It turns out that emotions are not straight forward things. Perhaps instinctively we imagine them to be such things as anger, sadness, happiness, fear, joy et al. And it turns out likely that would be an acceptable initial if somewhat abstract understanding. Acceptable that is until you discover there is always a beyond the obvious.
For the eighteenth and early nineteenth century empiricists like Hume and Locke, the mind was a single field of thought and feeling, fully conscious and transparent to itself. This mind was made up of visual, auditory, and tactile impressions, and distinct ideas which were the product of these impressions. Or as Hume put it, “like players in a theatre who successively make their appearance, pass, repass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations”. These early ideas were later dismissed. The suggestion emotions were just these pure and simple things floating around waiting to come together before dissipating again was deemed flawed. It missed the point that emotions are not stand alone boxable feelings but unique and unrepeatable; the mind, the body, the moment are never twice the same. A unique amalgamation of everything if you wish.
From the late nineteenth century a philosophising psychologist called William James decided, and incidentally this is apparently still a respected idea in the psychology world, a statement that needs checking and confirming beyond one verbal source, that emotions were the result of bodily physiological sensations. What this means is that were we to see a bear in a forest, our body would react, for example our legs might go weak and our hearts beat wildly, and this would trigger the emotion of fear within us. While undoubtedly reactions on a physical level play a role in emotions, to claim those bodily feelings create the emotions doesn’t hold up when challenged with the fact our legs feel weak and our heart beat increases when we go for a run. In that circumstance the feeling of fear is generally not the emotion people feel. The fact physically you feel the same feelings when you experience love, fear and exercise explains why this stance in itself is not widely held in contemporary thought.
From here we move into more accepted ideas of emotions, the main two being judgements and perceptions. They state that we see the bear, make an evaluative judgement of the situation, feel the emotion and have a suitable physical response, or that after seeing the bear we have an emotional and physical response based upon how we perceive the situation to be. This being philosophy neither are fool proof. If we were to be standing behind guard rails looking over the edge of a cliff we may still feel fear despite the fact we have made the rational judgement that we are not in danger of falling over. We have a contradictory emotional response to how we have assessed the situation. This argument could be used for fear of household British spiders too. It is important to mention though that evaluative judgements are ever forming and not just made in the moment. Proponents in the perceptual model would suggest we feel fear as we look over the precipice because we can perceive the inherent danger, an argument which frankly holds up a lot better. Unlike the judgemental model which deals with the rational and irrational, the perceptual approach is arational. When they have to explain non-human animal and infant human emotions both struggle to justify their positions as neither beasts nor babies have the required language to make evaluative judgements nor, and this is very debatable, the cognitive abilities to have an instinctive perceptual reaction. This point definitely needs further investigation though.
Two thoughts that came up after todays seminar were whether we can have an unconscious emotion, for example feelings of pain in the neck or ache in the head are symptoms of the emotion of stress, yet we may be completely unaware we’re stressed or anxious about anything. Are we unconscious in that moment of the emotion or just unaware of it from a cognitive perspective. Is this emotion a physical feeling only. If we’re unaware of this emotion then it stands to say we’re not consciously aware of it and so unconscious of it, yet unconscious seems like too strong a word.
The second thought was whether perception is just an evaluation or judgement made at an earlier time. Do we perceive danger in the bear because long ago we made the judgement that bears are dangerous. We may make the judgement in the moment that the bear on the other side of the valley could do us harm but likely won’t and so we’re in little to no danger, yet we still feel the emotion of fear. We arguably perceive the possibility of danger, the danger we judged bears can inflict when we learnt bears as dangerous. My dog would likely also feel this danger but it’s doubtable a baby would, and arguably neither would a puppy.
This is as far as week one has really got. There was also mention of something called the Common Sense Theory which is that you see the bear, something cognitive happens, you feel the suitable emotion and have a bodily physiological reaction. Unfortunately in philosophy common sense seems to infer not suitably complicated and therefore deeply flawed so this theory only ever seems to be granted a couple of sentences at most. There has been a bit regarding recalcitrant emotions, which are emotions that conflict with judgements and likely perceptions but these will be the focus of the material in weeks two and three. Their existence was touched upon but just to bring an awareness to something that appears to sow difficulties in all the theories. This will become clear. As will hopefully a further and clearer understanding of what is very much a base and slightly confused understanding of the few concepts so far. Seemingly the philosophy of emotions is yet to find a generally held coherent argument. Arguably there’s something in all the perspectives and undoubtedly emotions consist of a combination of sensations, experiences, perceptions and judgements. Perhaps the truth simply lies in some as yet undiscovered or unmeasurable perspective and understanding. As yet of course.
Observations and Misunderstandings 