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Emotions – Ben Dempster
Introduction The research and philosophising surrounding the emotions is confusing in the initial stages to say the least. A plethora of works dive headlong into the subject without describing first their methodology and type of theory they support. This discussion will make explicit the differing theories examined, as against the rest of the vague academic world. The cognitive and psychoevolutionary approaches to emotion will be critically analysed in what follows. My aim is to show the cognitive method is illegitimate – that not only is it open to numerous objections, but that its very framework can never produce the kinds of explanation we need for emotion. Having discarded cognitivism, the next step is to evaluate the best alternative. In my view, this is the psychoevolutionary method. This explanation style flourishes where cognitivism fails, yet, as will be seen, still has a few problems of its own to face.
The Cognitive Theory The cognitive theory has been spelled out innumerable times, and each time its true nature has become more and more obscured. Hence, a simplified version that most cognitivist theorists would agree to seems the most useful option. Cognitivism, simplified, equates emotions with action-inducing beliefs. The content of a person’s emotion is their belief in a certain state of affairs, this causes action, which causes a physiological disturbance; finally, this disturbance is recognised as emotion. Admittedly, this oversimplifies, but the core elements are present. What it is important to remember here is that cognitivists make out emotions to be propositional attitudes towards things. Their focus is on the content of the emotion – ie. the specification of the propositional attitude that a person has towards some object. Note that this view implies an emotion must have some focus – for without an object to focus on, there is nothing tangible for a person to have a positive or negative propositional attitude towards.
Objections The belief account, as it stands, succumbs to at least three powerful objections. Firstly, it seems clear that certain instances of emotion are reflexive. Imagine being suddenly frightened by a mugger while at an ATM late at night – the instant reflex response is fear, and with it comes all the physiological changes (sweaty palms, shaking). The same would happen, however, even if it were a friend who suddenly seemed to appear out of nowhere. What belief could we ascribe to the second scenario? I believe my friend to be dangerous? Certainly not. What then? It seems clear that in cases of reflexive emotional responses, (those that are more fundamentally linked to our survival, for example) the emotion arises before the belief utilising process even gets going. The cognitivist, in weak reply, must consider cases of reflex emotions as ‘self-deceit’, but if I feel every aspect of the emotion ‘fear’, how can we really consider this to be self-deceit? If cognitivists are really attempting to identify emotions with evaluative judgements, they are left with the problem that far too many things qualify for status as an 2|Page
Emotions – Ben Dempster
‘emotion’. My choice of breakfast cereal is certainly an evaluative judgement (I evaluate “Bugs’n’Mud” as tastier than porridge). It will even help motivate me to action; eating the chocolate-styled cereal. Yet this is not an emotion. Cognitivists allow too much into their account, unless they are willing to get sophisticated. Finally, the basic account of the cognitive theory leaves the physiological responses that so often accompany emotion unexplained. Psychoevolutionary and constructionist theories can, however. One with reference to evolutionary adaptations, the other via present and past cultural influences. On the other hand, the cognitivist approach, because it focuses on propositional attitudes not physical concerns, leaves the responses almost untouched, with a mysterious nature.
