Michael Lacewing – Philosopher and Teacher



Mikko Salmela, True Emotions, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2014, 191pp., US$135 (Hardback), ISBN 9789027241597The title of this book is deliberately equivocal. Salmela undertakes to answer three distinct questions:1. what is the truth about emotions, i.e. what is an emotion? 2. what is it for an emotion to be true to my self, i.e. what is an authentic emotion? 3. what is it for an emotion to be ‘true to the world’?After an introductory chapter, Chh. 2 and 3 discuss what emotions are. Ch. 4 discusses the question of authenticity, which is then returned to in a practical context in Ch. 6. Ch. 5 addresses the question of what it is for an emotion to be true, with a consequent discussion of the implications for metaethics taken up in Ch. 7. I shall take each discussion in turn before concluding with remarks on the book as a whole. The book is not always easy to read, as the writing is sometimes dense and the signposting is not always as clear as it could be, but as I hope to show, it is very worthwhile making the effort.I. What is an emotion?Salmela situates his discussion deep within the territory of the contemporary debate among psychologists, neuroscientists and those philosophers who accept a computational model of the mind. He assumes that we can meaningfully construct and discuss psychological theories in terms of the three ‘levels’ of functional analysis, algorithmic mechanisms, and neurological implementation. This is certainly the dominant paradigm in psychological theories of emotion, though there are well-known philosophical reservations about coordinating explanations and phenomena at the personal, functional and sub-personal levels, especially where rational processes and intentional content are involved (see, e.g., Murphy 2006, Ch. 5; Bennett & Hacker, 2003, Chh. 3-7; Roberts 2003, Ch. 1). Salmela doesn’t engage with these reservations, so if you are persuaded by them, his discussion starts on the wrong foot and misses a number of important opportunities to jump off the train of thought. But if we put them aside, he proves an interesting and helpful guide to the central concern of the contemporary debate, viz. whether emotions should be considered cognitive or noncognitive.Salmela starts from Dretske’s definition of ‘cognitive’, widespread in cognitive science, that a psychological system that can convert perceptual information into semantic content involves cognitive states if the intentional content is causally efficacious in determining the system’s response. This is evidenced by the flexibility of the system – differences in input may nevertheless receive sameness of output, indicating that mental representations mediate between the perceptual input and the system’s response. At this functional level of analysis, emotions clearly involve cognition, as very different stimuli can give rise to the same emotional response.However, this claim is compatible with radically different types of information processing underpinning different instances or types of emotion. An agreed mark of cognition is conceptual processing. If emotions are cognitive at the algorithmic level, then the content involved in emotional processing must be conceptual, i.e. either structured by concepts (in the semantic sense) or at least explicable in such terms. But this is far from clear. For instance, Paul Griffiths (2004) has argued that emotions divide into two kinds – those that are ‘affect programs’ and those that are cognitively complex. These work, he argues, with different types of intentional content, enter into different relations with other mental states, have different adaptive functions, and are realised in different neural processes. The claim has come to be associated with distinctions between conceptual and non-conceptual content and between explicit (conscious) and implicit (unconscious) processes. Early dual process theories sought to align these distinctions, talking of ‘type 1’ processes that are implicit, non-conceptual, automatic, and fast and ‘type 2’ processes that explicit, conceptual, voluntary (to some degree) and slow. Affect programs then fall under type 1, cognitively complex emotions under type 2. If this is right, affect program emotions are non-cognitive, while cognitively complex emotions are cognitive.In line with developments of the last ten years, Salmela is clear that such a division is too neat and simple. First, there are implicit processes that work with conceptual content. While there may be some basic emotions that emerge from implicit processing ‘by default’, many other emotions based on individual learning may become implicit through habitual response. Furthermore, implicit and explicit processes are not exclusive, but overlapping. In particular, explicit processes can redirect or intervene upon implicit processes (learning being just one example of this). So while Griffiths is right to think that emotions involve both conceptual and non-conceptual content, he is wrong to suppose there is a neat division of emotions to be had, since many emotions may involve both implicit and explicit processes and both conceptual and non-conceptual content.Salmela’s ensuing discussion of the place of nonconceptual content in emotion is careful and enlightening. He argues that reasons to think that any human emotions, post