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Emotional Logic and Emotional Content

Beyond Gunther’s Covariance Thesis


Raleigh Miller, GSU
December, 2007

I. Introduction

In this paper, I will show that York Gunther's (2003, forthcoming (a) forthcoming (b)) argument

for the uniqueness of emotional content is not persuasive. Subsequently, I will show that Gunther's

claim that different emotional phenomenologies entail different emotional contents is not justified.

When I refer to an emotion's “content,” or “intentionality” I mean to indicate that which the emotion is

about. This could be understood in at least two ways, both of which are compatible with my analysis.

First, the emotion could be understood as directed towards an object or state of affairs. I may be in

love with my partner, or upset by the movie. Intentionality could also refer to correctness conditions

that determine whether an emotion is appropriate. If I am angry that my car has no gas, my anger can

only be appropriate if the proposition “my car has no gas” is true. 1 In order for such a proposition to be

true, some state of affairs in the world must be a certain way. In this way, the emotion is about the

world. If an emotion is intentional, it contains, in some sense, a representation of that which is it about,

or those correctness conditions to which the emoter commits. For this reason, I will treat emotional

content and emotional intentionality as interchangeable. If an emotion is intentional, its intentionality

is to be found in its content.

York Gunther (2003, forthcoming (a), forthcoming (b)) has argued that the intentionality (or

content) of an emotion covaries with phenomenology (or feeling) of an emotion. In other words, if two

emotions have different phenomenologies, they necessarily have different contents.2 I will refer to this

as Gunther's Content-Phenomenology conclusion, or CP. Phenomenology refers to a first-person

1 This may be only a necessary condition for anger to be appropriate; an additional fact about the world, that my car's lack
of gas somehow contains a proper formal object of anger (such as a slight) may also be neccessary.
2 Gunther's claim goes the other direction as well. He argues that different emotional contents also necessitate different
phenomenologies. I think that this point stands up to scrutiny, even if Gunther's treatment is unsatisfactory. I will not,
however, address this claim.
subjective feeling, which is felt as irreducible.3 The phenomenology of seeing a particular yellow

shade is what it feels like to see that yellow shade, and the phenomenology of a particular anger

episode is what it feels like to be angry in that way. Gunther claims, in CP, that emotional content

varies as emotional phenomenology varies, or that if two emotions feel differently to two respective

emoters, those emotions necessarily have distinct contents. Gunther's argument for CP depends on his

understanding of emotional content, to which I now turn.

Gunther argues (forthcoming (a)) that emotional content is distinct in kind from propositional

content. According to Gunther's definition of emotional content, the phenomenology of an emotion

constitutes, in part, the content of an emotion. If Gunther's definition of emotional content is accepted,

CP is unproblematic; CP validly follows from this definition of emotional content. If the

phenomenology of an emotion constitutes, in part, the content of an emotion, then two emotions with

different phenomenologies have different contents. Thus, evaluating Gunther's argument for CP

requires investigating his grounds for positing a unique category of emotional content.

Gunther's strategy for showing the uniqueness of emotional content is, first, to argue that

emotional contents are not capable of full logical complexity. By this, Gunther means that the content

of an emotion cannot properly be anything but a truth-functionally simple statement. That is, the

content of an emotion cannot be a disjunctive (I will give away my country's secrets, or I will be killed)

a conjunction (You got home late, and you didn't call) a conditional (if I turn in a bad paper, then I will

be heavily criticized) or a negation (I did not get the promotion.) Gunther claims that emotions fail to

individuate between force and content, because individuating between force and content in mental acts

requires logical complexity. The distinction between force and content is essential to beliefs, desires,

and other prototypical mental acts, and if emotions fail to make this distinction, Gunther would be

3 Whether it is irreducible or not is an open question, and outside of the scope of this paper. I hope it is safe to say,
however, that it is felt as irreducible. The phenomenology of phenomenology is that phenomenology is irreducible.
However, if it is not, my thesis should not suffer; my conclusion will rest very little on a particular understanding of
phenomenology.
justified in arguing that emotional content is different in kind from propositional content. Gunther

concludes, because emotions do not individuate between force and content, that the content of an

emotion is inseparable from the force of an emotion, and consequently the phenomenology of an

emotion is inseparable from its content, entailing CP.