The Belief/Desire Account In answer to these criticisms, the most popular move historically by the cognitivist camp has been to add ‘desires’ into the belief account. This certainly has its advantages. Like emotions, desires have degrees of intensity and aren’t necessarily linked to the strength of the relevant beliefs. Like emotions, desires are inconsistent in the way beliefs are not1. It is perfectly normal to have conflicting desires and emotions. I may both love and hate somebody, and I may desire to give up smoking yet still at the same time desire another cigarette. But it seems absurd to suggest beliefs can occur like this. I can hardly believe both that it is snowing and that it is not snowing. Furthermore, the physiological changes that initially seemed enigmatic on the belief account are easily explained; we know that desires also bring about physiological change. Introducing desire has advantages, but it also has drawbacks. Without the need for much reflection, we can see it is simplistic to say emotions come to the same thing as desires, even with a belief account included. Basically, there’s still a huge logical gap between the two. We can have desires that are completely unrelated to any emotion. I may strongly desire a new bicycle yet have no attached emotion. Likewise, I may have a strong emotion that has nothing to do with any desires. I love the strange girl who I have a secret crush on, but I do not desire her. Maybe I never even want to meet her, to do so may destroy the purity of the love I have for something seen but never experienced in any other way. I certainly know of true instances of this phenomenon. Besides, is it not the traditional view of true love that there ought to be no corrupting desire, only unconditional love? Accordingly, emotion and desire can occur separately, and any attempt to link them needs a far stronger foundation, with this fact in mind, than has been offered by cognitivists so far. There is an objection to the beleaguered cognitive theory that even adding ‘desire’ to the account cannot cure. There is a kind of emotion that cognitivists must deny the existence or veridity of. These are emotions with no object2. For desires or beliefs to explain an emotion, there needs to be an object of the desire, or content of the belief. However, instances of melancholy, depression, anxiety and most ‘moods’ show that emotions do not need an object. Some claim that in the case of depression, the object of the emotion is ‘things in general’, yet it is unclear this tactic would work for moods also. Even if we accepted this reply, the objects of emotion would have to be 1
2
Griffiths. 1989. P. 301
Griffiths. 1989. P. 300 3|Page
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specified so vaguely in cognitive theory that the whole concept would surely break down into arbitrariness. If these objections aren’t enough to nail the coffin shut on the cognitivist approach to emotions for good, the following methodological criticisms certainly must. The cognitive approach can neither explain what an emotion is, nor why we classify emotions in the way we have3. If emotions are propositional attitudes and we have many attitudes that are clearly not emotions, the cognitivist must stipulate that physiological effects accompany the attitudes. This reply is unfortunately doomed. Some emotional states produce no physiological effects. This is most clearly seen in mild cases of emotion, which, although still classed as such, are not intense enough to register any physiological effect. Furthermore, the physiological changes still remain unexplained. They become brute fact; explicitly stipulated by cognitivists to ‘save the phenomena’. Other approaches explain the changes in a far less ad hoc manner. Unlike other approaches, cognitivism, even if successful, can offer no good reason for why our emotions are classified and structured the way they are. If we used more distinctions of content, we would end up with a more numerous, individually less broad group of emotions4. A psychoevolutionary account has the best answer for this; the different groups of emotions are related to different fundamental biological mechanisms (such as aggression, protective behaviour and courting rituals).
Psychoevolutionary Explanations Succinctly put, the psychoevolutionist theory examined here demonstrates that the nature and origin of emotional responses come from our evolutionary history. Obviously, evolution is a biological phenomenon, thus the content of the theory must also include a description of the biological processes that occur in our brain and body when emotion strikes. This is where the research of neuroscientists is so useful to the theory. The first evident advantage of the theory is that it explains the precise composition of human emotions. Empirical evidence of environmental struggles is used to explain why certain emotional mechanisms have given organisms survival benefits. Darwin, the godfather of this approach, saw at least three different ways that have the emotional response patterns we do. Firstly, there are straightforward functional aspects to many emotional responses5. The secretion of adrenalin when confronted by danger has the obvious advantage of stimulating the organism, giving it added physical ability for a short space of time – enough time for a rabbit to hop quickly into a burrow to avoid a hungry hawk, for example. We also possess emotional responses equivalent to the anatomical oddity, the human appendix. We know it served a purpose earlier in our evolutionary history, but now it serves none. For example, we know that the emotion of jealousy, when 3
Griffiths. 1989. P. 308
4
Griffiths. 1989. P. 309
5
McNaughton. 1989. P. 42 4|Page
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viewed neutrally, serves no useful purpose in modern society. It merely angers the jealous person and often the person they are being jealous about as well. But we live in a relatively peaceful abundant world. Back in the days when fighting for a mate was a reality rather than a social no-no, jealousy may have played an important part in securing a mating relationship over time. Previously functional responses may also become useful for completely different reasons than the original ones. A major aspect of emotional responses, according to Darwin, is their communicative value. We can see that facial expressions can have no other internal or external effects. They do not change the body, nor do they impact on the environment, except in the strict sense that other humans are affected by the emotional information they convey. An issue crucial, I claim, to the psychoevolutionary account is whether our emotional responses and the emotions that induce them are innate or learned. If all are innate, the emotional theorist need not offer much in the way of social causes for certain emotions. If completely learned, biological histories surely would count for very little. I contend that some of our responses may be innate, but emotions themselves are certainly not completely so. This leaves the psychoevolutionary account with a problem – it does nothing to explain social causes, unless these are implied by a sophisticated neo-Darwinian system. McNaughton notes that certain facial expressions as emotional responses must be innate6. Consider the young blind girl who, when told she is exceedingly beautiful, blushes and displays all the other physiological effects of a person embarrassed (or whatever exact description chosen from the myriad on offer). She cannot, being blind from birth, have learned this response from anybody – it must be innate. Others note the similarity of facial expressions between large groups of the primates. A perfect example is teeth baring to communicate angry or aggressive intentions. A homology of expressions between the primates may even suggest a homology of brain structure, although one need not attempt to claim this much.
