Transparent emotions? A critical analysis of Moran's transparency claim

Abstract

I critically analyze Richard Moran's account of knowing one's own emotions, which depends on the Transparency Claim (TC) for self-knowledge. Applied to knowing one's own beliefs, TC states that when one is asked “Do you believe P?”, one can answer by referencing reasons for believing P. TC works for belief because one is justified in believing that one believes P if one can give reasons for why P is true. Emotions, however, are also conceptually related to concerns; they involve a response to something one cares about. As a consequence, acquiring self-knowledge of one's emotions requires knowledge of other mental attitudes, which falls outside the scope of TC. Hence, TC cannot be applied to emotions.

Keywords:

• self-knowledge
• transparency
• Richard Moran
• emotion
• concern

Acknowledgements

For very helpful discussion and comments on earlier drafts of this article, I am grateful to Leon de Bruin, Quassim Cassam, Sally Farrar, Gerrit Glas, Josephine Lenssen, Kelvin McQueen, Rik Peels, Jeroen de Ridder, Scott Robbins, Beate Roessler, Jan Willem Wieland, René van Woudenberg and an anonymous referee. I am also grateful to the audience and organizers of the conference “Self-Knowledge, Folk Psychology and Psychiatry” (Radboud University Nijmegen, June 2014), and of the “MindGrad2014” conference (University of Warwick, December 2014).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Naomi Kloosterboer is currently a Ph.D. student at the VU University of Amsterdam, Abraham Kuyper Center. The central focus of her Ph.D. project is self-knowledge, reason explanation and confabulation and it is part of the overarching project Science Beyond Scientism.

Notes

1. Bear in mind that philosophical discussions of self-knowledge are mainly about first-person awareness of one's mental attitudes (see Moran 2001, 31–32) and not about self-knowledge as we are familiar with in everyday usage: self-knowledge as knowing who we are, what is important to oneself, one's character traits or one's deeper concerns. However, this latter form of self-knowledge will play a role in the argument later on.

2. For a helpful elucidation of what kind of agency is involved, see Boyle (2011) and Hieronymi (2009). Hieronymi dubs the agency exercised in being reason-responsive “evaluative control”.

3. This is also Shoemaker's interpretation (2003, 396).

4. For the stronger claim that for an attitude to be an emotion, it must be intentional, see (Moran 2001, 54; De Sousa 2007; Teroni 2007; Döring 2007). For the claim that even feelings are intentional, see, for example, Goldie (2002).

5. This is not to say that emotions are as reason-responsive as our beliefs. Emotions are known for their impenetrability (see Döring 2007). But we still criticize them if they diverge with one's evaluative perspective (see Smith 2005).

6. An interpretation of TC that can be applied to all mental attitudes is proposed by Finkelstein (2012, 103), and endorsed by Cassam (2014, 4): “The question of whether I believe that P is, for me, transparent to the question of what I ought rationally to believe – i.e. to the question of whether the reasons require me to believe that P. I can answer the former question by answering the latter.” Finkelstein's formulation of Qc is “Ought I rationally believe that P?” in which, so the thought goes, believe can be substituted by desire, feel, intend and so on. Although it seems to be a very elegant solution to the problem of applying TC to other attitudes than belief, I think it is incorrect. The main reason why it does not seem right to me is that it is not a question about the content of the mental attitude, but another inward-directed or self-related question, namely about what kind of believing it is, that is, whether it is rational. Clearly, more needs to be said about this, but that will have to wait for another time.

7. Shoemaker has criticized this last sentence (2003, 397), and Moran has corrected it (2003, 410). It should actually say: she will avow the psychological judgment “I believe that P”, but will not affirm the embedded proposition of P itself.