The selection of papers presented
in this special issue of The Journal of Consciousness embodies a genuine
interdisciplinary dialogue on emotion. Though the collection may look too
diverse because it includes various issues and disciplines, there is thematic
unity by attention to some crucial topics of emotion theory, which build
bridges between the empirical research on emotion and the philosophical
analysis of emotion experience. Among the several common threads running
throughout the volume, the reader can find: the role of affect in emotion
experience, the status of the unconscious aspect of emotion experience, whether
it is possible to demarcate emotion experience from other experiences, the role
of emotion in practical reasoning and how to establish a fruitful dialogue
between the various disciplines that crucially contribute to emotion research. 

In ” Are Emotions Feelings? ”, Jesse
Prinz continues to argue for his version of the feeling theory, presenting
evidence in support of William James ‘ claim that
emotions are perceptions of pattern of changes in the body. Prinz begins by
describing the cognitive position of philosophy of emotion, and how they all
accept the ‘Fundamental Axiom ‘
that emotions are not feelings. He wants to argue that the Fundamental Axiom is
both accurate and inaccurate in describing emotions. Then, he moves on to
present three bodies of evidence that support the feeling theory of emotions. The
first showing that there is evidence to suggest that emotions co-occur with
bodily changes; the second that the disruption of interceptive responses leads
to diminution of emotion; the third that the interceptive states are sufficient
to have an emotion, as the studies on drug effects on emotional states as well
as bodily feedback influence on emotions testify. Though Prinz recognizes that
none of the bodies of evidence counts as a conclusive proof of the Jamesian
Theory he remains hopeful that one day there will be such a proof, and states
that the fact that these evidences provide a circumstantial case for the
Feeling theory is enough reason for such optimism. At the end of the paper
Prinz explains briefly how perceptual states can become conscious.  That is he
offers a theory of how emotions become felt, an instance of a more general
theory of phenomenal consciousness called the AIR theory, proposing that when
perceptions are conscious they qualify as feelings, while when they occur
unconsciously emotions are unfelt.

The second paper, ”Emotion
in Human Consciousness Is Built on Core Affect ” by James A. Russell, puts forward the idea that Core Affect
is what provides the emotional quality to any conscious state. In this article
Russell elaborates and clarifies his account presented in a previous paper
(Russell 2003), which offers a different way of thinking about emotional
feelings. Russell ‘s account dissents from the accounts
that assume a set of basic emotions as distinct causal entities. Being closer
to a Jamesian account of emotion, Russell differs from James in his addition of
the Core Affect, and by dispensing with the term ’emotion’. One of the interesting takes of this paper is how it makes
sense to question the role of feeling in emotions, without immediately denying
it as the cognitive theories do. Russell begins by explaining that emotional
life consists of continuous fluctuations in simple primitive feelings that he
calls Core Affect [feeling good or bad, energized etc.], and in the perception
of the affective qualities of objects and events.  As Russell states, when one
considers emotional life in this way one comes to understand that emotions are
psychological rather than genetically or culturally construed. Then, Russell
distinguishes primary from secondary states. He gives several examples, showing
how, in his account, feeling bad is a primary state while feeling afraid is
secondary because it typically consists of an anticipation of feeling bad. Continuing
to elaborate on his account, Russell provides a descriptive model of Core
Affect, where the horizontal dimension, pleasure-displeasure, ranges from one
extreme [agony] to its opposite extreme [ecstasy], and the vertical dimension,
activation-deactivation, ranges from sleep to frantic excitement. He concludes
the paper by placing the account provided into the broader context of theories
of emotions, and arguing that his account can reconcile different positions
because it does not treat emotion concepts as scientific terms, which require
rather than provide explanation.

The third paper by Mathew
Ratcliffe, entitled ”The Feeling of Being”, introduces the notion of ‘existential
feelings ‘ as a distinct group of feelings because they
are bodily states that influence one ‘s awareness, and
they constitute the structure of one ‘s relationship
with the world. Ratcliffe offers an analysis of ‘existential
feelings ‘, which shows how they are both bodily
feelings and part of the structure of intentionality. Building on Goldie’s distinction between bodily feelings and feelings towards,
Ratcliffe proposes that existential feelings are ‘feelings
towards ‘, but suggests that Goldie ‘s
distinction is a double-counting case, concluding that bodily feelings are just
feelings towards — except that some feelings are towards the body or parts of
it, and others toward things outside the body. After claiming that certain
existential feelings constitute the ways of finding ourselves in the world,
Ratcliffe moves on to a section where he discusses how work in phenomenology,
neurophysiology and psychopathology supports the case for existential feelings.
First, Ratcliffe describes how Heidegger ‘s claim that
experience presupposes a sense of ‘attunement’, which is embodied in a mood, in order to indicate how
Heidegger ‘s concept of mood is close to the sense of
existential feelings. Second, he concentrates his attention on Damasio’s work, specifically on Damasio ‘s
somatic marker hypothesis, and how it may be seen as support for the existence
of existential feelings. The most compelling evidence for Ratcliffe appears in
psychopathology work, where reports and studies on schizophrenic patients
illustrate how the structure of experience can be altered, and how those
changes are related to modifications in bodily feelings. Finally, Ratcliff ends
his paper by tentatively suggesting that an appreciation of the existence and
role of  ”existential feelings ”
might further our understanding of the nature of philosophical thought.

