For your argument to work you have to be able to establish that one can’t infer anything from an emotion even in an overall context. But that just seems prima facie false. It seems we do this all the time. If I feel uncomfortable around my wife I infer that she’s upset at me and that I’ve done something to bother her even if I can’t discern anything beyond my emotional state. I do this all the time. We all do. So to argue that we can’t infer triggers or anything external from emotions seems to have the burden of proof. But you’ve just not met this.

While I’m not sure I agree with some of Blake’s comments, I do think you are effectively making an empirical claim that needs empirical backing. If you are making a philosophical claim then I think semiotics simply invalidates it due to the nature of what a sign is and how it functions.

While you may not see why emotions are so limited as signs, I still have no clue what religious emotions are supposed to be signs of. If you could answer this question I’m sure I will be able to address your point far more clearly.

But beyond those issues, I don’t see how this says anything about the key issues. After all language is also set up of of triggers yet we can understand meanings and implications using those triggers. So why not emotions?

I’m still not at all clear on why emotions are so limited as signs as opposed to any other entity. If emotions have content (and thus enter into a type-token relationship) then that content can be utilized for communication. I don’t see how anyone could argue otherwise.

A basic definition

Nice intro to semiotics that discusses it (Note that’s the second page in the tutorial – but it covers the type-token bit)

Types and Tokens at the SEP.

Oh, I buy that. I accept your distinction which is why I had to reread your posts on emotions. To see where, if anywhere, I actually disagreed with you. As I said at my blog I just don’t see how emotions are cut off from signifying anything important. That seems to be your key claim but I’m still missing the fundamental argument for it.

i.e. what makes emotions different?

BTW – for clarity, why don’t we get into the minutae of the emotion argument here rather than in the evidence thread at my blog. So feel free to answer my questions there here.

There are a few things which I think you need to clear up before I properly engage you:

1) What, exactly, do you mean by my account being reductive in nature?

2) I claim that emotions provide salience by which somethings stand out, or come to mean more than other things do. I admit that “determine” is too strong a word for this. I should also point out that I strongly reject the idea that emotions are biologically hard-wired in any meaningful way. The link in the original post about the refinement of emotions is also relevant to this. As such, I allow for the agent to play some role, though this role is small compared to that of culture and language. Your first response, which you think remains unchanged, seems to presuppose a view of biological emotions, when such is simply not the case. (To be honest, I’m not sure what this is supposed to say for or against my argument.)

3) The experiences which would exist with or without God are two fold: First, we would have experiences which were religion in nature, in that they are about religious ideas. Second, these emotional experiences would still seem as if they were acting upon us, when such is simply not the case. Here is another link which I discuss such passive seemings. Consider, as an example of this, how many people are discussing and worshipping Gods which the Christian takes to not exist. Nevertheless, this person has strong emotions which are “about” these non-existent Gods and do seem to come from an external source. This is exactly what I am arguing for all relevant religious experiences.

4) While I certainly recognize the difference between an emotion and my remembering an emotion, I see absolutely no reason why I cannot pass just as much judgment about remembered emotions as I can about actual emotions. I can say without qualification whether some past love was actually love or not. Indeed, such a comparison leads one to think that hindsight with regards to emotions is actually clearer than is the present experience do to the experience being less intense.

My response was this:

“I must confess that I have no clue what corrective your account of signs actually offers my account of emotions. I see feelings as being of secondary importance to emotions, at best. You seem to say that same thing.

I say that what is most important about an emotion is both its formal object, the judgments we pass on that object and our expression of such judgments. You say that interpretation is most important. I see no difference.

Where I think you are placing most of your emphasis, in terms of refuting my argument is here:

“Ultimately what I’m after is how anything becomes a token for a type. What I’d suggest is that we (a) have an interpretive model. That is, a theory which predicts certain phenomena and allows us to categorize phenomena. We then have (b) the experiences in question. Finally we (c) generate new hypothesis which modify (a) and (b). We then finally (d) test our hypothesis.”

But this is exactly where I have no clue what you are talking about. I don’t see how one can meaningfully distinguish the experience of emotions, our interpreting them as being in one category or another, and testing them. These things all seem to be the same thing. Perhaps you could elaborate.”

I see Clark as still being too wed to the idea that emotions are primarily feelings. Instead, I view them as experiences which include not only feelings, but interpretations, judgments and expressions. Given this, of course I allow religious experiences to be signs for other things, but the point which I try to make is that these experiences themselves do not provide any reason for their being interpreted as originating from anywhere other than the natural realm.

Jeff said: “Rather, I argue that since these experience would arise even if there was no God they cannot themselves count as evidence for an external cause of them.”

What is the basis for this rather bold assertion? What is the basis for asserting the (counterfactual) that these experiences would occur even if there were no God? It is mere assertion so far as I can tell. Yet this baseless assertion is the bottom line. I see no reason whatsoever to credit it.

With respect to your claim to have had the “emotion” in questions — I suggest that you may well have. However, it is like once having had a relationship. A memory of a relationship is not the same as being in a relationship. The “emotion” is not merely an emotion — it is a living, present reality of being in relation. Since you are no longer in relation, you don’t have presently what I am referring to. a memory of once having had a testimony is not the same thing as having a testimony.

If that is true then there is nothing to stop an emotional experience being correlated to other phenomena. Put succinctly, there’s nothing unique about emotions as a sign. What counts is the relationship to what is signified. And that is discerned via making hypothesis (abduction) and testing them (induction).

So I guess my answer is, what makes religion so special as opposed to every other kind of event where we seem able to infer significance and test it?

