GUEST LECTURE EVENT - Feeling Better and Better Feelings: Normative Emotionality

 

• Traditional/Classical Philosophical view of emotion:
  • Emotions = embarrassment -> needs to be gotten rid of -> traded for REASON
    • Keeps emotion at bay with help of will
    • Passion = clearly opposed to reason
    • Spinoza: defines passion as a “confused idea”
• Other intellectuals -> emotion = delight? = romantic view
  • Reason has warm bath in passion J
    • Intense passion = life embracing, transcendent
• Emotionality and Rationality
  • Both view hold that reason and passion are in opposition
    • Passion vs. reason
      • Classical
      • Romantic
    • Mind/Body
    • Passio vs. Actio
      • Passio = something we experience, undergo, suffer
      • Actio = an activity, something we do
      • Therefore… emotions are seen as something that just happens to us
        • E.g. fall in love like a hole we fell into -> passion happens to us, passively
        • Therefore… little room for normativity
    • Emotions are not necessarily the same as passions, and the modern word for emotion was not used until the late 16^th century
• Focal issues in Philosophy of Emotions
  • Emotionality
    • Genetically endowed with ability to have emotions
  • Affective Realm
    • Distinguishing passions from sentiments, moods, character traits, etc
  • Emotion-types
    • Anger, fear, disgust, hope, etc
  • Emotion-events
    • Aspect of actually experiencing emotions, from out and in
  • (bold = connected with normativity)
• Emotions have a cognitive element
  • Evolutionary perspective -> improbable to have an advantage to have passions develop diametrically opposed to reason
    • However, evolutionary, emotions have biological function
      • Important to know people’s emotions socially -> about the ability for humans to work together
      • + information dependent -> fear of plastic spider vs real spider
      • Emotions are evaluative -> demonstrate an individual’s view/take on the world
  • Opposing reason and emotion?
    • We use people having emotions as the norm
      • If they didn’t -> seen as a potential behavior/psychological issue
    • Some emotions have express routes to the amygdala others go through a longer route that go through the frontal cortex
• Emotion-types
  • Basic emotions: anger, fear, joy, disgust, remorse, hope, jealousy
    • As we develop and mature -> emotions become more complex
    • Tiny pack of crayons vs fat pack of crayons -> three-year olds do not experience nostalgia and remorse for example
  • IS THIS RIGHT?
    • Are emotions a natural kind? Or a mixture of a lot of different things? Not a pick and choose crayon scenario
    • How are they structured? Positive/negative issue of emotions, emotions towards yourself, towards others
    • How are they identified/distinguished?
      • Is justice an emotion for example?
        • Difference between jealousy and resentment and spite?
    • Do we all have the same crayons in our box?
      • Answer: no (gave cross-cultural examples, some culture specific emotions that are simply not shared)
        • Is it that we don’t have the word for emotion, or that we don’t experience it?
      • Do we share these crayons in Animals?
      • How does the array develop in humans?
  • The analogy demonstrates:
    • the issue of possible ‘lost’ emotions
    • problem of negative emotion types -> purpose of spite? Envy? Anger?
    • Problem of an Ecology of emotions?
      • Can you really pluck an emotion type from a list?
• Emotion Events: The Components
  • Sensation/perception/appreciation
  • Evaluation
  • Feeling(s)
  • Physiological Changes -> expressive in the face, nervousness system changes, heart rate, etc
  • Tendencies to Act
  • Focusing of Consciousness
• We identify what emotion type it is based on the evaluation of the event
  • When you are envious, it is because someone else has something you want
• Other Theses on Emotions
  • Complex processes -> rise from awareness of fit from values and state of the world -> especially intense when your will is extended beyond the horizon of our agency
    • Emotionality -> requires us to have a normative view of the world and to compare that to actuality
• Failures of Emotional Normativity
  • When Emotions are:
    • Unjustified
    • Inappropriate
    • Wrong (morally)
    • Dysfunctional
    • Violative of Integrity
• THE THESIS
  • We must separate three kinds of Normativity; Modes of Normative Emotionality:
    • Therapeutic Model
      • Goal: Emotional health
      • Emotionality: balance, resilience, coping
      • E-Types: elimination of dysfunctional e-types
      • E-Events: techniques of emotion management
      • Failure: dysfunction, pathology, life disruption
    • Educational Model
      • Goal: emotional intelligence, high “EQ”
      • Emotionality: deep understanding of e-life
      • E-Types: e-range expansion, sensitivity
      • E-Events: justified, appropriate emotions; self-transparency
      • Failure: obtuseness, insensitivity, naiveté
    • Moral Model
      • Goal: Moral emotionality
      • Emotionality: moral integrity and depth; empathy
      • E-Types: elimination of “immoral” e-types; cultivation of moral emotions
      • E-Events: empathetic emotions reflecting moral understanding; e-links linked to moral values, actions
      • Failure: indifference, cynicism, shallowness, immorality
  • Ending Question: Do the three models of emotionality ultimately converge?