The next article, ”At
The Source of Time. Valence and the Constitutional Dynamics of Affect” by Francisco J. Varela and Natalie Depraz, stands as a
step in the analysis of the key role of affect and emotions as the original
source of the living present, and provides an insight into how affect-emotion
moves the flow of the temporal stream of consciousness. The analysis given by
the paper has a double axis: on one hand, it leads to cognitive content by
looking at the emergence of reflection; on the other hand, it leads to a basic
and specific palette of emotions by looking at self-affection. They start by
situating their analysis by showing its Husserlian background and the closeness
with five important authors [Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, Henry and
Marion]. Once the background has been laid, they focus their analysis on a
detailed level of resolution of the grain of description, which is first rooted
in self-affection as the pro-noetic ground and following its trajectory until
it becomes a clear content where emotions are visible. Then, they illustrate
their analysis by two concrete examples [Averting Gaze and Musical Exaltation]
that give the reader an experiential reading of the analysis given. Finally,
they engage in the description of eidetic invariants through a progressive
constitutional analysis. The goal of the paper, as Varela and Depraz state in
their conclusion, is to combine regressive and progressive analysis of
micro-temporality in the transition moment. This analysis points to the
conclusion that affect and emotion appear as the original ground for the
constitution of temporality [and thus of consciousness altogether], through the
key generative layers of valence and domains of concern.

The next paper by Louis C.
Charland, ”The Heat of Emotion. Valence and the
Demarcation Problem ”, argues for the crucial role of
valence in emotion science. First, Charland explains how the philosophical
discussions about the scientific status of emotion are always framed in terms
of questioning whether emotions are a natural kind or not. Charland argues that
the direction of the debate is misguided: first because it forces reflection
into an endless impasse which draws attention away from the relevant debate in
emotion science; second, perhaps more importantly for Charland, because it
ignores valence as a central feature of emotion experience. Consequently,
Charland point out, philosophers are unable to see that valence is an
evaluative reason, giving emotion its central normative feature, and that it is
probably the most promising criterion for demarcating emotion from cognition.
Building on this, he argues that valence is the moving force of emotions.
Charland proposes an alternative philosophical hypothesis that presents emotion
as a naturally occurring valenced phenomenon.  Such hypothesis allows us to
treat emotion as a natural kind while simultaneously recognizing its normative
character, which means that the hypothesis proposed allows a more open-ended
trait to emotion, making it possible to understand how it evolves and develops.
Valence, Charland argues, is also relational because it can only exist within
the context of the encounter of an organism and its environment. Charland also
introduces the interesting distinction between affect valence and emotion
valence, which bring some clarification to the notion. At the end of his paper,
Charland considers the genealogy of valence by giving us two opposite proposals
[Damasio and Russell].

Giovanna Colombetti, in ”Appraising Valence ” makes an
excellent evaluation of valence. The paper has two parts that, although
complementary, can be taken independently. The first part shows how the term ‘valence ‘ has been used in more than
half a dozen ways since its appearance in psychology and emotion theory. First,
Colombetti indicates how ‘valence ‘
arrived through a questionable translation in psychology, and how it has been
linked to frequency of positive and negative. Then, Colombetti reviews and
illustrates the different uses in detail showing how valence of emotion
sometimes means object valence, sometimes behavior valence. Also, how valence
is attached to aspects of emotional processes such as affect valence, as well
as valence of facial expressions, and its connection to evaluation, in terms of
the goals of the organism. Finally, she presents how valence has been connected
to norms.  In the second part of the paper, clearly more argumentative than the
descriptive tone of the first part, Colombetti points to the conceptual
problems of having different uses of valence. First, there are the problems
that come from conflating the valence of an emotion with the valence of its
aspects. Secondly, problems arise from the idea that an emotion, or its
aspects, can be clearly and simplistically divided into mutually exclusive
opposites, which distorts the complexity of emotional processes.  She concludes
that, given the descriptive and critical analysis of the notion of valence, it
stands as a hindrance rather than a useful notion to define emotion. Colombetti
ends her paper by pointing out that one of the things that comes out from the
undergone reflection is the awareness that to fully capture the richness of
emotion, emotions research needs to use more complex conceptual tools.