In section two, I will say a great deal more about the force/content distinction. I will discuss

what this distinction is, and why it is important to Gunther's position. In section three, I will outline

Gunther's argument that emotions are not capable of full logical complexity, and I will refute this

argument by generating counter-examples, which I believe indicate reasonable candidates for

emotional content which do have full logical complexity. I will argue that these counterexamples

demonstrate that Gunther does not give us a satisfactory reason to believe that emotions violate the

distinction between force and content. In section four, I will show that Gunther's argument for CP

hinges on his claim that emotions violate the force content distinction. I will argue that Gunther's

failure to demonstrate that emotions violate the force content distinction undermines his argument for

CP. I will conclude that Gunther is not justified in claiming that emotions with distinct

phenomenologies neccessarily have distinct contents.

II. The Force/Content Distinction

In this section I will clarify the force/content distinction, particularly with respect to

prototypical intentional states, such as beliefs. I will also clarify the importance of logical complexity

to the force/content distinction, showing that a belief's capacity for logical complexity entails its

separation of force and content.

It is widely accepted that many prototypical intentional mental states, such as beliefs and

desires, individuate between force and content. “Force” is similar to Searle's (1983) notion of

psychological mode. If I believe “that all dogs are mammals,” the content of my thought is “that all

dogs are mammals” and the mode of my thought is “belief.” According to Searle, different

psychological modes are best distinguished by correctness conditions. I cannot believe that “all dogs
are mammals” without committing myself to believing that the content of my belief “that all dogs are

mammals” is true. That is, my belief is only “correct” if the content of my belief is true. By contrast, it

is possible to desire “that all dogs are friendly” without being committed to the truth of the proposition

“that all dogs are friendly.” Though “correctness” seems less appropriate with respect to desires (the

conditions in which one's desires can be “correct” are not as clear) we can understand a desire to be

appropriate, even if its content (that all dogs are friendly) is false. In this way, we are able to separate

the content of a belief from the force of the belief. The force of the belief is “belief,” and the nature of

that force can be understood independently of whatever content a particular belief has. This distinction

has been developed in Frege's Begriffschrift (1879, p 53, quoted in Gunther (2003))):

An interrogative sentence and an assertoric one contain the same thought, but the assertoric
sentence contains something else as well, namely assertion. The interrogative sentence contains
something more too, namely a request. Therefore two things must be distinguished in an
assertoric sentence: the content, which it has in common with the corresponding propositional
question; and assertion.

In this passage, Frege refers to “thought” and “content” interchangeably, while I refer to only

“content.” This ambiguity is present because Frege is referring to sentences as containing thoughts

(that is, the content of the sentence is a thought), while I am referring to thoughts as containing

contents. The risk of confusion grows as Frege refers to a sentence containing two things, a content,

and mode (assertion, or request).When I refer to content, however, I'm referring to precisely what a

thought contains, so it would not be plausible for a thought to contain a content and some other thing.

In spite of these differences in vocabulary, we can take from this passage a distinction that makes clear

the distinction between force and content. In a prototypical intentional mental state (e.g., a belief or a

desire) there are “two things [which] must be distinguished,” the content (e.g. That dogs are mammals)

and the psychological mode, or force, of that thought (e.g. Belief). Two different thoughts can share in

common a content, while differing in their psychological mode, or force. You may believe that all

dogs are friendly, while I may doubt that all dogs are friendly. Gunther accepts this characterization of

the force/content distinction. He writes (2003) that


Effectively, to heed the principle [of force/content independence] is to acknowledge a
distinction and separation of content and force. In language this involves distinguishing between
what a sentence or utterance says and the way it’s said.

Just as two sentences with identical contents can be, respectively, an assertion and a request,

two thoughts with the same contents can be, respectively, a belief, and a desire.

