Emotion, Desire, and Life Choices

If you don't get it, read on...

For this post I'm taking off my academic philosopher hat to gloss over fine distinctions I might otherwise make. I want to do philosophy for las masas. Wherever I use 'emotion' in this entry, don't think of it in a technical sense. I just mean any of drive, passion, emotion, strong motivating desire, and so on. The context throughout should make it clear. 

Emotions activate the imagination and enable us to see a world where we commit ourselves to embracing the spirit of that emotion in perpetuity. Let me give you an example. When I took my first philosophy class ever, I fell in love with the content. But I didn't see myself as ever being a philosopher or teaching. 

It was my second professor that opened my imagination to a career in philosophy. We've all experienced such moments and it's nearly impossible to put into words. That moment where you're utterly filled with awe and passion for something. When it hits, it hits hard. You see your entire life vividly unfolding along that new path as though it were actually happening. 

I was just a second year student. But I saw myself in the classroom teaching philosophy. I saw my students--both fascinated and perplexed by philosophy. I saw myself as I saw my professor: wise, kind, and patient. I saw myself fulfilled everyday. I saw the possibility. I saw a possible world. I felt what it was like to live there. I was there. 

In the context of important decisions, this is the value of emotion: It shows us our possible lives in a way a spreadsheet never could. But those lives only remain possible to the extent that we nurture the original emotion and sense of awe that first opened the window to them. 

(Note: I'm using positive emotions to illustrate but negative emotions have just as much value in the same respect: Negative emotions can show us what worlds to avoid and why. They show us what worlds await as the consequence of certain choices. I'll stay with positive emotions for simplicity.)

Let's go back to the familiar Sartrian tale of the young student who, during the German occupation of France, must decide between joining the French Resistance to avenge his brother's death or staying with his mother who lost both her husband to treason and her only other child to the Germans. How does he decide what to do? Make a spreadsheet of the 'pluses' and 'minuses' multiplied by their respective probabilities then weigh the outcomes against each other? Suppose, instead we tell him to look into heart. What do you feel? Is it the love for your mother or is it the thirst for revenge?

The respective feelings give him insight into the world he'll inhabit when he choses according to one or the other. 

If the thirst for revenge overwhelms but he stays with his mother, he'll resent her and they'll both be unhappy. He is estranged from the world he wants to inhabit. If his love for his mother overwhelms but he leaves seeking revenge, he'll be miserable thinking of his poor mother on her own. Again, he finds himself alienated from the world he desires. He must act according to, not against his emotion. 

Is that it? you ask. Is this is the culmination of hundreds of hours of studying philosophy? The bullshit platitude "Just do what you feel, maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan"? I could have spent $2, 000.00 on a special weekend with some new age self-help guru hack and learned the same thing without having to actually read anything. Why are you making me read? Just give me the answers! Stop making me work! ...

No, that's not it. 

For an emotion to have lasting value as a decision-maker it must continue to be nourished--not merely in thought but in action. The possible world into which it first gives a glimpse must be manifested through action. Otherwise, the emotion--that world's progenitor--wilts along with it.

To repeat: the emotion lets us see what is possible. But that possible world closes when it lingers only in the imagination. We are left standing in a barren landscape drained of passion. The path leading back to the original fork, unrecognizable and concealed. To say that an emotion guided us rightly we must live according to that emotion.

And so the relationship status between decisions, emotions, possibility, and guidance reads "it's complicated". An emotion guides my decision by revealing the possible. The possible becomes real and is sustained through action in accordance with the original emotion. I say I was rightly guided when I live according to the original emotion and embrace that world I construct in its spirit. 

The emotion, however, doesn't sustain itself. I must sustain it through actions characteristic of it. I must build that possible world as it was revealed to me. And as the possible becomes manifest I choose to sustain the original emotion--and hence my commitment to the world I'm constructing. 

Or I respond with a new emotion, one that reveals new future possibilities and the new forks they bring. 

There is no guarantee my future self will feel what I feel now about the world constructed in my current emotion's name. It's a matter of probability. I can't know beforehand. To speak plainly, be careful what you wish for because you just might get it. And so, emotions, as I have been speaking of them, ought not on their own be appealed to. This much seems obvious. They are valuable in that they give us the best available insight into what a decision in one direction could be like. Our choices are presented to us in a way a spreadsheet never could. But then we are faced with the impossible task of knowing whether our desire for a possible world will be sustained once it is manifest.

