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Neosentimentalism and the valence of attitudes

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Abstract

Neosentimentalist accounts of value need an explanation of which of the sentiments they discuss are pro-attitudes, which attitudes are con-attitudes, and why. I argue that this project has long been neglected in the philosophical literature, even by those who make extensive use of the distinction between pro- and con-attitudes. Using the attitudes of awe and respect as exemplars, I argue that it is not at all clear what if anything makes these attitudes pro-attitudes. I conclude that neither our intuitive sense of the distinction nor the vague accounts of it that exist in the philosophical literature are especially helpful in sorting out the hard cases. What is needed is a more explicit and thorough account of what the valence of our attitudes consists in.

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Notes

  1. There is a significant literature in psychology on the question of valence; however, none of the available psychological accounts sort attitudes in the same way that philosophers do. This is because psychologists tend to be interested in determining not which attitudes we take (or should take) toward good things as opposed to bad things, but rather which attitudes are enjoyable, which attitudes motivate us to continue the activity that produced them, and so on. For a helpful overview of this literature, see Prinz (2004).

  2. Many theorists of the emotions have claimed that any attitude that has no valence cannot count as an emotion. See, e.g., Prinz (2004, p. 164). I don't wish to take a stand on the proper definition of ‘emotion,’ and will talk about ‘valuative attitudes’ instead. The term ‘valuative attitudes,’ as I use it here, refers to intentional (i.e., object-directed) states that typically have both affective and cognitive dimensions.

  3. The example of surprise is from Gaus (1990, p. 68).

  4. Blackburn (1984).

  5. Ewing (1947, pp. 149–150).

  6. Nowell-Smith (1954, pp. 112–113).

  7. Gaus (1990, p. 68). For another example of this strategy, see Scanlon (1998, p. 95). For complaints about this strategy, see Williamson (1970) and Rabinowicz and Rønnow-Rasmussen (2004).

  8. As commentators have pointed out. See, e.g., Williamson (1970, p. 358) and Rabinowicz and Rønnow-Rasmussen (2004, pp. 400–403).

  9. Gaus (1990, p. 69).

  10. Garnett (1951, p. 74). This should be understood as a pro tanto claim—all that is required is an inclination to keep or preserve it, not that the sum of all of your inclinations point toward keeping or preserving it.

  11. Stump (1997) defines awe as "the affective reaction people sometimes have in the presence of something that strikes them as overwhelmingly great" (p. 281). Halstead and Halstead (2004) claim that awe is an emotion felt "in the face of something perceived as vastly larger or more complex or more powerful" (p. 165). Kemper (1978) describes awe as a reaction to the "larger-than-life character of the other" (p. 138). Nicholsen (2002) says, "Awe is the sense of an encounter with some presence larger than ourselves, mysterious, frightening and wonderful, numinous, sacred" (p. 16). Wettstein (1997) claims that awe is experienced "in the face of great power, or majesty, or beauty" (p. 260). Keltner and Haidt (2003) claim that the objects of awe are characterized by what they call "vastness," which "refers to anything that is experienced as being much larger than the self, or the self's ordinary level of experience and frame of reference" (p. 303).

  12. For a description of the typical elicitors of awe, see Haidt (2003b, p. 863); Sundararajan (2002, pp. 177–178); Wettstein (1997, p. 260) and Keltner and Haidt (2003, pp. 297, 300).

  13. See Heschel (1972, pp. 75, 107), Ballard (1988, p. 69), Gerber (2002, p. 47), Nicholsen (2002, p. 16), Ivanhoe (1997, p. 101), Keltner and Haidt (2003, p. 304), Wettstein (1997, p. 264) and Shiota et al. (2003, p. 297).

  14. For this reason, Keltner and Haidt (2003) claim that "[n]atural objects that transcend one's previous knowledge are more likely to produce awe than familiar objects" (p. 310). Cf. the description in Burke (1990) of which qualities of objects do and do not produce feelings of the sublime (pp. 53–79). Besides objects that are outside the bounds of normal experience, Burke also thinks that objects that are obscure or mysterious in some way are more likely to lead to experiences of the sublime. Heschel (1972) agrees that mysteriousness is an essential aspect of objects of awe. For a criticism of this claim, see Wettstein (1997).

