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Epistemology
and Emotions is
a recent addition to Ashgate's Epistemology and Mind
series which focuses on contemporary international
research at the intersection of metaphysics,
epistemology and the philosophy of language. The papers
collected in this volume discuss the recent "optimistic
trend" in which emotions are seen as sometimes playing a
positive epistemic role rather than, as they have
traditionally been seen, as impairing cognition and as
opposed to reason.
This
trend is in part due to the rejection of the picture in
which emotions are seen as just feelings. There are now
various theories in which emotions have representational
content. If emotions can represent features of the
environment -- if, for example, fear can represent
danger -- then perhaps there is a way of coming to have
knowledge of the environment via the emotions; epistemic
success thus mediated by emotion.
De
Sousa's The Rationality of Emotion (MIT Press,
1987) has been influential. He has argued, first, that
emotions are necessary for cognitive activity. At any
given time there is an open-ended number of inferences
and chains of reasoning that could be pursued; human
rationality therefore requires inferential abilities
along with a way to decide which inferences to pursue
and when to stop thinking about a course of action, and
just act. It is the emotions that enable us to do this.
Second, emotions provide us with the ability to pick out
what is salient to our interests. If one fears
avalanches, then one may be better at spotting the
danger signs, the cracks in the snow. "In the grip of an
emotion, we notice things we would otherwise miss"
(Elgin, 33); thus "systems that integrate emotional
deliverances are sometimes more tenable than rivals that
exclude them." (ibid. 35)
A
prominent theme in this collection is that the emotions
mark the "limits of reflection". Some forms of inference
feel right, yet we cannot provide argument to
prove that such reasoning is justified. The role of the
emotions -- or, specifically, the "epistemic feelings…of
knowing, of doubt, of certainty and of familiarity" (De
Sousa, 86) -- is especially relevant to skepticism.
Hookway recommends Peirce's injunction: "let us not
pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in
our hearts." (61) The skeptic asks questions that are
not appropriate. It is, for example, epistemically
responsible to react to Goodman's new riddle of
induction by sticking with the hypothesis that all
emeralds are green and not grue, and this is because
this hypothesis feels simpler.
Reasons
to be pessimistic with respect to the epistemic
significance of the emotions are also highlighted.
First, emotions are varied: "[s]ome emotions are more
like sneezes, others are like 60 years of marriage, some
spread across cultures and species, others are highly
determined by cultural factors, some are phenomenally
salient, some are very diffuse or have no phenomenal
feel at all." (Wild, 138) The category of emotion needs
to be tidied up before interesting conclusions can be
drawn.
Second,
emotions are notoriously fallible: anger, boldness,
cowardice, despair, envy, fear and gratitude often
distort clear sighted cognition. Elgin concedes that she
has "not been drawn unerringly to wonderful men." (35)
Goldie discusses an important feature of the kind of
distortion involved in emotion-mediated cognition --
emotions are systematically misleading. They
"skew the epistemic landscape" (159). We may take there
to be good evidence that a partner is unfaithful -- our
emotions seemingly picking up on salient features of her
behavior -- but "trifles light as air are to the jealous
confirmation strong"; jealousy affects the way things
look, making impartial reasoning impossible.
A
problem concerning normativity is discussed by most of
the contributors. It may be true that emotions play a
motivational role, and one perhaps wider than commonly
(honestly) acknowledged. But do the emotions pick out
the right beliefs as salient? Do they bring
deliberation to a halt at the right point? Can they
contribute to knowledge or justified belief? Dohrn
argues that we may be blameless in accepting the beliefs
that are acquired via the emotions, but we are not
justified in holding them.
One
way to secure the epistemic significance of emotions
would be to adopt epistemological externalism. Emotions
are epistemically significant because as a matter of
fact they reliably pick up on salient features of the
environment. Thagard's paper is sympathetic to this
approach; he recommends a naturalized account of the
emotions: "[b]ecause cognition meets emotion in the
brain, emotions can be integral to epistemology." (182)
His paper, though, is rather underdeveloped. According
to naturalized epistemology the answers to normative
questions must be based on how people actually think,
but more needs to be said about how factual issues
concerning the brain can ground the relevant answers
here.
On
the surface, then, there appears to be much disagreement
over the epistemic contribution of emotions. In actual
fact, though, there is much in common between the
optimists (Elgin, Hookway, Tanesini, Doring, Thagard, de
Sousa) and the pessimists (Dohrn, Wild, Goldie).
Sometimes the emotions do pick out what is salient. Fear
of nuts makes me more likely to spot items on the menu
that may trigger my nut allergy. Sometimes, though, the
emotions mislead, pick out things that are not salient,
skew the landscape, and halt deliberation in the wrong
place. Virtuous epistemic activity therefore requires
maintaining an equilibrium between reason and emotion.
Hume's dictum that reason is the slave of the passions
is an exaggeration since the emotions do not, and should
not, always have dominion over reason, and the
traditional picture in which emotions are always
misleading is also overblown: "the virtuous person is
the one who has acquired a certain kind of sensibility
which is, at least in part, characterized by a
combination of apt emotional dispositions." (Tanesini,
77) I think all the authors in this volume would accept
a picture in which there is some level of interplay
between reason and emotion involved in the acquisition
of belief and knowledge; pessimists may see emotions as
"minor characters in the drama" (Wild, 133), but they
have a role nonetheless.
I
recommend this collection. It is a little repetitive,
with many of the authors covering the same ground, but
it provides an excellent snapshot of current research
in, what will continue to be, a hot topic in
epistemology.
©
2009 Daniel O'Brien
Dr
Dan O'Brien, Oxford Brookes University
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