

If we are self-deceived in our emotional responses, or if some

emotional state induces self-deception, this may not be merely a

failure of self-knowledge. Many have thought that having certain

emotions is an important part of what it is to be a virtuous moral

agent. If this is true, then being systematically self-deceived about

one's emotions will be a kind of moral failure as well.

10. Morality and Emotions

The complexity of emotions and their role in mental life is reflected

in the unsettled place they have held in the history of ethics. Often

they have been regarded as a dangerous threat to morality and

rationality; in the romantic tradition, on the contrary, passions have

been placed at the center both of human individuality and of the moral

life. This ambivalence is reflected in the close connections between

the vocabulary of emotions and that of vices and virtues: envy, spite,

jealousy, wrath, and pride are some names of emotions that also refer

to common vices. Not coincidentally, some key virtues—love,

compassion, benevolence, and sympathy—are also names of emotions. On

the other hand, prudence, fortitude and temperance consist largely in

the capacity to resist the motivational power of emotions (Williams

1973).

The view that emotions are irrational was eloquently defended by the

Epicureans and Stoics. For this reason, these Hellenistic schools pose

a particularly interesting challenge for the rest of the Western

tradition. The Stoics adapted and made their own the Socratic

hypothesis that virtue is nothing else than knowledge, adding the idea

that emotions are essentially irrational beliefs. All vice and all

suffering is then irrational, and the good life requires the rooting

out of all desires and attachments. (As for the third of the major

Hellenistic schools, the Skeptics, their view was that it is beliefs

as such that were responsible for pain. Hence they recommend the

repudiation of opinions of any sort.) All three schools stressed the

overarching value of “ataraxia”, the absence of disturbance in the

soul. Philosophy can then be viewed as therapy, the function of which

is to purge emotions from the soul (Nussbaum 1994). In support of

this, the Stoics advanced the plausible claim that it is

psychologically impossible to keep only nice emotions and give up the

nasty ones. For all attachment and all desire, however worthy their

objects might seem, entail the capacity for wrenching and destructive

negative emotions. Erotic love can bring with it the murderous

jealousy of a Medea, and even a commitment to the idea of justice may

foster a capacity for destructive anger which is nothing but “furor

brevis”— temporary insanity, in Seneca's arresting phrase. Moreover,

the usual objects of our attachment are clearly unworthy of a free

human being, since they diminish rather than enhance the autonomy of

those that endure them.

The Hellenistic philosophers' observations about nasty emotions are

not wholly compelling. Surely it is possible to see at least some

emotions as having a positive contribution to make to our moral lives,

and indeed we have seen that the verdict of cognitive science is that

a capacity for normal emotion appears to be a sine qua non for the

rational and moral conduct of life. Outside of this intimate but still

somewhat mysterious link between the neurological capacity for emotion

and rationality, the exact significance of emotions to the moral life

will again depend on one's theory of the emotions. Inasmuch as

emotions are partly constituted by desires, as some cognitivist

theorists maintain, they will, as David Hume contended, help to

motivate decent behavior and cement social life. If emotions are

perceptions, and can be more or less epistemically adequate to their

objects, then emotions may have a further contribution to make to the

moral life, depending on what sort of adequacy and what sort of

objects are involved. Max Scheler (1954) was the first to suggest that

emotions are in effect perceptions of “tertiary qualities” that

supervene in the (human) world on facts about social relations,

pleasure and pain, and natural psychological facts, a suggestion

recently elaborated by Tappolet (2000).

An important amendment to that view, voiced by D'Arms and Jacobson

(2000a) is that emotions may have intrinsic criteria of

appropriateness that diverge from, and indeed may conflict with,

ethical norms. Appropriate emotions are not necessarily moral. Despite

that, some emotions, specifically guilt, resentment, shame and anger,

may have a special role in the establishment of a range of

“response-dependent” values and norms that lie at the heart of the

moral life (McDowell 1985; Gibbard 1990; D'Arms and Jacobson 1993).