This may appear an insurmountable task and will no doubt be a probabilistic affair. But probabilistic isn't the same as random. All of us have some sense of what sorts of things have enduring value. If an emotion encourages us to a world devoid of such values perhaps it's a world we ought not to construct...although in some cases it might be fun for while! (See: Ami's pre grad school life) Indefinitely honoring an emotion that sustains one such world is a mistake but feeling otherwise once we are there is a good thing. Our new emotions show us a way out...or at least tell us to get out. And hopefully we learned a thing or two while we were there. That counts for something. Right? 

Repressed Emotions: What Are They Supposed to Be? Part 1

Introduction and Two Theories of Emotion
You'll often hear the term 'repressed emotion' bandied about in the self-help industrial complex. In this alt-world, if you have a mental or physical illness, you can bet your bottom dollar that it's caused by a repressed emotion (usually from your childhood).  The concept is often used as the cause and explanation of everything. I'll argue in Part 1 that the concept of repressed emotions as it's used in the self-help industrial complex is unintelligible. However, it does have more respectable pedigree in Freudian psychoanalysis. In Part 2, I'll take a look at the more sophisticated Freudian account.

A Tale of Two Theories of Emotion
Let's set aside repressed emotions for a moment. Before doing a preliminary evaluation of the concept we'll need to take a quick look at the two basic theories of what emotions are. 

I'll begin with what I'll call the cognitivist account. On this view, an emotion is made up of two elements: it's a conjunction of (a) a judgment/appraisal and (b) a feeling/sensation. For example, when I experience anger, the emotion is comprised of 

(a) a judgment or evaluation that person x is disrespecting me or treating me unfairly, and
(b) the phenomenological sensation of anger (tension, heat, etc...).

Or, for example, when I experience fear the emotion is comprised of 

(a) the judgment or evaluation that something is dangerous to me/can harm me, and
(b) the phenomenological sensation of fear (racing heat, strange feeling in the stomach, etc...)

In sum, the cognitivist account requires that emotions have cognitive content (i.e., beliefs, concepts, judgments, appraisals) as well as a phenomenological 'feel' (i.e., a 'what-it's-like-ness'). The ability to distinguish feelings from emotions marks one of the advantages of the cognitivist theory. The difficulty to explain how animals and pre-linguistic children can have emotions counts against this view because it would require ascribing to them sophisticated concepts and beliefs.

The other main theory of emotions argues that emotions are simply a kind of (i.e., a sub-class of) feeling. On this non-cognitivist theory, emotions don't have cognitive content, they are just specific kinds of 'feels'. For example, being angry just is feeling a certain way. Being scared just is feeling a certain way. To have an emotion you needn't have made any appraisal or judgment or have any beliefs about the object/person/situation causing your feeling. It's all in the feels...

A major advantage of this view is that it's easier to ascribe emotions to animals and pre-linguistic children. Making judgments and appraisals requires complex concepts, something not easily ascribed to infants and animals. A problem attributed to this view is the inability to distinguish kinds of feelings. For example, the 'feel' in your stomach when you are scared and when you are angry might be the same. The feeling theory has to say they are the same emotion. There's also the problem of 'an explosion of emotions'. For each slightly different feeling there is a different emotion since what defines an emotion is its feel. Different feel=different emotion.

I won't get into the debate between the two accounts of emotion. There are ways (i.e., there are volumes of articles) that proponents of each view try to respond to the various challenges and criticisms. I merely want to point to some of the advantages and disadvantages with each and provide a framework in which to give a preliminary assessment of 'repressed emotions'. If we're going to say something is a 'repressed emotion' we need some general idea of what an emotion is first...

First Pass: Repressed Emotions Don't Make No Damn Sense
The Cognitivist View: Let's suppose for a moment that the cognitivist view of emotions is correct. An emotion is the conjunction of a judgment/appraisal and a feeling. Suppose my local self-help guru tells me I have [insert illness] because of repressed anger (from my childhood--of course). First of all, on this view, part of having an emotion requires that I have made an appraisal or judgment about some situation or person. This implies that I have a belief. 

Mysteriously, when the guru asks me if there's anything about my childhood I'm angry about, nothing comes to mind (cuz everyone had perfect childhoods and never got angry about anything).  So, of course he doesn't name anything specific but encourages me to look deeper because there must be something. Why else would I have [insert illness]? 