The next paper by Peter Goldie, ”Imagination and the Distorting Power of Emotion”, considers the role of emotions in practical reasoning.
Goldie observes that since emotions can distort practical reasoning in ways
which the subject does not realize, predict or plan it raises difficulties in
imagining such situations from the inside. In contrast, Goldie suggests another
kind of imagination, imagining from an external perspective, which allows
subjects to evaluate imagined events in a way that is revealing and helpful for
practical reasoning. The external perspective can draw on the dramatic irony
where one knows the situation imagined in a way that one also knows the way an
imagined emotion can distort one ‘s reasoning. First, he
begins by demonstrating that difficulties of central imagining, that is of
imagining from the inside, by showing the conceptual and psychological
limitations on imaginative counterparts. Disagreeing with Currie and Ravenscoft’s
conclusion that emotions have no imaginative counterparts, Goldie argues that
it is possible to imagine something threatening where the imagined fear is part
of the content of what I imagined, and not a response to what I imagine. Goldie
then takes us to inquire into how these imagined emotional experiences feature
in imagined practical reasoning and imagined action. Goldie answers negatively
to what concerns imagination ‘s ability to be a good
guide without prior comparable experience, but responds affirmatively to the
possibility of imagining oneself engaged in practical reasoning, so that the
imagined emotional experience has normative impulse. After establishing this,
Goldie turns to the distinction between empathetic and sympathetic audiences,
in order to suggest that the awareness of dramatic irony draws one away from
imagining oneself from the inside, and draws one to imagine oneself from an
external perspective, concluding that imagining from an external perspective
allows evaluation to be built into the perspective. Goldie ends the paper by
considering the merits of imagining others from an external perspective.

The paper ”The
Roles of Imagery and Meta-emotion in deliberate choice and moral psychology”, by Ralph Ellis, is a paper that attempts to ground moral
and other deliberate choices in the neuropsychological of imagery and
meta-emotions. Ellis’ goal is to show that ethics has nothing to fear from
neurosciences. He begins by outlining the two main reconciliatory strategies in
philosophy of mind that take both neuroscience and ethics seriously, and points
out the problems of these strategies. Then, he illustrates how love of truth
can be a hardwired sentiment, and how it is simultaneously a trait certainly
conducive to survival. Ellis explains how some people do not experience vivid
sensory imagery as triggering their first order feelings, but instead feel that
something like a ‘narrative ‘ of
a situation can pull up the feelings allowing the Readiness Potential. Ellis
points out that some philosophers, who argue that conscious choice is an
illusion, too quickly interpret a "Readiness Potential," which precedes
consciousness of action.  He argues that this conclusion is not supported by a
deeper look at the neuroscientific understanding of the way the brain works.
With this paper Ellis wants to show that to understand the role of emotion in
reasoned deliberate choice one needs to understand three components, namely the
fact that meta-emotions allow self-generated voluntary narratives that trigger
first-order emotions; second, that there are hardwired altruistic sentiments
which are necessary but not sufficient; finally that neuropsychology grounds
the sentiment of love of truth.

The following paper by Jaak
Panksepp, ”On the Embodied neural nature of Core
Emotional Affects ”, summarizes how we can develop a
cross-species affective neuroscience that probes the neural nature of emotional
affective states, by studying the instinctual emotional apparatus of the
mammalian body and brain. Panksepp begins by presenting a synopsis of the
affective neuroscientific strategy showing how animal models allow researchers
to empirically analyze the large-scale neural ensembles that generate
emotional-action dynamics that are critically important for creating emotional
feelings. Panksepp’s premise is that affective experience is a deeply
neurobiological process, and that scholars who do not invest in the biological
sciences have little hope of shedding light on what the effects really are.
Then he gives us an overview of different conceptual perspectives [traditional
behavioral neuroscience view, traditional cognitive neuroscience, affective
neuroscience], pointing out how they represent profound ontological
disagreements and make the study of affect generally ignored in basic animal
research. Given this scenario, Panksepp goes on to present his premise
concerning the nature of emotions, and state that it is the central neural
circuit changes that support our emotional feelings. Arguing how his research
aspired to provide a coherent theory of the neuro-evolutionary underpinnings of
raw emotional feelings, Panksepp indicates that if animals had no affective
experiences there would be no obvious reason for them to exhibit learned
behavioral preferences. Then he describes how it is reasonable to taxonomize
affective experiences into at least three major varieties (1. the homeostatic
states of our body signaled by interoceptors as well as other chemical states
of the body, 2. the great variety of
exteroceptively driven affects such as taste and, 3. the emotional affects so
evident in instinctual action dynamics), and how primal emotional processes
illustrate such varieties. Panksepp concludes by proposing that the affective
and emotional actions may reflect the dynamics of the primal viscero-somatic
homunculus of SELF-representation.

