Chapter 9

JUDGMENTS

“The man who is angry at the right things and with the right people, and, further, as he ought, when he ought, and as long as he ought, is praised.”

- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E), Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle 1953:IV.5)

            Our search for meaning has led us to the emotions. This is not surprising. After all, the question of the meaning of life is the question of what truly matters, and for something to matter to us is for it to engage our emotions. Unfortunately, our emotions can easily be inappropriate. The emotions form a maze fraught with the possibility of mistaken turnings.

            The previous chapter showed the complexity of emotions and the many ways in which emotions can be mistaken. Consider anger as an example. Getting our anger right, as Aristotle observed in the chapter motto, can be a difficult accomplishment. Anger can be directed onto the wrong person – onto the powerless rather than the powerful who deserve it. Anger can be caused inappropriately – not by misdeeds but by a sleepless night. The intensity of angry feelings can be out of proportion to the seriousness of the misdeed – excessively violent anger, for example, at someone dialing a wrong number. Anger can be based on false beliefs – the pen someone thought stolen and was angry about turns up in his other coat. Anger can be based on false evaluations – no one stole the pen, instead his friend borrowed it. Anger can focus a person’s attention to the exclusion of contrary evidence – his anger at his enemy may blind him to his good points. Anger may come on someone unthinkingly – conditioning of the primitive, undiscriminating, anger circuits of his brain may trigger his temper before he can control it. Finally, anger may not come when it is appropriate – we may be too distant geographically from injustice and oppression for them to move us to anger.

Emotional Judgments

            Notice how the problem of inappropriate emotions is similar to the problem besetting the actual-desire theory of value. It is entirely possible to desire that which, on closer acquaintance, turns out not to be worthwhile. It is also entirely possible not to desire that which would, on closer acquaintance, turn out to be worthwhile. Earlier, I called these the Misjudgment and the Happenstance problems, respectively.

            The way to prevent the possible mistakes of the actual-desire theory of value was to replace it with the rational-desire theory. On this second theory, what is really desirable to us is what we would desire if we were psychologically healthy, reasoning correctly, and fully informed about the world. Instead of using our actual desire for so-and-so, we use our judgment that so-and-so is desirable as a guide to its value.

            Similarly, the way to prevent the possible mistakes of the actual-emotion theory of value is to replace it with the rational-emotion theory. That which is truly worthy of the emotion that we feel is that for which we would feel this emotion if we were free of the distortions to which emotions are prone. As a guide to whether such-and-such truly matters, we do not use our actual emotion. Instead, we use our judgment that such-and-such is worthy of that emotion.

            Our best guide to what is meaningful or valuable is not the emotion that we currently feel. Instead our best guide is our judgment about what is worthy or deserving of our emotion. This does not, however, imply that our actual emotions are irrelevant. The emotion we feel toward something is good evidence that it is worthy of or deserving of that emotion. Because of the distortions to which emotions are prone, though, it is not conclusive evidence. We must always make further inquiry.

            For many emotions, the English language allows us easily to show when someone is making an emotional judgment. The names of many emotions have a cognate adjective that expresses an emotional judgment. For example:

            Admiration                 Admirable

            Love                          Loveable

            Awe                           Awesome

            Enjoyment                  Enjoyable

            Shame                        Shameful

            Disgust                       Disgusting

Some emotions do not have a cognate adjective to express an emotional judgment. Nevertheless, we can still express the emotional judgment using the phrases “merits,” “worthy of,” “deserving of, ” or “makes sense to be.”

            Anger                          Deserving of anger.

            Pride                           Worthy of pride.

For each emotion, we can make the corresponding simple emotional judgment.

            In the search for meaning, we make highly particular emotional judgments, judgments from our own particular circumstances. We can see this most clearly for a highly personal emotion like enjoyment. A person needs only to know if an activity is enjoyable-to-her for the activity to matter to her. She does not need to know if the activity is enjoyable-to-everyone.

            We can also see the particularity of judgment in other emotions. A person needs to know if someone else deserves her admiration for that someone else to matter to her. She only needs to know if the other person is universally admirable if she is trying to enlist the cooperation of others in a moral project. Another person deserves her admiration (is admirable-to-her) if, under distortion-free conditions, she would admire him. Another person deserves admiration (is admirable) if, under distortion-free conditions, everyone would admire him. Particular judgments are much easier to make. Nevertheless, the judgments of others will be something that she takes into account in her own reflection.