In order to make Gunther's position more clear, I will develop one more feature of the

force/content distinction before moving on. One way of seeing that beliefs individuate between force

and content is to see that the contents of beliefs can exhibit full logical complexity. Not only can I

believe that all dogs are friendly, but I can believe that “if all dogs are friendly, then I have nothing to

fear from the neighbor's great dane.” (conditional) I can also believe that “either all dogs are friendly,

or all dogs are vicious,”(disjunction) that “all dogs are friendly, and all dogs are

mammals,”(conjunction) and “it is not the case that all dogs are friendly.”(negation) This potential

complexity of belief states allows us to formalize the inferential roles that beliefs can play in our

reasoning. For instance, I know that if Peter believes that “all dogs are friendly, and all dogs are

mammals,” then I know that Peters believe that “all dogs are friendly.” I know this because the

correctness conditions of this conjunction are such that it is only true if both “all dogs are friendly” and

“all dogs are mammals” are true. We can recognize this formal structeure of belief contents by

abstracting them, and showing that, in all cases, if I belive P and Q, then I believe P. Thus, I separate

the content (all dogs are friendly) or potential content (P) from the mode, or force, of belief, and

analyze those contents for their inferential potential, independently of the mode in which they are

presented. The capacity of beliefs to be logically complex allows for beliefs to be such that a single

logical operator can range over a complex belief content. Believing “either I will study or I will fail”

does not entail believing either disjunct. In this case, the content of the belief is the disjunction of two

statements, not in either disjunct particularly. This notion of range will be important when evaluating

whether emotions can have logically complex contents.

III. Gunther and Emotional Content


In this section, I will outline Gunther's argument that emotions violate the force/content

distinction because they are not capable of logical complexity. I will then outline Gunther's argument

for the claim that an emotions content can not have a conditional structure. I will introduce and defend

several counterexamples, which will illustrate that emotions can have a conditional structure. I will

then conclude that Gunther's argument that emotions are not capable of full logical complexity is

unsuccessful, and due to its failure, Gunther is not justified in claiming that emotions violate the

force/content distinctin.

According to Gunther, emotions do not individuate between force and content. Gunther argues

that this can can be demonstrated by the failure of emotions to exhibit full logical complexity. My

strategy to refute Gunther's argument will be to show that the content of an emotion can take the form

of a conditional. I choose to focus on the conditional for two reasons. First, Gunther argues that

emotions cannot have any sort of logical complexity. If the content of an emotion can have the form of

any sort of logically complex statement, then the force of that emotion can be separated from its

content. Therefore, demonstrating that an emotion's content can have the form of a conditional will be

sufficient to refute Gunther's categorical claim that no emotional content can have full logical

complexity. Second, Gunther's claim that emotional content cannot have full logical complexity may be

read as claiming that emotional content cannot take the form of all logically complex statements

(including conjunctions, disjunctions, and negations.) On this reading, Gunther is vindicated if an

emotion's content is incapable of being a conditional, or a disjunction, or a conjunction, or a negation.

Though I think that this is an inaccurate reading of Gunther, my analysis of the conditional will guard

against it. If the content of my emotion can have the logical form “ if I turn in a bad paper, then I will

be heavily criticized” then it could4 also have the form of “either I will not turn in a bad paper, or I will

4 It may very well not, since emotions (like beliefs) are intensional. That is, I could be angry that “if p then q” but not be
angry that “if not q, then not p” if I do not realize that “if p then q” entails “if not p, then not q.” However, if an emotion
can have the content “if p then q” there is no reason to say that it could not have the the content “if not q then not p,”
because they are logically equivalent.
be heavily criticized” (disjunction) and “it is not the case that both I will turn in a bad paper, and I will

not be heavily criticized” (negation and conjunction). If the content of an emotion can be a conditional

statement, there is no non-arbitrary way to rule out my emotion's content being disjunction, a

conjunction, or a negation.

To support the claim that the content emotion content cannot be a conditional, Gunther's

strategy is to introduce potential counterexamples (that is, emotional expressives that appear to have a

conditional as their content) and to illustrate that they do not contradict his claim. First he considers a

straight forward expression of gratitude: “Thank you for lending me the book.” He argues that trying

to “conditionalize” this expression results in an unsuccessful counterexample:

(1) “Thank you for if you lend me the book, I will read it.”