Douglas Watt’s paper, ”Social Bonds and the Nature of Empathy ”,
investigates the crucial place of the notion of empathy in affective research,
showing that the creation of social bonds is a critical domain of affective
research. Watt notes that there is a widespread confusion regarding the role of
the cognitive and the affective in empathy. He begins by elaborating on the
difficulties of defining empathy, concluding that there are three central
components to the various conceptions of empathy. After reviewing some of the
models of empathy in cognitive neuroscience and some of its problems, Watt
develops a basic model of empathy which arises from resonance induction of
others distress accompanied by the motivation to relieve the distress. Assuming
that human empathy mixes primitive emotion resonance with later developmental
cognitive abilities, Watt establishes four classes of variables that affect
empathetic induction: first, the native talent and developed ability; second,
the degree of attachment to the object; third, the degree of felt potential
vulnerability of the object; and finally, the affective state of the
emphasizer. Then, Watt considers some of the clinical disorder of empathy, and
how they fit with the basic model proposed. The paper concludes by considering
some remaining questions and possible tests for the hypothesis given, pointing
out that empathy is a phenomenon which breaths on the cognition-emotion border.
Watt ends by pointing out that given that empathy is a concept that covers a
large group of processes, and does not denote a single unique process, it will
take some time to organize a theoretical coherence for it.

  ”Getting
Emotional: A Neural Perspective in Intention and Consciousness ”,
by Marc Lewis & Rebecca Tood, presents a review of the psychological model
of emotional episodes proposing that goal obstruction extends the duration of
these episodes while it simultaneously increases cognitive complexity and
emotional intensity. They suggest that attention is initially focused on action
plans and their obstruction, and argue that it is only when obstruction
persists that focal attention comes to include emotional states. Lewis and Tood
believe that dynamic systems approaches in emotion theory are the most fruitful
ones when they look at biological systems, and go beyond the behavioral level of
description. Accordingly, they follow up with a description at a neural level
that considers three levels of obstruction in order to show the
self-organization of neural activities that hypothetically underlie the
evolution of an emotional episode. They suggest that prefrontal activities
greatly extend intentional states, while focal attention integrates emotional
awareness and goal pursuit in a comprehensive sense of the self in the world. Finally, they inquire into the
evolutionary status of the advantage of emotional awareness, exploring
different possibilities and concluding that emotional awareness enriches our
sense of self, and it also allows us to be attentive to the details of the
world and to our movements.

The last paper by David Rudrauf
& Antonio Damasio, entitled ”A Conjecture
Regarding the Biological Mecahnism of Subjectivity and Feeling ”
presents a conjecture regarding the biology of subjectivity and feeling, which
aims at providing the beginning of an explanation of why and how we are feeling
subjects, based on biophysical and phenomenological considerations. Part of the
motivation of this paper is to contribute to the ongoing effort to close the
explanatory gap in the study of consciousness. Their hypothesis is that the
core of the subjectivity of feeling would come to life as a process of
resistance to variance occurring during the cognitive and behavioral processes
of the individual. Their hypothesis presupposes certain conditions: that
feelings entities must be capable of certain kinds of behaviors namely
intentional and emotional behaviors; that feeling entities must have a certain
size and a certain degree of complexity; and finally, that a complex,
multicomponential nervous system is required. After showing how the notion of
affect suggests an underlying process of resistance to variance, they turn
their attention to how vigilance, emotional arousal and attention reflect a
dynamics of controlled over-excitation related to cognitive integration and
control. In this article they characterize the phenomenological, functional and
neurocognitive levels at which a dynamics of resistance to variance could be
seen as generating basic subjectivity and feeling. At the end of the paper they
take up discussion about the impact of their hypothesis as well as its
limitations, explaining how the spacialization of the subjectivity [the fact
that we feel in a projective way] is more difficult to account for.

The collected essays presented in
this volume are a true reflection of the effort to establish a relation of
topics and concerns among different fields, and a must for those who want to
know and participate in the effort of building an interdisciplinary research on
emotions.

 

 

 © 2006 Dina
Mendonça

 

Dina
Mendonça is a Postdoctoral Fellow of Fundação
para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, Portugal, at the Instituto de Filosofia
da Linguagem in the Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Working in a
research program on "Pragmatic Analysis of Emotion." This research,
of Deweyan inspiration, aims at elaborating a critical interpretation of the
philosophy of emotions clarifying: on the one hand, (1) the different
methodological approaches to emotions; on the other hand, (2) the topics that
surround reflection upon emotion. Among other things, the project aims at the
production of a commented bibliography and a research database on philosophy of
emotion.

Categories: Psychology, Philosophical