These are excerpts and elaborations from my book "The Nature of Consciousness"
Emotion as Cognition The common theme underlying
all of these studies is that emotions are not as irrational as they seem to be;
quite the opposite, actually. William James explained emotions as bodily
upsets, but the variety of emotional responses makes it difficult to devise a
common theory of emotions (and why only some bodily upsets result in emotions).
If emotions have a “cognitive life”, on the other hand, that would explain
their complexity. The US psychologist George
Mandler views emotion as a cognitive
summary of sorts. Let's assume that, of all the information available in the
environment, the mind is mainly interested in environmental regularities. Then
most of its processing can be reduced to: there is a goal (e.g.:
"eat"), there is a need (e.g.: "food") and there is a
situation (e.g.: "a plantation of bananas"). Based on known
regularities of the environment, the mind can determine what it needs to do in
order to achieve its goal in the current situation. The emotion (e.g.: "to
desire bananas") simplifies this process. The function of emotions is to
provide the individual with the most general view of the world that is
consistent with current needs, goals and situations. The US psychologist Richard
Lazarus agrees that the ultimate goal of our emotions must be to help the
organism survive in the environment. Emotions arise from the relationship
between the individual and its environment, or, better, the regularities of its
environment. An emotion arises an
appraisal of the situation and its consequences. For example, such an appraisal
may lead to fear if the situation turns out to be dangerous. Emotions are
genetically determined, but they can change during a lifetime: both biological
and social variables may alter our given set of emotions, and this explains why
emotions change through the various stages of life. The meaning of each emotion
is about the significance of the triggering event (the situation) for the
well-being of the individual. Ultimately, emotions express the personal meaning
of an individual's experience. Each emotion is defined by a
set of benefits and harms in the relationship between individual and
environment, and that set is constructed by a process of appraisal. Appraisal
is key to emotion. Each type of emotion is distinguished by a pattern of
appraisal factors. Since appraisal is the
fundamental process for the occurrence of emotion, Lazarus believes that
cognition is a prerequisite for emotion: a cognitive process (an appraisal)
must occur before one can have an emotion. Similarly, the Dutch
psychologist Nico Frijda viewed emotions as awareness of “action tendencies”, tendencies to
act based on the situation. The US psychologists Peter
Salovey and John Mayer (“Emotional intelligence”,
1990) introduced the term "emotional intelligence" and
identified four kinds of emotional
intelligence: recognizing emotions, using emotions to facilitate reasoning,
understanding the meaning of one's emotions, managing one's emotions. Several
scholars associated emotional intelligence with the development of empathy from the US pediatrician Martin Hoffman (“Development of Prosocial
Motivation”, 1982) to the US psychologist Nancy Eisenberg (“Empathy and Sympathy”, 2000).
In fact, the French neurologist Jean Decety and the US neurologist Philip
Jackson have shown that in most cases
empathy employs the same neural structures of emotional intelligence (“A
Social-Neuroscience Perspective on Empathy”, 2006). Following Heidegger (who thought that emotions tune
us to the world) and Sartre (who thought that emotions have
a purpose and we are responsible for them), the US philosopher Robert Solomon argued that we are responsible
for our emotions, and, in fact, we "are" our emotions (as well as our
thoughts). Emotions are an essential part of our existence: without them, we
would not be able to make rational decisions. It is our emotions that guide us
in this world. Anger, for example, is a strategy for engaging with the world.
People enjoy dramatic films and even horror films because they evoke unpleasant
emotions. People even enjoy (and pay for) experiencing extreme danger (whether
on rollercoasters or paragliding). We wouldn't get pleasure out of a
"negative" emotion unless that emotion was not negative at all.
Pleasure and pain are not opposites: they are complementary. Emotions help us
conceptualize and evaluate, and therefore shape our lives. Emotions are not inside our mind but are
outside, in the world, and more precisely in the social space.
"Introspecting is looking in the wrong place". Emotions, therefore,
help us "reason". People whose emotional life has been damaged (e.g.
by a stroke) are no longer capable of making rational decisions despite the
fact that the rest of their brain is functioning like before. They do not
"care" for the consequences of the decision and therefore are
incapable of making a rational one.
Solomon also argued that spirituality is a meta-emotion that transcends
the personal and relates to a larger self. Back to the beginning of the chapter "Emotion" | Back to the index of all chapters |