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March 2001

What is the Nature of Emotions - Part Four

To me, this seems to be a reasonable construal of the state of affairs presented to us by the emotions. There seems to be no universal called ‘emotion’. Emotions consist of all of the types of conditions described above, of judgments, desires and feelings, but not necessarily all at once, which is why we find each of the categories so convincing yet we are able to find counter-examples to each theory. We are still faced with the difficulty of explaining how the various components of emotion are causally connected to one another however; emotions are not just completely random conjunctions of judgments, desires and affects; we perceive them as wholes. The theories of Lyons, Alston and Oakley all demanded this, though they did not explicitly suggest what the causal connection would be. All Lyons’ cases of emotions began with beliefs about situations and carried through their course from there. But now that we conceive of emotions being realised in many different ways, it is more complex. I cannot explain how emotions will be ‘held together’ in this way, and I believe this raises a serious problem for this view. However, at the moment I think that the family resemblance view of emotions consisting of various combinations of judgments, desires and affects is the best theory of what the nature of emotions is as it is the theory most able to explain our real experiences of emotions.

What do you think is the nature of emotions?

Why not discuss it straight away on the Discussion Forum?

An excellent online source on emotion- Philosophy of Emotions Portal - lots of links to online texts on the topic

References.

(Some of these authors are linked to on the Philosophy of Emotions Portal) Alston,W.P. 1967. ‘Emotion and Feeling’. In The Encyclopaedia of Philosophy vol 2, P.Edwards (ed.) Macmillan and The Free Press.

Bedford,E. 1956-57. ‘Emotions’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society vol 57, 281-304.

Hamlyn,D.W. 1978. ‘The Phenomenon of Love and Hate’ Philosophy vol 53,5- 20.

Lyons,W. 1980. Emotion Cambridge University Press.

Oakley,J.1992. Morality and the Emotions Routledge.

Solomon,R.C. 1988. ‘On Emotions as Judgements’ American Philosophical Quarterly vol 25, 183-191.

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