            Making an emotional judgment is an intricate intellectual process. For example, take her judgment that he is worthy of her admiration. When she judges that he is admirable-to-her, she is predicting that she would admire him if her admiration were free of the distortions to which the emotion of admiration is prone. Her inquiry would need to proceed on many fronts. She would need to make a factual inquiry to have all the relevant true beliefs about his character and history. She would need to make an inquiry into her own psychology to discount for her own physiological quirks. She would need to make a normative inquiry to get her auxiliary evaluations right. She would need to make sure that her feelings and her motivation were proportionate to her evaluation. If, after she has made this inquiry, she feels admiration for him, then she should conclude that he deserves her admiration.

            Notice how this account of emotional judgment requires that emotions be rational, or responsive to reasons. On this picture of judgement, emotions change in response to evidence. If they did not change in response to new information, then her predicted emotion would always be the same as her actual emotions. Many people will find the idea that emotions are rational to be strange. People often think of emotions as the very paradigm of the irrational. They think that when someone is moved to act out of emotion, then she is not being moved by reason. People talk of being “possessed” or “seized” by an emotion, or by being “paralyzed” or “consumed” by feeling. They think of emotions as “intruding” on the conscious, rational mind, perhaps coming from the cesspit of unconscious, instinctual drives. The old terminology for the emotions, the “passions,” encourages people to think of themselves as passive victims of their feelings.

            This view of the emotions is wrong and misleading. We must replace this old-fashioned view of the strict separation of emotion and reason by a more balanced view.

            Emotions are rational both strategically and cognitively. Emotions are strategically rational because they help us to act in the world. They are not just useful; they are necessary. Without emotions, we could not decide what to do. Emotions are cognitively rational because they do respond to our beliefs about ourselves, the world, and the future, and to our auxiliary evaluations. If this were not so, then the cognitive types of psychotherapy would not work. However, the strategic and cognitive rationality of the emotions are in tension with one another, with the strategic acting to disguise the cognitive. Let me explain.

Strategic Rationality

            People often think of emotions as getting in the way of rational decision making, of intruding on the calm, deliberative thought necessary to good decisions. Nevertheless, it turns out that, in fact, we cannot decide without our emotions playing a role. Theorists have pointed out two ways emotions are involved in rational decision making. Both arguments turn on the fact that, in some sense, we know too much.

            Suppose someone has to choose between a profitable business deal and loyalty to a friend. To decide, he starts imagining all the various scenarios that might follow from either choice. He imagines what it will be like when his friend finds out his betrayal, what it will be like to do without the profit, what his family will think, what his employees will think, and so on. Then he imagines the consequences of all these imagined scenarios. Then he tries to figure out the likelihood of each scenario happening. The calculation is huge.

            In his book, The Rationality of the Emotions, Ronnie de Sousa explained how emotions are sufficient to solve this decision making problem. (de Sousa 1987:192-196) Our memories contain a great deal of information. Some of it is relevant to a decision that we are facing, and some of it is not. In the example above, his friend’s personality and the profitability of the business deal is relevant information, but the price of corn in Chicago and the color of his car is irrelevant. The amount of irrelevant information in his memory is vast, and it vastness creates this problem: How does he know whether a given piece of information is relevant unless he retrieves it and examines it? He cannot know its relevance to his decision in advance. Yet if he has to retrieve and think about every bit of information in his memory to tell if it is relevant to his decision, then his decision making process is potentially endless.

            Pure, unemotional rationality can take us only this far. Instead, de Sousa hypothesizes that our decision making is not emotionless. The role of our emotional responses to the situation we face is to focus our attention on some pieces of information and away from others. Emotion makes some pieces of the information salient to our decision, and leads us to ignore the rest. We have learned our emotional responses from experience, and if we have learned well, then our emotions will solve the relevance problem. Learned emotional responses enable us to make decisions in a reasonable amount of time. Emotions are rational in a strategic sense.

            In his book, Descartes Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, Antonio Damasio describes how emotions are not only useful, but also essential, to decision making. (Damasio 1994:170-175) For the person choosing between profit and loyalty, setting up a huge calculation is far as pure, unemotional rationality can go. He hypothesizes, however, that, in a decision like this, a person will use his “gut feelings” about his options. Gut feelings (which Damasio calls “somatic markers”) are emotional responses that we learn from experience and that guide decisions. Perhaps here, his gut feelings focus his attention on how bad it will feel to betray his friend and warn him against this option. Thus, his emotions will bring a potentially endless calculation to a close, something that unemotional rationality could not do alone.

            Damasio studied patients who, because of injury to their prefrontal cortices, were unable to use their emotions in their rational deliberations. Such patients appeared, on the surface, unaffected by their injuries. Their intelligence, their knowledge of the world, their skills, and their understanding of conventional morality remained as before their injury. Still, their lives were all failing miserably – they could neither work, make and keep to plans, nor keep up their commitments to others. They could go through long processes of cognitive deliberation about what to do, but they could not make decisions. With their emotional systems damaged, they lost their strategic rationality. They required healthy emotional processing to make decisions.