Here's the thing. If I have an occurrent belief that situation x made me angry as a child, it's not a repressed belief. It's occurrent. So, that can't be the anger that's causing my [insert illness]. The belief has to be buried. It's a belief I can't access--yet it's there! Somehow, I believe something I don't know I believe! 

At this point, some charity is in order. The mind is not totally transparent, and subconscious and unconscious thought and belief are fairly widely recognized phenomena in psychology. So, let's grant for a moment that I have some subconscious belief that I was treated unfairly in situation x as a child. We'll set aside the strangeness of having a belief that you don't know you have.

At this point in the session, the guru will prod me with more questions, getting me to search my mind for instances where I might have believed myself to have been unfairly treated. As though by magic, I find a memory of an instance of being upset as a child! I judged my treatment as unfair when blah blah blah... 

Here's a question: Is this a judgment I formed as a child that I'm now recalling, i.e., is it a judgment buried deep in my consciousness until now, or is it a belief that I have formed now, after much suggestion and prodding? (Because "surely there was something in your childhood that upset you, otherwise there's no other possible way to explain your [insert illness]"). Also, consider how memory works. It's not like retrieving a file in your hard drive. When you "recall" something you are actually recalling the last instance you thought about it then reinterpreting in light of your life's current narrative. How likely is it that what you are recalling from so long ago is actually what happened? (Hint: Not likely).

Again, for the sake of argument, I'll be charitable. Suppose the guru has managed to get me to retrieve (the memory) of this old appraisal about how I was treated. Ok, so far I have one half of what makes an emotion an emotion. I have a judgment/appraisal. 

There's still a problem. If an emotion is made up of a conjunction of a belief and a feeling, I need to 'find' the feeling part. But how can you have a feeling that you don't feel? How does that make sense?

If my repressed anger is indeed an emotion then by definition it has an affective/phenomenological component. It has a 'feel'. But if it's repressed, I don't feel it...otherwise it wouldn't be a repressed emotion, it would just be an emotion that I'm experiencing. 

Simply put, either you feel a repressed emotion or you don't. If you feel it then it doesn't make sense to call it repressed because you're feeling it. If you don't feel it then how is it an emotion if emotions are constituted in part by a sensation? 

At this point, a proponent of repressed emotions could reply that when I bring the appraisal of my treatment as unjust to my conscious awareness then the feeling will follow. But this reply doesn't seem to work. It looks like the feeling of anger is being caused by the belief. In other words, I didn't have a repressed emotion, I had a repressed belief. When I dredged the belief out from my unconscious mind and onto the main stage of the theater of my mind, I reacted to it (in light of my current circumstances and coaching). The feeling and the belief weren't unified when there were in my subconscious which is what is needed in order for them to count as an emotion (on this view).  

Here, the repressed emotion theorist could give up on justifying the phenomena in terms of the cognitivist view. Maybe emotions just are feelings and I've buried my anger somewhere (?) and that's why I have [insert illness].

Non-Cognitivist View: The argument against repressed emotions under the second theory follows the same logic as above. If emotions just are feelings (and don't involve any appraisals/beliefs/conceptual content) then you have to explain how it makes sense to have a feeling that you don't feel. That's no emotion at all because there's no feeling and the feeling is what makes the emotion what it is. Let me repeat that. If what makes an emotion an emotion is that it is a feeling, then it makes no sense to say you have an unfelt feeling. No feeling=no emotion. 

On the non-cognitivist theory, the notion of repressed emotion makes even less sense. 


It looks like if the notion of repressed emotions is going to be intelligible at all, we'll need a more sophisticated account. This means leaving the realm of the self-help industrial complex, going back to Freud himself and examining what he said about the concept. 

In Part 2 I'll look at Freud's own account of the concept. 

Aside on Philosophy
Often non-philosophers will criticize (and mischaracterize) philosophy as being all about asking people "well, what you mean by x?". In some contexts, this philosophical practice can be extremely annoying and not always useful. Allegedly, incessantly engaging in this practice is partly how Socrates got himself killed. 

But, as I hope you can see from above, there are cases where asking this sort of question is useful. Someone postulates a theoretical entity (i.e., repressed emotions) and a philosopher will naturally ask, "well, what do you mean by that?" Spending some time getting clear on our concepts helps to avoid postulating unnecessary and incoherent theoretical entities. 

