Do Emotions Provide Reasons for Action?

In responding to the question of the essay, the paper focuses on the cognitivist view

according to Deigh (1994) and Jamess feeling theory (1994). The cognitive theory of

emotion asserts that emotions are part of a cognitive process. James claims that emotions

have mental states which are representations of physical processes. The essay argues that

some emotions provide reasons for action. The essay presents three main imaginative

situations in which emotions provide reason for action. The introduction presents short

explanations on previous theories of emotion.

Emotions influence our thoughts and reason. I will show throughout the essay that

sensations are caused by internal bodily changes. But are emotions simply sensations and

nothing more than internal biological changes? Do they provide propositional content so that

one can say emotions are cognitive? The relation between emotion and judgment is causal.

Emotions can affect our reason and our reason can affect our emotions. It goes both ways.

The particularistic approach on emotion asserts that some emotions provide us with reasons

and some do not. Emotions and the objects of emotion are interrelated. According to Poellner

(2016), we have direct access to the characteristics of objects. The characteristics of objects

are values from which we derive meanings. Thus, the characteristics of objects provide us the

content by which our emotions are caused. Emotions are a perceptual experience. But

perception may be delusional. Thus, the way we perceive some emotions may be delusional;

x may seem to be y when in fact x is only x.

For now let us consider previous accounts on emotion by having a quick look on

Locke and Descartes.

 Locke's conception is typical. Emotions, in Locke's view, are "internal sensations" of

pleasure and pain, which differ from bodily sensations in being produced by thoughts of

something good or evil rather than by alterations of the body. Being simple ideas, however,

they no more contain any thought than do the bodily sensations that are their simple

counterparts. Moreover, Locke was largely following Descartes, who had defined emotions as

excitations that seem to come from within the soul itself rather than from any part of the body

or from some object external to the body. (Deigh 1994: 825)

As it will be shown, Lockes and Descartess accounts are in contrast with James.

Their source of emotions, i.e. from where emotions come from, is in opposition. In Lockes

and Descartess view, what it seems at first sight is that emotions are produced by immaterial

objects such as our thoughts or soul. Thus, they are not produced by external objects and

events, or by our bodily changes. But why is not it possible for emotions to be produced only

by physical changes or sensations? Why does it have to be something more than the physical

part of our body and mind? In answering to this question, let us take the example of the

intentionality of a feeling. Emotions cannot be merely bodily sensations because they are

more complex than bodily sensations and some emotions have intentional properties and

sensations do not; intentionality means when an emotion is directed toward an intentional

object (Deigh 1994: 826; 834). Sensations cannot have such a property because they cannot

be directed toward an external object. When Anna, let us say, is angry at Pat, an emotion is

projected toward an intentional object, which in this case happens to be Pat. Thus, an emotion

can have an intentional state but a sensation cannot.

That is, emotions are conceived of as having similar intrinsic properties to such

sensations. At the same time, the conception distinguishes emotions from bodily sensations

by locating them in a different place in the mind's machinery. Emotions, on this conception,
thus differ from bodily sensations in the relations they bear to other states of mind and to

states of the body. (Deigh 1994: 825)

From Deighs approach presented above, it follows that:

1. Emotions have similar intrinsic properties to sensations.

2. Emotions differ from sensations by being located in a different place in the minds

machinery.
3. Emotions differ from sensation by being in a different relation to other states of mind

and to states of the body.

In regard to (2), what is it meant by the phrase minds machinery? Does it consist of our

physical brain or does it consist of the mental content of our mind? According to the

cognitivist theory of feeling, emotions are classified within this theory as cognitions, since

the theory conceives of them as mental states in which the subject is cognizant of some

object. (Deigh 1994: 827). Thus, the minds machinery is made up of propositional attitudes

in regard to emotion. To make it clear, neither James approach nor the traditional cognitivism

asserts that one can understand an emotion independently of thought (Deigh 1994: 829).

Thus, emotion and thought are interrelated.

Broad and James accepted introspection as the main way to gather facts about the mind.

Accordingly, both men, in giving their accounts of emotion, took themselves to be looking at

consciousness and describing what they saw. (Deigh 1994: 830). It is the subjects belief

which defines the emotion. Beliefs are propositional attitudes (Deigh 1994: 846).