Kevin Mulligan (1998) advances a related view: though not direct

perceptions of value, emotions can be said to justify axiological

judgments. Emotions themselves are justified by perceptions and

beliefs, and are said to be appropriate if and only if the axiological

judgments they support are correct. If any of those variant views is

right, then emotions have a crucial role to play in ethics in

revealing to us something like moral facts. A consequence of this view

is that art and literature, in educating our emotions, will have a

substantial role in our moral development (Nussbaum 2001). On the

other hand, there remains something “natural” about the emotions

concerned, so that moral emotions are sometimes precisely those that

resist the principles inculcated by so-called moral education. Hence

the view that emotions apprehend real moral properties can explain our

approval of those, like Huckleberry Finn when he ignored his “duty” to

turn in Jim the slave, whose emotions drive them to act against their

own “rational” conscience (Bennett 1974; McIntyre 1990; Arpaly 2002).

These suggestions about the relevance of emotion to ethics must be

sharply distinguished from “Emotivism”—the claim that emotions can be

used to elucidate the concept of evaluation itself. Such elucidation

would only be plausible if we understood the explicans more clearly

than the explicandum. But the variety and complexity of emotions makes

them poor candidates for the role of explicans. The view in question

must also be distinguished from the sociobiological hypothesis—which

had early precursors in Mencius and Hume—that certain motives of

benevolence are part of the genetic equipment which makes ethical

behavior possible. That plausible view has attracted surprisingly

energetic opposition in recent years. One objection against it is one

directed against all forms of ethical naturalism: namely that the

biological origins of a sentiment have no obvious bearing on its

ethical value. Nevertheless, studies of social interaction among other

primates strongly support the hypothesis that our moral intuitions

have been shaped by evolution. And although analogies between primate

behaviour and human morality are still resisted with desperate energy,

it seems hard to deny that we can recognize a surprising range of

familiar “moral emotions” in our nearest non-human cousins (de Waal

2006). Such naturalistic studies do promise to explain, at least, both

the existence of some of our more benevolent emotions and attitudes,

and the way in which their scope often seems so dangerously limited to

the members of some restricted in-group.

The range of emotions to which the sociobiological hypothesis can be

applied, however, is relatively narrow. That many complex emotions are

to a certain extent socially constructed, is attested by the fact that

what is considered normal emotion varies between epochs and cultures.

Feminists have pointed out, in particular, that gender-specific norms

on emotional experience and expression have been a standard means of

maintaining inequality among the sexes in many cultures (de Beauvoir

1952). Viewed in this light, the emotions in general lack that

property of universalizability which many philosophers have regarded

as a sine qua non of the ethical (Blum 1980). On the other hand, the

extent and significance of cultural differences are still a matter of

considerable controversy (Pinker 2002). Any conclusions about the

place of emotions in the moral life must therefore remain highly

tentative.

11. Summary of Recent Trends and Ramifications into Neighboring Disciplines

In the past two decades, the philosophy of emotions has become

enriched with a number of perspectives that have both embraced and

inspired inter-disciplinary studies. In this section, not all

references are to works by professional philosophers: some references

are to philosophically significant work in psychology, sociology, or

neuroscience. Most significantly, the study of emotions has had a

considerable impact on ideas about the intersection of morality,

politics, psychiatry and law.

Over a century after Nietzsche opened up the question of the

“genealogy” of morals, philosophers have finally begun to take

seriously the emotional roots of morality (Prinz 2007; Haidt 2012).

Emotions are seen by several philosophers as the psychological roots

of moral feelings, so that different domains of morality can be traced

to groups of emotions of which the prototypes are observed in our

primate cousins (de Waal 2006; Joyce 2006). Less radically, other

philosophers have explored the function of emotion — particularly

guilt and shame — in motivating moral behavior (Taylor 1985; Gibbard

1990; Baier, 1995; Greenspan 1995).

