Emotion, autonoesis, and the self

ABSTRACT

I examine LeDoux’s cognitive account of emotions in The Deep History of Ourselves and raise two questions about it. First, LeDoux argues that emotions are autonoetic conscious experiences grounded in episodic memories. I argue that this overlooks the existential emotions, which represent facts about human conditions in a general rather than an episodic fashion. Second, LeDoux suggests that emotions engage the self-schemas and are concerned with one’s own flourishing. I argue that this overlooks the non-eudaimonistic emotions, such as surprise, wonder, and awe, which respond to the pull of the objects but do not view them through the lens of one’s own scheme of ends.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotion
• self
• autonoesis
• episodic memory
• well-being

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. It should be noted that not all emotions are concerned with what is happening to oneself at present. Some emotions are directed at the future, such as hope. Some emotions are about happenings in the past, such as regret. Nevertheless, the opponent could argue that all these emotions involve episodic memories in that they represent particular points in time as being in certain ways.

2. LeDoux (2019) claims that “no other animal matches humans in abstract conceptual thought, hierarchical relational reasoning, and pattern processing” (p. 236). If so, it is unlikely that other animals are capable of having existential emotions.

3. Well-being, flourishing, and eudaimonia are used interchangeably throughout this commentary.

4. This aspect of LeDoux’s account resonates with the eudaimonistic account of emotions in the philosophical literature. According to Nussbaum (2001), a well-known proponent of the eudaimonistic account, emotions require eudaimonistic evaluative content. That is, emotions not only ascribe high value to things, but also do so from the perspective of the agent by referring to her important goals and ends (p. 41).

5. According to Darbor et al. (2016), wonder is “related to trying to understand the world, reflected in greater use of cognitive complexity and tentative words,” such as “think,” “because,” or “perhaps” (p. 1188).

6. For example, the ocean can elicit awe because it is physically vast, whereas a complex scientific theory can elicit awe because it is conceptually vast.

7. A similar point can be found in Keltner and Haidt (2003), who argue that “prototypical awe involves a challenge to or negation of mental structures when they fail to make sense of an experience of something vast” (p. 304).