That said, the more sophisticated Freudian account of repressed emotions won't be so easily dismissed. I don't know yet where my analysis will take me. Anyhow, there is value in carefully analyzing the contents of a concept and placing it within the context of major theories to see how well it fairs. 

Another thing philosophers make much ado about is whether a concept is "doing any work." If you can give an account of a phenomena with existing concepts and without appeal to a new concept, there has to be good reason to add the new theoretical entity. In Part 2, I'll pay more attention to the work Freud intended 'repressed emotions' to do in psychology and psychoanalysis. If there's no other way to capture the phenomena he refers to and do the theoretical work, then it might mean that the theories of emotions themselves have to change to accommodate repressed emotions. 

Until then, keep repressing your emotions.  They can't hurt you cuz they don't exist. 

Doing What Feels Right and Sartre's Existentialism

Introduction
Existentialism can be summarized in one phrase, "existence precedes essence." But what does this mean? Pre-existentialism, philosophical systems presumed Man had an essence. To understand what that means consider a chair. Chairs don't just randomly pop into existence...no sir!  Before they are created someone or something has to have a concept of what a chair is (i.e., something for sitting), then the chair is created in conformity with the concept. The essence of a chair is that for which it is designed--which is sitting, if you didn't know.

Notice two things: (a) having an essence, in the sense I've described, implies a creator and (b) that the creation's essence is determined before it comes into existence. And so, artifacts--things like chairs, computers, cars, iphones, etc--all have creators and have an essence/nature/purpose before they come into existence.

Let's return to "existence precedes essence." For existentialists, human beings are unlike artifacts in that we exist before we have an essence/nature. We are not designed and so there is no predetermined essence that defines who or what we are. Who/what we are comes after we exist. We are thrust into the world and create ourselves through the actions we choose. This is what "existence precedes essence" means: first we exist, then we will acquire a nature (though our acts).  If I do harmful acts and act selfishly, then this is what I am. If I create and share, then this becomes my nature. There is no predetermined nature beyond what I actually choose to do. Again, contrast this with artifacts: first they have a nature/essence/purpose then they are brought into the world.

For existentialists, the human condition is (a) understanding that we are free to choose our own essence (through our actions) and (b) figuring out how we ought to create ourselves given we have no intrinsic nature. Another way of thinking about this is to say that we are responsible for who we are.

Radical Freedom and Responsibility
Although we have no common nature among us we all share the same conditions: We are "condemned" to be free thus we have to make choices about how to live and 'be'. There is nothing objective in the world to grab to guide us in our choices. Every choice is exactly that--our choice. And because every action is a consequence of our own choice, we bear absolute responsibility for it. Pretending you don't have a choice is what Sartre calls "bad faith". Bad faith is lying to yourself about the reality of your radical freedom. Even when you act in bad faith you cannot escape responsibility for your choices which define who you are. It was your choice to lie to yourself.

The existential condition is that there are no objective values to guide our decisions and no one but our selves to decide which values we adopt. Now some might say that we can turn to religion or authorites to guide us. There are a few problems with this. First, you are shirking your responsibility as a free being for decisions. By deferring to an outside source for your decisions your are denying your responsibility to choose for yourself.

One might say that choosing to follow this or that text or leader is a choice--and it is. But this doesn't allow you to escape the subjectivity of the human condition:  how you choose to interpret the various texts and advice will also be a matter of your own choice. There's no external source you can lean on to tell you how to interpret. You cannot escape the subjectivity of your existence and so you still must bear the responsibility of choosing one interpretation over another.

Furthermore, your essence is nothing more that the sum of the things that you choose to do. And if trying to deny your radical freedom and offload responsibility are part of your actions, then you are a coward. Anguish, for the existentialist, in part comes from knowing that he bears full responsibility for what he does and who he is and that this responsibility is inescapable.

Moral Choice
If there are no objective values in the world, it seems like anything goes. Again, just like with any other choice, the ethics that you choose define your essence. If you choose and act on a selfish ethic, then that's what you are and you are responsible for everything that comes from it.

But, in a sense, our actions aren't completely unconstrained. Here's where we exit subjectivity. Every choice that I make not only defines who I am but also defines the essence of Man as a whole because I am a part of that whole. This demands that I consider the consequences of my choices on what will be the nature of Man.