(2) “I apologize that if I make a mess, I will clean it up”

He argues that these are grammatically unsound, and are thus not proper counterexamples. This

is a poor argument against emotions having content of this sort. The beginning and the end of his

argument against these potential counterexamples is this:

Such cases are ungrammatical and reflect one way that counterexamples can be misbegotten.
(2003, forthcoming (a))

First, it is not clear to me that their “unsoundness” is any more than a grammatical

awkwardness, and Gunther's implicit belief that a grammatically awkward statement could not

accurately characterize the content of an intentional mental state is far from obvious. He presents no

argument to defend this assumption, and it is plausible that our grammar could, on occasion,

inaccurately reflect the actual content of our mental states.

Gunther moves on to consider ways in which emotional sentences can be transformed into

conditionals, at the expense of their expressive character:

(3) If I am late, then I will apologize.

Such a sentence is obviously not a counterexample to Gunther's position. The speaker of such a
sentence is not necessarily experiencing any emotion at all, so it is not plausible that such a sentence

identifies the content of her emotion. I will move on to the third counterexample. Gunther entertains

the possibility that emotional ascriptions could indicate emotions whose contents are conditionals.

(4) “Gertrude is happy that if she is dilligent, she will impress William.”

This strikes me as the most plausible, least straw-man, counterexample that Gunther considers.

Gunther argues that, in this case, the content of Gertrude's emotion does not have a genuine conditional

structure, even thought the ascription makes it appear to be a conditional.

“Unlike expressive utterances, emotional ascriptions don’t have the same content as emotional
states; they are, after all, about emotions. As such, they aren’t reliable indicators of the logical
structure of emotion. This is apparent since neither ascription presupposes that the individual in
question is experiencing the relevant emotion. Rather than experience happiness at the time of
the first ascription, the interpreter is supposing that if Gertrude is diligent, she will be happy that
she impressed William,” (forthcoming (a))

Here, Gunther is arguing that emotional ascriptions do not express emotions, because they are

about emotions. If I say “I am angry that I did not get the promotion”, my expression is about my

anger; it is not about my not getting the promotion. When we ascribe happiness to Gertrude, as in (4),

we are making a claim about Gertrude's emotion, not about the state of affairs that Gertrude is happy

about or the content of Gertrude's happiness. This is problematic for two reasons. First, Gunther fails

to consider that we might imagine Gertrude ascribing the emotion to herself, such that Gertrude might

say “I am happy that if I am diligent, I will impress my professor.” This is not different in any

important way from a more obviously expressive statement, such as “Woo hoo! If I am diligent, I will

impress my professor!” This self-ascribing expressive statement is similar to (1) and (2), which

Gunther disregards on the ground that they are “grammatically unsound.” But “I am happy that if I am

diligent, I will impress my professor,” is not grammatically unsound. It is, in fact, quite natural.

Further, as I argued above, even if Gertrude's self-ascription were grammatically awkward, this would

be an inadequate reason to conclude that she was not experiencing an emotion with a conditional as its

content, because our grammar may inaccurately reflect the contents of our mental states. Second, I
think Gunther is wrong to suppose that ascribing to Gertrude that she is happy that “if she is diligent,

she will impress Williams” is to not presuppose that she is experiencing happiness. It is false that

Gertrude's self ascription does not have Gertrude's being (presently) happy as a correctness condition

for the self-ascription to be true. Ben Smith (2007) offers a similar counterexample that illustrates this

point well:

(5) Christ, if I fail the seminar, I won’t finish my degree!

In this circumstance, the speakers distress ranges over the whole conditional statement. Recall that one

of the reasons Gunther believes that beliefs can be logically complex is that a belief can have a

logically complex content, in which the major operator of the content ranges over the truth-functionally

simple components of that content. Here, we observe the conditional ranging similarly over the truth-

functionally simple components of the emotions content: “I fail the seminar” and “I won't finish my

degree.”5 Here, the speaker is distressed that if the first proposition (that I fail the seminar) obtains,

then the second (that I won't finish my degree) will also obtain. Similarly, it can be true that

(6) I am delighted that if I write a bad paper, Dr. Scarantino will criticize it heavily.