Cognitive Rationality

            Emotions mostly respond to reasons in a straightforward way. We become sad when we hear that a friend is ill, but our sadness goes away when we find we are mistaken and that our friend is well. We admire someone when we hear that he has won a prize, but we cease to admire him when we find out that he cheated. Our anger with someone goes away when we find out that she did not really say what we thought she said. When the reasons are obvious enough, emotions are usually rational.

            Sometimes, however, people’s emotions do not respond appropriately to their situations. Examples are people who have depression, anxiety disorders, or anger management problems. Being sad in sad circumstances is appropriate, as is being worried in worrisome situations, and being angry at injustice. Nevertheless, being sad, worried, or irritable when the situation does not call for it is not appropriate. Then emotions become dysfunctional.

            However, cognitive forms of therapy can help people with emotional disorders. These techniques rely on cognition underlying dysfunctional emotions – not true or valid cognition, but fallacious or distorted cognition. Cognitive forms of therapy do not work directly with dysfunctional emotions, but instead work with the distorted thoughts that underlie them. The dysfunctional emotions do respond to reasons, but they are based on bad reasons. Therapy helps the person to identify the assumptions she is making or the thoughts she is automatically having in these situations. Therapy then helps the person to understand the way her assumptions are fallacious or distorted, and to “talk back” to her automatic thoughts. As the person becomes skilled at identifying and fixing her cognitive distortions, her emotions will, over time and with the aid of her therapist, change and become more appropriate.

            For example, someone who is depressed and unable to esteem herself properly will find that her negative feelings are based on distorted assumptions that automatically come to her mind. She might focus only on negative comments received at work to the exclusion of more numerous positive comments. She may personalize the behavior of others. Perhaps she may attribute her boss’s surliness to her boss’s anger at her, when the more likely cause is that her boss had slept badly the night before. She may be a perfectionist, and continually fail in her own eyes because she assumes that a job that is not done perfectly is not done well. By getting her to test these fallacious inference patterns and talk herself out of them, her therapist will gradually achieve a change in her self-esteem and in her mood.

            The point of this discussion of the rationality of the emotions is contained in the last sentence. Emotions do respond to reasons, but they often respond only gradually and with assistance. The explanation of why the response is gradual is that our emotions have to do two jobs. Not only do they have to respond accurately to the world around us, but they also must guide our decisions. It is the strategic rationality of the emotions that slows their response to reasons. Emotions prevent decision making from being endless. To do this, they focus our attention on what they have learned, rightly or wrongly, to be relevant information. Simultaneously they take our attention away from what they suppose to be irrelevant information. In so doing, emotions make it difficult for us to pay attention to information that might be contrary evidence. So our response to contrary evidence will be slow, and may require assistance.

            Consider this example. Someone is walking in tall grass when he sees a slack coil partly hidden in the grass. He takes it to be a poisonous snake. He freezes in fear, his attention focused on the snake. For a long time he cannot move. Every little movement of the grass, and every little rustling sound, he interprets as made by the snake. Only after a minute or two is he able to discern evidence contrary to his belief that the coil is a snake. At last its braiding, its motionlessness, and its failure to move away convince him that he is seeing a coil of rope. The human fear mechanism must work this way: People prone to losing interest in the face of danger would not live long. The human species would not have survived this long if people had to engage in endless deliberation before freezing in dangerous situations.

            So the responsiveness of emotions to reasons is in tension with their role in decision making. The result is to make the response of emotion to reasons often a gradual one, and a response that, often, will require assistance. Emotions focus a person’s attention away from information that may turn out to be relevant. Often it will take time, and the help of friends and therapists, for a person to see his distortions and denials and to make emotional change. “Love is blind,” runs one saying, illustrating how powerful emotions bring the decision making process to an end. “Marry in haste; repent at leisure,” runs another, illustrating how even the most powerful emotions can, over time, respond to reasons.

            The responsiveness of emotions to reasons is slow and social rather than instant and individual. Thus, some people (especially philosophers) may fail to see that emotions can be rational. If our paradigm of rationality requires rationality to be an instantaneous, individual response to reasons, then we should change our paradigm.

            If emotions can be rational, then we can make emotional judgments. If an emotion can respond to reasons, then judging whether so-and-so is worthy of that emotion is possible. An emotional judgment is a prediction: Such-and-such is worthy of our particular emotion just in case if we were to avoid all the distortions to which emotions are prone, then we would have that emotion. The emotion that we actually feel for so-and so is evidence that so-and-so is worthy of this emotion, but it is not conclusive evidence. We must do more than just getting in touch with feelings. We must inquire rigorously into their appropriateness.