In recent years, a notable development in philosophical treatment of

emotions has been the attempt to incorporate interdisciplinary

approaches and insights into philosophy. Paul Griffiths (1997), Jessie

Prinz (2004), Craig DeLancey (2002), Tim Schroeder (2004) are among

the most vigorous exponents of the view that philosophical work on the

emotions must be re-oriented away from linguistic analysis and more

richly rooted in science. Robert Solomon, who spurred both interest

and opposition with his provocative thesis that emotions are

judgments, also advocated an enrichment of emotion theory through

cross-cultural perspectives and the integration of scientific

perspectives (Solomon 1999). Under the impact of explosive progress in

brain science, there has been renewed interest in the hypothesis that

innate emotional temperament, as well as social environment, condition

people's moral and political stance. Emotional dispositions, in turn,

have been linked via neuro-transmitters to specific genes (Canli and

Lesch 2007). At the same time, the influence of social environment and

ideology has been studied in increasingly greater depth. The view that

emotions are “socially constructed” and partly conditioned by ideology

can now be supported by more solid empirical work: what is experienced

as a quintessentially individual and psychological process, namely

love, is conditioned by an ideology that depends on social and

economic factors (Ben Ze'ev and Goussinsky 2008; Illouz 2012). More

traditional perspectives continue to thrive, notably in the defense,

by David Pugmire (2005) and others, of a broadly Aristotelian point of

view on the moral importance of integrity in emotions. There has also

been increasing attention paid to the central role of emotions in

psychiatry (Blair, Mitchell, and Blair 2005; Charland 2010), in law

and politics (Finkel and Parrott 2006; Deigh 2008), and in religion

(Roberts 2007).

A notable development of the past quarter of a century has been the

increasing interest in specific emotions. Many philosophers have

abandoned their preoccupation with the question of whether or not

emotions form a “natural kind” (Rorty 1988; 1998; 2003; Elster 1999;

Ben Ze'ev 2000). Instead, some have been willing to look at less

typical emotions, turning their attention to such “epistemic” emotions

as interest, curiosity, conviction, and doubt (Silvia 2006; Brun,

Doguoglu, and Kuenzle 2008), as well as to aesthetic emotions

(Matravers 1998). Efforts have been expended, in particular, on the

rehabilitation of some emotions commonly described as “negative”, such

as guilt (Greenspan 1995), shame (Deonna et al. 2011), envy (D'Arms

and Jacobson 2005), disgust (Rozin, Lowery, Haidt et al. 1999), and

sentimentality (Solomon 2004; Howard 2012). The very idea that some

emotions are “negative” has come under fire: philosophers have been

critical of a simplistic notion of “valence” that is widely taken for

granted in psychology (Krisjansson 2003).

The role of emotions in our experience of art and literature is an

obviously promising area which has received much attention in recent

decades. Robert Gordon (1987) was one of the first to suggest that the

knowledge we have of the states of mind of others, and particularly of

their emotional condition, is derived not from any psychological

theory, but from an active simulation of that other's state. There is

suggestive neurological evidence that this might be on the right track

from the discovery of “mirror neurons” that are similarly activated

both by a concrete action and by the sight of the same concrete action

in another (Gallese and Goldman 1998). The idea has been developed by

Keith Oatley (2012), as an approach to literature. Fiction, he argues

on the basis of much empirical work, works as a simulation run on the

wetware of the reader's mind, and has the power to change us. This

view is also supported by Martha Nussbaum, who despite being firmly in

the cognitive camp, has insisted that the kind of knowledge involved

in moral appraisal is both affective and cognitive. For that reason,

the full force of certain moral truths can best be grasped through the

medium of literature rather than philosophical argument. (Nussbaum

1990; 1994; 2001; Baier 1995; Hogan 2011).