William Jamess account on emotion and its implications is presented in this essay by

appealing to the paper The Physical Basis of Emotion (1994). I have selected from his

journal four key paragraphs on which my essay will be referencing to. In explaining James, I

change the terminology: I will be using the term caused instead of aroused because the

first term is more philosophical than the second one.

 The theory of emotional consciousness, according to James, agrees that emotions are, in

the first place, caused by external exciting objects or thought but the primary feeling does

not count as being an emotion It is thus not a primary feeling, directly aroused by the

exciting object or thought (James 1994: 205). But, I argue, even if the emotion is a thought, a

thought about something is in the first place a thought about something that happened, which,

as it will be shown throughout the next lines, can be called the external object. Let us take an

example. If one, for instance, feels sad because one remembers a moment which happened a

while ago, that memory comes, in the first place, from an event that already happened. To be

more specific, if the person in question has a sad memory because he lost a game, then the

lost game accounts as the external object. If he is sad because he forgot to do something

which was necessary and utterly important, then the object is himself; it is his act of

forgetting which counts as the object.

James asserts that the way emotions are expressed is through biological processes of

alteration; it is the effect of the organic changes, muscular and visceral, of which the socalled

'expression' of the emotion consists (James 1994: 205). But the biological processes alone do

not count as the emotion itself; It is thus not a primary feeling, directly aroused by the

exciting object or thought (James 1994: 205). Instead, as it will be shown while discussing

Wundt, the primary feeling of the biological changes is only the physical expression of the

emotion and not the emotion as a whole. The emotion can be seen as being either the whole

body-mind process or the mental representation of the physical processes. It is interesting,

however, that James sees the biological changes as the primary feeling of an emotion but this

feeling counts more as a first stage in experiencing the emotion in question; it is not the

emotion. According to James, emotions consist of the second feeling, indirectly caused. As he

puts it:
 1) It is thus not a primary feeling, directly aroused by the exciting object or thought, but

a secondary feeling indirectly aroused; the primary effect being the organic changes in

question, which are immediate reflexes following upon the presence of the object.

(James 1994: 205)

Since emotions, for James, cannot account for the organic changes alone, all the physical

information is then processed by our mind the sphere of intellection and perceived as an

emotion (James 1994: 205). Thus, emotions are a complex process and because of that they

are considered to be secondary and indirect feelings. For instance, when one looks at The

Statue of Liberty and experiences an emotion of freedom, that emotion is, in the first place,

caused by the object, which is the statue. But this is only the first part of experiencing the

feeling of freedom; it is interconnected with the second part when that information is brought

together with previous data, so that the brain can make sense that the statue is a

representation of freedom. In making the connection with previous data, the feeling arouses

in our sphere of intellection and it is our mind, our consciousness, which experiences the

feeling. As shown by Ratcliffe (2005), Jamess account on emotion does not fail to assign the

cognitive role to feelings. Emotions are indirect and secondary feelings because they are

indirectly perceived by us. The biological changes, on the other side, are in direct access to

the feeling. To be clear, it is the whole process which should be counted as emotion.

2) Secondly, Wundt says, whence comes it that if a certain stimulus be what causes

emotional expression by its mere reflex effects, another stimulus almost identical with

the first will fail to do so if its mental effects are not the same? (355). The mental

motivation is the essential thing in the production of the emotion, let the 'object' be

what it may. (James 1994: 205)

From Jamess interpretation of Wundt, let us consider the following observations. Firstly,

the primary feeling consists of the emotional expression. This is the physical expression of
the emotion and should not be treated as being the emotion; the emotion occurs in the mind

and, therefore, it is a mental expression.

Secondly, I will explain the second part about the two stimuli as follows. The mental

motivation behind every feeling plays a key role in perceiving emotions. But it is important

what one understands by mental motivation. Taking into account that one stimulus is

physical and one is mental let us consider an instance. Suppose that Ben is at a jazz session.

The music played is very chill and relaxing. His physical stimulus perceives the sound as

positive and relaxing but his mental stimulus perceives it, on contrary, as negative and

disturbing. The mental stimulus is linked to Bens own interpretation of what jazz music is.

Thus, according to James interpretation of Wundt, Ben is experiencing the sounds of jazz

music as negative and disturbing and not as positive and relaxing. What counts as the

emotion is not the physical expression of it but he mental expression.