For every man, everything happens as if all mankind had its eyes fixed on him and were guiding itself by what he does. And every man ought to say to himself "Am I really the kind of man who has the right to act in such a way that humanity might guide itself by my actions? (Existentialism)

I am responsible, through my choices, for how Man is defined for my time in history because I am a part of Man.

But this is vague. How do I decide what to do in specific cases? Unfortunately, general moral principles can't tell us how to decide particular cases. Sartre give the following case:

[The young man's] father was on bad terms with his mother, and, moreover, was inclined to be a collaborationist; his older brother had been killed in the German offensive of 1940, and the young man, with somewhat immature but generous feelings, wanted to avenge him. His mother lived alone with him, very much upset by the half-treason of her husband and the death of her older son; the boy was her only consolation. The boy was faced with the choice of leaving for England and joining the Free French Forces--that is, leaving his mother behind or remaining with his mother and helping her to carry on.
He was fully aware that the woman lived only for him and that his going off--and perhaps his death--would plunge her into despair. He was also aware that every act that he did for his mother's sake was a sure thing, in the sense that it was helping her to carry on, whereas every effort he made toward going off and fighting was an uncertain move which might run aground and prove completely useless; for example, on his way to England he might, while passing through Spain, be detained indefinitely in a Spanish camp; he might reach England or Algiers and be stuck in an office at a desk job. As a result, he was faced with two very different kinds of action: one, concrete, immediate, but concerning only one individual; the other concerned an incomparably vaster group, a national collectivity, but for that very reason was dubious, and might be interrupted en route. And, at the same time, he was wavering between two kinds of ethics.
On the one hand, an ethics of sympathy, of personal devotion; on the other, a broader ethics, but one whose efficacy was more dubious. He had to choose between the two. Who could help him choose? Christian doctrine? No. Christian doctrine says, "Be charitable, love your neighbor, take the more rugged path, etc., etc." But which is the more rugged path? Whom should he love as a brother? The fighting man or his mother? Which does the greater good, the vague act of fighting in a group, or the concrete one of helping a particular human being to go on living? Who can decide a priori? Nobody. No book of ethics can tell him. The Kantian ethics says, "Never treat any person as a means, but as an end." Very well, if I stay with my mother, I'll treat her as an end and not as a means; but by virtue of this very fact, I'm running the risk of treating the people around me who are fighting, as means; and, conversely, if I go to join those who are fighting, I'll be treating them as an end, and, by doing that, I run the risk of treating my mother as a means. (Existentialism)

And so a general ethical principle can't help us decide specific cases. And besides, even if we do choose a general ethical principle, there is no guide to tell us which to choose as either a general guide of action or for particular cases. We also have to make that choice and we bear responsibility for it and accept that it now defines us in so far as we act on it.

Sartre and Emotions
General ethical principles can't tell me what to do in particular cases. Maybe I ought to do what feels right to me. If the young man feels that his love for his mother is great enough to sacrifice his other desires, then he should do that. But if the feeling of love for his mother isn't enough to make him give up everything else, then he ought to leave.

But how will he know that he loves his mother enough to give up everything else unless he actually does it? To know that his feeling leads him to the right choice he has to live that choice. He has to see how it plays out. He might try it and find out that the desire to avenge his brother overwhelms him and he's unhappy staying behind and so the feeling misguided him. But he can't know this before he lives it. The feeling can't tell him in advance what to do.

Consider another case that many can relate to. How do you know if marrying someone will be the right choice? Consulting your feelings before you're married can't tell you. You'll only know if it's the right choice if you actually do it. If it turns out well, it was the right choice. If it turns out poorly, it wasn't. The feeling can't tell you what's going to happen and so can't tell you in advance what the right thing to do is. Besides, if feelings were a good guide to marriage, we'd expect the divorce rate to be substantially lower.

It Isn't All Doom and Gloom
So, we are hurled into the world, condemned to be free with no fixed points to guide us in how we ought to live, yet we are somehow responsible for everything we do and are. This is the existential forlornness and anguish.  Forlorn because we cannot turn to anyone to make decisions for us and anguish because of the tremendous responsibility that comes with creating both our own essence and that of Man.

But chin up, butter cup! The good news is that existentialism is a philosophy of action. You might not have any guides but you get to create yourself--with every choice. Bonus, if you didn't like where things were going, you can reinvent yourself at any moment, if you so choose.