“Jeff’s argument that his view of “feelings” is non-reductive because he credits them with some intelligence (i.e., non-cognitive ability to lead us to a right result thru evolutionary adaptation though we think we’re really experiencing what we are not) also is false. His view is reductive to the extent it reduces religious experiences to “feelings” that lead us to get something about the world, just not what we think based on the “feelings”. He doesn’t hesitate to declare that we create these feelings and there is no external cause to them. There is so much that is wrong-headed about this that I hardly know where to begin.

“First, I am no fan of the rank speculation that goes on in the name of evolutionary explanation. It is merely speculation about what could possibly explain a phenomena in terms of evolutionary thought — what could work. it is speculation of the most baseless sort. I see it all the time without a shred of sensible evidence to support it.

“Second, it is unquestionable that we are somehow involved in creating our feelings since if we were dead we wouldn’t have them. It take a living, interacting entity. Beyondt that, there isn’t much to support Jeff’s claim. It is clear that sometimes we have “mere feelings” and that we misattribute causes to them. It doesn’t follow that we always do so — same fallacy that Michael D. committed.

“Third, reducing the experiences of “knowing that” that is both a cognitive and connative experience to “feelings” of the sort Jeff talks about (gut feelings or hunches really) doesn’t do the experience justice. Moreover, there is an entire dimension of the experience of “knowing that” that gets lost because what is at issue is both a “knowing that” in terms of Latin “sapere” and knowing whom in terms of Latin “conoscere”. It is like the distiction between knowing a fact by reading about it knowing it through direct experience. I know that a rose smells sweet, but until I smell the sweetness of the rose I have no idea what is being referred to in terms of experiential knowledge.”

Blake, despite his brilliance with which I am well acquainted as well as admiring, has completely missed the purpose as well as content of my argument.

1) I go to great lengths to distance emotion from mere feelings, a derogatory term which Blake seems to see me characterizing religious experience with. Such is not the case.

2) I don’t think I mentioned “evolution” or “adaptation” a single time in the post. I simply don’t see what role evolution is supposed to be playing in my argument.

3) I am not arguing (I also go to great lengths in my post to make this clear) that my account is somehow an argument that all religious experiences MUST be self-caused. Rather, I argue that since these experience would arise even if there was no God they cannot themselves count as evidence for an external cause of them. Religious experience cannot count as evidence that such experiences are caused by an external agent. Maybe they are caused by an external agent, but these same experiences do NOT count as evidence for such.

4) My account seems entirely harmonious with a good deal of both “know that” as well as knowledge by acquaintance. Indeed, that is the entire point of my distancing emotion from mere feelings.

Later on in the post, Blake says,

“is there some test or criteria to determine when an experience is externally referring rather than merely internally referring as Jeff asserts — is that one can know only by having the experience itself.”

I covered this in (3). My whole point is that having the experience is not at all a criterion for distinguishing external from internal causation.

I have had the experiences which Blake is referring to. Accordingly, Blake may be able to argue that I don’t know what the experience is really like since due to the utter privacy of such experiences I can never be sure that I have had the “real” thing. Following such reasoning, I can in turn argue that I do know what it is like and that he has no way of calling this assertion into question due to the utter privacy of my experiences.

Nevertheless, as I argued in the post, such emotions are NOT utterly private in nature. Indeed, much of what religionists do presupposes that they are not entirely private. It’s almost as if Blake did not read the post at all (which is possible since the post was inspired by an earlier thread which we were both engaged in).

First of all, I strongly disagree that I have divorced emotion from context. I think that context if part of what emotion is, especially in the case of religious experiences. I see my account as being completely compatible with, perhaps even requiring the repetition and context which you speak of.

First off I agree with you on “emotions” broadly construed. (I didn’t read all your older posts on the subject, but managed to find time to reread many and largely agreed, although I had a few semantic quibbles here and there) In Peircean terms (yeah, I know, I know – I keep bringing him up since I just find him more and more useful for my thought as time goes on) I think emotions have aspects of 1stness, 2cdness and 3rdness and can’t be reduced to just one of those. Thus firstness (what they are in themselves), secondness (emotions as pure relation or force) and thirdness (their representational or intentional content) are all important.

My complaint with your approach isn’t that I disagree with what you say. I do. Rather my complaint is that you’ve divorced emotion from context. That is what gives emotion useful and meaningful content is its relationship to the world. So, if I always have say an emotional experience of anger towards a person I can take that as a sign that this person has done something to offend or bother me. But what lets this content be taken as truthful and meaningful is (a) the repeated nature; (b) the normed conditions it is found it (i.e. this is a standard interpretation by others of this situation; and (c) the testability of further inquiry. (i.e. I can look for tests to see if this interpretation of content is accurate, thereby strengthening this Code of the sign as an accurate meaning)

Put simply, one has to delve into the type-token relationship and the content and Code which lets it function as a type-token.

So I certainly agree that by themselves emotional experiences are not evidence for God.

What is at hand isn’t the nature of emotions, for the reasons you outline. Rather what is at issue is he predictive patterns, the social patterns, and all the things that let any sign be a type-token relationship.

So consider the example of lust vs. love. (An example I believe I already brought up into the discussion) The experience is insufficient for several reasons. First, is there the repetition to discern it as a sign for love? No. Quite the contrary typically. Second are there existing codes which give it a different meaning. Yes. Thirdly how does the process of inquiry treat the experience? Quite poorly.

Now I do happen to think that probably the majority of religious experiences do fit this pattern. (Indeed I’d brought up the example of love/lust at my blog precisely to argue that it does invalidate most religious experience) But does it invalidate all religious experience. No. Quite the contrary.

But that’s why I talk of experience, which is more broad than simply emotion. There is far more involved in any experience than can be reduced to emotion. Put simply context and the issues of difference and repetition are key aspects of any experience qua experience. And that is key.