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Bodily Feeling in Emotion*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2010

Philip J. Koch
Philip J. Koch
Affiliation:
University of Prince Edward Island
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Extract

One might imagine that this remark of James was too obvious to be denied, but in fact current philosophical orthodoxy runs against it. Since the renewal of interest in the emotions produced by Anthony Kenny's Action Emotion and Will in 1963, philosophers have focussed primarily on the cognitive aspects of emotions—the judgments, evaluations, beliefs, presuppositions which they contain. Bodily feelings have been, on the whole, slighted. Sometimes they are dismissed outright, as by Robert Solomon: “feelings no more constitute or define the emotion than an army of fleas constitutes a homeless dog. … Feeling is the ornamentation of emotion, not its essence.”; more often, as in Jerome Neu, given only rather slight attention because “thoughts are of greater importance than feelings (in the narrow sense of felt sensations) in the classification and discrimination of emotional states”.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , Spring 1987 , pp. 59 - 76
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1987

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References

1 James, William, “What Is An Emotion?”, Mind 9 (1984), 188–205.Google Scholar It will be seen, as this essay unfolds, that I reject much of the rest of James's theory of emotion.

2 Thus Roger Scruton: “It is now widely accepted that all emotion involves both understanding and activity and, indeed, that nothing important is left to an emotion when those terms have been removed from it” (“Emotion, Practical Knowledge and Common Culture”, in Rorty, A., ed., Explaining Emotions [Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1980], 524).Google Scholar There are of course exceptions to this orthodoxy. The best of these is still Moreland Perkins' “Emotion and Feeling”, The Philosophical Review 75 (1966), 139–160,CrossRefGoogle Scholar a well argued and sensitive defence of feelings that received less attention than it deserved. I owe much to that article.

3 Solomon, Robert, The Passions (Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1976), 158.Google Scholar

4 Neu, Jerome, Emotion Thought and Therapy (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1977), 152.Google Scholar

5 Cf. Bedford, Errol, “Emotions”, in Chappell, V., ed., The Philosophy of Mind (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1962), 111–113.Google Scholar I discuss an argument he bases on this distinction below in note 33.

6 Alston, William, “Feelings”, The Philosophical Review 78 (1969), 3–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Feeling f and being fare not in general to be equated. For example, “It is possible for one to be tired without feeling tired, and to feel tired without being tired (according to objective indexes of fatigue)” (6). Admitting that with emotional feelings it may be impossible to feel f without being f, he thinks that it is possible to be (emotionally) f without feeling it: “I may be quite angry at x but 'not let myself realize it'” (6n).

7 The term is Alston's (ibid., 6) but the distinction is noted by others. In “Emotion and Feeling” (148–149), Moreland Perkins distinguishes between “occasional conditions” and “standing conditions”. Alston, , in his 1967 Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on “Emotion and Feeling” (vols. 1 and 2 [New York: Macmillan, 1967], 479),Google Scholar distinguishes “emotional states” from “dispositions to various states”. For a more recent discussion, see Lyons, William, Emotion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 53–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a rejection of the distinction, see Solomon, The Passions, 161.

8 This is, of course, an enormously contentious issue. The constituent approach is nothing new, being traceable back through I. Thalberg's, “Constituents and Causes of Emotion and Action”, The Philosophical Quarterly 23 (January 1973)Google Scholar to McGill's, V. J. four-factor analysis in Emotions and Reasons (Springfield, IL: C. C. Thomas, 1954),Google Scholar and arguably back to Aristotle's De Anima. Among psychologists, one of the foremost contemporary writers on emotion, Magda Arnold, utilizes a conception that comes to much the same thing as mine: “I would define emotion as afelt action tendency toward anything intuitively appraised as good, or away from intuitively appraised as bad for me here and now. This attraction or aversion is accompanied by a pattern of physiological changes organized toward a specific kind of approach or withdrawal” (Philosophical Studies 22 [1975], 154).Google Scholar As for my choice of constituents, each—as well as the constituent approach—have been attacked in the literature. For a partial defence, and illustrations of the usefulness of this analysis, see my “Expressing Emotion”, The Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 64 (1983), 176–191CrossRefGoogle Scholar and “Loneliness Without Objects”, The Southern Journal of Philosophy 21 (1983), 193–209CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Indeed at this stage the definition must remain open to the possibility that some of the constituents (or ingredients, as I shall often call them) can only be adequately analyzed through reference to some of the others: for it is possible to argue that attentional sets themselves essentially involve evaluative judgments (and in some ways tempting to argue for the converse). Plainly, too, some sorts of desires include bodily feelings.

10 Hume, David, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. Selby-Bigge, L. A. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888; reprint ed., 1975),Google Scholar 2.1 §2, 277. Hume was aware of the other aspects of emotion we have designated constituents, but preferred to analyze them as separate from the emotion itself, related by association or as causes or effects.

