Abstract
Some emotional representations seem to be unreliable. For instance, we are often afraid when there is no danger present. If emotions such as fear are so unreliable, what function do they have in our representational system? This is a problem for representationalist theories of emotion. I will argue that seemingly unreliable emotional representations are reliable after all. While many mental states strike an optimal balance between minimizing inaccurate representations and maximizing accurate representations, some emotional representations only aim at maximizing accuracy. They detect important phenomena such as danger based on little evidence, which will lead to a lot of false alarms. When it matters, however, these emotional representations will detect danger and other important phenomena. Often, one is better scared (and wrong) than sorry.
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11 December 2021
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-021-00502-w
Notes
It is possible that our folk psychological concept “emotion” refers to a set of mental states, rather than one monolithic representation. In fact, some emotion scientists claim that an emotion consists of multiple components See e.g. (LeDoux, 2014) or (Moors, 2017). Depending on which emotion theory one defends, emotions might include different components, such as directive content (or “action tendencies”), bodily feelings, facial expressions, behaviour and higher cognitive thoughts. If you accept such a view of emotion, you should note that “emotional representation” refers to the aspect of emotion that is representational and is distinct from higher cognition. When I talk about “emotion” in this paper, I mean “emotional representation”, while remaining neutral on the definition and ontology of “emotion” as a folk psychological concept.
I am trying to explain what emotions represent in an intuitive way. I do not mean that emotions literally represent the thin values of “good” and “bad”.
Before an emotional representation occurs, the object of that representation arguably needs to be represented by some prior mental state, such as a perception, belief, or imagination. Deonna and Teroni (2012) call this an emotion’s cognitive base. The represented object might be something in the past, as in regret. It might be something in the future, as in anxiety.
See (Scarantino, 2010) for a clear description of what it means to say that emotions represent.
Psychologists have described these evaluative properties in relation to one’s “goals” and “needs”, which one might call matters of “personal significance” (For an overview, see e.g. Smith & Kirby, 2009). In the philosophy of emotion, there is an ongoing debate regarding what personal significance is. Price (2015, pp. 116–131) distinguishes between the interest-based account and the preference-based account. The interest-based account conceptualizes significance in terms of a list of objective “goods” or “interests”, such as “health; security; adequate material resources; good social status; autonomy; good social relationships; intellectual stimulation” (Price, 2015, pp. 117–118). The preference-based account holds that personal significance should be thought of in terms of preferences, such as desires, values, likes, and dislikes (see also Döring, 2007; Solomon, 2003). Neo-sentimentalist accounts describe the ontology of values in terms of emotional fittingness (see for instance D’Arms & Jacobson, 2000).
One might reject this Quinean way of thinking on other grounds. Different theories of emotion might provide different solutions to this problem. However, as I want to defend the idea that content is reliable covariation, I need to take this line of thinking very seriously.
The basics of signal detection theory are effectively explained in (Godfrey-Smith, 1991). (For more information, see Lynn & Barrett, 2014; Macmillan & Creelman, 2004; or Swets & Green, 1964). Signal detection theory also mentions “neutral bias” in which the bias is strictly speaking neither Jamesian nor Cartesian (Lynn & Barrett, 2014).
“True belief” might sound a bit awkward in this context because it might seem to suggest that an emotional representation is, in fact, a belief. Therefore I replace “true/false belief” when talking about emotional representation with the more neutral “accurate/inaccurate representation”.
The “pragmatic theory of emotional representation” is a reference to Stich’s (1990) “pragmatic theory of cognitive evaluation”. This theory should not be confused with Tanesini’s (2008) “pragmatist” theory of emotion, stressing the value and virtue of fallibilism, which is also inspired by Jamesian philosophy.
Confusingly, the ordinary language notion of “sensitivity”, in the sense I am using it here, is not what sensitivity means in signal detection theory (SDT). (This footnote is a continuation of footnote 10). Sensitivity in SDT is the ability to distinguish a particular signal from particular noise. The common-sense notion of sensitivity as I am using it here has more in common with the SDT notion of bias (Lynn & Barrett, 2014).
I would like to thank Arturs Logins, Julien Deonna and Fabrice Teroni for raising this objection and discussing this idea.
Schroeter (2006) also provides a convincing defence of the claim that what fear tracks is functional and does not track something which is dependent on the experience of fear.
Byrne and Hilbert define colour categories as properties that have the power to produce certain responses of sensory systems. Colour representations track these properties. Or, one might say, they reliably covary with these properties. These properties can be misrepresented. This is a way to reconcile the ideas that colour properties are dependent on sensory systems and that colour representations reliably covary with them, while avoiding circularity objections.
For an argument in favor of the disentanglement between representational content and phenomenology as applied to colour, see (Shoemaker, 1994).
I would like to thank Steve Butterfill for raising this objection.
This distinction between “initial response” and “re-evaluation” resembles other distinctions made in emotion theory. Some emotion scientists propose a dual system theory, consisting of two “systems”: a quick and dirty system I, followed by a slow and accurate system II (LeDoux, 1998, pp. 163–164). Lazarus (1991) distinguishes between primary and secondary appraisals. The primary appraisal would represent the snake as dangerous, while the secondary appraisals would reappraise the situation in the light of new information and prevent the organism acting as if it were in a full-blown state of fear. Scherer’s model includes a number of appraisals, ranging from very primitive and direct to more complex and possibly conceptual (Scherer, 2001, 2005). Robinson (2005) distinguishes between non-cognitive appraisal and cognitive monitoring in an emotional episode. In this paper, however, I do not wish to focus on mechanistic explanations of mental phenomena. I am not necessarily committed to a dual system theory. The distinction between Jamesian and Cartesian reliability might resemble other distinctions in emotion theory but one should be careful if one wants to “map” this distinction onto other distinctions. For a detailed argument against the mapping of different dichotomies onto each other, see (Moors, 2014). Likewise, my claims about the Jamesian-Cartesian trade-off do not imply that Jamesian reliable representations are modular (see also Jones, 2006).
When the 3D snake jumps towards you, you already know that you are watching a movie. The emotional representation, however, does not use this information to determine whether the object that is seemingly moving towards you is dangerous. Cartesian re-evaluation does take this information into account and because it takes time to deploy this information, it is slower.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the following people for their valuable feedback: Bence Nanay, Bart Vandenabeele, Stacie Friend, Steve Butterfill, Julien Deonna, Fabrice Terroni, Annelies Monseré, Nicolas Alzetta, Nick Wiltsher, Manolo Martinez, Jerry Viera, Allert Van Westen, Arturs Logins, John Kulvicki, audiences at several conferences and seminars, as well as the anonymous referees.
Funding
Kris Goffin is the holder of a Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) Junior Postdoctoral Fellowship (1217120N). This paper is based on Kris Goffin’s doctoral research at Ghent University and the University of Antwerp, funded by Ghent University.
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Goffin, K. Better Scared than Sorry: The Pragmatic Account of Emotional Representation. Erkenn 88, 2633–2650 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-021-00470-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-021-00470-1