In this report I will be looking at arguments where emotions can be seen as representational and counter-arguments where it is believed that emotions are not representational. After doing this I will conclude by arguing that emotions are representational and explain why I believe this.
The philosophical literature contains discussions on the argument that emotions are representational. In order for emotions to be representations, it is believed that emotions are perceptual states and that they detect patterned changes within the body. (Jesse J.Prinz). Emotions allow us to decide on behaviour responses which come with the external situations that we deal with daily. An analogy that will help us understand this theory is the example of a smoke alarm, it is set up to make sound when it senses smoke. We are wired in the same way, in the sense that we “enter into bodily states when matter of concern arises” [1].
Evolution plays a big role in trying to help us understand how emotions are representational. There are different bodily patterns that the body goes into depending on the situation we are found in and evolution has a role in it as over the years it allowed our bodies to adapt and chose the bodily pattern that was more suitable for the situation found in.
I will explain this by using the different patterns discussed in the literature. The first one being when we encounter something dangerous e.g. predators or loud noises. The next pattern is the way we encounter threatening factors, such as an attack or theft, following this we have the losses pattern, this is for example the death of someone whom we have a close relationship with. For each basic emotion, there is a distinctive pattern and a distinctive set of eliciting conditions. These conditions represent a unique type of organism environment relation. We can call these relations concerns, from this argument I believe this shows my thesis of emotions being representational more plausible, as we represent our concerns, for example if we saw a lion running towards us we would represent fear by running away.
Modality-Specific
According to this argument in the literature, emotions qualify as states. Emotions respond to changes in the body system as they are believed to be states in the sensory system. To make the distinction between representing an emotion rather than registering an emotion, the state would have to be caused by a stimulus. Also, in order to qualify as a “perception of a stimulus, the state would have to represent it” [1]. Emotions were presumed to cause various bodily changes, depending on the pattern (see above) but William James (1884) and Carl Lange (1885) belied that emotions are the effects of bodily changes, rather than the causes. To understand this concept better let’s look at the example of crying. Does crying makes us sad? Or the feeling of sadness makes our body respond which induces crying. Emotions arise in the following way. We have a thought that will trigger a pattern of changes in our body, when these changes take place they are registered in brain systems that are sensitive to somatic states. These responses are experienced as feelings and the feelings are what we classify as emotions. With this argument we can see that emotions are not representational, but they are interoceptive states that register patterned changes in the body.
Carl Lange focuses more on the vascular changes, whereas William James argues that “each emotion is associated with a complex range of bodily changes” [1] therefore emotions feel different due to the diverse bodily patterns that they register.
A good explanation of this would be for example when we are angry our muscles tighten, and our blood tends to rush to our face and extremities. When we are happy our breathing becomes more relaxed and our heart starts to race. Therefore, this shows that the majority of our systems (respiratory system, circulatory system, etc.) are all correlated with emotions. Saying this we tend to believe that emotions are the cause of all these bodily changes, rather than the effects. James therefore reversed the order of the events to get a greater understanding. Starting with the brain, it contains interoceptive systems which are linked to the body via a large number of nerve fibres. This is questioning the argument for representational, as it is really hard to differentiate from things like twinges, chills and itches.
Other piece of evidence suggests that emotions could be artificially induced by changing states of the body, this could be done with the use of drugs. (Marañon 1924) Suggested that if people are injected with adrenaline, they would have experiences that feel like emotions. Although Marañon found that adrenaline alone did not produce an emotion, however if the test subject was questioned first about a sad event in their life, the drug would then produce emotional sadness [3]. Another method used to induce emotions is when we make facial expressions or change our body posture. The registration thesis predicts that often we “experience a corresponding emotion, for example, smile and you will feel happy; frown and you will feel mad” [1]. This is strong evidence towards the registration thesis that was argued by William James and Carl Lange.
Emotions can be also recognised as states or traits. An emotion trait could be seen in this example: “Andrea is afraid of drowning”. This statement is true even when Andrea is not actually experiencing the state of fear. Furthermore, emotions can arise before our body actually had time to perceive bodily changes. These specifically can occur with individuals who have a limited capacity of perceiving, e.g. spinal cord injury. This part of the argument goes against James’s approach as they perceive the emotions to be interoceptive states, even though in this example such states can arise in the absence of bodily changes. The brain can anticipate what the body will do, therefore claiming that emotions are interoceptive states can match with the claim that emotions can occur before bodily changes. On the neurological aspect we can see that emotions work with the brain structures that register changes in the body. With all these points discussed above we can see from this argument that emotions are interoceptive states. Following this if emotions are interoceptive states, it means that they are perceptual states because interoceptive systems are perceptual systems and interception is one of our senses.
