Emotions thesis

I'm poring through a friend's report on the nature of emotion, and hopefully whether and in what ways emotions should be involved in legal decisions. This is a store for my comments:
It seems that Solomon, Taylor, Nussbaum and Greenspan need to learn some evolutionary psychology. Biologists can sometimes offer some help when considering the nature of cognition. Emotions are indeed a judgement (well done, Solomon!): they are a short-cut that allow us to make good decisions most of the time without complex analysis. They are not that complex analysis done at a subconsious level, and nor are they always correct. Our brains are compartmentalised, such that many reflexes and responses we have are uncontrollable, and the response to a snake, for example, that is behind glass, remains even when we know where it is. Thankfully we are able to give conscious judgement priority, and deliberately ignore the snake because we know better. I would argue that complex analysis is always better than emotional 'analysis', which has evolved precisely to be a short-cut, and that therefore emotions have no place in law as long as we afre able to think.

This understanding of unconscious judgement that is separate from conscious thought and judgement neatly addresses the philosophical debate that my friend summarises.

We rapidly move on to subconscious emotions, as distinguished from 'emotional episodes', which are emotions of which we are consciously aware. I regard an 'unconscious emotion' as an oxymoron. Long-lasting changes in priority are merely that; character traits, and not emotions. While we're looking at definitions, I'm happy to go along with the distinction between emotions and feelings that emotions have an object, but feelings are more akin to moods, in that they're diffuse and untargeted. I am glad to say that I am not much of a sufferer from the disease of feelings, and that I also don't suffer from having feelings caused by emotions. The idea of emotions spilling out beyond their targets is a rather revolting one.

However, emotions and feelings share an affective element ('affect' being a third term that in more general usage means the same thing as emotion or feeling), in that they are feelings rather than thoughts. Of course, having already defined 'feelings' as something specific (diffuse, untargeted emotions), I need a new word for the 'having the character of a feeling or emotion'. Perhaps I should stick with emotion continuing as targeted feeling, feeling being a general term for emotions and moods, moods being diffuse feelings, and affect being the category for everything conscious that is not thought or perception.
My friend addresses the problem that in the case of grief, the emotion is not felt at the same intensity all the time (it fades), causing her to question whether affect is necessary in emotion. This is only a problem if we postulate subconscious emotions of which emotional episodes are merely upwellings. Otherwise the episodes are separate, and when no affective element is present it is no longer an emotion! The reason is as she says: one finds new emotional anchors and attachments in life, and so the absence of old ones is no longer the gaping wound it was.

Triggered by a sentence describing affect as part of the thought-content of emotions, rather than a separate element, I want to take a little detour. Firstly, emotions are not thoughts; we have seen that evolutionary and cognitive scientists can separate them. Emotions are not thoughts because they necessarily have an affective component: they are of the limbic system. Emotions mimic rational thought, but are distinctly in the 'affective' category of cognition. Without affect, there is no emotion, solely a reflex. When Darwin recoils from a snake strike he might feel emotional. When an unfortunate American who had a tumour in a certain part of his brain sees a snake striking at him he recoils despite being entirely unable to experience any affect whatsoever.
In the case is dispassionate emotion, I admit to having trouble understanding the point. If we can say that someone is angry with another when that someone feels nothing, then how exactly are we defining emotion? Emotions have become a diffuse concept that in this case are merely judgements. The ability to simulate anger because we know that it is appropriate does not mean that the emotion is there, but in a dispassionate form: it is a simulation. It is the same problem Plato has with his theory of forms: our minds do indeed categorise items as if there were a perfect example of each item (proven in cognitive tests), but just because we simulate a perfect form in our minds does not mean that such a thing really exists, or can exist.
In fact, my friend seems to get into problems precisely because of these few points:
1. A puzzlement regarding the notion of Solomon's 'judgements of the body', which is remarkably close to cognitive scientists' descriptions of compartmentalisation of the mind. Well done Solomon! Without compartmentalisation of processes, one can be swamped by problems of knowing that emotions represent judgements (heuristics), but not having a way to separate them from conscious judgement. Therefore one links them with conscious judgement, which conflicts with point 2:
2. An insistence on subconscious emotions, which leads her down problems of defining when and how emotions do and do not have affect, when affect is an intrinsic part of emotion. If emotions are subconscious, and necessarily judgements, then we have another contradiction.

Compartmentalisation is key to another argument she makes: that emotions and thought come simultaneously. She argues that the thoughts 'there is such a thing as a snake' must precede fear of a snake, and that therefore although we often do consciously notice our feelings before we rationalise them the two occur simultaneously. If one understands that the 'snake-recognition' part of the brain is separate from the brain of conscious, rational thought, then the overall emotion can be entirely separate from rational thought.

