The linguistic fallacy & the complex content of emotion

ABSTRACT

Some argue that emotions represent so-called core relational themes. A core relational theme describes a relation between a particular event and an organism’s well-being. For instance, the core relational theme of anger is ‘a demeaning offense against me and mine’. I argue that a core relational theme is a summary or generalization of a more complex mental content. Defenders of the Simple Core Relational Theme View reject the idea that emotional content is complex. Instead, they argue that the content of emotion simply consists of a core relational theme. I argue that this view commits the linguistic fallacy: it confuses a theory of emotion categorization with a theory of emotional content.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotion
• mental content
• philosophy of cognitive science
• teleosemantics

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank the following people for their valuable feedback: Bence Nanay, Bart Vandenabeele, Stacie Friend, Matilde Aliffi, Fabrice Terroni, Annelies Monseré, audiences at several conferences and seminars, as well as the anonymous referees. This paper is based on Kris Goffin’s doctoral research at Ghent University and the University of Antwerp, funded by Ghent University.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. I will presuppose that emotions have content and thus I will presuppose a representationalist framework. There are interesting accounts of emotion that do not presuppose representationalism, which I will not discuss in this paper. I presuppose this framework because my opponents do so as well. My main opponent, Prinz’s (2004), for instance, relies heavily on Dretske (1981, 1986).

2. Deonna and Teroni’s notion of content is somewhat different from how I use “content” here. I use “content” and “representation” in a very general sense. Content refers to everything that emotions “tell” us or reveal to us. Content is what is presented to us in an emotional experience.

3. I mention other defenders of the Simple Core Relational Theme View in Section 2.

4. Within a representationalist framework, a particular object is an “intentional object” and does not always qualify as an “object” as it is traditionally described in metaphysics. A particular object can also be an event, as one can, for instance, be frightened that “the lion is attacking me”. Besides fearing a real object it is also possible to fear an imaginary object. A child can, for instance, be afraid of an imaginary lion sleeping underneath her bed. According to the representationalist, particular objects can be represented in various ways.

5. Kenny uses the concepts “future evil” for fear, “another’s good” for envy and “one’s own past sins” for remorse. (Kenny, 1963, p. 135.).

6. For interesting discussions of how formal objects have been used in the philosophy of emotion, see (Deigh, 1994; Deonna & Teroni, 2012; Green, 1970; Lyons, 1980; Salmela, 2006; Scarantino, 2010; Teroni, 2007; Wilson, 1972).

7. “the description of the formal object of a mental attitude such as an emotion, unlike a description of the formal object of a non-intensional action, must contain reference to belief. Only what is wet in fact can be dried; but something which is merely believed to be an insult may provoke anger.” (Kenny, 1963, pp. 193–194).

8. I borrow this metaphor from neuroscientist LeDoux who compares an emotion to a soup with different ingredients (LeDoux, 2014). It is noteworthy that LeDoux’s soup view of emotion may allow for various ingredients to be part of an emotion that are not “content”. LeDoux includes neurophysiology and behavioral responses in his “emotion soup”. I use his metaphor to argue for something slightly different.

9. I do not wish to imply that this is the only difference between “fear” and “anger”, nor do I wish to provide a definition of both emotions. I simply wanted to illustrate that some instances of across emotional kinds can have both similarities and differences in content.

10. With this analogy, I do not wish to imply that emotions are a similar kind of mental state as mental disorders. I used this analogy simply to show that a way of categorizing mental phenomena does not need to correspond to a detailed description of the mental phenomena themselves.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Postdoctoral Award; Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) under Grant Junior Postdoctoral Fellowship (1217120N); and by Ghent University.

Notes on contributors

Kris Goffin

Kris Goffin My research focuses on philosophy of mind, philosophy of cognitive science, emotion theory, and aesthetics. I mainly work on emotions, art and implicit attitudes, such as implicit racist and sexist prejudices. In October 2019, I started doing interdisciplinary research with a team of social psychologists from Agnes Moors’ Lab at KULeuven on implicit bias and implicit racism. I received a Postdoctoral Fellowship from the FWO (Flemish Research Foundation).