There has been a good deal of work on the role of emotions in music,

although there is little consensus about how that works. (Budd 1985;

Juslin and Sloboda 2001; Robinson 2005; Nussbaum 2007). Emotions in

film have also come under scrutiny from philosophers (Plantinga 1999;

French, Wettstein and Saint 2010.)

One area that has mushroomed since the last couple of decades of the

twentieth Century is the philosophy of sex and love. At least one book

has explored the prospects for love and sex with robots (Levy 2007).

More usually, controversies have centered on the role of reason in

generating love, as well as the kinds of reasons for action that love

produces or can justify. As might be expected, contemporary

contributions to the philosophy of love have on the whole been less

sanguine about love, particularly erotic love, than the general run of

self-help or popular books in praise of love. Surprisingly, however,

the idea that we love for reasons continues to find defenders among

philosophers. (Singer 2009; Frankfurt 2004; Jollimore 2011; Lamb 1997;

Nussbaum 1997; Soble 1998; Solomon and Higgins 1991; Stewart 1995;

Vannoy 1980; Blackburn 2004).

In debates about the nature of emotions, feminist voices have been

important participants, particularly on issues concerning the role of

emotions in morality (Gilligan 1982; Larrabee 1993) and the question

of gender. On the latter question, (as in other aspects of mentality)

research on gender differences in emotion has generally been dogged by

publication bias: since absence of differences is not apt to seem

newsworthy, journals have favored findings of emotional difference.

Sometimes it has seemed to follow in some mysterious way from the

dimorphism of human gametes that men and women must have significantly

different experiences of emotions in general and of sex and love in

particular. Nevertheless, a number of thinkers have resisted this

trend. Nancy Eisenberg, for example, has concluded that “gender

differences in empathy may be an artefact of measurement” (Eisenberg

and Lennon 1983); much the same is argued about gender differences in

emotional expression by Brody (1997), and specifically for jealousy by

Hupka and Bank (1996) and Harris (2003).

Finally, though probably not exhaustively, emotion theorists have

turned to collective or shared emotions, as a specific form of shared

intentionality; a motivating topic in that area being the question of

collective guilt feelings (Gilbert 2000; Tuomela 2007; Konzelmann Ziv

2009; Salmela 2012).

In short, interdisciplinary research has thrived in recent years. Vast

projects have sprung up, notably the Centre for Interdisciplinary

Study of Affective Sciences (CISAS) in Geneva, in which philosophers

have collaborated with psychologists, neuroscientists, experimental

economists, and students of literature to study emotions.

12. Conclusion: Adequacy Conditions on Philosophical Theories of Emotion

Despite the great diversity of views contending in the philosophy of

emotions, one can discern a good deal of agreement. A broad consensus

has emerged on what we might call adequacy conditions on any theory of

emotion. An acceptable philosophical theory of emotions should be able

to account at least for the following baker's dozen of

characteristics. All the recent and current accounts of emotion

discussed here have something to say about most of them, and some have

had something to say about all.

emotions are typically conscious phenomena; yet

dispositions to manifest certain emotion types, such as irascibility,

are often unconscious;

emotions typically involve more pervasive bodily manifestations than

other conscious states, but

they cannot reliably be discriminated on physiological grounds alone;

emotions vary along a number of dimensions: intensity, duration,

valence, type and range of intentional objects, etc.;

they are typically, but not always, manifested in desires;

they are distinct from moods, but modified by them;

they are reputed to be antagonists of rationality; but also

they play an indispensable role in determining the quality of life;

they contribute crucially to defining our ends and priorities;

they play a crucial role in the regulation of social life;

they protect us from an excessively slavish devotion to narrow

conceptions of rationality;

they have a central place in moral education and the moral life.

The exploration of questions raised by these characteristics is a

thriving ongoing collaborative project in the theory of emotions, in

which philosophy will continue both to inform and to draw on a wide

range of philosophical expertise as well as the parallel explorations

of other branches of cognitive science.