3) () but he contrasts the small degree of this inconstancy in the case of' motived

emotions where we have a recognized mental cause for our mood, with its great

degree where the emotion is unmotived, as when it is produced by intoxicants

(alcohol, haschisch, opium) or by cerebral disease (James 1994: 205)

In experiencing mental emotions one has a recognized cause for his feeling. But this is

questionable because an individual may not recognise the cause of his emotion, so that he is

not aware of why he perceives that emotion as such. It is easy to imagine a case in which Ben

feels disturbed while listening to jazz music but he is not aware that it is the music which

makes him feel this way. Or probably he misidentifies the cause and thinks it is because of

another event which happened previously.

Regarding the 3rd paragraph, it seems reasonable to believe that all emotions have a

reason behind them. Whether the individual in question is conscious and aware of the reasons
behind his experienced emotions is not important in discussing the topic of the essay. There

may be conscious or unconscious reasons. Our emotions are unmotivated and mentally

unjustified only if they are produced by chemicals such as drugs. If someone takes

antidepressants, for instance, and feels better, then it is the drug which is making him feel

better and it does not entail any mental motivation.

According to James, people perceive emotions differently because they have different

mental motivations for each emotion; it varies from one person to another (James 1994: 205).

Thus, two individuals can experience the same emotion only if the mental motivations are the

same for both of them.

4) It [James theory] assumes (what probably every one assumes) that there must be a

process of some sort in the nerve-centres for emotion, and it simply defines that

process to consist of afferent currents. It does this on no general theoretic grounds, but

because of the introspective appearances exclusively. (James 1994: 207)

Thus, Jamess approach has an introspective side as well. It entails a personal

introspective investigation on how the mind and body function. What James tries to point out

here is that by introspecting ourselves and the way we get to feel certain emotions, one seems

right in thinking that the physicalist part of our experience of emotions, i.e. the neurological

system of our brain, is not what ultimately counts for the experience of emotions. What

ultimately counts is the immaterial mental apparatus which is linked to the neuronal activity

within our brain.

For now let us mainly focus on the question of the essay. As presented while discussing

the 2nd paragraph, the mental motivation behind any emotion is the core in the production of

the emotion. Consequently, what it entails is that we behave according to our reasons. For

every emotion which an individual experiences there is at least one reason for it.
 In the first example with the Statue of Liberty, the person who is seeing it is experiencing

a feeling of freedom because the individual believes that the statue in question is a symbol of

freedom or, at least, that it somehow represents freedom. Thus, he associates the object the

statue with the concept of freedom and by this association while looking at the statue he

ends up experiencing a feeling of freedom. If he would associate the object with the concept

of freedom, then he would not experience the emotion of freedom by starring at the statue.

But how can, in this instance, the feeling of freedom provide a reason for action? It is not

hard to imagine that feeling of freedom causing a reason for action. Perhaps it makes him

prove that he is free to do everything he wants to. Or he may simply start thinking whether he

is free or not; even in this instance, that feeling of freedom is what caused him to think about

it. Then, he notices that his job restrains him too much from doing the things he would really

like to. After this realisation he is very motivated in changing his job; he does it and his life

becomes better. Probably it is a story which we already heard before but the point here is that

the feeling of freedom can definitely influence ones own behaviour and provide reasons for

further actions. The reasons provided in this example is that he is better finding another job

because it will make his life better. Thus, it is the feeling of freedom felt in front of the statue

which provided him with the reason to change his job.

As an objection to this instance one might claim that it is not the feeling of freedom

which provides the reasons to quit the job but the object: Statue of Liberty; so that starring at

and thinking about the statue and the concept of liberty is what provides the reason for further

action. But such an objection entails changing the supposition that it is the feeling of liberty

which provides the reason for action and that feeling is aroused by starring at the statue.

Thus, without changing the premise the arguments still stands up.

Let us consider now the second example with Ben at the jazz session. In this example it

was showed how the sounds of jazz music made Ben feel disturbed. Let us imagine now that
Ben continues to stay there and listen to the music. Nothing changes. On the contrary, the

feeling of disturbance intensifies and it bothers him that much that he becomes so irritated by

this that he promises to himself that he will never come back to that place and he quickly

leaves the jazz session. In this instance, it is the feeling of disturbance while listening to jazz

sounds which made Ben to promise and leave the session. His emotion of continual irritation

provided the reason to leave and never come back. Funny or not, I had a similar experience.

