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March 2001
What is the Nature of Emotions - Part One
I Know What Emotions Are - I Feel Them Each Day!
Whilst we all have distinct ideas of what it is like to have each of the different types of emotions such as anger, fear, or joy, we do not in our ordinary day to day lives usually consider what it is that our emotions consist of. It is normal, however, to make reference to emotions when making important decisions in our lives. I think it is therefore very interesting to examine what the nature of these important parts of our lives could be.
What I propose to do is describe some of the theories of emotions which famous philosophers have suggested and then we can discuss whether or not we agree with them :-)
The Feeling Theory
The feeling theory of emotion, which is considered to be the most traditional, is suggests that emotions are ‘psychic’ feelings, that is, they are mental feelings which are unrelated to the body. This theory is dualistic (sees the body and soul as separate entities), and was suggested by Descartes in his ‘The Passions of the Soul’. Descartes conceived of emotions as ‘the subjective awareness of the activities of the animal spirits in the body.’ (Lyons,1980,p5). We become aware of our emotions when we see how our bodies have been affected by our animal spirits, so that we realise, for example, that we are afraid by becoming aware of animal spirits in our legs making us run away, amongst other physiological changes.
Many people nowadays reject dualism - a more modern version of the feeling theory of emotions which does not depend upon a dualistic conception of persons, is that emotions are bodily feelings, and nothing more. This is the ‘James-Lange Theory’, which states that emotions consist only of physiological changes, such as changes in the heart-rate. Attempts were made to classify emotions in this way, such as describing fear as involving, amongst other changes, an increased heart rate and constriction of the blood vessels, while anger also caused an increased heart rate, but also dilation of blood vessels. However, there has been limited success in such attempts, and so far psychologists have been unable to give distinct descriptions to each emotion; there has been much overlap. Perhaps in the future more sensitive physiological measures will be able to be made, so it is not inconceivable that emotions could be identified through observation of physical changes.
Evaluating The Feelings Theory of Emotions
This theory has come up against many objections. If we do come up with physical descriptions of each of the emotions, is that sufficient? It is argued that we can be in the same physiological state that an emotion is described as, yet not be in that emotional state and indeed scientific studies have supported this view. This seems to show that bodily feelings alone are not sufficient for emotions.
Even without experimental data like that described above, we can see that feelings are not the same as emotions in other respects. For example, while we can conceive of emotions as being motives for behaviour, the same cannot be said of feelings. For example, it makes sense to answer the question ‘Why did you run away?’ with ‘I was frightened’, but not with ‘My heart rate increased, my blood vessels constricted and my digestion slowed down.’
In another example of how emotions do not seem to be the same as feelings, Bedford argues that emotions can and should be justified, in a way that feelings cannot be. You can judge that a person ought not to be so happy when they have done wrong, for example, but you cannot judge that a person ought not to have such and such a heart rate, for example.
It seems therefore that we need a theory of emotions which will allow for the fact that we use emotions as motives, and that they can be justified. Such a theory is provided by Bedford, who argues that emotion words are used as judgments about people’s behaviour.
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