  15. Writers have proposed a number of different attitudes besides elation and terror as components or possible components of awe. On the positive side are joy (Peterson and Seligman 2004), ecstasy (Peterson and Seligman 2004; Di Chiara 1990), fascination (Heschel 1972), wonder (Gerber 2002; McDougall 1950; Halstead and Halstead 2004; Lazarus 1991; Lee 1994; Keltner and Haidt 2003), celebration (Gerber 2002), admiration (McDougall 1950), exhilaration (Wettstein 1997), pleasure (Keltner and Haidt 2003), enlightenment (Keltner and Haidt 2003), and rebirth (Keltner and Haidt 2003). On the negative side are fear (Peterson and Seligman 2004; McDougall 1950; Halstead and Halstead 2004; Keltner and Haidt 2003), reverential fear (Di Chiara 1990; Lee 1994), Promethean fear (Williams 1994), submissiveness (Peterson and Seligman 2004; McDougall 1950) and fright (Lazarus 1991).

  16. McDougall (1950, pp. 111–112).

  17. Nussbaum (2001, p. 54, n. 53).

  18. Lyons (1980, p. 30), Halstead and Halstead (2004, p. 165), Peterson and Seligman (2004, p. 539), Haidt (2003b, p. 863) and Frijda (1986).

  19. See Nicholsen (2002, p. 16), Heschel (1972), Gerber (2002), Lee (1994), Wettstein (1997) and Reed (1989).

  20. Adler and Fagley (2005, p. 82), Halstead and Halstead (2004, p. 165), Reed (1989, p. 57) and Heschel (1965, p. 77).

  21. One might think that there is an exception to the above claim, namely, cases where the thing that one is in awe of is oneself. But even when one takes the attitude of awe toward oneself, one regards oneself third-personally (i.e., as an 'other') in so doing. As Elizabeth Anderson has put the point (in personal communication), awe is essentially a "third-personal, observer's affect."

  22. Gerber (2002, p. 40) and Halstead and Halstead (2004, p. 166).

  23. See, e.g., Adler and Fagley (2005). For a description of awe as a positive moral emotion, see Haidt (2003a). For a description of awe as a peak experience, see Maslow (1970, p. 65).

  24. Muir (1987, p. 14). Along similar lines, Gifford Pinchot (1998) said of the Grand Canyon, "awe-struck and silent, I strove to grasp the vastness and the beauty" (p. 42).

  25. J. Smith (2005), Hundley (2004), Evans (1999), McLeod (2005) and Karlinsky and Harris (2006).

  26. In fact, in its older usage, "awe" was synonymous with "fear" or "dread."

  27. There is also the possibility of awe being neutral in the sense of being at the midpoint between positive and negative on the scales of valuation (i.e., being only so–so or mediocre). I won't have much to say about this possibility here because no description of awe seems to point to it as a live possibility.

  28. Lazarus (1991, p. 238).

  29. Cf. Rabinowicz and Rønnow-Rasmussen (2004, pp. 400–401).

  30. See, e.g., Ekman (1992). In the psychoanalytic literature, awe has also been treated as a kind of basic or primitive affective state. Guiseppe Di Chiara (1990), for example, refers to awe as a "strong, primordial affect" that is part of our "primitive animal mental inheritance" (pp. 444, 448).

  31. Awe may also be sustainable over time in ways that startle is not. The feeling of being startled tends to last only as long as is needed to understand and accept the new stimulus; feelings of awe can persist even after the awe-inspiring object has been understood and accepted (Elizabeth Anderson, personal communication).

  32. Nicholsen (2002, p. 16).

  33. The understanding of awe as ambivalent seems to be implicit in Keekok Lee's (1994) description of awe as the combination of "reverential fear and wonder" (p. 94). Many writers have noted that awe seems to be both positive and negative. Howard Wettstein (1997) refers to this as the "duality" of awe. Mark and Anne Halstead (2004) describe this as a "paradoxical" aspect of the concept of awe, speculating that it "corresponds to something paradoxical about human nature itself" (p. 167).