In this case, the speaker is not delighted that she will write a bad paper, and she is not delighted

that Dr. Scarantino will criticize her paper heavily. She is delighted by what she takes to be a true

proposition, that if she writes a bad paper, then Dr. Scarantino will criticize it heavily. In this case, the

conditional ranges over both truth-functionally simple compounds, and she is delighted that these two

propositions have a particular logical relationship: that if one occurs, then the other will occur. It

would be false to claim that she is entertaining the possibility that Dr. Scarantino will criticize her

paper heavily, and projecting onto her future self that such a state of affairs would delight her. She is

experiencing delight now because she believes it to be true that if one state of affairs obtains, the other

will obtain.

But Gunther's criticism of such counterexamples is that they do not have a “genuine conditional

5 Ben Smith deserves credit for this insight.


structure”. This claim is confusing, and must be further scrutinized. I don't think we can interpret

Gunther as arguing that (6) somehow introduces a “disingenuous” conditional. If he does, I do not

know how to make sense of his claim, and he provides no explication of what a disingenuous

conditional might be. Rather, we may interpret Gunther as saying something like the following: If the

ascription appears to be expressing an emotion whose content is a conditional, this appearance does not

reflect the content of the emotion accurately. Gunther writes of the apparently-conditional emotional

ascription:

But looks are deceiving. What is conspicuous about the utterance is that its conditional
structure isn’t genuine. If it were, the speaker should be able to entertain rather than experience
the antecedent.

But this does nothing to illustrate that (6) does not express an emotion whose content has a

genuine conditional structure. In fact, the speaker in (6) is entertaining the antecedent; she is

considering the possibility that she might write a bad paper, noting that if she does write a bad paper

then she will be criticized, and taking delight in the fact that this consequent would obtain. She is not,

however, taking delight in the consequent itself (in this case, she would probably be irritated if the

consequent obtained), but is rather taking delight in the knowledge that the antecedent, if true, would

bring about the consequent. In order for the content of an emotion to have a genuine conditional

structure, it would have to be the case that it is by virtue of this state of affairs (that the antecedent

could not be true and the consequent false) that the emoter is delighted. I believe that (6) expresses an

emotion whose content is a conditional in this way, for the reasons I stated above. The speaker in this

self-ascription, if she is being genuine, is taking delight in the fact that two potential state of affairs

exist in a particular logical relationship: that if one obtains, the other will obtain.

In this section I have shown Gunther's argument for the claim that emotions violate the

force/content distinction is unconvincing. Gunther believes that he can demonstrate this violation by

arguing that emotions are not capable of full logical complexity. I have shown that his argument for

the latter claim is poor, and that we have no reason to accept the claim that emotional contents are not
capable of having a conditional structure. I have offered counterexamples that demonstrate that

emotions can have conditionals for contents. If emotions can have logically complex contents, then

their contents can be abstracted from their force, and we can conceptually separate the force and

content of a given emotional experience. Therefore, the claim that emotions violate the force/content

distinction has not been adequately justified, and we have no reason to suppose that the content of an

emotion is fundamentally different in kind from the content of a belief or desire. I conclude that the

Gunther fails to illustrate that the logical complexity (or lack thereof) of emotional content requires us

to posit a new kind of content for emotional phenomena.

IV. Emotional Content and Emotional Phenomenology

Thus far I have argued that Gunther does not provide satisfactory reasons for believing that

emotional content is less capable of logical complexity than propositional content. In the remainder of

this paper, I will trace the significance of this argumentative failure through Gunther's other arguments.

I will attempt to show that Gunther errs in concluding (forthcoming (b)) that emotional content is so

“imbued” with phenomenology that two emotions with different contents necessarily have different

phenomenologies.

For Gunther, the failure of emotions to be fully logically complex demonstrates that force and

content do not individuate in emotional experience. Because belief contents can be logically complex,

we can isolate the logical structure of the content from the mode in which the content is presented

(belief). This is how we can distinguish a belief that “I will get well” from the desire that “I will get

well,” while recognizing that these to mental states have the same content. If emotional contents cannot

be logically complex, then we cannot isolate the content of an emotion from it's mode of presentation

in this way. However, my analysis in section three has shown that Gunther fails to demonstrate that

emotional contents are incapable of logical complexity. Consequently, it has yet to be demonstrated

that emotions (that is, all emotions, Qua emotions) violate the force-content distinction.

Because emotions may not violate the force/content distinction, we have no reason to accept
Gunther's claim that the content of an emotion covaries with the phenomenology of an emotion (CP).