Despite many emotional responses being innate, the emotion itself may not be so. McNaughton offers an interesting explanation; the responses may be innate, but are not equated with ‘emotion’ itself except by learning7. After all, how could we ever conclude that we were ‘scared’ when feeling shaky and ill unless we lived in a world which constantly teaches us of the correlation of such things? Emotions are not just physiological changes, thus some knowledge of the human conceptual scheme is needed to consider felt changes as one emotion or another. Without it, one simply does not have the epistemological fuel to make such a claim. Consider the analogy with animals in an experimental situation. Young animals, displaying the same outward emotional response as older ones, were found to have completely different motivations for their responses. Young cubs, when fighting, exhibit all the same signs as a fully-grown member of the species when fighting. Yet the motivational contexts are incredibly different in the two cases. The young cub is merely practising its skills at fighting, or is expending energy playfully as young often do. The adult fighting, on the other hand, is protecting himself, his group, or collecting food. Thus, 6
7
McNaughton. 1989. P. 95
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the same innate responses – the physiological changes concurrent with fighting, are brought about by different stimuli altogether. This aspect of the emotion may be taught - older lions teach younger ones to hunt - it does not seem innate. The same applies for humans; certain responses are innate, yet emotions are a more complex set including social and cultural learning factors. More direct methods of considering emotions as evolved prototypic behaviour are used by other biologists. Plutchik, to name but one, concocts eight ‘prototypic dimensions’ of an organism’s behaviour and tries to attribute emotions directly to these8. The eight dimensions consist of four pairs of bipolar axes: incorporation/rejection, destruction/protection, reproduction/deprivation and orientation/exploration. One assumes emotions for Plutchik are hence somewhat akin to the state-space theory of memory. His step too far involves directly pairing up the four axes with emotions. His attempts to do this end in some very bizarre and arbitrary classification structuring. For example, Plutchik links the reproduction dimension with the emotion ‘ecstasy’ 9. Certainly, I can imagine an ecstatic reproductive instance (sex!), but surely childbirth, months of discomfort and the burden of tending for young children cannot all be instances of ecstasy as well? They are not, and Plutchik is just plain wrong in his prototypic dimension theory. The second big advantage for the psychoevolutionists is that their method can explain why we have the emotions we do in certain situations10. This is most true of emotional responses that still have their original function; fear is to protect our lives, love is for continuation of the species, anger enables us to act in a heightened mode – useful for protective and destructive endeavours.
