In his lecture series The Passions: Philosophy and the Intelligence of Emotions, Robert Solomon presents a number of wonderful lectures which I plan to review over the next long while. (Yes, I understand that I have way too many projects going on right now, especially for how slow the posting has been.) One of these great lectures is concerning the relatively shallow way in which we classify emotions as being either good or bad. We will see that such a view, especially as found in the all-too-common reduction to pain and pleasure, is simply inadequate on a number of levels.
Basic to Solomon’s understanding of emotions is that they are intelligent is that they are strategic interactions with the world. Thus he draws the important distinction between the judgments which we have about emotions, such as “love is good”, as opposed to the judgment which we make in actually experiencing an emotion, love being a judgment regarding the relation which we have with the object of our love.
We can see from this that it is not only possible, but actually quite common to have negative judgments concerning emotions which are in themselves positive judgments toward their target object, just as we can have positive judgments about emotion which are in themselves negative judgments toward their target object. Consider the example of all the negative emotions of pain, jealousy and frustration which are part and parcel of the emotion ‘love’. Another case would be that of a righteous anger directed at corruption or oppression. Fear, pragmatically speaking, has been and is still one of the most valuable emotions which we have, despite its not only consisting in negative judgments, but also being the common object of negative judgments in our culture. Or consider the highly complex emotion of schadenfreude in which we take delight in the suffering of others.
But what do we mean when we call some emotions ‘positive’ while branding others ‘negative’? This is the issue of emotional valence, and it is simply far too simplistic to follow the traditional Utilitarians in reducing all emotions to pleasure or pain. It should be clear from the examples already given that such a cut and dry treatment of many emotions is to miss so many of the subtle, yet vital appraisals and judgments which surround such emotions.
Let us consider first the judgments which we pass on emotions. Perhaps the most obvious factor which will determine what our appraisals and judgments are concerning a particular emotion will be that of what ethical standards one espouses, standards which obviously vary across cultures. We can judge emotions according to a standard of right and wrong more or less according to what Kant advocated, which certainly seems to be the reason for the common criticism which is aimed at fear in our culture. But as we noticed, the presence of fear is highly instrumental in our lives, and it is no difficult to see how a Utilitarian such as Bentham or Mill would see it as one of the ‘most-good’ emotions.
Additionally, it is not terribly difficult to imagine the utility of an emotion actually varying greater across varying cultures and environments and a parallel argument can possibly be made regarding the variability of right-based ethics. This point plays an even greater role if one follows Aristotle or Nietzsche in embracing a virtue based ethics. To expect people from varying cultural, political, social and natural environments to have the same ethical judgments and appraisals regarding any given emotion is simply absurd.
Another assumption which is somewhat common to a rather simplistic notion of emotional valence is the idea that each emotion is either positive or negative with regard to one object, which this need not be the case. Many emotions are judgments both about the object which the emotion is usually directed at as well as the person experiencing the emotion. Often anger consists in a negative appraisal toward the object while maintaining a positive toward oneself. Frustration can be seen, in many instances, of one’s having negative judgments primarily toward themselves while only secondarily at the object. Some emotions such as love or hatred involve not only the person and the object, but also the relation ship which is seen to exist between the two.
At this point we can now approach the two classic labels for positive and negative emotions, or at least the positive and negative aspects of other emotions: pain and pleasure. As is well known, Jeremy Bentham attempted to ground ethics in a sort of ethical calculus wherein actions produce consequences which are judged according to how much, quantitatively speaking, pain/pleasure was produced by it. This analysis is flawed on a number of points.
- Can pain and pleasure really be quantified? While we certainly can describe the intensity of our pain by using the number scale as an analogy, but can we really assign numbers to such experiences? Could such a scale ever hope to hold any kind of objectivity across individuals? While we can say that we take more pleasure in eating an apple over an orange, can we really compare the pleasures of eating good sushi, kissing your loved one and taking a well needed nap?
- Can pain and pleasure really be measured on the same scale any more than apples and oranges can be? What is the pleasure equivalent of being burned alive? What is the pain equivalent of getting a nice massage? Does it not seem at times that pain is far more acute than pleasure tends to be?
- Are pain and pleasure really opposites? Is it possible to experience opposites at the same time as pain and pleasure seem to be? In many cases the two simply do not seem to be the same thing at all. Indeed, Aristotle argued that there is no such thing as pleasure, considered independent of the activity which produces it. And yet, while pleasure seems to necessarily be part of some other activity, such is certainly not the case for pain. Beside the fact that we desire, for the most part, pleasure and avoid, for the most part, pain, is there anything about these emotions that allows us to consider them opposites?
- Finally, it remains unclear what exactly is meant by pleasure or pain. Is it a sensation, an experience, a feeling, an emotion? Do we simply mean those sensations and experiences which we enjoy/seek or dislike/avoid? Can we anything at all about these emotions which will encompass enough to sustain Bentham’s theory while excluding the enough of the exceptions to whatever rules we may draw? Are we honestly to agree with Bentham that “Pushpin is as good as poetry?”
Questions such as these cast serious doubt on the prospect of articulating and defending a hedonist account of ethics. Our emotions are simply far to complex to try to place in either one of the two slots which such accounts leave for us.
