Chapter 8

EMOTIONS

“When I am angry, I am actually possest with the passion, and in that emotion have no more a reference to any other object, than when I am thirsty, or sick, or more than five foot high.”

- David Hume (1711-1776), A Treatise of Human Nature, Book II, Part III, Section III (Hume 1888:415)

            We have seen two ways to ask the question of the meaning of life. One asks whether life has a purpose. The other asks whether anything truly matters. The first way is the old-fashioned way, the way of Aristotle and the Mediaeval church philosophers. It leads to a fruitless search for superhuman purposes with which we should align our goals in life. The Godless must abandon this search for a cosmic purpose. Instead, we must accept the second way of asking the question and search for that which truly matters. We can base our goals in life on the outcome of this search.

            We have examined self-realization, pleasurable experience, and desire-satisfaction as possible answers to the question of what truly matters. Each theory has proven inadequate. The self-realization theory fails to explain why the development of our human potential should matter to us. Pleasurable experiences matter to us, but they are not all that matter. We want things truly to happen, not just appear to happen. Fulfilling our desires matters to us, and we can desire more than just sensations, but again satisfying our desires is not all that can matter. Desires are always directed on events in the future. What matters, however, includes not only events, but also persons and things. It includes them not only in the future, but also in the present and the past.

The Complexity of Emotions

            Emotions have the right structure to be a guide to what can matter. If we love, hate, admire, or despise something, then it matters to us. For something to matter to us is just for it to engage our emotions. Our emotions are not directed only on the contents of our minds. True, we can fear pain or enjoy pleasure. However, we can also fear a bear or enjoy a painting. We can worry about events in the future. However, we can also admire people and things in the past and in the present. Our emotions are not just directed on future events. They are the reasons behind our wants; they are what we refer to when we explain why we want what we want.

            Emotions are very complicated, and neglecting their complexity can mislead us. Emotions are complex because of their role in unifying various aspects of the mind. Joseph Ledoux, who researches the brain mechanisms of emotion writes that emotions are “the thread that holds mental life together.” (Ledoux 1996:11) Because of this unifying role, emotions have aspects of all the mental phenomena that they unify. They have conscious, affective, experiential aspects, focusing, cognitive, evaluative aspects, motivational aspects, and physiological, bodily aspects.

            If emotions were just sensations, such as just thrills, pangs, twinges, or warm glows, then they would be no better guides to meaning than are pleasurable and painful experiences. Alternatively, if emotions were just unconscious drives, bottled up until they escape into consciousness like pressurized hydraulic fluids, then again they would be irrelevant meaning. If we think of emotions in these simple ways, then we will fail to see how they could possibly be guides to what can truly matter.

            Emotions may be the best candidates for guides to meaningfulness, but they are still very fallible guides. A pang of hunger cannot be mistaken; it just is. In contrast, emotions can go wrong in all sorts of ways. Anger, jealousy, or even joy can be inappropriate responses to our circumstances. If we think of emotions as simple feelings, then we will miss the many ways that they can be inappropriate or mistaken. What follows is a simple discussion of the complexity of the emotions.

Direction

            Most emotions are directed toward something. It may be something real, or something imaginary, something present or something in the future. We esteem ourselves, admire other people, are proud of past accomplishments, or look forward to future events. This is the feature of psychological phenomena that philosophers call “intentionality.” Emotions are about something, someone, or some event – past, present, or future and real or hypothetical. Hume, in the chapter motto, was just wrong when he said that emotions did not “make reference to any other object.”

            Sometimes we can have feelings without knowing on what they are really directed. We can be irritable without being angry with anyone in particular. Moods, like irritability, depression or generalized anxiety, are directed on everything. Sometimes resolving feelings will involve figuring out what it is they are about. Sometimes, also, resolving feelings will involve figuring out what is causing them.

Causation

            Commonly, our emotions are responses to our immediate environment. The actions of persons and things around us cause us to have the emotional responses that we do. Our emotions are less responsive to distant situations. We respond more easily to the problems of our friends and neighbors than to the plight of people in far-away countries. We worry more intensely about our immediate future than we do about our retirement, old-age, and death. Our children matter to us more than do our descendants far in the future.