11 Ryle, Gilbert, The Concept of Mind (London: Hutchinson, 1949), 83–84.Google Scholar

12 Alston, , “Emotion and Feeling”, 483.Google Scholar

13 Ryle thought that “though the seven cited uses of 'feel' are not members of one family, still they do have traceable genealogical connections”, “Feelings”, The Philosophical Quarterly (1951), 197.Google Scholar For Alston's attempt to reduce this plurality of senses, see “Emotion and Feeling”, 484.

14 I might have chosen “sensations”, were it not for the suggestions that term carries of localizabtlity and body-focussedness—both of which I wish to avoid.

15 For a useful contemporary study of the concept of passion, see Lawrie, R., “Passion”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 41 (1980), 106–126CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 This is not the only way philosophers have classified feelings, and a few other typologies may interest the reader. Scheler, Max, Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Value, trans. Fringes, Manfred S. and Funk, Roger L. (Evanston, IL: North-western University Press, 1973),Google Scholar differentiated types of feeling according to their level in a hierarchy of the life of feeling: (1) sensory feelings; (2) vital feelings; (3) psychic feelings; (4) spiritual feelings. Stephen Strasser in Phenomenology of Feeling (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1977)Google Scholar differentiates felt experience into (1) impulse feelings, (2) the experience of attraction, (3) the experience of being-apprehended. Kenny, Anthony in Action Emotion and Will (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963)Google Scholar devoted his chapter on Feelings to distinguishing (1) feelings of emotion, (2) feelings of perception, (3) feelings of sensation. Agnes Heller in A Theory of Feelings (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1979), 64, offers the following classification: (1) drive feelings, (2) affects, (3) orientative feelings, (4) emotions proper (cognitive situational feelings), (5) character and personality feelings, (6) emotional predispositions. See also her interesting comparison of feeling terms from several languages (59–60).

17 Solomon, , The Passions, 157n.Google Scholar

18 These projective feelings cause one to recall with new interest Brentano's claim that intentionality characterizes all mental states, and to recall with new suspicion Kenny's claim that “the most most important difference between a sensation and an emotion is that emotions, unlike sensations, are essentially directed to objects” (Kenny, , Action Emotion and Will, 60)Google Scholar.

19 Wittgenstein, L., Philosophical Investigations (New York: Macmillan, 1953), 2, 1, 174e.Google Scholar

20 Bedford, , “Emotions”, 113–114.Google Scholar

21 Ibid., 120–121.

22 Ryle, , The Concept of Mind, 100.Google Scholar

23 Kenny, , Action Emotion and Will, 60.Google Scholar

24 Solomon, , The Passions, 161.Google Scholar

25 Marks, Joel, “A Theory of Emotion”, Philosophical Studies, 42 (1982), 228.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 Solomon, , The Passions, 159.Google Scholar

27 Wilson, J. R., Emotion and Object (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 Cf. Alston's discussion of dispositions in “Feelings”, 6 and Lyons', Emotion, 53–57.

29 Rilke, Ranier Maria, The Notebooks of Matte Laurids Brigge (New York: Vintage, 1985), 82.Google Scholar

30 The odd consequence—that sometimes “emotion-words” can be used to refer to non-emotional states—is not balked at by Perkins (“Emotion and Feeling”, 155). Neu makes a similar suggestion (Emotion Thought and Therapy, 167).

31 Alston, , “Emotion and Feeling”, 486.Google Scholar Cf. Kenny's remarks in a similar vein (Action Emotion and Will, 67–69), but see also Lyons' worries on the subject (Emotion, 87–89).

32 Solomon, , The Passions, 160.Google Scholar See also Neu, , Emotion Thought and Therapy, 141Google Scholar.

33 There is a curious argument that Bedford advances against a bodily feeling component which belongs in this section. As I understand his longish paragraph on 111–112, the argument is this: “One cannot understand what it is to feel angry without first under-standing what it is to be angry” (as is shown by reflection upon the possibility of teaching these expressions). (Therefore) “being angry is logically prior to feeling angry”, (and therefore) “being angry does not entail feeling angry, and, a fortiori, does not entail having any other feeling”. His initial premise, seems wrong to me. Surely the concepts mentioned are learned together as part of a logical network. “You're angry” is taught fundamentally in cases where the child is experiencing some bodily feelings, I should think. However that may be, Bedford's own reasons for denying that emotion statements ascribe bodily feelings are well known: the function of such statements is held to be “judicial, not informative”—in particular, not informative of bodily feelings. Noting this function was a valuable contribution, though its significance was severely circumscribed 8 years later by Perkins, “Emotion and Feeling”. Suffice here to close with the observation that there is no contradiction in holding that emotion statements fulfill both judicial and informative functions.

34 Kenny, , Action Emotion and Will, 14.Google Scholar

35 Ironically, Bedford suggests unwittingly just such an analysis in his attempt to account for the relations between emotion and emotional behaviour (see 116–117). William Lyons takes a parallel position with regard to physiological changes and emotion: some physiological change is essential for “being in an emotional state”, but no particular set of changes is criterial for any particular emotion (cf. Lyons, Emotion, especially chap. 7). Daniel Farrell appears to take the line I am endorsing in his article “Jealousy”, The Philosophical Review 89 (1980), see especially 543.