Perceptually Conscious
Conscious thoughts come to us in the form of mental images. We have experiences that are in the form of auditory, visual and so on. If emotions are conscious then they must be sensory. At any moment in time, we are hearing things, seeing things, smelling things and maybe tasting things, which allows us to believe that at any given moment conscious qualities can be explained in perceptual terms. This argument believes that emotional consciousness is perceptual, therefore if emotions are conscious, this then leads us believing that they are perceptions. (Jackendoff 1987) in his argument stated that “senses are hierarchically organized” [4]. The levels that he is describing are low-level sensory stems, intermediate level perceptual systems, and high-level perceptual systems. The low-level systems relate to very discrete local features, for example, if we are talking about vision, the low level, in this case, would be registering edges but not the whole shape. The next level is the intermediate perceptual system takes the local features from the low level and integrates them, so the edges of the shape stated above become contours. This level gives coherent representations, rather than a confusing image, even though this is not the final level of perceptual processing. The final level in the hierarchy is the high-level representation. Jackendoff desc
ribes the high-level system as abstract from specific features and it facilitates recognition. Jackendoff does not believe that the hierarchical system explained above can apply to emotions.
Jesse argues that if emotions are states that register patterns of bodily change, “then emotions can be identified with a simultaneous and integrated occurrence of perceptions in the pathways that register changes in specific bodily systems” [3]. Emotions are categorized as followed: happiness, fear, anger and so on. These categories are applied when we abstract away from the details in which our bodies react. Therefore, in this argument, we can see that emotions do seem to arise at the intermediate level of the hierarchy that Jackendoff was stating above. “Emotions are experienced as bound episodes of specific changes throughout the body” [3]. This argument puts emotional consciousness at an intermediate level of perceptual processing. To finalize this argument, from the literature we can see emotional consciousness is a case of perceptual consciousness, and this can be described in the same way across sense modalities.
Emotions are Quasi-Modular
The final characteristic feature that I will discuss in this essay is quasi-modularity. Quasi-modular in this case is when some perceptual systems are not modular, and they share common features with other modules. Prinz is arguing that there are five different attributes within quasi-modularity (Prinz, J 2006):
– Functionally Specialized
– Subject to characteristic breakdowns
– Capable of automatic processing
– Built up from a system of innate rules and representations
– Stimulus-dependent
Functional specialisation relates to emotions being able to provide us with information about our relation and interaction with the environment. As stated above we understand that emotions represent concerns and when they do this they capture our attention and makes us behave in a certain way. Being scared for example, makes us notice a danger nearby, after being aware of the danger, we can then decide on how to deal with the situation. Prinz then argues that there is a characteristic functional role for the emotions” (Prinz, J 2006). I believe this goes back to our main argument that emotions are triggered by an input stimulus which send information to centres that help us with our decision making.
Characteristic breakdowns in other words mean that quasi-modules break down based on characteristics. If we look at the example of comparing emotion and vision that is shared with us in the literature, I can understand that by having visual damage can affect our emotional capacity. Blindness obviously does not allow visual information to get into the system as the structures are compromised, this then leads to reduction in emotional experience. This attribute allows us to see that emotions can malfunction characteristically and these match with the body disorders, so from the example used here, visually damaged.
Automaticity is the third attribute offered by the literature. This attribute shows us that emotions also be triggered automatically. It is plausible to believe that our we can control our emotions, but these can also be triggered automatically. For example, someone suddenly throwing a football at you, first feeling you would feel is fear as you are scared that the ball would hit you in the face, but this fear did not require any fear or control, it just automatically occur. This argument here also builds up the emotions being representational, as we are being scared of the ball coming towards us and we act automatically to the input stimuli as stated in the argument above.
The fourth attribute available to us is that characteristics of quasi-modules is innateness. This describes how we have learnt from previous experiences. Using the vision example again, shows us that we can store memories that we have previously experienced and “we develop visual skills through practice” (Prinz, J 2006). These require a state of representations and innate rules. To link this with our emotion argument, they are also dependent on innate rules and representations. We have systems in our body that perceive bodily changes. To use an example here it could be seeing a lion running towards us it will trigger a bodily change and we will experience fear.
The final attribute discussed is stimulus dependence. This is a very strong argument for emotions being representational as we need a stimulus to then drive a response. Even though this might be the case there are also circumstances where emotions can be induced by directly altering the body. Using the example of seeing a snake or believing that there is a snake in the house, our mental events would be triggered, and our body will be affected, therefore it would create an emotion. Looking back to the first argument where it states that once emotions has been triggered, it then conveys a representation of that emotion, for example seeing a big spider would induce fear and therefore we might want to leave the room.