Emotions are not (Merely) Feelings

The mission of science, it can be said, is to either reduce or eliminate all of mankind’s pre-scientific “folk” theories. Folk biology, for example has been a system of thought which has largely been reduced, while astrology has come to be almost completely eliminated. Paul Churchland, in his paper “Eliminative Materialism and Propositional Attitudes,” argues that folk psychology will be largely, if not entirely eliminated and that a mature neuroscience will lead us to the conclusion that we have no propositional attitudes, such as beliefs and desires, at all. In this post I will argue that careful look at the relationship between emotions and feelings reveals that a strong elimination of folk psychology will likely be counter-productive.

First of all it can be argued that emotions essentially are propositional attitudes: I am angry that… I am sad that… I love that… and so on. To eliminate emotions as part of our conceptual repertoire would probably be every existentialist’s nightmare. While I do not consider myself an existentialist of any sort, I do agree with Solomon’s definition of emotions as engagements with the world. It is my position that no amount of measured facts at the neurological level will ever be able to capture this definition. A matured neuroscience, consequently, is destined to reduce rather than eliminate the emotions which are native to folk psychology.

Removed one step from the complete elimination of emotions would be the equation of emotions with feelings. This sentiment can trace its origins back to the classical conception of emotions as sufferings. As a brief sidetrack, the motivations for such a negative view of emotions are highly revealing of the connection between intelligence and passion. Passion is seen as bad because it was in competition with our intelligent rationality. Passions are only not bad to the extent that they encourage rational behavior, behavior which we would have rationally done if there had been no passions involved in the first place. Notice the assumption in place in such a view, namely that ‘good’ is defined in terms of rationality rather than passion, what we think over what we feel. While such a view certainly squares well with much of the axial values of light, knowledge and liberation, it is not so clear that such an assumption can be defended from a post-axial point of view.

Another central aspect to the view of passions as sufferings, which I have already hinted at, is that passions are things which happen to us rather than being things which we actively do. With such a view of emotions, ideas concerning responsibility and pity are utterly meaningless. Statements such as “he has no right to be angry” or “you shouldn’t feel that way toward that person” are simply misuses of language at best. But we do hold people accountable for their emotions; even such evaluations are only aimed at how well each person deals with whatever passions are happening to them.

Of course the eliminativist would simply label such (mis)uses of language as deriving from the misguided theory of folk psychology. Nevertheless, it remains unclear how the eliminativist project can salvage in any ways the values which we not only have regarding emotions but also those which are embedded in the emotions themselves. In the reduction of one level of explanation to another, values can still be said to exist in some form at the former level, whereas in the elimination of the former level altogether there seems to be no room left for values of any kind, for if material science prides itself on anything it is its value-free nature.

The approach of William James was not that of elimination however, although it does embrace the classical notion of emotions as things which happen to us. According to James, emotions are the end results, the feelings and sensations of the physiological processes which we undergo. When we see a bear in the forest, we undergo certain physiological responses, which produce in the end the sensations which we experience. What James’ view amounted to was the shifting of attention from the sensations, which we seen as being caused by the body but otherwise largely detached from the body in the tradition of Locke, to the physiological processes in the body which caused such sensations.

Such a view certainly allowed for a scientific approach to emotions in a way which had not been available until that point. Indeed, Antonio Damasio to this day asserts that the feeling involved in an emotion simply is the feeling of what is happening in the brain. Nevertheless, this view of emotions as being merely the feelings caused by physiological responses simply seems to fall short of the rich variety and depth which characterizes our emotional experience. While there clearly is an emotional difference between having a slight fever and being frustrated, there does not seem to be very much of a sensational difference between the two. Does it make any sense at all for the entire Western culture to celebrate the mere physiological sensations of love?

Furthermore, the fact that emotions are propositional attitudes also draws out another problem with the view of emotions as feelings. Propositional attitudes are about something; they have intentional content to them. While physiological responses do have causes, they are not about anything. Feelings do not have any intentional content while clearly emotions do. While feelings clearly play an important role in emotional experience, they simply cannot be the entire story. Indeed, I argue that they cannot even be the central feature of emotional experience, for I see intentionality as play this role in emotions as engagements with the world.

There are other problems with considering emotions as feelings. Briefly, these include: feelings are intensely private and subjective, whereas emotions have a public dimensions to them; feeling is a broad world which can be used to describe mental phenomena which are decidedly not emotional such a intuition; similarly, feelings characterize nearly our entire conscious experience, whereas emotions do not; feelings are brief sensations whereas emotions are processes which are drawn out over time; an account of why physiological feelings would be relatively uniform within a culture while differing so greatly across cultures as emotions seem to is highly unlikely.

The stripping of emotions of all intentional content leaves them without any of the features which we value so much. It seems absurd to morally evaluate physiological responses, but our emotions, by any account, play a central role both as sources as well as targets of moral evaluation. ‘Emotions as feelings’ also creates a wide divide between an emotion and the actions by which that emotion is expressed; a divide which I find unacceptable. Most importantly, if there is no intentional content to emotions, we prospect of understanding them seems doomed. On the contrary, I see ‘emotions as engagements with the world’ as leaving open the possibility of infusing our emotions with more and more intelligence by way of coming to understand them better.