36 W. B. Cannon, “The James-Lange Theory of Emotion: A Critical Examination and An Alternative Theory”, The American Journal of Psychology 39 (1927), 106–124.

37 J. Singer and S. Schachter, “Cognitive, Social and Physiological Determinants of Emotional States”, Psychological Review 69/5 (1962).

38 Schachter's and Singer's work has been an important factor in the development of a psychological approach towards the emotions called Labeling Theory.

39 Solomon, The Passions, 156.

40 Ibid., 158. Bedford uses the same argument (“Emotions”, 111).

41 Solomon, The Passions, 158. On 178 he insists that “a feeling is not even a component of emotion”. Their relation to the emotion is sometimes said to be associational (e.g., 171), sometimes causal (191). Yet he also says—inconsistently—that emotions “may even essentially involve feelings” (160). Perhaps this last was just a slip.

42 For examples, see: Solomon, , The Passions, 178Google Scholar; Bedford, , “Emotions”, 113Google Scholar; Kenny, , Action Emotion and Will, 60Google Scholar; and Neu, , Emotion Thought and Therapy, 152Google Scholar.

43 An interesting line of argument for the claim that emotions are not identified through reference to bodily feelings rests on the claim that the bodily feelings of an emotion are themselves identified/characterized by reference to the emotion; so that to attempt to identify an emotion by its bodily feelings would be a kind of vacuous and circular procedure. This line of thought develops out of epistemological worries about “inner objects”, and parallel claims have been made about sense impressions and proprioceptive sensations:

(a) sense impressions are non-contingently referenced to external objects (the feel of silk, the colour of beef fat, the smell of onions)

(b) proprioceptive sensations are non-contingently referenced to publicly observable states of our bodies (my finger felt doubled-back, I had the sensation of one leg bent under the other).

Kenny appears to develop such a line of thought in response to Ryle, who held that “in attaching a feeling to an emotional condition we are applying a causal hypothesis”, The Concept of Mind, 105. Ryle argued thus: one may diagnose as a twinge of remorse what is really a twinge of fear; therefore, a report of a twinge of remorse embodies afallable hypothesis about the cause of the twinge (105). Kenny demurred: “(if Ryle is correct) it must be possible to identify the effect independently of the cause. … It must be possible, on Ryle's view, to know that one has a tug, but not to know that it is a tug of commiseration. … (But) we know what 'tug' means in this context only because we are familiar with the use of'commiseration'. It is because we know about the various states which these feelings are feelings of that we can see and applaud the appropriateness of the words which Ryle employs for the feelings themselves (Action Emotion and Will, 80).” I find this argument confusing; for it might be true (last premise) that we can see the appropriateness of the descriptor “tug” because we know about the various states of which we can feel tugs, yet be unsure as to which of those states we are presently in (because, e.g., we have not reflected upon our attitude towards the object of our emotion), and so know that we have a tug but not know that it is a tug of commiseration (as opposed, e.g., to a tug of voyeuristic curiosity, or a tug of guilt). Anyhow, the claim that we only know what “tug” means because we know the use of “commiseration” seems false: “commiseration” is a more “highfalutin” word than “tug”. But even if bodily feelings were describable only in terms that were emotion-laden, since (according to Kenny, among others) no bodily feelings are peculiar to each emotion type, the bodily feeling description would have to tolerate a range of emotions; and this would leave logical room for a person to know that they had the feeling, but not know which emotion they were feeling.

44 Marks, Joel, “A Theory of Emotion”, 229.Google Scholar

45 Ibid., 230.

46 Solomon, who equates emotions with subjective judgments, is forced to add that emotions are “relatively intense evaluative judgements” (The Passions, 187). Marks seizes upon this, and the ensuing criticisms of Solomon and Lyons are right on-target.

47 Skillen, Anthony, review of Lyons' Emotion, in Mind 92 (1983), 310.CrossRefGoogle Scholar He continues: “Rather, it might be a better start to go back to Aristotle's suggestion in De Anima that bodily change stands to directed thought as 'matter' to 'form'. We are moved as incarnately conscious 'whole' beings when we are angry.” Several of the points in my two remaining sections were stimulated by these remarks.

48 Cf. Herrigel's, Eugen exclamation in Zen In The Art of Archery (New York: McGraw Hill, 1964), 88.Google Scholar “Isit T who draw the bow, or is it the bow that draws me into the state of highest tension? Do 'I' hit the goal, or does the goal hit me? Is 'It' spiritual when seen by the eyes of the body, and corporeal when seen by the eyes of the spirit—or both or neither? Bow, arrow, goal and ego, all melt into one another, so that I can no longer separate them. And even the need to separate has gone. For as soon as I take the bow and shoot, everything becomes so clear and straightforward and so ridiculously simpie …”.