Mind
Reflection on the emotions gives rise to a variety of questions. These include:
1. What is the connection between emotion and thought? Between emotion and desire? Is emotion opposed to rational thought?
2. Do emotions exist cross-culturally or are they culturally specific?
3. How should the emotions be studied?
a. a priori approaches
vs. b. a posteriori
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In its simplest form, the propositional attitude theory holds that an emotion is equivalent to a cognitive evaluation - a belief that something is a of a certain sort.
Emotion = belief that something is of a certain sort
To have an emotion of a particular sort, then, it would be necessary and sufficient to have a belief of the appropriate sort. Consider fear. If the propositional attitude theory is correct, then being in fear consists in have a certain sort of belief. A plausible candidate might be the belief that something threatens you or something you are concerned with.
This simple version of the propositional attitude theory has many apparent counterexamples. These are all cases that attack the identification either by suggesting the presence of evaluative judgements without emotions, or the presence of emotions without judgments.
1. Objectless emotions
2. Reflex emotions:e.g. disgust, surprise, etc.
3. Unemotional evaluations
4. Judgements underdetermine emotions
5. Emotional responses to imagination (e.g. a movie)
Another strange feature of the propositional attitude theory is that it seems to ignore the intensely physical character of emotions. (The bodily arousal, the facial expressions, and so forth).
One way of responding to the above criticisms is to add desires as well as beliefs into the mix. E.g.
Emotions = judgments +desires
Thus, for example, unemotional evaluations can be analyzed as judgments in the absence of desires.
The central problem with this approach is that desire itself seems to be in need of further analysis, and it may be that desire crucially involves emotions. Thus, the analysis may exhibit circularity.
Hybrid theory: One way of addressing this problem (and involving the propositional attitude theory more closely with the body) would be to understand desires in a physical way. Thus:
Emotion = judgment + a physical state of a particular type
An alternative ‘missing attitude’ theory due to Michael Stocker may hold that emotions are neither beliefs, nor desires, but some ‘missing’ propositional attitude.
Emotion = an attitude(not belief or desire but another one) towards a content
It’s clear that Griffiths real problem with these theories is their a priori basis. He thinks conceptual analysis itself is an ‘impoverished methodology’ that ignores progress in the philosophy of language.
Remember our discussion of externalism: the meaning of ‘water’ is determined in part by what the underlying structure of that stuff is - H20. Griffiths points out that the best definition of water we have - that water is HOH molecules - could not have been discovered a priori. Rather, we had to investigate the phenomena in order to offer a definition.
Same story for the emotions: why think the emotions can be understood via conceptual analysis. Why not investigate the emotions in order to find out what emotion terms mean?