Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-pftt2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-15T18:34:21.674Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

In Defence of “Emotion”

Critical Notice of:

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Louis C. Charland*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy and Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Western Ontario, London, ON, CanadaN6A 3K7

Abstract

Image of the first page of this content. For PDF version, please use the ‘Save PDF’ preceeding this image.'
Type
Review Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2001

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Gerrans, C. Review of Griffiths, Paul E. What Emotions Really Are: The Problem of Psychological Categories, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 77.4 (1999) 512–15Google Scholar; Sousa, R. de Review of Griffiths, Paul E. What Emotions Really Are: The Problem of Psychological Categories Dialogue 38.4 (1999) 908–11Google Scholar; Hacking, I. Review of LeDoux, Darwin Griffiths, Paul E. Times Literary Supplement (17 July 1998) 4972Google Scholar; Nussbaum, C. Review of What Emotions Really Are: The Problem of Psychological Categories, Philosophical Psychology 12.4 (1999) 546–51Google Scholar; Solomon, R. Review of Griffiths, Paul E. What Emotions Really Are: The Problem of Psychological Categories, Philosophical Review 108.1 (1999) 131–4Google Scholar

2 In his review of Griffiths’ book, Robert Solomon aptly conveys what this fanfare is all about. He refers to the fact that ‘the book announces itself as a radical demolition job’ (133). He also expresses skepticism about ‘the radical deconstruction job promised by Griffiths and his blurb writer’ (133).

3 Waal, F. De Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1996)Google Scholar; Panksepp, J. Affective Neuroscience (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1998)Google Scholar

4 Gordon, R.M. The Cognitive Structure of Emotion (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press 1987)Google Scholar, x

5 Griffiths, P.E. What Emotions Really Are, 78Google Scholar

6 Sousa, R. de The Rationality of Emotion (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press 1987), 125–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Darwin, C. The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animal (1872; Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1965)CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Solomon, R. The Passions (New York: Doubleday 1976)Google Scholar

9 Lyons, W. Emotion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 R.M. Gordon, The Cognitive Structure of Emotion

11 Kenny, A. Action, Emotion, and Will (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1963)Google Scholar

12 Lazarus, R Emotion and Adaptation (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1991)Google Scholar

13 Elster, J. Alchemies of Mind: Rationality and the Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Ellis, A. Reason and Emotion in Psychotherapy (New York: L. Stuart 1962)Google Scholar

15 Beck, A.T. Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders (New York: International Universities Press 1976)Google Scholar

16 Scherer, K.R.Studying the Emotion-Antecedent Appraisal Process: An Expert System Approach,’ Cognition and Emotion 6 (1993) 325–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schwartz, N.Feelings and Information: Informational and Motivational Functions of Affective States,’ in Sorrentino, R.M. and Higgins, E.T. eds., Handbook of Emotion and Motivation: Foundations of Social Behavior (New York: Guilford 1990)Google Scholar; Sloman, A.Motives, Mechanisms, and Emotions,’ Cognition and Emotion 1.3 (1987) 217–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Picard, R. Affective Computing (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press 1997)Google Scholar

17 Simon, H.A.Motivatinal and Emotional Control Signals,’ Psychological Review 74 (1967) 2939CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 Charland, L.C.Emotion as a natural Kind: Towards a Computational Foundation for Emotion Theory,’ Philosophical Psychology 8.1 (1995) 5984CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 R. de Sousa, The Rationality of Emotion; Johnson-Laird, N. and Oatley, K.Basic Emotions, Rationality, and Folk Theory,’ Cogniton and Emotion 6 (1992) 201–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar; R. Lazarus, Emotion and Adaptation

20 Elster, Alchemies of Mind; Neu, J. A Tear is an Intellectual Thing: The Meanings of Emotion (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2000)Google Scholar; Picard, Affective Computing; Wollheim, R. On the Emotions (New Haven: Yale University Press 1999)Google Scholar

21 R. de Sousa, The Rationality of Emotion; Clarke, S.G.Emotions: Rationality Without Cognitivism,’ Dialogue 25 (1986) 663–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 Charland, L.C.Reconciling Cognitive and Perceptual Theories of Emotion: A Representational Proposal,’ Philosophy of Science 64 (1997) 555–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 Sousa, R. de The Rationality of Emotion, 152–5Google Scholar, 190-203; see also Clarke.

