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Emotion, Cognition and Action

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2010

David Charles
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Extract

Contemporary philosophers have not, at least until very recently, been much concerned with the study of the emotions. It was not always so. The Stoics thought deeply about this topic. Although they were divided on points of detail, they agreed on the broad outline of an account. In it

emotions are valuational judgments (or beliefs) and resulting affective states.

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Papers
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Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 55 , September 2004 , pp. 105 - 136
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Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2004

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References

1 On these issues, see Nussbaum, Martha, The Therapy of Desire, Princeton 1994Google Scholar, Sorabji, Richard, Emotion and Peace of Mind, Oxford 2000.Google Scholar

2 Aristotle discusses imagination (phantasia) in De Anima Γ.3. In one of his examples, he describes a person for whom the moon looks a foot across, even though he believes that it is the size of the inhabited world (428b2ff). Imagination, unlike belief, is not subject to rational argument (428al8ff). Aristotle's canonical description of fear is as arising from the imagination of some imminent pain or harm (Rhetoric B.5, 1382a21–3).

3 See for example, Beck, A. T., Cognitive Therapy and Emotional Disorder, New York 1976Google Scholar, Beck, A. T., Rush, A. J., Shaw, B. E, and Emery, G., Cognitive Therapy for Depression, New York 1979Google Scholar, Alford, B.A. and Beck, A. T., The Integrative Power of Cognitive Therapy, New York 1997Google Scholar.

4 Rachman, J., Introduction to The Science and Practice of Cognitive Therapy, Essays in Honour of Michael Gelder, ed. Clark, D. M. and Fairburn, C. G., Oxford 1997.Google Scholar

5 See, for example, Clark, D. M., ‘A Cognitive Approach to Panic’, Behaviour Research and Therapy, 1986, 24, pp. 461–70.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

6 See A Guide to Treatments That Work, ed. Nathan, P. M. and Gorman, J. M., Oxford 2002, pp. 315–6.Google Scholar

7 The phrase ‘belief-based’ is intended to encompass two different types of cognitive theory. In one, beliefs account for the origin of the condition, in another for its maintenance. Cognitive theorists do not always clearly distinguish between these two very different types of account.

8 In the case of eating disorders in general, purely behavioural treatment does not work as well. The research evidence is summarized in A Guide to Treatments That Work, p. 569.

9 Davidson, D.: ‘Hume's Cognitive Theory of Pride’, in Essays on Actions and Events, Oxford 1980Google Scholar and Wollheim, R.On the Emotions, New Haven 1999Google Scholar. Wollheim focuses on sophisticated emotions which arise after one has been drawn to or repelled by something and involve awareness of one's own relation to the appealing and the repellent.

10 See Jacobson, N. S., Martell, C. R., Dimijdan, T., ‘Behavioral Activation Treatment for Depression’, Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice 2001, pp. 264–70Google Scholar. Hollon, S. D., ‘Behavioral Activation for Depression: A Commentary,’ Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice 2001, pp. 271–4.Google Scholar

11 On this, see Teasdale, J. and Barnard., P., Affect, Cognition and Change, Hove 1993, pages 8ff.Google Scholar

12 Teasdale, J. and Barnard., P., Affect, Cognition and Change, p. 216Google Scholar.

13 See their Affect, Cognition and Change, esp. pp. 65–96 and 209–23.

14 Stacker, Michael, ‘Psychic Feelings’ in Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 61, 1983, pp. 5–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Goldie, Peter, The Emotions, Oxford 2000Google Scholar, Madell, Geoffrey, Philosophy, Emotion and Music, Edinburgh 2002Google Scholar.

16 See his ‘The relation between Cognition and Emotion: The Mind in Place in Mood disorders’ in The Science and Practice of Cognitive Therapy, ed. Clark, D. M. and Fairburn, C. G., Oxford 1997Google Scholar, and also Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy, Siegel, Z. V., Williams, J. M. G. and Teasdale, J. D., New York 2002Google Scholar.

17 For discussion of this case, see Evans, Gareth's The Varieties of Reference, Oxford, 1982, pp. 123ffGoogle Scholar.

18 For an interesting account of relevant internal reactions, see A. Damasio's discussion of ‘background feelings’ such as excitement, calmness, dread, tension and malaise (sickness) in The Feeling of What Happens, London 1999, p. 286Google ScholarPubMed. Damasio helpfully distinguishes these from what he calls ‘primary emotions’ such as fear, anger, disgust, surprise and sadness, and ‘secondary’ (more sophisticated) emotions such as jealousy, guilt, embarrassment and pride. There is need for further investigation of Damasio's trichotomy. If it can be sustained, there can be no one theory of all the emotions. (Perhaps my present proposal is correct for certain primary, Richard Wollheim's for certain secondary emotions. Neither seems to work for background feelings or moods).