Gunther (forthcoming (b)) introduces a variation upon Searle's (1983) discussion of “psychological

mode.” According to Searle, (1983) two mental acts with the same content (desiring that I will get well

and believing that I will get well) differ according to their psychological mode (desire in the one case,

belief in the other). Gunther attempts to develop a parallel idea for emotions: the emotional mode of

presentation. If I am angry that Bush won the election, while you are delighted that Bush won the

election, the emotional mode of presentation is delight for you, and anger for me. However, unlike

Searle's mode of presentation, Gunther claims that the emotional mode cannot be conceptually

separated from the content, because emotions violate the force/content distinction which such

separation would require. If you are delighted that S is P, the content of your emotion is something like

“delight in S being P.” Attempts to divide this content into the mode (delight) and content (that S is P)

fail because the content of an emotion is inseparable from the emotions force.

But the claim that the emotional mode of presentation cannot be separated from the content of

an emotion is problematic. Gunther's argument depends on the failure of emotions to individuate

between force and content. I have shown that Gunther's argument for this latter claim is unsuccessful.

If Gunther's claims about the failure of emotional contents to have full logical complexity are not

justified, there is no reason to believe that the emotional mode of presentation, or the force of a

particular emotion, cannot be separated from the content of that emotion. If we have no reason to deny

the distinction between emotional force and emotional content, then we have no reason to follow

Gunther in supposing that the emotional mode of presentation is an indissoluble component of

emotional content.

Gunther's conclusion is that the phenomenology of an emotion is covariant with its content. To

show this, he posits, first, that emotional modes of presentation have distinct phenomenological types.6

6 His argument for this positing is also questionable. He refutes two arguments for emotions not having distinct
phenomenological types, and then having disposed of the objections, concludes that our intuitions tell us they do have
Thus, when one transitions from one emotion to another (anger subsides and one becomes

embarrassed) one experiences (at least) two distinct phenomenologies that correspond to distinct modes

of presentation. Gunther's claim that emotional content is, in part, made up of emotional mode of

presentation, allows him to claim that a different emotional content entails a different emotional

phenomenology. However, his claim that emotional content is made up, in part, by emotional mode,

depends on the claim that we cannot separate between force and content. This claim is unjustified, so

Gunther's argument for CP is unsuccessful. Gunther does not give a satisfactory reason to believe that

two emotions with distinct phenomenologies have distinct contents.

V. Conclusion

I do not conclude that emotional phenomenology does not covary with emotional content. I

actually suspect that a successful argument for this claim could be constructed. 7 Rather, I have

demonstrated that Gunther's argument for the claim that emotional phenomenology covaries with

emotional content relies on his argument that emotions violate the distinction of force and content. If

Gunther has not demonstrated that emotions violate the distinction of force and content, then his claim

that different emotional phenomenologies entail different emotional contents is not justified. Because

it remains to be demonstrated that emotions cannot have full logical complexity, it consequently

remains to be shown that emotions violate the distinction between force and content. Thus, we do not

yet have adequate grounds to accept Gunther's conclusion that two emotions with distinct

phenomenologies necessarily have distinct contents.8

distinct phenomenological types. Refuting this argument would not contribute to the purpose of the present paper, so I
will not dedicate any space on it.
7 See for instance, Miller, Raleigh. Epistemic Emotions. Cambridge Press. Forthcoming.
8 I am greatly indebted to Ben Smith, Ben Sheredos, Lucas Keefer, Paul Pfeilschiefter and Andrea Scarantino for
comments on earlier drafts of this work.
Sources

Frege, Gottlieb. Begriffschrift. (1879) Quoted in Gunther (2003)


Gunther, York (forthcoming (a)) “A Theory of Emotional Content.” Under review.
http://www.csun.edu/%7Eyg76853/theoryemotion.pdf
Gunther, York. (2003) “Emotions and Force.” Essays on Nonconceptual Content. The MIT Press, 2003
Gunther, York (forthcoming(b)) “The Phenomenology and Intentionality of Emotions” Philosophical
Studies.
Searle, John. (1983) Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge University Press.
Smith, Benjamin, (2007) MS. “Do Emotions Violate Force Independence?”

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