This book is an important
contribution to the wealth of work that has been recently published on the
topic of emotion and consciousness. Aimed primarily at graduate-level students,
it brings together research from psychologists, neuroscientists, and
philosophers on major issues related to conscious and unconscious processes in
emotion that are likely to interest a wider audience among those interested in the
subject. The topics covered include the relation between thinking and feeling,
conscious and unconscious emotion-related processes in the brain, the body’s
role in emotional processing, how stimuli acquire affective meaning, the
conscious experience of emotion, and the question of whether it even makes
sense to talk of ‘unconscious’ emotions. In my opinion, the editors have made a
commendable job in assembling a collection of papers that are both informative
and sufficiently challenging with regards to various debates and controversies currently
dominating the field of emotion studies. Not so successful, I think, is their
expressed hope of "bring[ing] needed coherence to the scientific study of
emotion and consciousness" (p.2). In this respect, more demanding readers
may well find that the authors seem to have underestimated the size of the task
they took on.

There are two reasons, I think, why
Emotions and Consciousness fails to completely fulfill its promises. The
first has to do with the structure of the book vis-à-vis its declared aims, and
I offer my comments here more as suggestions for future editions than
criticisms of what is otherwise a worthy book. The second is directly linked to
the state of the field and the apparent lack of consensus regarding fundamental
questions of method and conceptualization.

Let me start with the point about structure.
The volume is comprised of 16 Chapters, including an Introduction by the
Editors where they give a general overview of what is ahead and express their
belief that the "field is ‘ready’ for a systematic attempt to integrate
the various themes of research on conscious and unconscious processes in
emotion" (p.3). Unfortunately, little room is given here to clarifying how
that integration is meant to be achieved, or how to resolve the conceptual
disagreements that are apparent between various contributors. As the editors
themselves acknowledge, the collection of papers in this volume is testimony to
the "diversity of topics and the authors’ differing disciplinary
orientations" (idem), and any attentive reader will notice that the
rifts between them run in fact quite deep. Yet, nothing of great substance is
said in the introduction regarding the consensus we are told is emerging around
these. The editors mostly limit themselves to a summary of ‘themes’ in the
literature and "hope that the reader will notice the coherence of the
message that emerges from the book" (idem). Given the explicit aim
of attempting to integrate results across fields and, moreover, the
acknowledgement of a variety of approaches, it is to be expected and desirable
that the editors would give a more careful treatment of the conceptual issues uniting
and /or dividing the contributors. Perhaps adding another chapter at the end ‘weighing-up’
the suggestions and competing explanations offered in the book could go some
way towards resolving this issue.

 The above said, let me hasten to
add that I don’t think that it is entirely the editors’ fault if their
book never quite delivers the ’emerging consensus’ they are so optimistic
about. This is my second point. For it seems to me that Emotion and
Consciousness is in fact a good illustration of how far we still are from
conceptual consensus on the subject. As the papers here included so nicely
demonstrate, despite the enthusiasm for integrating results, the field of
emotion-related studies is still plagued by old conceptual disagreements regarding
how to best understand fundamental terms like ’emotion’ and ‘consciousness’. To
give an example, some investigators are convinced that consciousness is a kind
of extra property bestowed upon mental states that can be independently
characterized (among other things) as ’emotion episodes’ (see, e.g., Chapters
2, 7, 15), whilst others insist that emotions are necessarily consciously
experienced (e.g. Chapters 4 and 10). This disagreement runs deep in the field
and is easily seen to influence disputes about, for example, the role of the
amygdala in the processing of emotion-related information, how stimuli come to
have emotional meaning, or the possibility of ‘unconscious emotions’. Yet, what
is striking about many such disputes (and this book is no exception) is that
researchers all too often waive these deeper conceptual disputes by simply deciding
to define — or accept a given definition of — ’emotion’ and/or ‘consciousness’
according to their preferred intuitions, and then ignoring the objections
raised against those same intuitions by their opponents. The impression left is
thus of a ‘bunch’ of people talking past each other and not really noticing
where their disagreements truly rest. Until such conceptual matters are taken
seriously and given their proper treatment, it seems to me that attempts to integrate
data from different approaches are very capable of adding ‘fuel’ to current
debates but continue to offer little hope of ultimately setting them to rest.

In summary, Emotion and
Consciousness is well worth the time spent reading it but don’t expect
major breakthroughs or amazing revelations.

Link: Publisher’s web page for book

© 2006 Isabel Gois

Isabel Gois is a PhD student at
King’s College London working on Consciousness. Her research interests include
Philosophy of Mind, Neuropsychology, and Mental Disorder. She has articles
published on Emotions, Computationalism, and Consciousness.    

Categories: Philosophical, Psychology