Emotion: A Short Introduction

 

Photo by Peter Conlan on Unsplash

It is somewhat paradoxical that emotion is one of the most beloved and one of the most underappreciated aspects of our nature. In popular culture emotion is appealed to in order to move us to action. Churches often foster an environment where emotion motivates you to repent or worship. Advertisements leverage emotion in order to move you buy something. Popular talent shows explicitly tell their singing contestants that their emotional involvement in the performance is as important if not more important than technical accuracy.

However, while popular culture regularly encourages us to have emotions and follow our passions, it doesn’t do much to help us understand what emotions are or how they are appropriately employed. We rarely hear questions like: What are emotions? Are emotional responses morally praiseworthy or blameworthy? Do emotions hinder reason? How do we become emotionally mature? Should we repress our emotions? What role do emotions play in the formation of moral beliefs?

Until we start looking at questions like this, our understanding of emotion will remain superficial. And a superficial understanding of our selves inevitably leads to practical problems.

In this article, I want to begin with the question “What is an emotion”? Philosophers and psychologists have offered various definitions over the centuries. However, discerning which view adequately describes the nature of emotion can be daunting. Since ancient views on the nature of emotion are more abstract and require more explanation, this article will start with more modern views of emotion. That is not to say that ancient and medieval views are not worth exploring. They are worth exploring, but in this article, we will focus on views that are more current.

One of the earliest modern views of emotion comes from William James and Carl Lange (late 19^th century). According to this view, an emotion is the recognition of a certain set of physiological responses. Those physiological responses are generated by some external stimuli. If, for example, you were to see a mountain lion running towards you, your heart would start to beat harder and you would start to perspire. The emotion, on this view, is your recognition of this set of physiological responses. Some external stimuli cause some physiological reaction in you and your autonomic system generates a “feeling” of emotion. Hence emotions are non-cognitive occurrences that “happen” to you.

One possible implication of this view is that you are not responsible for your emotions. Saying that you are responsible for your emotions would be like saying you are responsible for your heart beating or for how your body digests food. While there is something intuitively satisfying to the notion that emotions arise automatically, this view is not widely accepted among professional philosophers these days.

One reason for this has to do with the intentional nature of emotion. When we are angry, we are usually angry about something. For example, we might be angry with our friend for not telling us the truth. This “aboutness” seems to imply that emotions are not simply recognitions of physiological states, but cognitions that have an object. When your arm gets cut, you feel pain, but the physical pain is not “about” something even if it indicates that something is the case. Emotions, on the other hand are “about” something.

Furthermore, emotions tend to have a narrative structure. Our emotional states seem to be related to a narrative about our situational context. A dishonest friend makes us mad because we have certain expectations about friendship and morality that prompt or foster the emotional reaction that we have. We might think to ourselves “Joe was supposed to be my friend, his lying to me means X and Y and this upsets me”. Hence emotions seem to at least involve interpretive and evaluative aspects as well. If correct, this implies that emotions are cognitive rather than non-cognitive autonomic responses. There is a good deal of background “thought” going on during an emotional experience.

There are a number of cognitivist theories of emotion. One view is that emotions are concern based construal’s. In other words, they are ways of perceiving a situation where that perception is grounded in a concern. For example, consider your love for your children. The concern you have for your children sets you up for a variety of emotions. If they are threatened, you are worried or scared or angry. If they do something noble, you are proud of them. If they succeed in something, you are joyful. Your concern for your children is what philosopher Robert Roberts calls an “emotion disposition”.

If you perceive a situation as threatening and that perception is linked (in a single organic experience) to your emotional disposition, the result is an emotion. If this view is true, then there are several implications.

First, you have some measure of control over how you frame a narrative. These narratives aren’t easy to change since they are lower level cognitions, but you can reflect on them and modify them. In doing so, you have a kind of indirect path to gaining some control and responsibility for your emotional states.

Second, if emotions are cognitive, then they may be more related to other cognitive states that are usually associated with them. Moral and aesthetic experiences come to mind. Morals and emotions are sometimes so closely associated, that there is an entire meta-ethical school of thought that reduces morals to emotions.

Finally, this view offers a path for emotional maturity. If emotions are concern-based construal’s, we can extrapolate that our path to emotional maturity includes properly ordered concerns and accurately formed construal’s. And since we have some control over these things, we need not relegate emotions to thing’s that merely happen to us. As Robert Solomon says, emotions are things that humans do, not just things that happen to humans.