  34. The concept of the sublime as it has been discussed in philosophy (though not in literary criticism) from about the mid-eighteenth century onwards I take to be the same concept as awe. Many other commentators seem to agree on this point; Burke's and Kant's analyses of the sublime are often discussed in analyses of the nature of awe. See, e.g., Keltner and Haidt (2003). For an opposing view, see Brady (forthcoming).

  35. Burke (1990, p. 54).

  36. Burke (1990, pp. 31–34; cf. Locke 1975, p. 232). There seems to be some recent experimental evidence in favor of Burke's view. See, e.g., Diener and Emmons (1984) and Watson and Tellegen (1985). For an overview of the psychological research on this topic, see Green et al. (1999).

  37. Burke (1990, p. 34).

  38. Burke (1990, pp. 47, 122–23).

  39. Burke (1990, pp. 120, 123).

  40. Legrand and Apter (2004).

  41. The term "existential affirmation of identity" is from Fodorova (2004).

  42. See Zuckert (2003, p. 223).

  43. Kant (1987, pp. 119–126 Ak. 260–266) and 103–17 (Ak. 247–260).

  44. Kant seemed to consider the feeling of the sublime to be ambivalently valenced. He says, "The feeling of the sublime is a feeling of displeasure that arises from the imagination's inadequacy…but is at the same time also a pleasure…." (Kant 1987, pp. 114–115) (Ak. 257). Here I will not be concerned with Kant's account of the sublime, but rather with his account of those parts/aspects of the sublime that are positively valenced.

  45. Kant (1987, pp. 105, 106) (Ak. 250).

  46. Kant (1987, pp. 111) (Ak. 254–255).

  47. Kant (1987, p. 114) (Ak. 257).

  48. Kant (1987, p. 113) (Ak. 256).

  49. Cf. Zuckert (2003, p. 222). We might also raise an additional worry for this view: after these amazing features of ourselves have been pointed out to us the first time, it's unclear why we should need any further experiences or objects of awe to tell us what we already know.

  50. Rachel Zuckert (2003) describes a similar criticism of Kant from Johann Gottfried Herder, that the object of aesthetic experience is "not only…the occasion for, but…the object of aesthetic feeling" (p. 222). For a defense of Kant's account of the sublime against this line of criticism, see Brady (2012).

  51. Darwall (1977, p. 38).

  52. See Galvin (1991), Greenberg (1999), Guyer (1996), McCarty (1993) and Reath (2002).

  53. In fact, Charles Taylor (1982) suggests that the German word Kant uses, Achtung, which is usually translated as "respect," might properly be translated as "awe" (p. 138).

  54. Parfit (2011) agrees and on this basis claims that while Kantian dignity (worthiness of respect) might be a moral status, it is not a kind of goodness (pp. 237–244).

  55. Thanks to an anonymous referee for pressing this point.

  56. Environmentalists have been fighting against this "Bambi" view of nature as essentially likeable for many years.

  57. This seems to be the strategy favored by D'Arms and Jacobson. See D'Arms and Jacobson (2000) and the discussion of their views in Rabinowicz and Rønnow-Rasmussen (2004).

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Acknowledgments

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at The University of Maine at Farmington, North Carolina State University, and Colorado State University. Thanks to those audiences for many useful comments. Elizabeth Anderson, Matt Ferkany, and Patrick Frierson generously commented on earlier drafts of this paper, and an anonymous reviewer provided very helpful comments on the penultimate version. For helpful conversations about many of the ideas presented here, thanks to Elizabeth Anderson, Michael Burke, Marina Bykova, Philip Cafaro, Jonathan Cohen, Mark Crimmins, Stephen Darwall, Matt Ferkany, Patrick Frierson, Daniel Gunn, Alan Holland, P.J. Ivanhoe, Jeff Kasser, Robert Mabrito, George Miller, and Elizabeth Tropman.

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McShane, K. Neosentimentalism and the valence of attitudes. Philos Stud 164, 747–765 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-012-9873-z

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