            In many cases, the person or thing on which our emotion is directed is also the cause of the emotion. For example, someone might be angry with a colleague because of something that her colleague did. In other cases, the object of our emotions is not their cause. For example, someone might be angry with her colleague because she is irritable from not sleeping well the night before. She might even be angry with her colleague because he reminds her of her father, toward whom she is angry without realizing it.

            Even if caused by sleeplessness or by unresolved childhood issues, anger is nonetheless real. Being aware of the causes of our emotions helps us figure out if our emotions are appropriate. If someone is only angry with her colleague because of her lack of sleep, then her anger is not justified. In other cases, someone’s anger may have more than one cause, perhaps both a lack of sleep and the nature of what her colleague did. Here her anger may still be justified. Nevertheless, to make complex judgments like these, we need some insight into the causes or triggers of our emotions.

Feelings

            We sometimes use the word “feelings” to refer to emotions generally. So we talk about feelings of love, or admiration, or contempt. We also sometimes use the word “feelings” to talk about internal sensations or conscious experiences. So we talk of the feeling of pain, hunger, or thirst. We talk, too, of the internal sensation of an emotion, its wrenching, gnawing, or thrilling feeling.

            Being aware of these two meanings of “feelings” is very important. If we run the two meanings together, we are liable to identify them. Then we may think that emotions are nothing more than the internal sensation that often accompanies an emotion, its wrenching, gnawing, or thrilling feeling. Yet emotions are not identical to the conscious experiences that are often a part of them. They are much more complicated.

            First, internal sensations are not directed on anything, whereas emotions are. An internal sensation like thirst or hunger is a conscious experience complete in itself. It is not about anything. Similarly the twinges, pangs, and chills that accompany emotions are just sensations, they are also not about something. Full-blown emotions are directed toward something or someone. When we feel awe at the size of a mountain or the power of a whale, our emotion is more than the accompanying thrill. Emotions are not just internal sensations.

            Second, internal sensations alone do not provide enough information to discriminate between emotions. Most people can identify the primary emotions such as anger, joy, sadness, fear, or disgust by the internal sensations that accompany them. We cannot generalize, however, from the most basic emotions to more sophisticated ones. Consider two similar emotions like embarrassment and shame. Suppose someone walks off with another person’s newspaper, by mistake in one case, on purpose in the second. If people notice him then his hot-faced feelings will be identical in both cases. To distinguish embarrassment and shame, we must consider why he took the newspaper. If he was merely a bit stupid and took it by mistake, then his emotion is embarrassment. If he were guilty of taking in on purpose, then his emotion is shame.

            Third, we can have emotions without experiencing any conscious internal sensations. One person can be coldly angry with another over a long period without having the tense, knotted, flushed sensations that accompany an episode of anger. Her anger will color her thinking about the other person, making her less able to see his good points and too able to see his bad points. It will affect the choices that she makes and the things that she does. She can identify her anger at him only by paying attention to her pattern of thoughts and actions. However, she can be angry without continuously having angry feelings.

            Fourth, we can be far more easily mistaken about our emotions than about our internal sensations. We can think we are in love when we are not, or think we are not when we are. We can think ourselves angry, when in fact we are feeling guilty. We can get confused about shame and embarrassment, or about envy and jealous. However, we do not make similar mistakes about our internal sensations. When we feel hungry or sick or in pain, we know it. We may have to learn the name of a sensation, but we seldom mistake it for something else.

            For these reasons, which are drawn from Robert Solomon’s The Passions: Emotions and the Meaning of Life (Solomon 1993:96-102), emotions are more than just feelings. Emotions are not just mental sensations. We cannot identify our emotions simply by being in touch with our feelings.

            Nevertheless, being in touch with our feelings is important. The conscious, experiential, felt, affective aspect of emotions is a significant aspect. We can become deadened to the felt aspect of emotions, just as we can become deadened to physical sensation. People who work with their hands no longer notice nicks and scrapes that would bother an office worker. People who work with hot dishes no longer notice mild burns that would bother even a manual laborer. People who are chronically ill-fed come not to notice pangs of hunger that would send the better-fed running to the refrigerator. In a similar way, people can become desensitized by their circumstances to feelings of anxiety and guilt. Yet they may still be anxious or guilty because their mental life contains other aspects of these emotions. Similarly, people can become desensitized to feelings of joy and enthusiasm. Though emotions are more that just felt experience, it is still important for people to relearn how to experience these feelings.