Biology The biological facts that should flesh out the content of the emotion process are offered by researchers of the brain. However, at this point, only a limited degree of convergence is present. Papez underscores the anatomical areas of the brain that are largely agreed to be somehow involved in emotion: the hypothalamus, the gyrus cinguli, the hippocampus and their respective connections11. According to Papez, pathways from organs receiving stimuli are split at the thalamic level into three routes or ‘streams’12. The stream of movement and the stream of thought are directed to the corpus striatum and lateral cerebral cortex respectively, but it is the stream of ‘feeling’ that interests us here. Concomitant impulses are sent through the ventral thalamus to the hypothalamus and the gyrus cinguli. In this way, sensory excitation that get to the lateral cortex are emotionally ‘coloured’ by concurrent processes originating in the hypothalamic region. 8
Plutchik. 1962. P. 72
9
Plutchik. 1962. P. 79
10
Griffiths. 1989. P. 308
11
Papez. 1937. P.302
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Arnold highlights the importance of affective recall in emotional appraisal. Memory is the source of almost all of the facts we take into account when appraising something, hence memory tracts of the brain must be included in a complete account of emotion. Affective recall is mediated by relays from the limbic cortex to the cingulum, hippocampus, postcommissural fornix, mamilliary body and anterior thalamic nucleus back to cortical limbic areas13. Arnold also suggests a different mechanism that brings about the stream of ‘feeling’ Plutchik talked of. It involves what she calls the ‘action circuit’: the limbic cortex is connected via relays to the hippocampus, hypothalamus, fornix, midbrain and cerebellum14. Without expert neuroscientific knowledge myself, it is hard to criticise such a claim. One thing can be said, however, it is one thing for researchers like Arnold to posit numerous areas of the brain which are involved in emotion, and quite another to actually explain the process.
Objections A telling criticism against the psychoevolutionary enterprise questions whether purely evolutionary explanations can ever relieve puzzlement about the vast abundance of different emotions. We can recognise an indefinitely large number of responses as an instance of an emotion. To illustrate, imagine I am angry. This will be clear to others whether I get into a fistfight, stomp my feet, wear a scowling frown, scream loudly, act impatiently or a thousand other things. Can evolutionary explanations really cover the ground needed to unify this enormous set of data? It is also far from certain that the psychoevolutionary stance can suggest a reasonable explanation for imagined emotions. They are neither functional nor seem to be previously functional. They are not communicative, considering they are often unreported. It is difficult to imagine what role they could have played in our evolutionary history. Perhaps the only way to explain these emotions is with reference to social/cultural phenomena, such as escapism.
Conclusion One of the most difficult aspects of the study of emotion, alluded to by both Averill and Griffiths, is the appearance that emotions have greatly different causes. In fact, for many researchers, studying each emotion independently is a useful experimental method. Any attempt to unify either the source or the classification of human emotions must therefore take in broad aspects of our physiology and neuroanatomy as well as our language and concept usage. The psychoevolutionary account explains the first part of the unification, yet is silent with regards to the import of the folk psychology of emotions. A brave and much needed move in emotion research, thus, is giving an explanation of the relation between our folk-concepts and physical occurrences, while specifying how dividing the emotions conceptually the way we have is a direct product of environmental (including social) factors.
13
14
Arnold. 1970. P.283
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Bibliography Arnold, Magda B (ed.). 1968. The Nature of Emotion, London: Penguin Books 1970. “Brain Function in Emotion: A Phenomenological Analysis,” in Black, Perry (ed.) 1970. Physiological Correlates of Emotion, USA: Academic Press Black, Perry (ed.) 1970. Physiological Correlates of Emotion, USA: Academic Press Bindra, Dalbir. 1970. “Emotion and Behaviour Theory,” in Black, Perry (ed.) 1970. Physiological Correlates of Emotion, USA: Academic Press Ekman, P. & Davidson R. J. (eds.) The Nature of Emotion: Fundamental Questions U.S.A.: Oxford University Press Green, O.H. 1992. The Emotions, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers Griffiths P.E. 1989. “The Degeneration of the Cognitive Theory of Emotions,” Philosophical Psychology 2, 297-313 McNaughton, N. 1989. Biology and Emotion, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Papez, J.W. 1937. “A proposed mechanism of emotion,” in Arnold, M. (ed.) The Nature of Emotion London: Penguin Books Plutchik, R. 1962. “The evolutionary basis of emotional behaviour,” in Arnold, M. (ed.) The Nature of Emotion London: Penguin Books Solomon, R. C.1993. The Passions: Emotions and the Meaning of Life, U.S.A.: Hackett Publishing
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