Abstract
Recalcitrant emotions are emotions that conflict with your evaluative judgements, e.g. fearing flying despite judging it to be safe. Drawing on the work of Greenspan (Emotions and Reasons, Routledge, London, 1988) and Helm (Emotional Reason, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2001), Brady (Philos Stud 145:413–430, 2009) argues these emotions raise a challenge for a theory of emotion: for any such theory to be adequate, it must be capable of explaining the sense in which subjects that have them are being irrational. This paper aims to raise scepticism with this endeavour of using the irrationality shrouding recalcitrant episodes to inform a theory of emotion. I explain (1) how ‘recalcitrant emotions’ pick out at least two phenomena, which come apart, and (2) that there are different epistemic norms relevant to assessing whether, and if so how, subjects undergoing recalcitrant bouts are being irrational. I argue these factors result in differing accounts of the precise way these emotions make their bearers irrational, which in turn frustrates present efforts to adjudicate whether a given theory of emotion successfully meets this challenge. I end by briefly exploring two possible ways a philosophy of emotion might proceed in the face of such scepticism.
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Notes
A judgementalist might be able to explain emotional recalcitrance without positing contradicting judgements, e.g. a subject judges that flying is safe but still feels fear because what he actually fears is not flying itself, but the prospect of flying. This point due to Solomon, is mentioned, though not examined, by D’Arms and Jacobson (pg. 129, fn.6). Also see Grzankowski (2016), who explains how judgementalists can deny attributions of radical irrationality by claiming that subjects endorse conflicting contents under different concepts or different modes of presentation.
E.g. D’Arms and Jacobson describe it as a “familiar psychological phenomenon” (2003: 129).
This model of emotion generation should give judgementalists cause for concern, but they could respond that emotional responses generated via circuit (i) won’t legitimately count as emotions because they lack the relevant evaluative judgements which help individuate them from similar responses.
I am grateful to an anonymous referee for this suggestion.
See Weiskrantz (1986) for an overview.
This provides a causal explanation of the conflict, but it doesn't resolve one of the key controversies shrouding emotional recalcitrance, viz. the precise nature of this conflict.
See Tappolet (Tappolet 2012: Sect. 1.5) for a response. Brady (2013: 112) also offers a different, sparser, explanation of the irrationality: recalcitrant bouts are irrational because nothing about the object or event constitutes adequate reason for the emotion. As I read Brady, this is supposed to augment his earlier account. Very roughly, recalcitrant episodes are irrational because they involve searching for “reasons that bear on the accuracy of our emotional construals, despite the fact that we have endorsed the opposing evaluative view in judging as we do” (2013: 177).
Döring also mentions and rejects two further principles, one she ascribes to Tappolet (pg. 393) and the other to Helm (pg. 396).
This account of emotions involving justificatory reasons is discussed in more detail in Brady (2007).
Damasio’s (1994) Somatic-Marker Hypothesis proposes a similar thesis. Very roughly, somatic states, i.e. feelings about the body that are associated with past experiences, assist deliberation by highlighting some options as either favourable or unfavourable.
Another form of strategic irrationality is due to Döring, who explains the intuition that recalcitrant emotions make us irrational on grounds that they interfere with “the reasoned pursuit of our goals” (2014: 128).
I am grateful to an anonymous referee for this suggestion.
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Majeed, R. What Not to Make of Recalcitrant Emotions. Erkenn 87, 747–765 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-019-00216-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-019-00216-0