Emotions, Appraisals, and Embodied Appraisals
| Autor | David Pineda |
| Cargo | Departament de Filosofia, Facultat de Lletres, Universitat de Girona |
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CRÍTICA, Revista Hispanoamericana de Filosofía. Vol. 47, No. 140 (agosto 2015): 3–30
EMOTIONS, APPRAISALS, AND EMBODIED APPRAISALS
DAVID PINEDA
Departament de Filosofia
Facultat de Lletres Universitat de Girona david.pineda@udg.edu
SUMMARY: Jesse Prinz’s recent perceptual theory of emotion honors the central Jamesian claim that the emotion follows, and is actually caused by, the syndrome of bodily changes which are typical of emotional reactions. Prinz also thinks that emotions essentially involve appraisals of the object of emotion but, in the light of certain arguments supporting the central Jamesian claim, he concludes that these appraisals must be in any case embodied. In this paper, I will first raise three concerns with Prinz’s view and, second, I will present an alternative, the multidimensional appraisal theory of emotion, and argue that this alternative can accommodate successfully the Jamesian arguments without any need to honor the central Jamesian claim.
KEY WORDS: emotion, appraisal theories, feeling theories, perceptual theories, phenomenology of emotion
RESUMEN: La teoría perceptiva de las emociones que Jesse Prinz ha defendido recientemente mantiene la tesis jamesiana según la cual la emoción es un efecto causal del conjunto de cambios corporales que aparecen típicamente durante los episodios emotivos, y es, por tanto, posterior a dichos cambios. Prinz defiende también que las emociones encierran valoraciones del estímulo emotivo, pero a la vista de sus razones a favor de la tesis jamesiana, sostiene que tales valoraciones son corporeizadas. En este trabajo, en primer lugar presento tres objeciones a la teoría de Prinz y, en segundo lugar, ofrezco una teoría alternativa, la teoría valorativa multidimensional de las emociones. Mi argumento es que esta alternativa puede responder a los argumentos de Prinz sin necesidad de adoptar la tesis jamesiana.
PALABRAS CLAVE: emoción, teorías valorativas, teorías de las sensaciones, teorías perceptivas, fenomenología de las emociones
Introduction
Jesse Prinz has recently defended a perceptual theory about emotions according to which emotions involve embodied appraisals. His view honors the central Jamesian claim that the emotion follows, and is actually caused by, the syndrome of bodily changes which are typical of emotional reactions. Prinz also thinks that emotions essentially involve appraisals of the object of emotion but, in the light of certain arguments supporting the central Jamesian claim, he concludes that these appraisals must be in any case embodied. In this paper, after laying out the bare bones of Prinz’s position, I will first raise three concerns with Prinz’s view and, second, I will present an alternative,
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the multidimensional appraisal theory of emotion, and argue that this alternative can accommodate successfully the Jamesian arguments without any need to honor the central Jamesian claim. So my final conclusion will be that emotions are appraisals, but not embodied appraisals.
1 . Prinz’s Theory
In his book Gut Reactions (2004), Jesse Prinz has defended an original perceptual theory of emotion. Part of the originality and interest of the theory lies in the fact that it cleverly integrates elements of so-called judgmentalist or cognitive theories of emotions (Solomon 1976, 2003; Nussbaum 2001) into the overall framework of the James-Lange theory (James 1884), two main theoretical approaches to emotion often thought to be antagonistic. The theory is also compelling because it is argued for after a careful examination both of philosophical considerations and extant empirical studies about emotions.
Prinz’s theory honors the central Jamesian claim. He argues that bodily changes frequently associated with emotions (facial expressions, vocal and musculo-skeletical changes, and changes in the Autonomous Nervous System and the Endocrine System) actually precede emotion rather than following it. James was then right to hold that bodily changes are causes of emotion and not effects thereof. Actually Prinz makes the orthodox Jamesian claim that emotions are perceptions of bodily changes. For future reference, let us state this central Jamesian claim in a more formal way:
(J) Bodily changes precede, and actually cause, emotions.
