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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 June 2019
I argue that a careful consideration of the internal relation between the expression of an emotion, ‘I am angry’, and the description of the object of that emotion, ‘That was wrong’, illuminates the sense in which emotions are intentional, and perhaps also rational, as brought out in cognitive accounts of emotion. It also throws light on the moral and interpersonal aspects of our emotional life, which I instantiate through a discussion of the different perspectives on what has happened between the parties in a quarrel and the kinds of failures of understanding that may take place in such cases.
1 For one of the first expositions of this idea, see Kenny, Anthony, Action, Emotion and Will (London; New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul: Humanities Press, 1963)Google Scholar.
2 Brentano, Franz, Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (London: Routledge, 1973 [1874]), 88Google Scholar.
3 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1997), §476Google Scholar.
4 Taylor, Gabriele, ‘Love’, in Hondrich, Ted and Burnyeat, Myles (eds) Philosophy as It Is, (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd, 1979), 165–182Google Scholar.
5 Op. cit. note 4, 166.
6 Op. cit. note 4, 166.
7 Op. cit. note 4, 166.
8 Solomon, Robert C., ‘Emotions and Choice’, in Rorty, Amélie Oksenberg (ed.) Explaining Emotions (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1980), 251–281Google Scholar. Solomon, Robert C., The Passions (London: Hackett, 1993)Google Scholar. Nussbaum, Martha C., Love's Knowledge (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990)Google Scholar.
9 Op. cit. note 4, 165–168.
10 For this kind of criticism, see, Griffiths, Paul E., What Emotions Really Are (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Prinz, Jesse, Gut Reactions. A Perceptual Theory of Emotions (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)Google Scholar. Robinson, Jenefer, ‘Emotion: Biological Fact or Social Construction?’, in Solomon, Robert C. (ed.) Thinking About Feeling: Contemporary Philosophers on Emotions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 28–42, 35Google Scholar.
11 LeDoux, Joseph, The Emotional Brain (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996)Google Scholar.
12 In a recent study, LeDoux and Brown, rather propose a modified version of a higher-order theory of emotion that emphasises the relevance of cortical circuits for emotional consciousness. In a manner similar to the cognitive accounts of emotion under discussion here, they write: ‘An emotion is the conscious experience that occurs when you are aware that you are in [sic] particular kind of situation that you have come, through your experiences, to think of as a fearful situation. If you are not aware that you are afraid, you are not afraid; if you are not afraid, you aren't feeling fear. Another implication is that you can never be mistaken about what emotion you are feeling. The emotion is the experience you are having: if you are feeling afraid but someone tells you that they think you were angry or jealous, they may be accurate about why feeling angry or jealous might have been appropriate, given behaviors you expressed in the situation, but they would be wrong about what you actually experienced.’ LeDoux, Joseph and Brown, Richard, ‘A Higher-order Theory of Emotional Consciousness’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 114(10) (2017)CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, E2016–E2025, E2022. I have more sympathy for psychological theories that regard emotions as socially constructed than as hardwired, natural phenomena. See e.g. Barrett, Lisa Feldman, ‘Are Emotions Natural Kinds?’ Perspectives on Psychological Science 1(1) (2006), 28–58CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Harré, Rom, (ed.) The Social Construction of Emotions (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986)Google Scholar. However, it is the explicit aim of this discussion not to take a stand on the neurological background mechanisms of what we call emotions. It is, however, central to my approach to note that the shift in LeDoux's theorising is not an outcome of new data, but a reconsideration of what in the data one is to call by the name ‘emotion’, or more specifically, ‘fear’. Is it meaningful to call non-conscious affective episodes, or appraisals, ‘emotions’ or should we limit the notion to conscious experiences? (Cf. LeDoux, Joseph, ‘Coming to Terms with Fear’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 111(8) (2014): 2871–2878.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed) On this account, it is also relevant to ask whether LeDoux and Brown's limitation of emotions to conscious experiences is too rigid. As will become clear in my discussion, some form of self-awareness is central to our understanding of emotion. This is true not least in the sense that emotions are attributed to persons. (Cf. Bennett and Hacker's discussion of the mereological fallacy, i.e. attributing states to the brain that are ordinarily attributed to persons in Maxwell, Bennett and Hacker, Peter, ‘The Conceptual Presuppositions of Cognitive Neuroscience’, in Bennett, Maxwell, Dennett, Daniel, Hacker, Peter, and Searle, John (eds) Neuroscience and Philosophy, (New York: Columbia University Press. 2007), 89–111, 91.Google Scholar) Nevertheless, as my discussion will also make clear, it does, pace LeDoux, make sense to attribute emotions to a person, although the person is unaware that her behaviour can be seen under this description, and may be unwilling to accept this as the proper description of what she is feeling.
13 On the difference between investigating the object of an emotion by contrast to its cause, see also Solomon, ‘Emotions and Choice’, op. cit, note 8, 25–257.
14 Hamlyn, D.W., Perception, Learning and the Self (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983)Google Scholar.
15 Op cit. note 14, 272.
16 Op cit. note 14, 272.
17 Op cit. note 14, 272.
18 Op. cit. note 14. Robert C. Roberts, Emotions: An Essay in Aid of Moral Psychology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Ronald de Sousa, ‘The Rationality of Emotions’ in Oksenberg Rorty (ed), op. cit. note 8, 127–151.
19 Phil Hutchinson, Shame and Philosophy: An Investigation in the Philosophy of Emotions and Ethics (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).
