Philosophy of emotions

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Philosophy of emotions

• Emotions and rationality
• 19.11.08
• Mikko Salmela
• mikko.salmela_at_helsinki.fi

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Forms of emotional rationality

• Instrumental rationality
• Functionality
• The somatic marker hypothesis (Damasio)
• Strategic rationality (Sartre Solomon Frank)
• Epistemic rationality
• Satisfaction of propositional content (Searle
  Gordon)
• Appropriateness/fittingness to the eliciting
  situation (De Sousa DArms Jacobson)
• Emotional truth (Salmela)
• Emotional intelligence (Salovey Mayer Goleman)

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The somatic marker hypothesis

• Emotions are necessary for rational decision
  making
• Impairments in amygdala or ventromedial
  prefrontal cortex
• Impairment degrades both the speed and the
  quality of deliberation
• Somatic marker operates as an alarm signal that
  either steers us away from choices that
  experience warns us against or toward choices
  that experience makes us long for.
• Somatic markers bias options and plans for action
• Conscious knowledge alone insufficient for making
  advantageous decisions.

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Functionality

• Emotions as adaptive special-purpose mechanisms
  in dealing with universal human predicaments
  (Lazarus) or fundamental life tasks (Ekman)
• Kinds of functions biological, social, personal
• 3 most important functions of emotion (Clark
  Watson)
• Signal system
• Resource mobilization
• Resource conservation
• Compatible with both cognitive and noncognitive
  theories of emotion

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Strategic rationality

• JEAN-PAUL SARTRE (1905-80)
• Emotions are magical transformations of the
  world, renouncements of responsibility in
  difficult situations that we are unable to change
  by taking action.
• Emotions are a subclass of bad faith and their
  logic is summarized in the story of fox and sour
  grapes.
• Bodily changes and feelings represent the
  genuineness of emotion, testifying to its
  seriousness
• ROBERT SOLOMON (1942-2007)
• Emotions are subjective strategies for the
  maximization of personal dignity and self-esteem
• The strategic character of emotions is hidden
  from the subject
• Problems
• Rationality not merely strategic
• A motivated emotion is not genuine
• Speculative and irrefutable as a global thesis

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Strategic rationality (continues)

• ROBERT FRANK
• Emotions as strategically useful commitment
  devices in maximizing self-interest
• Emotions save us from the perils of short-sighted
  maximization of self-interest by allowing us to
  discount immediate benefits for the sake of
  securing greater benefit in the future.
• E.g. ultimatum bargaining game
• Emotions can function as commitment devices
  because they are communicable to others and
  difficult to fake.
• Ignorance about real function necessary for
  functional operation.

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Epistemic rationality

• A popular view rationality of intentional mental
  states can be evaluated in terms of their
  direction of fit and condition of satisfaction
  (Searle)
• Beliefs mind-to-world direction of fit truth as
  condition of satisfaction
• Desires world-to-mind direction of fit
  fulfillment as condition of satisfaction
• Emotions no/zero direction of fit truth and
  fulfillment as conditions of success for
  constitutive belief and desire, respectively
• Robert Gordon epistemic vs. factive emotions
• A problem fulfillment vs. desirability of
  desires
• De Sousa condition of satisfaction vs. condition
  of success
• Beliefs truth/truth
• Desires fulfillment/desirability
• Emotion truth/fittingness
• Rationality as appropriateness or fittingness of
  an emotion to its object
• Formal object as the standard of fittingness
  fear dangerous, anger offensive, shame
  shameful, infatuation attractive, envy
  enviable
• Analogy to beliefs mind-to-world direction of
  fit

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• The Euthyphro-problem
• Is an act offensive because we get angry at it,
  or do we get angry at an act because it is
  offensive?
• Projectivism formal properties as perceptual
  properties
• Detectivism formal properties as norms of
  fittingness
• An object x is f a formal property if x
  possesses a descriptive property or properties
  that justify the ascription of f to x
• Relativity to individuals and communities
• Intersubjectively intelligible and plausible
  reasons for fitting emotion
• DArms Jacobson appropriateness as fittingness
  distinct from other criteria of appropriateness
  prudential, moral, and all-in
• The size and shape of an emotion
• Not sufficient if I or we do not share your
  concerns or values, fitting objects of our
  emotions differ significantly (the handgun
  example)
• Salmela emotional truth as idealized communal
  warrant

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Emotional intelligence (Salovey Mayer)

• Salovey Mayer (1999,5) EI is the ability to
  perceive emotions, to access and generate
  emotions so as to assist thought, to understand
  emotions and emotional knowledge, and to
  reflectively regulate emotions so as to promote
  emotional and intellectual growth.
• Components
• Perception, appraisal and expression of emotion
• Understanding and analyzing emotions employing
  emotional knowledge
• Emotional facilitation of thinking
• Reflective regulation of emotions to promote
  emotional and intellectual growth

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Article 3 Patricia Greenspan Emotions,
Rationality, and Mind/Body, in A. Hatzimoysis
(ed) Philosophy and the Emotions. Cambridge
Cambridge University Press (2003), 113-125.

• Questions for reading 
• What is Damasios error?
• What is meant by treating emotions as cases of
  rational irrationality?
• What is a rationally appropriate emotion like on
  Greenspans perspectival account?
• What is the difference between rationality as
  appropriateness and adaptiveness?
• How is rational emotional ambivalence possible?
• What is the rationale for discussing emotions in
  terms of propositional content?
• How Greenspan defines an emotion?