Both examples can have the same objections. But this time let us take a different

criticism. One might question the nature of the emotion: what if the feeling of disturbance is

induced by Ben so that the emotion is not real but fake, or similar to an illusion? Or what if

Ben is simply self-deceiving in regard to the emotion? Emotions can be confused with blind

impulses (Dancy 2014: 791); because, as Dancy (2014: 792) continues, belief is like

blindsight in being representational but not presentational. But even if the emotion is nothing

more than a blind impulse it does not really support the conclusion that Ben is not

experiencing the feeling of disturbance. Moreover, such observations can only attack the truth

value of the premise. Discussing the problem of deceiving yourself voluntarily or

involuntarily seems trivial in the sense that we can still easily imagine a real situation in

which an emotion provide reasons for action. It does not seem reasonable to believe that there

are no situations at all in which feelings provide reasons for action. And if we can think of at

least an instance which seems plausible, only one instance is sufficient to believe what this

essay is arguing for. Furthermore, as Lisa Damm argues, an individual cannot be wrong about

what is like to feel a specific emotion because A person has unique epistemic access to this

experiential state and what a person consciously feels at that precise point in time is

indisputably that persons experience (Damm 2011: 258).

However, one may still claim that Ben, in the described scenario, desperately wants to

leave because he finds it boring. But even if he finds it boring, then I can still say that it is the
feeling of boredom which actually makes him leave. Thus, the emotion of boredom provides

the reason for action.

If the object of fear must be something that is seen to threaten harm, then fear entails an

evaluation of its object as the potential source or agent of some bad effect. (Deigh 1994:

836).

Is either introspection or evaluation of our emotions relevant in any way in addressing the

question whether or not our emotions provide reasons for action? It is relevant because by

introspecting and evaluating your feelings you can try and change some aspects of them, such

as its effects. Let us take a 3rd relevant instance for our discourse. Suppose that Maria

experiences a genuine feeling of anger. It is so strong that she starts worrying so much that

she would like to make it stop somehow. The anger already made her looking for solutions on

how to get rid of the feeling. Moreover, she starts introspecting and evaluating her emotion to

see if she can find the cause of it, so that she will never experience the anger at this intensity

again. Even without succeeding, by the simple act of trying to change some aspects of the

recently felt anger, the anger makes her to act for the reason of stopping it. Thus, the anger

provides reasons for action.

My argumentation is as follows:

1. M feel A. [A=anxious; or angry or any other emotion that can fit in this example]
2. Her anxiety makes her think about how to stop it. [temporarily or permanently]
3. Thinking about how to stop is a reason for action.
4. Anxiety provides reasons for action.

In considering the 2nd premise we can imagine that M suffers either from a generalized

anxiety disorder which involves chronic worrying and panic attacks or from a normal anxious

feeling. Both cases consist an emotion and they both support the conclusion that emotions

provide reasons for action. Moreover, if M suffers from a generalized anxiety disorder, then it
seems impossible to imagine herself how he is faking or self-deceiving herself. Thus, such

aspects become even less questionable.

In conclusion, from all instances presented it follows that emotions do provide

reasons for action. The main objections against such a fact either questions the truth value of

the premise x feels y or it questions the nature of the feeling, such as its genuine aspect or

whether it is a self-deception. But, as it was shown, such criticism is weak and it is not

enough to prove that emotions cannot provide reasons for action. In defending my position,

the essay was not trying to argue that all emotions provide reasons for action but that some

emotions have such a role. In contrast, it is not reasonable to believe that feelings do not have

this impact on reason.

References

Dancy, J., 2014. Intuition and Emotion, Ethics, 124, p. 787-812.

Damm, L., 2011. Self-Deception about Emotion, The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 49(3),

p. 254-270.

Deigh, J., 1994. Cognitivism in the Theory of Emotions, Ethics, 104(4), The University of

Chicago Press, p. 824-854.

James, W., 1994. The Physical Basis of Emotion, Psychological Review, 101(2),

p. 205-210

Poellner, P., 2016. Phenomenology and the Perceptual Model of Emotion,

Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 116(3), University of London.

Ratcliffe, M., 2005. William James on emotion and intentionality. International

Journal of Philosophical Studies, [e-journal] 13(2), p.179-202.

<http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09672550500080405> [accessed on 9 May 2017].