19 These cases, so understood, present an interesting analogy with a certain view of spatial experience. According to this account, as developed by Evans, Gareth in his ‘Molyneux's Problem’, Collected Papers, Oxford 1984, pp. 364–99Google Scholar, to experience something as being to my left or within my reach is to be disposed (in normal circumstances) to act (or react at the sensorimotor level) in a given way. On this account, what is essential to the experience of something as to my left is my being disposed to act in a given way. Indeed, Evans suggested that is its ability to guide actions in this way that gives our conscious experience its distinctive spatial content. Here, too, there is room for debate as to whether the relevant reactions are best conceived as bodily movements or (more internally) as ways of attending to the object. (I shall simply assume, for present purposes, that a zombie could not have Evansian spatial experience.).

20 It is important to distinguish the case in which something looks frightening to me (as distant rocks might do at sea) from that in which it seems frightening to me. The expression ‘it seems frightening to me’ serves to indicate (at least in the use on which I am focussing) the presence of some fear in me.

21 There may be uses of the phrase ‘seeing as’ which allow us to see things as frightening only when they have a given impact on us. But such accounts would not be cognitive accounts as I construe them. For I am taking ‘cognitive accounts’ of my seeing something as frightening to be ones which do not essentially involve my being disposed to react in a given way to the object.

22 For an account along these lines, see Roberts, R.: (Phil Review 1988 and Philosophy, 71, 147–56, 1996)Google Scholar. In Roberts'account, to fear A is (1) to construe A as something dangerous or harmful which is coming one's way, and (2) to be seriously concerned about it. But this account faces several serious problems:

  1. 1.

    1. the object feared may not even appear harmful or dangerous, let alone be seen as actually dangerous or harmful (see the plight of the spiderphobics);

  2. 2.

    2. what counts as having a serious concern in this case other than taking A as frightening? Roberts' account will not (in my view) be rescued simply by replacing (1) with (1)*: to see as (or construe) A as frightening. For an experienced sailor can construe or see nearby rocks as frightening but not be frightened by them. What would make him frightened is not how they appear to him, but how they affect him: how they seem to him to be.

23 See De Anima Γ. 7, 431b7f. The sentence ‘It will be pleasant to be in Cardiganshire in April.’ may be understood in two different ways: as a prediction about what how it will be if one is in Cardiganshire in April, and as the expression of a desire to be in Cardiganshire in April. In the former, the prediction may lead to a desire to be in Cardiganshire in April. In the letter, one is actually expressing one's current desire to be there at that time. What happens in the case represented by (2)? The agent imagines being in Cardiganshire then and this affects her in a way analogous to that in which the present perceptual scene might do. She is currently affected by the envisaged future scene. Indeed, what it is to envisage the future state as pleasant is to be attracted towards it. There is no need for a further or additional desire to be present (over and above his imagining it as pleasant) to explain her aiming to be in Cardiganshire in April.

24 Some spider-phobics may agree that spiders (in their present perceptual field) seem frightening to them but deny that they look frightening. If so, in their case, the type of seeming is one which captures how they are emotionally affected by the spider, and not something they are inclined to believe.

25 One could, of course, (pace Evans) think that norms of successful action are also relevant to the content of spatial experience. For this view, see Cussins, Adrian' ‘The Connectionist Constuction of Concepts’, 1990, reprinted with additional material in (ed) Gunther, Y.H., Essays on Nonconceptual Content, Cambridge Mass. 2003, p. 133Google Scholar.

26 For further development of this style of view, see, for example, the paper by Adrian Cussins mentioned in the previous footnote.

27 For this style of view, see for example Grice, Paul's Aspects of Reason, Oxford 2001Google Scholar, chapters 2 and 3. I attribute a version of this view to Aristotle in my Aristotle's Philosophy of Action, London 1984, pp 84–96Google Scholar.

28 There is a striking analogy between the present proposal and Johnston, Mark's discussion of affect in his excellent essay ‘The Authority of Affect’ in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research Vol. LXIII, No 1, 2001, pp. 181–214CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I am indebted to Ralph Wedgwood for bringing Johnston's essay to my attention (after I had read my paper at the Oxford Conference on Action in 2002). Both of us aim to understand (what Johnston describes as) ‘affective experience’ as involving experience of the world around us. We differ, however, in several ways. (1) Johnston denies that his account of ‘affective perception’ applies to the emotions (op.cit p. 182 fnl). (2) Johnston's view appears consistent with thinking of the appropriate affect as merely a causally necessary condition for experiencing what is (e.g) alluring or frightening. (3) Johnston does not connect his discussion of affect with the idea of norms of assessment other than truth.

29 Nor is this result confined to spider-phobics. For similar results in the treatment of certain cases of obsessive-compulsive disorder, see McLean, P. D., Whittal, M. L., Thoradson, D. S. and Taylor, S., ‘Cognitive versus Behavior Therapy in the Group Treatment of Obsessive- Compulsive Disorder’, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 2001, vol. 69, no. 2, pp. 205–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 This method is discussed in detail by Susan Thorpe in Cognitive Processes in Specific Phobias and their Treatment, OxfordD.Phil 1994Google ScholarPubMed

31 Our visual system can be influenced in other ways by our understanding. Our cognitive grasp of what is in our environment often leads us to experience things differently. We can learn to see and group things differently as we acquire new concepts and a new understanding of the situation. To this extent our visual system is influenced by our cognitive grasp of our environment. In some cases, we can free ourselves from one way of looking at objects when we grasp new concepts and apply them to our experience. (See Strawson, P. F.: ‘Imagination and Perception’ in his Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays, London 1974)Google Scholar. In this way certain important aspects of our visual experience can be correctly described as conceptual.

