Emotions as cognitive products: the case of fear
Résumé
Emotions studies in Philosophy seem to have reached an understanding: they cannot agree on what emotions are or what they should be referred as. A particularly interesting case is the study of fear, first because it is one of the most studied and second because it offers a lot a great examples. I want to argue for a more broad consideration of emotions and for a classification among cognitive products in the sense of Twardowski (1911): they result from a cognitive act. This definition is the only one that is satisfying enough to consider for the diversity of emotional occurrences and their
semantics. There are two main stances:
I am afraid because I have a desire to escape a dangerous situation. This is only acceptable for survival situations, it does not account for when one is terrified in front of a movie for example (Walton 1978) nor for phobias. What of one fear of failure that stops him to apply to a job? Inner human egoism is also important: there is fear for others and one can put his life at risk for that, which is paradoxical.
I am afraid because I deem the situation dangerous. This statement account for judgments and beliefs as they influence each other. Judgments are supposed to be made in conscience and emotions are not (always). Self-control is not sufficient to allow humans to surpass emotional crisis or phobias (Stocker 1996). None of this account for the fact that you can trigger emotions by making the corresponding emotional face (Ekman et al. 1980).
Those views allow to map emotions with propositional attitudes but those are relations between agents and propositions. Emotions are not propositions nor the people who experience it are agents. Furthermore, the mental content of an emotion cannot be a proposition, How would this account for fear in infants or the primal fear of animals, two instances unable to grasp propositions or language ( Deigh 1994 )? I argue there is no such thing as a constructed propositional fear.
Bibliography:
Deigh, J. 1994. “Cognitivism in the Theory of Emotions”. Ethics 104.4, 824–54.
Ekman, P, Friesen, W V, and Ancoli, S. 1980. “Facial Signs of Emotional Experience”. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39 (6) 1125–1134.
Stocker, M and Hegeman, E. 1996. Valuing emotions. Cambridge.
Twardowski, K. 1911. On actions, products and other topics in philosophy. Eds. J.L. Brandl and J. Woleński. Amsterdam.
Walton, K L. 1978. “Fearing Fictions”. The Journal of Philosophy 75.1, 5–27.