infancy, operate solely with nonconceptual content, are slight indeed. He unpicks the evidence for affect programmes, rejects D?ring’s arguments from noninferential structure of emotion, and argues that phenomenology, while indicating nonconceptual content, is nevertheless conceptually structured.Thus far, the argument indicates that neither cognitivism nor noncognitivism is correct as a general theory of emotions. But the balance tilts towards cognitivism once we consider not just the constituent structure of emotions (Ch. 2), but their dynamic unfolding (Ch. 3). Noncognitivists tend to assume that emotions are automatically triggered by noncognitive causes (e.g. perception) and short-lived; cognitivists, such as appraisal theorists like Frijda and Scherer, think of emotions as evolving in time through interaction between different elements. In a passage of detailed, nicely structured argumentation, Salmela firmly sides with the cognitivists, arguing that ‘dynamic, parallel, non-linear, holistic emotional processing is both elicited and driven by appraisals’ (p. 56), including cognitive appraisals of the self and the normative significance of the eliciting event. Thus even if the initial cause of an emotion is noncognitive, conceptual cognition rapidly comes into play as the emotion evolves. Salmela makes the case that such reappraisal is also a form of emotion regulation, and can occur implicitly, explicitly or through social interaction. In so doing, he neatly surveys and unifies a significant number of the main theories in contemporary psychology of emotion, viz. appraisal theory, psychological constructionism, emotion regulation theory, and theories that emphasise social interaction. Because automatic reappraisal is an intrinsic part of emotion, emotions turn out to be cognitive on the algorithmic level as well as the functional, even allowing for the presence of nonconceptual content.At times, Salmela’s discussion of the nature of emotions is rather too quick and rough, and gives the impression that he is more at home among the psychologists than the philosophers. For example, I’m not convinced by Salmela’s claim that Goldie and Roberts hold that the intentional content of emotions is always fully conceptual (p. 28): Goldie (2000: 60) allows that the distinctive evaluative content of an emotion may be semantically inexpressible while Roberts (2000: 132) says that emotions needn’t always have propositional content, but have content determined by biological factors or habit (2000: 117), the first of which, at least, qualifies as nonconceptual content. Nor does Salmela’s objection (p. 28) to these authors, that to claim emotional content is in some sense sui generis is simply to give up on the attempt to explain it, persuade. It appears to rely on an assumption that explanation must engage with the three-level computational analysis. Not only do Goldie and Roberts have much to say about emotional content, they work outside Salmela’s framework in doing so, finding no need to provide an algorithmic account to fill out their personal level accounts.Another problematic, but widely shared, aspect of the assumed framework is a restricted understanding of emotion in terms of its supposed function ‘to evaluate perceived changes in the environment for their significance to the subject’s concerns and to motivate adaptive responding to the situation’ (p. 3). While it is of course true that emotions frequently function this way, this starting point both privileges emotions that arise in response to perception rather than in cogitation and struggles to adequately account for the interaction between occurrent emotions and long-lasting emotional dispositions, sentiments, character, or the self. Such dispositions are not mentioned in the discussion of what emotions are, but become central to the second question concerning what it is for an emotion to be true to the self. II. What is an authentic emotion?In Ch. 4, Salmela provides a very good guide to recent literature on authenticity and does an excellent job of delineating the shortcomings of the widespread understanding of authenticity as sincerity and spontaneity in one’s emotions. He defends a more normative account that accepts the necessity of sincerity, but adds the condition that an authentic emotion is coherent with one’s internally justified values and beliefs. Thus not all sincere emotions speak for the self, e.g. those that arise as a result of a restrictive or oppressive upbringing whose values one now rejects. And while many authentic emotions are spontaneous, this is not a necessary condition. As argued in Ch. 3, almost all adult human emotions involve emotion regulation, which is typically unconscious, and brings our emotions into line with feeling rules. There is therefore no sharp distinction between spontaneous and ‘managed’ emotions (Salmela switches from talk of regulation to talk of management). Authenticity involves striving towards a more coherent self, and this may require bringing emotional dispositions into line with values rather than vice-versa. This introduces the final condition in Salmela’s analysis: authenticity is best understood as an open-ended, regulative ideal, not a final, achievable psychological state.Central to the discussion are significant questions around what it is for emotions to be ‘coherent’ with each other and with one’s values, and