Isolating primitive emotional phenomenology in the ‘lab’ of fiction

ABSTRACT

There is an important debate in the philosophy of mind that has roots in the phenomenological tradition, namely: what are the primitive forms of consciousness, that is, what are the fundamental ingredients or aspects of consciousness. This paper wants to contribute to partially answering this general question by providing an answer to a required sub-question within this question: is emotional phenomenology fundamental? I will answer in the affirmative and will offer an argument focused on contemplative emotions elicited by fiction. Another type of contemplative emotions, namely, esthetic emotions, have been invoked in the literature but I will argue that the phenomenology of emotions elicited by fiction, given their continuity and sameness in kind with the phenomenology of garden variety emotions, are more dialectically efficient vis-à-vis the debate on the irreducibility of emotional phenomenology.

KEYWORDS:

• Primitive emotional phenomenology
• quasi-emotion
• fiction

Acknowledgements

I want to thank first my advisors: Esa Díaz León and Manuel García-Carpintero. In addition, I want to thank especially F. Contesi, M. Gömori, A. Rivadulla and M. Kortabarria and general audiences at Logos Student Seminar at Barcelona for their insightful comments on previous versions of this paper. I want to thank audiences at the University of Santiago de Compostela, specially X. De Donato and C. Martínez. I also want to thank Brody Loeffler for his valuable stylistic and grammatical corrections and philosophical insights. Finally, I want to thank Beatriz Piñeiro Salgado for her unconditional support while writing this paper and, also, for her clever comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 I use ‘ingredient of consciousness’ and ‘element of consciousness’ because I want to remain neutral on the question of whether consciousness is atomistic or holistic. If the former, the stream of consciousness would be a molecular phenomenon formed by atomic constituents. If the latter, then there would not be any atomic element, but different aspects of the same substance, so to speak.

2 To prevent misunderstandings, it is worth emphasizing that the question of whether emotional phenomenology is fundamental, or derivative, is relative to the debate on what are the fundamental varieties of consciousness. That is, one can hold that emotional phenomenology is primitive but be a physicalist about the ultimate nature of reality. In other words, one can believe in the primitive existence of emotional phenomenology in the context of the debate on what are the fundamental varieties of consciousness. However, one can believe that the only fundamental thing in absolute terms is physical reality. Thus, even if emotional phenomenology is a fundamental type of phenomenology, in comparison, for instance, with moral phenomenology; phenomenology in general would not be as fundamental as matter.

3 Derek Matravers (2014) argues that there is no clear divide between our encounters with fiction and non-fiction narratives. He argues for what he considers a more robust distinction: emotions elicited by representation and emotions elicited by confrontation, where the former precludes action since it is elicited by a representation which stands for an absent object, whereas the latter involves action since one directly confronts a given object. This distinction is supposedly capable of explaining puzzling aspects of our interaction with fiction without presupposing that fiction and the mechanisms of fiction-understanding and appreciation are different from those involved in engagement with non-fictional works. My point is also compatible with alternative ways of understanding fiction as Matravers does. I want to take fictions with a specific content and only those fictions as a case study, namely: fictions whose intentional content is about characters and events that do not exist in the sense in which the current pope and his life exist. These emotions are clearly about a representation in Matravers’ sense and they lack a link to action (in the sense specified at the end of this section).

4 I have added this ‘knowingly’ to emphasize that it is important that the emotional subject knows or believes that the intentional object of their fiction-elicited emotions does not exist in the sense in which ordinary objects and events exist. That way, cases in which the emotional subject mistakenly believes that a fictional character exists and acts consequently, would not count as cases of contemplative emotions in my sense.

5 It may be that emotional phenomenology is necessary but not sufficient for having an emotion. For instance, according to those who defend the motivational theory of emotion (Scarantino 2014), the individuation conditions for emotion are not only given in terms of their phenomenology but also, and crucially, in terms of their motivational profile.

6 Though emotions cannot provide themselves with their particular object, and have to parasite other mental states for that purpose, emotions make an original contribution to the intentionality of a subject’s consciousness: they represent the particular object under the guise of their formal object. Emotions parasite their cognitive bases to acquire their particular intentional object towards which they react, representing it according to their formal intentional object: as dangerous, in the case of fear; as a personal loss in the case of sadness; as goal-congruent in the case of joy; etc. Thus emotions are representational states whose whole content is not exhausted by their cognitive bases’ content. In Deonna and Teroni’s theory (2012), for instance, the emotion makes its intentional contribution by means of representing its particular object in a certain way, through a certain felt somatic profile which is constitutive of the emotion. Thus, for instance, joy represents-as-goal-congruent that I publish a paper by means of its felt somatic profile: felt accelerated heart rate, several felt Musculo-skeletal changes, etc.

7 Surprise is a puzzling case. It is an exception to this rule because it is said to lack a clear valence. You can be surprised by what later can be assessed as a negative or as a positive stimuli.

8 Several authors have also pointed out at the essential relation between emotional phenomenology and the meaning of our evaluative concepts. According to them, without emotional phenomenology our evaluative concepts would be emptied of meaning. See, for instance, Dewalque (2017) and Motague (2017). I am indebted to an anonymous referee of this journal for this point.

9 I owe the suggestion for this section to a reviewer from this journal.

10 Emotions have complex intentionality. They parasite their cognitive bases to acquire their particular intentional object towards which they react, representing it according to their formal intentional object: as dangerous, in the case of fear; as a personal loss in the case of sadness; as goal-congruent in the case of joy; etc. According to my interpretation of Deonna and Teroni’s theory, the emotions represent their particular object under the guise of their formal object by means of their characteristic felt bodily profile. Thus, emotions are representational states whose whole content is not exhausted by their cognitive bases’ content.

Additional information

Funding

FPU GRANT (Ministerio Español de Educación y Formación Profesional)/Grant Number: FPU18/01134.