Abstract
Chapter 9 defends a cognitive theory of emotions according to which they represent the world to be a certain way and they are had for reasons. This enables the application of the lessons from rational action to emotions to show that the reasons emotions are had for are facts which the emotions represent. It is argued that these reasons can ground our everyday talk of the appropriateness of emotions in a way which other popular approaches to the normativity of emotions cannot. Furthermore, when combined with the fact that the tense of an emotion affects its appropriateness this shows that tensed emotions must capture facts not captured by tenseless ones.
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- 1.
- 2.
Cf . Solomon (1993, ch. 4).
- 3.
Cf. Ryle (1949, ch. 4).
- 4.
- 5.
- 6.
A number of writers have defended the idea that emotions have cognitive content, though not all of these writers are happy to speak in terms of belief as providing that cognitive content. I will say something of this below. (Cf . Solomon (1993), Greenspan (1988), Calhoun (2003), and de Sousa (2004).) (This distinction assumes a narrow use of ‘belief’ not the umbrella one that I have been using.)
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
Cf . Shaffer (1983).
- 10.
Solomon (1988) actually argues in response that the notion of pure belief or judgment is in fact unclear, insofar as there appears to be something at fault in or pathological about a belief that one has, e.g., been wronged, which lacks relations to or elements of feeling . I think this is interesting but it does not—as Solomon acknowledges—undermine the response I have given.
- 11.
If one were to insist that an emotion was a feeling with a cognitive content, then I might be happy to speak of this feeling as a belief given an umbrella use of the term ‘belief’ as a mode of awareness (cf. Chap. 4). In this restricted sense an emotion may be no more than a belief.
- 12.
- 13.
Cf. Deigh (2010).
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- 15.
Deigh himself supposes something like this (2010, 31).
- 16.
Cf . Solomon (1998).
- 17.
It should be noted that Robinson does not take herself to have proven that no emotions involve a cognitive element, merely that not all do.
- 18.
Though that is not to say the idea is new. Aristotle was perhaps an earlier example (cf. Aristotle (384-22BC/2001, bk. IV)).
- 19.
Cf . Greenspan (2004a). She refers to the two forms as emotions adaptiveness and appropriateness respectively.
- 20.
- 21.
A different social practical advantage of emotions might be taken to arise from the idea that expressions associated with emotions aid social cohesion (cf. Robinson (1995) who attributes such an idea to Paul Ekman). But, given that emotions and behaviour needn’t be covariant, then this appears to be implausible.
- 22.
- 23.
It is no good to suppose that an emotion must be of practical value otherwise it would have been ruled out by evolution, because it could be that emotions are side effects of things which are of value, that emotions are of neutral practical value, or that we have not evolved to a state at which the negative practical value of emotions has knocked them out of existence.
- 24.
It is of note that Maclaurin and Dyke (2002) admit that they struggle to explain grief in terms of practical value despite trying to account for all emotions in this way.
- 25.
de Sousa (1987) speaks of the appropriateness of an emotion in terms of whether the context of the emotion is relevantly similar to the paradigm context of the emotion. But, this does not offer us an alternative to a practical assessment of emotions because de Sousa takes the appropriateness of the paradigm contexts to be determined by practical matters.
- 26.
Cf. Bergmann (1978).
- 27.
E.g. Audi (2004). My argument is not reliant on this view of the appropriateness of beliefs.
- 28.
Greenspan , e.g. (1988) says that the appropriateness of an emotion will not be identical with the appropriateness of the belief it involves. Her reason for saying this is that the belief will often have to meet higher standards to be appropriate than the emotion does. However, this difference in level changes little of relevance to my argument.
- 29.
I am not the only person to speak of reasons in regard of the appropriateness of emotions (cf . Pitcher (1965), Taylor (1975), Goldie (2004), and Solomon (1993)). However, I think that it is important to carefully separate this from considering the practical value of an emotion and considering whether the belief involved in the emotion is appropriate.
- 30.
Solomon believes that the emotion will be triggered by something objective, but that objective thing needn’t be anything to do with the fact that my headache is over.
- 31.
- 32.
Note, the more one takes there to be evidence that the emotions at issue are had for a reason the more evident it becomes that there is irrationality involved. If this evidence should turn out to be compelling, then we ought to bite the bullet and accept the irrationality. If so, we still lack grounds for weakening the cognitive component of an emotion.
- 33.
Some have tried to criticize the cognitive view on the grounds that some of the physiological aspects of an emotion start independently of cognition, because they start before cognition starts. In short, there are physiological reactions to environmental stimuli before these stimuli are cognised (cf . Damasio (2000)). This criticism is problematic because it is not clear what is at issue in the notion of cognition (cf . Solomon (2004)). Moreover, this does nothing to undermine my argument even if it turns out these initial physiological reactions are identical in the case of normal and recalcitrant emotions. This is because one can distinguish these initial physiological conditions from emotions proper, which must be something more. Arguments in support of the cognitive theory can therefore be seen as arguments in support of the idea that emotions are more than these initial physiological conditions. Normal and recalcitrant emotions might therefore still differ in their responsiveness to reasons, even if their initial physiological conditions do not differ in their reaction to stimuli.
- 34.
- 35.
E.g . Pitcher (1965).
- 36.
I am assuming the demonstrative ‘this’ is tenseless though denying this would do little to alter my argument.
- 37.
Cf . Cockburn (1998, 83).
- 38.
Even if it is appropriate to be relieved to have learnt that a discomfort will end, e.g., be relieved when one’s discomfort at the prospect of endless discomfort ends. Hoerl (2013) in fact distinguishes two forms of relief: temporal and counterfactual. If this distinction were accepted my argument might only apply to the former sort but this is the sort had by Prior and therefore it is the sort that is relevant here.
- 39.
My argument does not rest on this assumption. It merely rests on the idea that mental states can be known third-personally as well as first-personally.
- 40.
Even if one could narrow the options down to being such that the state being looked at was either present or past this will still not be sufficient to know the discomfort has ended. Further, the pattern of temporal orientation manifested in relief is quite different to that manifested in other emotions and so this cannot be a general response to the matter at hand, as I will make clear shortly.
- 41.
- 42.
Well, it might be a reason in a bizarre case in which I am concerned about whether or not I can feel relieved. However, the everyday case such as Prior’s is not like this.
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Pearson, O.(. (2018). The Argument from Appropriate Emotions. In: Rationality, Time, and Self. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71973-3_9
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