whether such coherence can provide a fully adequate account of authenticity. Salmela rightly diagnoses difficulties with the relation between authenticity and autonomy in light of unconscious emotional dispositions and processes. Thus De Sousa (2007) takes authentic emotions to fit one’s unique, largely unconscious affective structures deriving from childhood; but because these structures remain unconscious, the project of authenticity becomes nigh-on impossible, as one is neither aware of the patterns of emotion that determine authenticity nor able to engage with them rationally. Or again, Salmela claims that we should not say that emotions are authentic if both they and one’s values, with which they cohere, derive from heteronomous influences, such as an oppressive childhood. Thus we need to add the condition that such coherence should survive critical acknowledgement of how such emotions and values came to form part of one’s psychology. Because it is impossible to subject oneself to accurate scrutiny on this matter, the condition is to be met by being open to new evidence that can challenge our evaluative perspective. But how can Salmela remain optimistic that such openness is possible, having granted (following Goldie (2008)) that our (unconscious) affective structures can unconsciously skew our appreciation of relevant evidence? Such evidence of which we become conscious may have already been brought into coherence with our existing, heteronomously originating values and emotions. The problem of the place of autonomy in authenticity remains unresolved. That said, there is much food for thought in Salmela’s discussion of authenticity, and well worth consideration by anyone interested in the topic.In Ch. 6, Salmela uses his theory of authenticity to provide a critique of existing positions on emotional authenticity in the workplace that have been largely critical of roles that require particular emotions to be displayed as part of a work role (an airline steward’s friendliness, a nurse’s compassion, etc.). He defends the view that emotions expected or required as part of a professional identity can nevertheless be authentic if the values of the profession are coherent with the worker’s personal values. His discussion is a fine example of applied philosophical reflection creating new options in a significant practical debate. III. What is it for an emotion to be true?Many philosophers have defended the claims that we can properly talk of emotions being ‘appropriate’ or ‘fitting’ and that these terms should be understood by analogy with truth. Each emotion type is said to have a ‘formal object’ that is distinctive of that type, e.g. sadness responds to valuable loss. An emotion is appropriate if its particular object possesses properties that ‘fit’ its formal object, e.g. your sadness is appropriate if the event it responds to constitutes a valuable loss. Salmela argues that we can go further, and talk of emotions being true. But first, to the claim that the particular object of an emotion must fit its formal object, we should add that the particular object exists or is accurately represented by the emotion. Fear of monsters is not ‘true’ because, although monsters are indeed dangerous, they don’t exist. The claim is that ‘an emotion is true if and only if there is an actual fit between the particular object of emotion and its formal object, and the emotion’s propositional content is semantically satisfied or the target of the emotion exists’ (122). Salmela identifies and responds to two main objections. The first, from York Gunther (2003), notes that psychological states that are truth-apt, such as beliefs, have linguistic expressions that are truth-apt, in the form of assertoric sentences with propositional content that retains its meaning in conditionals, disjunctions, etc. and in expressions with different illocutionary force. Thus my belief that she is late can be expressed by my utterance ‘she is late’, whose propositional content is unchanged in ‘if she is late, then I shall be cross’ and ‘is she late?’. By contrast, ‘she’s late, damn her!’ creates ungrammatical forms when modulated, while ‘She’s late!’ (said with anger) fails to express emotion when modulated. Emotions don’t have the requisite logical form of expression to be truth-apt. Salmela responds that while many utterances expressive of emotion don’t have this logical form, there is one common form that does, viz. those that also function as first person reports of emotion. For example, ‘I resent her being late’ retains its meaning in ‘Either she’s on time or I resent her being late’ and ‘Do I resent her being late?’