24 Charland, L.C.Feeling and Representing: Computational Theory and the Modularity of Affect,’ Synthese 105 (1996) 273301CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25 Churchland, M.Eliminativist Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes,’ Journal of Philosophy 78.2 (1981) 6790Google Scholar; Stich, S. From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press 1983)Google Scholar

26 Like other commentators, I will often use the words ‘category’ and ‘kind’ interchangeably. This reflects Griffiths’ view that a category is an aspect of reality (175-6).

27 L.C. Charland, ‘Emotion as a Natural kind';Gordon,Ch.1 and 7; Johnson-Lairdand Oatley

28 Weekly, E. An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English (New York: Dover 1967)Google Scholar

29 Elster, J. Strong Feelings (Cambridge, MA: Bradford 1999), 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 De Sousa and Nussbaum take Griffiths to be committed to the view that emotion breaks down into three distinct categories (de Sousa, Review, 910; Nussbaum, Review, 547). However, Robert Solomon argues that ‘we are left, “really,” with two categories’ (Solomon, Review, 133). Ukewise, Gerrans concludes that ‘it looks as if there are at least two categories of emotion’ (Gerrans, Review, 514). Whatever the case may be, what we are talking about here is ‘emotion.’ It is hard to imagine how these points might be stated in a future psychology that has jettisoned the term.

31 Pylyshyn, Z. Computation and Cognition (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press 1984)Google Scholar

32 Rorty, A.O.Explaining Emotions,’ Journal of Philosophy 75.3 (1978) 139–61, at 141CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33 LeDoux, J. The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life (New York: Simon and Schuster 1996), 16Google Scholar

34 LeDoux's point is framed in terms of there being ‘a single brain system’ (16). However, Griffiths’ argument that there is no natural category that corresponds to the term ‘emotion’ is far more specific. It has to do with there being ‘one kind of process’ (15). This is an even greater oversimplification. Note also that Griffiths’ own affective program homologies cannot possibly satisfy this ‘one process’ criterion for kindhood, which means they cannot count as natural kinds even though he says they do. The ‘one process’ criterion is also incompatible with the claim that categories in the special sciences can sometimes count as natural kinds (5-7).

35 LeDoux argues that fear is mediated by a distinct neurophysiological system. But the situation may be more complicated than that. For example, Jerome Kagan argues that there may in fact be three distinct kinds of fear states, each subsumed by different brain systems (Galen's Prophecy: Temperament and Human Nature [Boulder, CO: Westview Press 1998], 96-112).

36 Damasio, Descartes’ Error (New York: Putnam 1994)Google ScholarPubMed; Maclean, D. The Triune Brain in Evolution: Role in Paleocerebral Functions (New York: Plenum 1990)Google Scholar; Panksepp, Affective Neuroscience

37 Moore, C.C. Romney, K.A. and Rusch, C.D.The Universality of the Semantic Structure of Emotion Terms: Methods for the Study of Inter and Intra Cultural Variability,’ American Anthropologist 101.3 (1999) 529–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 There are interesting parallels between debates over the natural kind status of colors and emotions (in the plural) and color and emotion (in the singular). For example, Dennett, Daniel argues that ‘colors are not “natural kinds” precisely because they are the product of biological evolution’ (Consciousness Explained [Boston: little, Brown 1991], 381 n.2)Google Scholar. He writes: ‘if some creature's life depended on lumping together the moon, blue cheese, and bicycles, you can be pretty sure that Mother nature would find a way for it to “see” these as “intuitively just the same kind of thing'” (ibid.). According to him, biological evolution has a ‘tolerance for sloppy boundaries that would horrify any philosopher bent on good clean definitions’ (ibid.). Clearly, ‘sloppy boundaries’ do not bother Griffiths in the case of emotion. There are also interesting analogies between emotion and color. Like emotion, color is arguably an evolutionary category that requires an ecological level of explanation. See Thompson, E. Palacios, A. Varela, F.Ways of Coloring: Comparative Color Vision as a Case Study in Cognitive Science,’ Beluruioral and Brain Sciences 15 (1992) 174CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thompson, E.Color Vision, Evolution, and Perceptual Content,’ Synthese 104 (1995) 132CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Color is also subject to semantic and conceptual cross-cultural vicissitudes, as is emotion. See Dedrick, D.Color Language, Universality, and Evolution: On the Explanation for Basic Color Terms,’ Philosophical Psychology 9.4 (1996) 497524CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Elimination seems implausible in the case of color for just the same reasons it is implausible in the case of emotion. Both terms allow us to group together phenomena which we otherwise might have no reason to do so. And both terms are also currently theoretically productive.