Philosophy of emotions

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Philosophy of emotions

• Emotions and culture 5.11.08
• Mikko Salmela
• mikko.salmela_at_helsinki.fi

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The evolutionary origin of human emotions

• A Darwinian assumption of all psychologists
  emotions are adaptive, special-purpose mechanisms
  that help agents in dealing with fundamental
  life tasks (Ekman)
• Darwin The Expression of the Emotions in Man and
  Animals (1872)
• Evolutionary explanation of human
• emotional expressions vestiges of
• adaptive responses in our ancestors.
• The current function of facial
• expressions expression and
• communication.

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Evolutionary psychology

• Human mind is a set of evolved, domain-specific
  programs to solve adaptive problems faced by our
  ancestors ? emotions as adaptations
• John Tooby Leda Cosmides
• Emotions are higher order programs that
  coordinate the minds many subprograms into a
  functional response
• Well-designed to the ancient context, not
  necessarily to the modern
• The entire response defines the emotion
• Problems
• Universality on the output side does not imply
  universality on the input side most eliciting
  stimuli are learned, but the learning mechanism
  is evolutionarily biased
• Universality does not imply innateness several
  developmental mechanisms for the creation of
  emotional expressions

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The Affect Program Theory (Ekman)

• Main evidence pancultural facial expressions of
  basic emotions anger, fear, disgust, surprise,
  joy, sadness ( contempt)
• FACS Facial Action Coding System
• Emotion are complex, coordinated, and automated
  responses.
• Automatic appraisal
• Expressive facial changes
• Musculoskeletal responses
• Expressive vocal changes
• Endocrine system changes
• ANS changes
• subjective experience
• cognitive phenomena

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Features of affect programs

• Quick onset and brief duration (0,5 5 secs)
• Present in other primates
• Appraisal in terms of ancestral and individual
  past
• Evolved for their adaptive value
• Distinct response patterns distinguish between
  different emotions heart rate, blood flow,
  electrodermal responses, ANS responses, brain
  circuits, and neurotransmitters
• Display rules rules for when and how the
  effects of affect programs should be suppressed
  or moderated culture-specific
• Redefinition of emotion terms as categories of
  psychological events gtlt folk theory of emotion
  terms

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Social constructionism

• Rom Harré, Claire Armon-Jones, Catherine Lutz,
  James Averill The Social Construction of
  Emotions (1986)
• Focus on emotion vocabularies, their cultural
  differences and translatability
• Emotions primarily exist in social encounters
• Empirically established cultural differences in
  emotions and emotion vocabularies
• inversion of standard of valuation Western fear
  vs. Ifaluk metagu
• cultural submission vs. encouragement
• strong vs. weak form depending on culture
• historical changes in emotion repertoires
• culturally distinctive quasi-emotions

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Core assumptions (Armon-Jones)

• Emotions are characterized by beliefs, judgments,
  and desires, the contents of which are not
  natural but determined by systems of cultural
  belief and value.
• Emotions are learned as part of the subjects
  introduction to the beliefs, norms, values, and
  expectations of his or her culture.
• De Sousa (1987) paradigm scenarios
• Emotions are not natural responses but
  socioculturally determined patterns of response.
• Emotions serve sociocultural functions in
  restraining undesirable attitudes and behavior,
  in sustaining and endorsing cultural values.

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Strong vs. weak constructionism

• Strong constructionism
• All emotions are sociocultural products
• Similarities between non-human and human behavior
  cannot be used as evidence for naturalness
• No emotion E without the concept of E
• radical interpretation of functionality emotions
  depend for their existence on serving some social
  function
• Weak constructionism
• some emotions exist in some form prior to
  sociocultural influences
• still all emotions are partly socially
  constituted and they have sociocultural
  functions differences between natural and
  cultural instances of the same emotion-type
• weak interpretation of functionality social
  function is an aspect of emotion

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Social concept/social role model

• The social concept model
• Emotions are constituted from socioculturally
  derived propositional attitudes.
• To have an emotion is to think of the situation
  as one that is culturally appropriate to a
  certain emotion
• Solomon Armon-Jones
• The social role model
• Averill (1980) an emotion is a transitory
  social role (a socially constructed syndrome)
  that includes an individuals appraisal of the
  situation, and is interpreted as a passion rather
  than an action ? emotions are disclaimed actions
• Emotion roles are functional either for the
  individuals who occupy them or for the society or
  for both.
• The belief that emotions are difficult to control
  is a myth which helps emotion to fulfill its
  functions.
• Social role behavior need not be planned, e.g.
  the Gururumba wild pig

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Social constructionism as cognitivism

• Judgmentalism emotions presuppose and involve
  culturally specific beliefs, values, and norms,
  including standards of emotional appropriateness
• Emotional experience is always culturally
  mediated
• Strong cognitivism emotional feelings can be
  constituted from attitudes without physiological
  arousal and sensations
• vividness, seriousness, and consumingness of
  propositional attitudes
• Problems of social constructionism
• (1) all emotions do not have a social function,
  nor an aspect of such function
• (2) cognitive interpretation of emotional
  feelings

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Article 1 Ron Mallon Stephen Stich The Odd
Couple The Compatibility of Social Construction
and Evolutionary Psychology. Philosophy of
Science, 6, (2000), pp. 133-154

• Questions for reading
•  
• What is the debate between social
  constructionists and evolutionary psychologists
  about? 
• How social constructionists study emotions?
• How evolutionary psychologists study emotions?
• How can culture influence affect programs?
• How social constructionists and evolutionary
  psychologists understand the universality of
  emotions?
• How does the thick description theory define the
  meaning and reference of emotion terms?
• How is it possible to integrate social
  constructionist and evolutionary psychological
  views about emotions?