. Its true that it fails to retain its affective expression in these forms, but that is because the emotional experience is not being asserted. Retaining affective expression is irrelevant to whether emotions can be truth-apt, which requires only that they have assertoric content.Of course, this requires that emotions have conceptual content – but this was independently established in Chh. 2-3. It also entails that we cannot rationally hold contradictory emotions simultaneously. Salmela argues that supposedly contradictory emotions that we can hold simultaneously (such as being both upset and happy about not getting a job) do not have the same intentional object, e.g. they focus on different aspects of a situation, or they cannot be sustained over time, any more than contradictory beliefs, but demand resolution.The second objection to saying emotions can be true is that we cannot meaningfully talk of truth as there are no sufficiently objective standards for whether an emotion is warranted, in particular whether the particular object fits the formal object. Salmela responds that the standards of appropriateness for a given community are sufficiently convergent; within a community, we have and expect the same reasons for emotions, grounding intersubjective intelligibility. These reasons pick out descriptive features of the emotion’s particular object that ground the ascription of its formal object to the particular object, e.g. the snarl and sharp teeth of the big dog ground the ascription of its fearsomeness. We may rationally assess (1) whether the object has those features, and (2) whether those features warrant the ascription of the emotion’s formal object. (1) is unproblematic in terms of truth; (2) succeeds, Salmela argues, on an anti-realist conception of truth. He adopts and develops Crispin Wright’s (1992) idea of ‘superassertibility’; hence, ‘a true emotion is warranted by reasons that remain undefeated no matter how much our information is or will be enlarged or improved’ (117). He expands this claim further in relation to talk of improvements in our emotional sensibilities as well, following Blackburn’s (1998) defence of truth in quasi-realism. We can criticise emotional responses, and even a community’s local standards of warrant, as being immature, unimaginative, or unsympathetic. Truth in emotion is thus the focal point of rational reflection and critique.In Ch. 7, Salmela uses his theory of true emotion to solve a fundamental challenge to neosentimentalism, the ‘wrong kind of reason’ or ‘conflation’ problem. Conceptual neosentimentalism is the claim that sentimental value concepts (e.g. loss) can be analysed in terms of appropriate emotional responses (e.g. sadness). To avoid the circularity of re-introducing value concepts in explaining appropriateness, a number of defenders have adopted a non-cognitive theory of emotion, but this has been rejected in Chh. 2-3. So Salmela sets the conceptual claim aside as hopeless, to concentrate on metaphysical neosentimentalism – the claim that what it is for something to have a sentimental value just is for it to be appropriate for us to respond emotionally in a certain way. The conflation problem is that we have different types of reason for our emotional responses, not all of which are relevant to whether some object has the value in question. In the original example that began the debate, an evil demon threatens to kill thousands of people if I don’t admire it. I now have a reason to admire the demon, but the demon is not admirable. D’Arms and Jacobson (2000, 2006) famously distinguish ‘appropriateness’ – an all-in notion of whether or not to feel the emotion – from ‘fittingness’, which specifically relates this issue of the possession of the formal object by the particular object of emotion. The question now becomes how to further theorise fittingness without circularity, i.e. without mentioning the evaluative term that is being analysed in terms of fitting emotional responses.Salmela reports D’Arms and Jacobson’s reviews of other theories without comment, before critiquing both their own proposal and that of Danielson and Olson (2007) and defending his own account in terms of emotional truth. In doing so, he rejects D’Arms and Jacobson’s distinction between appropriateness and fittingness. There is no specific type of reason related to fittingness; any properties that warrant the ascription of the formal object to the particular object in a particular community of sensibility, which warrant is superassertible, are relevant reasons. This rules out strategic and instrumental reasons, but allows, for example, for moral reasons to render a joke unfunny in extreme cases.Salmela’s arguments and final position are a significant contribution to the debates discussed. As in Ch. 2, a number of arguments are made too quickly, e.g. conceptual neosentimentalism is rejected almost out of hand, and I found myself questioning whether contradictory emotions merely impose a psychological, but not a logical, pressure for resolution. But there are some fine discussions, e.g. on envy, and the whole is generally very successful in its aim.IV. Concluding remarksSalmela demonstrates an incredible breadth of knowledge and a familiarity with a very wide range of literature within philosophy and without. My primary criticism of the book as a whole is that the three questions are not brought into closer connection to provide an overarching unity, not only to the argument, but to our understanding of emotions. Certainly, a few connections are made, most notably the dependence of the theory of true emotion and neosentimentalism on a cognitive theory of emotion. But there is no extended discussion of, say, the relation between the cognitivism of the early chapters and the anti-realism of Chh. 5 and 7; or again, the episodic nature of emotion of Chh. 2 and 3 and the centrality of emotional dispositions to the question of authenticity; or finally, the relation between authenticity as an ideal of individualism and the communal nature of emotional warrant. It is therefore a complete shock to read, in the concluding chapter, that Salmela’s ‘main aim has been to show how these problems relate to each other and together form a plausible area of research.’ (171) The very brief discussions of the relations between the three questions that structure the book that appear with this statement in the concluding chapter are suggestive only, and do little to meet that aim.The lack of unity is also evidenced in the deployment of conflicting frameworks. The difficulties, noted at the outset, about coordinating explanations at the personal, functional and sub-personal levels, apply acutely to how we are supposed to understand the relation between the first question and the other two. For example, emotional dispositions are not mentioned in the discussion of what emotions are, but become central to the second question concerning what it is for an emotion to be true to the self. Should this alter our understanding of what emotions are, that they form or manifest standing dispositions? The three-level analysis framework doesn’t easily make room for this diachronic dimension.Further tensions arise around cognitivism and direction of fit. Psychologically cognitive processes are present in both directions of fit, e.g. desires and intentions (with world-to-mind fit) use concepts and otherwise demonstrate the flexibility of cognitive processes just as much as beliefs. Thus, a theory of emotion that is cognitivist in this sense has no direct implications for metaethics, which understands cognitivism in terms of mind-to-world fit. In discussing authenticity, Salmela states in passing that evaluative attitudes have world-to-mind fit (93). But when defending his account of emotional truth, Salmela claims that emotions have mind-to-world fit (114). Given that values are to be analysed in terms of emotional truth, it is unclear how both statements can be correct. It is also left unclear how his anti-realist theory of emotional truth fits with the latter claim, since ‘the world’ to which emotions fit is not understood realistically (by contrast, Blackburn argues that the evaluative dimension of emotional responses have a world-to-mind fit, though projectivism makes it seem otherwise). There are a variety of ways I can think of in which these claims may be made to cohere, but Salmela doesn’t address, let alone resolve, the tension. No doubt, this is partly a function of material for four chapters being previously published as stand-alone articles. But given the aim of unity, they have not been amended as much as they should (even to the extent of ‘in this article’ appearing occasionally in Ch. 6). The experience of disunity also enters in the ordering of the chapters. I found it easier to read Ch. 6 straight after Ch. 4, before moving to Chh. 5 and 7. (Perhaps at one time, they were ordered thus, as there are points in Ch. 7 at which the text refers to ‘the previous chapter’, meaning Ch. 5.) On a more positive note, this criticism can also be read as a plea for Salmela to develop his position in greater depth. Undoubtedly, the most successful and enjoyable parts of the book were extended passages of original argument or synthesis. At times, though, the discussion feels more like a review – an exegesis of one theory followed by a brief evaluation, repeated for a second theory… with concluding remarks bringing together the various evaluations at the end of the chapter. I was left wanting lengthier passages of original argument that explored the issues in greater depth and detail. I hope that the future will see just such writing from this well-informed and wide-ranging thinker.Michael LacewingHeythrop Collegem.lacewing@heythrop.ac.ukReferencesBennett, M. & Hacker, P. (2003). Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Blackburn, S. (1998). Ruling Passions. Oxford: Clarendon Press.D’Arms, J. & Jacobson, D. (2000). The moralistic fallacy: On the ‘appropriateness’ of emotions’. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 61, 65-90.D’Arms, J. & Jacobson, D. (2006). Anthropocentric constraints on human value. In R. Schafer-Landau (Ed.) Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Vol. 1, 99-126.Danielsson, S. & Olson, J. (2007). Brentano and buck-passers. Mind, 116, 511-522.De Sousa, R. (2007). Truth, authenticity, and rationality. dialectica, 61, 323-345.Goldie, P. (2000). The Emotions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Goldie, P. (2008). Misleading emotions. In G. Brun, U. Doguoglu, & D. Kuenzle (Eds.), Epistemology and Emotions. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing.Griffiths, P.E. (2004). Is emotion a natural kind? In R. C. Solomon (Ed.) Thinking About Feeling, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 233-249.Gunther, Y. H. (2003). Emotion and force. In Y. Gunther (Ed.) Essays on Nonconceptual Content, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Lacewing, M. (2014). Emotions and the virtues of self-understanding. In C. Todd & S. Roeser (Eds.), Emotion and Value, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 199-211.Murphy, D. (2006). Psychiatry in the Scientific Image, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Roberts, R. (2003). Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Wright, C. (1992). Truth and Objectivity, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ................
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