32 There are significant differences between phobia and mood disorders (such as depression) which need to be investigated further.

33 For a view of this type of the role of claustrophobia, see Davidson, Donald, Essays on Actions and Events, Oxford 1980, p. 7Google Scholar. Davidson appears to see emotions as inputs to (or sources of) pro (or con) attitudes not as instances of such attitudes (note their absence from his list of such attitudes: ibid p. 4.) One motivation for this view may be that emotions are primarily object-related (fear is of (eg) enclosed spaces, jealousy is of one's rival…) while Davidson's attitudes are directed to actions of a certain type (Ibid., p.4)

34 Hursthouse, Rosalind. (J. Phil 1991, pp. 57–9)Google Scholar attempted to refute this aspect of Davidson's account by analysing a dramatic example in which Jane so hates Joan that, when she sees Joan's photograph, she tears at it with her nails in an attempt to gouge out Joan's eyes. Hursthouse plausibly notes that Jane's action is not to be explained by saying that she wanted to tear out Joan's eyes and believed that damaging the picture was the (or a) way to achieve this goal, and concludes that there is no Davidsonian desire-belief pair which can be invoked in explaining her action. But Davidson's own remarks (op. cit. p. 7) suggest a different model in which Jane's anger makes her want to destroy Joan's picture and she believes that ripping it up is a (or the) way to do this. After the episode, Jane can (according to Davidson) say this: I did what I wanted to do (however irrational the source of my want may have been). Successfully to pursue Hursthouse's goal one needs to challenge the role Davidson assigns to the emotions as causal sources of desire.

35 Is there always a belief of this type present? In some simple actions (such as moving or turning away from the threatening object), there may be a direct connection between the experience and our sensorimotor responses, unmediated by the presence of a further belief about how to achieve one's goal. In Davidson's account of intentional action, one requires beliefs to connect a generalized pro-attitude (eg: to avoid this spider) to the specific action to be undertaken (moving away in a given fashion from it right now) But this requirement seems to result from insisting on the presence of a generalized pro-attitude in the explanation of all intentional action. If one begins one's account with a specific experience of this object as frightening now, there seems less reason to invoke a further belief to account for one's attempts to avoid it: one just moves away from it. (This issue requires further discussion.)

36 This con-attitude to the spider (being repelled by it) should not be confused with a desire to escape it (or its presence). For one can be repelled by something but be so overawed as to have lost one's desire for flight!

37 One might say that, in this situation, such considerations are ‘silenced’ as reasons. For this terminology, put to different use, see McDowell, John's ‘Are Moral Requirements Really Hypothetical?’ P.A.S.S. vol. 52, 1978, pp. 13–29Google Scholar.

38 This comment, if correct, offers a way of undermining the first premiss in an argument sometimes used to call into question the possibility of acrasia. The argument, as developed by Davidson, in ‘The Paradoxes of Irrationality’ (Philosophical Essays on Freud, Cambridge 1982, ed. Hopkins, J. and Wollheim, R., pp.289–305)CrossRefGoogle Scholar runs as follows:

  1. [1]

    [1] Intentional action is action on reason (Premiss).

  2. [2]

    [2] If intentional action is action on a reason, it is rationally explainable (from 1).

  3. [3]

    [3] If action is rationally explainable, it is rational (from 2).

  4. [4]

    [4] Acratic action is irrational but intentional action (Premiss).

39 Velleman, David (‘What Happens When Someone Acts?’ in his The Possibility of Practical Reason, Oxford 2000, pp. 126ff)Google Scholar focuses on actions motivated by certain emotions and criticizes the standard (Davidsonian) model for not separating these adequately from actions in which the agent is genuinely involved, in which he acts on ‘a desire of his own’. While Velleman is right (in my view) to distinguish between these two classes of action, it remains unclear why the agent fails to be involved in his emotionbased actions or why these motivations are not ‘his own.’ The alternative, sketched briefly here, is to separate those actions which the agent sees as justified from those which he does not. While the latter may be intelligible to him (‘I get angry easily’), they are not rationalized by his lights.

40 I was assisted in writing this essay by helpful questions and criticisms from several participants at the Oxford Conference on The Philosophy of Action (September 2002) and at a subsequent Helsinki workshop on the emotions. I am indebted to them and to John Campbell, Jennifer Hornsby and especially Adrian Cussins for their subsequent comments. My greatest debt is to Zafra Cooper for many discussions of the relevant psychological and philosophical issues and for her continuing dissatisfaction with my attempts to address them.