Prinz has offered three main reasons for claim (J). First, he simply accepts James’ “subtraction argument”, which is based on a well-known thought experiment. According to James, if we fancy a strong emotion and abstract away from it all feelings of bodily disturbances what we are left with is definitely not an emotion. Prinz reads this thought experiment as showing that the phenomenology of emotion is exhausted by feelings of bodily changes. This is of course a conclusion which supports (J). If emotions are caused by bodily changes, and are actually perceptions thereof, then it is only to be expected that the phenomenology of emotions is exhausted by feelings of bodily changes, since emotions would be essentially feelings of these bodily changes. Prinz also points out some recent empirical evidence as supporting the conclusions of James’ thought experiment. Thus, according to a recent study when subjects report being experiencing
Crítica , vol. 47, no. 140 (agosto 2015)
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EMOTIONS, APPRAISALS, AND EMBODIED APPRAISALS 5 a particular emotion there is a significant engagement of areas of the brain, such as the cingulate cortex, the hypothalamus, and certain somatosensory cortices and regions of the brain stem, which are known to build maps of the body informing about the current state of the organism (Damasio et al. 2000).
Second, Prinz accepts Robert Zajonc’s view that emotion and cognition involve separate neuroanatomical structures. In Gut Reactions, Prinz mentions Joseph LeDoux’s findings about fear (LeDoux 1996) as providing good evidence for this conclusion. LeDoux found out that fear responses to snake-like objects are entirely processed through subcortical regions of the brain. It seems that when the thalamus has the information that the stimulus might be a snake (the thalamus cannot make fine discriminations, the primary visual cortex is required for that task) it sends a signal not just to the primary visual cortex but to the amygdala as well. The amygdala is another very important subcortical structure which is known to orchestrate all by itself the sort of bodily changes typically involved in episodes of fear (Damasio 2010). As the amygdala gets activated, typical fear changes ensue and usually a withdrawal behavior follows quite quickly, before or just when the signal reaches the primary visual cortex. This is why one can sometimes find oneself stepping back from a coiled object at the same time one realizes it is not a snake but, say, a house pipe. Now assuming that subcortical brain regions do not implement tasks which require the use of concepts, LeDoux’s evidence would then show that some fear responses occur without the mediation of cognitive states such as those that would be required for the sort of appraisals and evaluations postulated by cognitive theories such as Solomon’s or Nussbaum’s. Of course, LeDoux’s evidence, by contrast, is entirely consistent with the Jamesian view that a state of fear is just the perception of the bodily changes orchestrated by the amygdala.
Third, Prinz also endorses the claim, which was already put forward by Karl Lange, that emotions can arise by direct physical induction. The administration of certain drugs, for instance, seems to have the power to change our emotional state. Consider as an example the ingestion of alcohol and its emotional effects. There seems to be also some evidence to the effect that voluntary acquisition of facial expressions characteristic of the expression of certain emotions actually gives rise to the corresponding emotion (Zajonc et al. 1989). This is again something which a Jamesian theory can account for perfectly well. While the explanation of the second sort of cases, voluntary acquisition of facial expressions of emotion, is quite straightforward,
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the explanation for the first cases would be that certain drugs have the power to provoke the sort of bodily changes the perception of which is the emotion.
These are then the three main reasons that, according to Prinz, should commit us with claim (J). In the last section of this paper I will address these three reasons and offer my responses to them. I will argue that, contrary to what Prinz thinks, they do not compel us to accept (J).
Now, although for these three reasons Prinz thinks that emotions follow bodily changes and are actually perceptions of these changes, his view is not entirely Jamesian. He claims that emotions are perceptions of bodily changes but they do not represent the bodily changes they perceive. Prinz introduces a subtle distinction between registering and representing to make that crucial point clearer. A mental state, he says, registers that which reliably causes it to be activated. Representing, on the other hand, is defined drawing on ideas of Dretske and Millikan: a mental state represents that which it has the function to carry information about. Or to put it in the concise terms that Prinz likes to use: a mental state represents that which it is set up to be set off by.
Now, according to Prinz, emotions are definitely not set up to carry information about bodily changes. This view, he thinks, cannot adequately explain why emotions were naturally selected as they conferred some sort of survival advantage. He argues that emotions are used to promote certain specific behaviors which become unintelligible if we assume that emotions represent bodily changes (2004,
p. 59). For instance, in many cases fear compels us to run away from the eliciting stimulus, but to say that we run...
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