 

Question Time:

• Q1: How does one cultivate emotions:
  • A: example of gratitude. Parent say to child: “say thank you!”. Generally, we’re not good at cultivating emotions, but we do try
• Q2: Feeling of the absurd. feeling of foreignness of experience stands outside other emotions.
  • A: The feeling is so wide it is not a particular object; it’s existence. It could be that if you really understood reality, you would feel alienated and in despair. Most emotions have a positive or negative tone. Astonishment doesn’t -> inability to give a take on the world
    • Q2.1: Cultural effect -> example of shyness/emabrassment is demanded in Japan, seen as someone being reserved and respectful
      • A.1: Embarrassment is a very interesting emotion -> self-formative emotion -> suggests you’ve done something that isn’t amoral but conveying an image you don’t want to convey. What embarrasses someone in different cultures is different. Even in a single culture, what is embarrassing in front of your mother is very different to a friend. + embarrassment for other people e.g. embarrassed of friend singing karaoke.
• Q3: Cultivation of emotions -> link to cultivation of virtues?
  • A: Yes, but not in practice. About focusing in the evaluation of emotions. Formed on the belief that dysfunctional emotions come from irrational beliefs. If you’re trying to educate the emotions, having certain kinds of beliefs and cultivating them would produce other sort of emotions. But we’re not there yet in terms of beliefs.
    • Q3.1: phobia = extreme version of fear. Fear can be rational, but phobias? People know that most spiders in Europe can’t do damage. On the rational side, knows, but still the feeling.
      • A.1: Can approach it in different ways. May be that belief is not the problem. Can’t be educated. Phobias are resistant to normativity
• Q4: Would you say that animals have certain e-types:
  • A: Yeah, umm… we have to be carful in projecting human qualities onto animals by observation. In order to have emotionality, you need to be conscious, have a set of values, wants/desires that you can match against the world. Requires some development in an animal to have it. Seems clear to me that higher orders of animals do have emotions. Some don’t have the cognitive capacity or social capacity to have a need to develop these emotions, but they are there to an extent. Humans, unlike animals have second order emotions. You can be ashamed that you’re jealous. Don’t think a dog can have that same sort of introversion that allows for these second order emotions. Also, mostly talking about mammals here. Can also train some animals to have feelings about certain things too.
• Q5: Eliminative materialism. To what extent do you think emotional terms should be reduced to neurochemical correspondents?
  • A: there are issues in cross-cultural terms for emotion. How do you know they are the same?
    • Q5.1: terms referring to processes in our brain = more useful for describing emotions then?
      • A.1: Yes, work done by psychologists on emotion is seriously important.  We need to be very careful about the philosophy of science in terms of neuroscience -> lots of base assumptions in neuroscience, but showing us a lot of things that are really important and need to have a theory that flows in a similar path to this scientific theory
• Q6: You mentioned that emotions and values overlap. When you think about the cultivation of emotion. When we teach some sort of values, can we take a route to emotions we want?
  • A: If it comes to matter to you as self-expression then it will carry with it the emotional reaction you want. What matters most is whether those values do or do not match the state of the world. E.g. I love this person, but I’m not with them, therefore I am lonely.
    • Q6.1: when educationalists talk of the value of education. There are 5 steps to teaching a value to students. Do you think this chain is accurate or needs some altering?
      • A.1: tough to introduce a value through a taught process. It happens through social context and bonding, experience over time. It isn’t as likely to work as directly as suggested. This is why studying another culture is valuable. Nothing is more likely to affect a homophobic person than familiarity and connection to someone who is homosexual.
• EQ and repertoire of emotions and trying to control them = product of capitalism and individualism
  • Support by lecturer: EQ concept came out of corporate world. Reason most jobs don’t work out because of a low EQ. Daniel Goleman -> produced his own little industry in EQ. In the medical world, there are now EQ tests to ensure a doctor would interact well with patients.
    • Why there are so many development books -> self-responsible to yourself, you must be emotionally intelligent, not because you want to, but because we’re gonna sell it to you!
      • Lecturer: example of a thinker that argues that we choose our emotions. Lecturer says we don’t fully choose our emotions, but we do have a responsibility for them. You’re responsible for being the kind of person who is susceptible to certain emotions.