            The intensity of felt experience can be inappropriate. Imagine someone who experiences feelings of grief and sadness for days after dropping a small coin down a storm grating. The intensity of his feelings is out of all proportion to the incident. Imagine someone else who feels nothing, no grief or sadness at all, at the breakup of a relationship. The lack of any intensity to her feeling is inappropriate to her loss.

Cognition

            Emotions have a cognitive aspect. Factual beliefs about the objects on which they are directed partly make up emotions. Suppose that one person admires another for having become so wealthy, and that his wealth is the only thing she admires about him. Her admiration depends on her belief that this person is, in fact, wealthy. Suppose that she finds out that she is mistaken, that he is poor instead of wealthy. If she continues to admire this person for his wealth, although she now believes his wealth is nonexistent, then her admiration has become neurotic. It is no longer admiration, but something else.

            Emotions become mistaken or inappropriate when they are based on false beliefs. Suppose that, in the example above, the person never finds out that her friend is poor. She admires him based on believing him to be wealthy and her belief is false. Although her admiration is consistent with her beliefs, her beliefs are false. Her admiration is not obsessive or neurotic because it is consistent with her beliefs. Nonetheless, her emotion is still mistaken or inappropriate because it is based on a false belief.

Evaluation

            Emotions have an evaluative aspect. Evaluative beliefs, beliefs that the objects on which emotions are directed are in some way worthy of the emotions that we feel toward them, partly make up emotions. Suppose a person discovers that someone whom she admires because of his wealth has acquired it by lying, cheating, and corrupting government officials. She believes, presumably, that lying, cheating, and corruption are despicable. She believes that his acquisition of his wealth is unjust and immoral. If she continues to admire him because of his wealth, though she believes that his actions are not worthy of admiration, then her admiration has become neurotic. Again it is no longer admiration, but something else. (Nozick 1989:88)

            Emotions become mistaken or inappropriate when they are based on false evaluations. Suppose that, in the last example, the person believes that lying and cheating is not despicable. She admires him based on a false evaluative judgment. Although her admiration is consistent with her evaluation, her evaluation is wrong. Her admiration for her wealthy friend is not obsessive or neurotic because it is consistent with her evaluations. Nonetheless, her emotion is still mistaken or inappropriate because it is based on an incorrect evaluation.

Attention

            Emotions have an attention focusing aspect. A pattern of focus and attention partly makes up an emotion. When we explode in anger at someone, we rivet our attention on him. The person and what he has done occupy all our awareness. Our anger pushes everything else to the side; we notice nothing else. This focusing of attention continues, however, even after our feelings of anger die down. Our attention easily shifts to memories of the incident and the vile things that the other did and said. Even more important is that to which we do not pay attention. By definition, attention is selective; it must leave something out. For example, our anger makes it difficult for us to see the other’s point of view, or to see factors that might excuse or mitigate the other’s behavior.

            In a similar way, a self-supporting pattern of cognitive focusing partly makes up depression. The depressed person pays attention only to thoughts with sad, self-demeaning, hopeless implications. He cannot attend to evidence that he is a worthy individual, a person with a positive future in a world that is not malignant. In his inferences, he focuses only on consequences that support his sadness: A trifling slight implies that everyone hates him; a small setback implies an imminent future catastrophe. His distorted patterns of reasoning sustain his depressed mood.

             Emotions usefully focus our attention on things, but in so doing they make other things difficult to notice. All emotions involve mild versions of what psychoanalysts call “defense mechanisms.” Without its characteristic pattern of denial, repression, and rationalization, an emotion would not be the emotion that it is. These defense mechanisms can, however, become too strong. A person’s emotions can fail to respond to even strongly opposing evidence and can require absurd patterns of reasoning to sustain themselves. Then the person’s emotions become maladaptive.