Do emotions focus one's rational thoughts on certain facts, or do they motivate us directly through discomfort? Personal reflection suggests the latter; my friend the former. She finds the idea of grief motivating us to wallow further unconvincing. I on the other hand do not assume it be normal function: it is better understand as the unusual result of an imperfect system, which normally motivates us to change things that discomfort us, but in this case discomforts us about something we cannot change. In so far as we can distinguish the two effects, I find that discomfort is first, and the focussing of thoughts a natural consequence of it.
If emotions seem especially effective at focussing the thoughts, it is probably more to do with the general human fallacy of ignoring contradictory evidence: of 'confirmation bias'. Humans want to do something through emotion, and confirm this course of action by focussing on reasons for, not against.

When considering the value of emotions, they can convince us of moral truth, but the decision that emotions act by focussing thought, rather than directly through affect, makes my friend overlook the explanation for the equally possible (and more usual, in modern society) problem that emotions convince us of moral falsehoods. This is because we actually focus our thoughts through confirmation bias. When seeking an objective truth, something that drags us from considering evidence solely on its merit, as subjective emotion does, is more likely to be a problem than a help.

Are emotions not only instrumentally valuable, but intrinsically valuable because they are constitutive of social relationships? I'd first point out that this assumes that social relationships are intrinsically valuable. Secondly, I don't think that emotions are essential to relationships. I have had Platonic relationships that are based on mutual understanding and discussion, not emotional reactions.

My friend brings up an interesting argument by Harry Frankfurt, that caring about something is investing in it (in the context of whether it can be appropriate or inappropriate to care about something). If you identify with something, then if it gets better or worse, so will you; you have made yourself vulnerable. This is interesting; it ties in nicely with what Epictetus has to say: 'no man can be free who is not master of himself'. If you rely on external things then you are not free. If Frankfurt is right, caring about things inversely correlates with being free.
It certainly throws a new light on 'romantic' relationships; one desires to enslave the other when one desires love in return. It rather supports my idea (summarised elsewhere) that jealousy and exclusivity are similar and unjustifiable things. People who assume that freedom and jealousy are right and proper are contradicting themselves. A woman (whom I had the misfortune to know closely) once desired love over and above kind, principled action. She wanted to be important to me and in control of me (the two being similar) not through Frankfurt's first possibility of being important whether or not I care, because of independent value; but through his second possibility of being important because I care. This slide into questions of importance also casts new light on people's desire to be special to a partner, rather than merely cared for. For many people, intrinsic to a good relationship is being the most important thing for the other person, not merely important. This raises issues of self-belief and how the possibility of actually being important is contrasted by people with the 'easy' route of simply being cared about as the most important.
I once knew another girl who became more important to me in both ways through her own action. Rather than requiring of me a change in emotion (the easy route) she herself acted to do nice things and help me, and I cared for her as a consequence.

I've mentioned this at least twice before, so let's move on to a related topic: of requirements to feel.
In the case of a conflict of two rights (as in Greek tragedy), when we choose one over another, is it appropriate to feel guilty? Philosophers seem to think so, but I find that strange. One can feel sorrow, but guilt is different. I'll ignore the suggestion that people don't exist but only actions as equivalent to the idea that this computer doesn't exist and only individual key presses.
Not feeling guilty after making a choice does not imply a refusal to focus one's attention on the wrongs of not choosing one case; or an ability to regard these facts with detachment. It implies a refusal to focus solely on on these facts, and an ability to focus on both sets of facts at the same time. Furthermore, both my friend and her source are rather pessimistic about human nature when they agree that humans cannot detach themselves for long periods of time. It is possible to ignore all urgings from emotions for lifetimes.
If one is required to feel an emotion, it is, in effect, a requirement not to think, since the complex analysis that is thought short-circuits the short-cut of emotional responses. Requirements of emotion are antithetical to the recognition of principles, rules or laws because these are rational, objective and consciously chosen. One holds principles with one's rational mind; requirements of emotion deny the value of those principles. So, for example, if a person claimed that I had not been wronged because I did not feel angry he would be wrong: injustice is determined by evaluations of principles and actions, not through consequences (Consequentialism being a failed and ridiculous doctrine).
I do agree that requiring emotions, when a person cannot control them, is a joke. For my friendm this needs distinction because I am using emotions to mean what she might define as '(affective) emotional episodes'. For me the two are the same.
We have some control over emotions, but really only over time. I would phrase it that we have control over our character, which determines our emotions, but no immediate or direct control over emotions themselves. We can induce feelings by recalling specific events and the related emotion, but cannot induce another emotion through the primitive magic of 'like induces like', just as rain dances do not cause rain.

And that, abruptly, is the end. Responding to other people directly, rather than in the form of an essay of my own, doesn't lead to carefully crafted, flowing prose.