20 Op. cit. note 3, §664.
21 Here I am leaning on a broadly Wittgensteinian tradition, cf. op. cit. note 3, §43. For a more general discussion, see Cavell, Stanley, The Claim of Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979)Google Scholar, especially chapter 7. For a discussion of how this view of philosophy comes into the philosophy of mind, see Cockburn, David, Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind (London: Palgrave, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an overview of Wittgenstein's remarks on emotion, see Bellucci, Francesco, ‘Wittgenstein's Grammar of Emotions’, RIFL 7(1) (2013), 3–17Google Scholar.
22 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Zettel (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1970), §489Google Scholar.
23 Eliot, George, Middlemarch (London: Penguin Books, 1994), 633Google Scholar.
24 Op. cit. note 23, 635.
25 Op. cit. note 23, 635.
26 Op. cit. note 23, 634.
27 I focus on anger in my discussion of the relationship between Rosamond and Lydgate, and in particular this scene. Clearly, there are many other emotions which play out in it. A discussion of their relationship in relation to shame is found in Hirsch, Gordon, ‘Ardor and Shame in Middlemarch’ in Adamson, Joseph and Clark, Hilary (eds) Scenes of Shame: Psychoanalysis, Shame, and Writing (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), 83–99Google Scholar.
28 The point here is not that whenever I do something ‘secretly’ or ‘in opposition’ to somebody I am necessarily doing something wrong, nor that it is always wrong to intentionally hide what I am doing from someone. If, e.g, I plan a surprise birthday party for you, I may be described as acting secretly and intentionally hiding things from you, but this is not a reason for blame. It would, however, sound strange to say that in doing this I ‘went behind your back’, since that is an expression of blame, which is internally related to my deceiving you. Planning a surprise for you is not deceiving you even if I, in a sense, withhold the truth.
29 Op. cit note 23, 633.
30 It is a characteristic feature of at least Taylor's account to take talk about the objects of emotions as a function of giving reasons for holding certain beliefs about the world, rather than, say, as a reason for feeling certain ways. Cf. Cockburn, David, Other Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1997), 41–49Google Scholar. It should be clear, however, that words, such as, ‘That was wrong’ or ‘You went behind my back’, ‘You betrayed your promises to me’, do not simply have the role in conversation of describing, or even stating, facts. They are means of hurling accusations at each other, and themselves form reasons for the other, not primarily to believe certain things, but significantly to feel certain ways, such as hurt, offended, remorseful, as well as to act in certain ways. They are meant to make someone listen, put an end to the wrong, or ask for forgiveness. Cf. Cavell, Stanley, ‘Passionate and Performative Utterance’ in Goodman, Russel B. (ed.) Contending with Stanley Cavell (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2005), 177–198Google Scholar.
31 Op. cit. note 23, 634.
32 Op. cit. note 23, 634.
33 This marks a further failure of Rosamond in that she lets what is agreeable or not rule her view of what is wrong or right.
34 Op. cit. note 23, 634.
35 This, I take it, is one dimension of Wittgenstein's remark that one does not see the eye in the visual field. Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1993), §5.633-5.6331Google Scholar.
36 See e.g. Solomon, ‘Emotions and Choice’, op. cit, note 8, Nussbaum, op. cit. note 8.
37 Solomon, ‘Emotions and Choice’, op. cit. note 8, 257–258.
38 Op. cit. note 4, 167.
39 It is tempting to think that the distinction between the facts they are in agreement about and the ones about which they disagree mirrors the distinction between fact and value. However, as Elizabeth Anscombe has shown in her discussion of brute facts, it is not clear from the beginning whether a sentence is to be taken as designating a fact or expressing a value. Anscombe, G.E.M, Ethics, Religion and Politics: Collected Philosophical Papers Volume III (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981), 22–42Google Scholar. The sentences ‘She wrote a letter to his uncle’ ‘He did not know’ can be taken as a brute fact in relation to the sentence ‘She went behind his back’. In other words, we can in some contexts infer the latter ‘value judgement’ from the first ’statements of fact’. In a different context, though, the sentence ‘She went behind his back’ can be brute in relation to another sentence, such as, ‘She had ‘flourished wonderfully on a murdered man's brain’, op. cit. note 23, 792, i.e. they stand as facts that substantiate the further evaluative claim.
40 Cf. Hertzberg, Lars, ‘On Knowing Right from Wrong’, in Gustafsson, Ylva, Kronqvist, Camilla and Nykänen, Hannes (eds) Ethics and the Philosophy of Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013), 160–170Google Scholar.
41 Cf. Hertzberg, Lars., ‘On Aesthetic Reactions and Changing One's Mind’, in Lewis, Peter (ed.) Wittgenstein, Aesthetics and Philosophy (Aldershot, Burlingham: Ashgate, 2004), 95–106, 164Google Scholar.
42 Anscombe, G.E.M, ‘Under a Description’, Noûs 13(2) (1979), 219–233CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
43 Solomon, Robert C., ‘Reasons for Love’, in Williams, Clifford (ed.) Personal Virtues: Introductory Readings (New York, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 143–181, 144CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
44 See however de Sousa, Ronald, Love: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 59–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
45 Op. cit. note 35, §6.43.
46 In this relation, consider the following remark. ‘The happy lover and the unhappy lover both have their particular pathos. But it is harder to bear yourself well as an unhappy lover than as a happy one.’ Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 86e.