Motivation

            Emotions partly explain motivation. Psychologically healthy people generally want things for reasons. The reason for their wanting what they want always has something to do with their emotions. Someone’s motivation may be intrinsic, as when she goes to the store because she enjoys shopping. Someone’s motivation may also be extrinsic, as when she goes to the store to please someone of whom she is afraid. Yet in both cases, the reasons for their motivations appeal to their emotions, in one case enjoyment and, in the other, fear.

            Emotions are expressed in actions. The most basic emotions – fear, anger, joy, and disgust, for example – produce characteristic innate facial expressions. More sophisticated emotions produce motivations mediated by culture and personality, and to actions mediated by strategy and circumstance. This again makes room for mistakes. The way someone is motivated to expresses an emotion can be inappropriate. For example, friendly feelings may be expressed on occasion by the giving of presents. Yet someone whom friendship motivates to give presents that are too large or too frequent is motivated inappropriately.

            Note, however, that social norms often mediate the expression of emotion in action. For example, different cultures have different conventions for the exchange of gifts among friends. So it is sometimes difficult to discern whether someone is motivated inappropriately or has simply misunderstood the conventions.

Physiology

            Emotions are in the body. Emotional responses typically include bodily responses: Behavioral responses such as fight or flight reflexes, autonomic nervous system responses (such as changes in blood pressure or a tendency for body hair to stand erect), and hormonal responses such as the release of adrenaline into the blood stream. Probably, our internal perception of these bodily responses plays a large role in our feelings, in our conscious experience of an emotion. (Damasio 2003:83-133)

            Brain processes embody emotions. Emotions are most often responses to situations, persons, things, etc., and they are mostly learned responses. Learning involves memory. Emotion involves three types of memory, each employing a different pathway in the brain. The following is a quick summary of these types of memory. (Damasio 1994) (Goleman 1995) (Ledoux 1996)

            Imagine someone who, some years ago, was a bystander involved in a corner-store robbery. People fired guns, and she was deeply frightened. Years later, she hears a bang reminiscent of gunfire, and she responds with fear. Three different brain systems are involved in her emotional response. One type of conditioned emotional response involves a neural pathway directly linking her auditory thalamus and her amygdala. The thalamus is a region of the brain that begins the processing of incoming information. The amygdala is an almond-shaped mass of grey matter in the limbic system that is crucial to the fear response. This learned response is fast, but undiscriminating; it may fail to distinguish a gunshot from other loud noises. In response to any loud noise, this pathway will trigger both her visceral response and her fight-or-flight response.

            A second, slower, more discriminating system involves a pathway from the auditory thalamus to the prefrontal cortex, and then to the amygdala. The prefrontal cortex allows for sophisticated cognitive processing of the auditory information. It is an evolutionary recent part of the brain whose development sets primates apart from the rest of the animal world. The prefrontal cortex helps in distinguish a gunshot from other loud noises like a car backfiring. It helps integrate information about her present context, for example, that she is safe in her home and surrounded by friends. This considered response from the prefrontal cortex then mitigates the response of the amygdala, bringing that response into line with her beliefs about reality.

            Third, she will have memory of the incident, of the robbers, the store, the noise of the guns, and of her feelings of fright. This will be a memory of the emotion that she experienced, but will itself not be an emotional response. These declarative memories of the emotion, formed through another brain system involving the hippocampus, can inform the second response, or even occasionally trigger the other two sorts of emotional memory. Declarative memories can become distorted, forgotten, or repressed. 

            The complex physiology of emotions opens all sorts of possibilities for having inappropriate emotions. A person’s level of a neurotransmitter like serotonin could be too low. Her hormone levels in the blood could be too high. She could have damage to her amygdala, resulting in little emotional response at all. She could have damage to her prefrontal cortex, resulting in subtle deficiencies in incorporating emotion into decision making. She could have learned triggers for emotional responses that, because the primitive pathway for emotional learning is undiscriminating, are directed in inappropriate ways.

            The upshot of the complexity of emotions is this: The path of the emotions is our best bet so far for a path to meaning and value, but it is a very fallible path, with possible wrong turnings everywhere. Emotions have the correct structures to be guides to value, but they can easily mislead us. We must look for some way to make the path of the emotions less fallible.