There is no reality except in action. Man is nothing else but his plan; he exists only to the extent that he fulfills himself; he is therefore nothing else than the ensemble of his acts, nothing else than his plan. (Existentialism)

Before you go skipping off into the sunset, existentialism is a demanding philosophy if you take it seriously. In creating yourself and defining Man, with every act you are saying "this is what I think all mankind ought to be--follow me!" When taken seriously, that is a massive responsibility to bear (hence, all the angst).

It also means that there is nothing that exists that is not expressed in action. There are no great authors with unwritten great books, no charitable people with kind deeds undone, no great loves who have not loved.  "Reality alone counts and [...] dreams, expectations, and hopes warrant no more than to define a man as a disappointed dream, miscarried hopes, as vain expectations" (Existentialism).  In other words, coulda woulda shoulda is worthless. At the end of the day, what matters is what you did with your life and whether it was an example for others to follow.

Evidence for Moral Claims Part 2: Coherentism

Overview of Coherentism
The issue on the table is to figure out what it takes for a moral claim to be epistemically justified. The coherentist offers the following general account of justification. A moral belief is justified to the degree that it coheres with the believers other beliefs. In short, justification is cashed out in terms of a belief's inferential relations to other beliefs. Central to the coherentist position is that there is no privileged set of beliefs that ground other beliefs. All beliefs are justified in terms of other beliefs--regardless of what kind of beliefs they are.

Coherentism is perhaps best understood in contrast to foundationalism. A foundationalist holds that certain kinds of beliefs are--well--foundational while others are either inferred from or not as privileged as the foundational set. For example, in terms of justificatory status, Descartes foundationalism privileges a priori beliefs over empirically derived beliefs. That is to say, if an empirically derived belief conflicts with an a priori (or derived from a priori) belief, the latter belief is more justified because a prior beliefs have more justificatory status (i.e., they're more foundational). In contrast, the coherentist would say that the best justified belief is the one which best coheres with the totality of your beliefs--regardless of kind.

I want to emphasize that the coherence theorist (of the type advocated by Sayre-McCord) isn't a theory of truth rather it is a theory of justification.  Coherence doesn't make beliefs true, coherence simply justifies a belief for an agent.

Emotional Experiences, Justification, and Coherentism
In my previous post I argued that it's plausible that our emotional reactions to certain situations play an evidential role for moral beliefs. In short, in some cases we use emotions to support moral claims or emotional experiences can change our moral positions.  If we think that emotions can sometimes count as evidence for moral claims then, I will argue, coherentism isn't able to capture this type of evidence in its account of how moral claims are justified. In other words, coherence is sufficient for justification but not necessary. The reason for coherentism's difficulty in accounting for emotions as evidence is that (obviously) emotions are very different sorts of things as beliefs. And, on a simple version of coherentism, only beliefs can justify other beliefs.

Let me briefly make explicit the problem. Beliefs--moral or otherwise--are propositional in nature thus can, in principle, have a truth value. Emotions, on the other hand, are not propositional and so cannot have a truth value.  So, (obviously) emotions are not the same sort of thing as beliefs. There doesn't seem to be any obvious way on the coherentist model that something non-propositional could count as evidence for a proposition because the only thing that can justify a belief is its relationships to other beliefs.

Coherentism and Perceptual Experience
Well, not so fast. In some cases--namely perceptual experience--it doesn't seem far-fetched to say that something non-propositional could justify a proposition. For example, the experience of seeing red seems to support the proposition "I see red".  Or maybe the experience of stubbing your toe plausibly supports the proposition "I'm in pain".

So, even though perceptions aren't--strictly speaking--propositional, the tight connection between direct observation and propositional beliefs should make us willing to allow such experiences as able to justify certain beliefs. (More on this later.)

However, even if we allow perceptual experience to justify beliefs on the coherentist model two problems arise. The first problem is general to all types of experience as evidence and the second regards only extending coherentism to allow emotional experience to play a justificatory role. Let me address the first problem...uh...first.

The Isolation Problem
Suppose all my life I've believed that brick walls are soft.  Maybe my parents are the world's greatest pranksters or I was home-schooled or something...Anyway, I've never actually seen a brick wall but I've read a lot about them. As an toddler I was lulled to sleep with stories about their pillowy softness. At dinner my father would regale me with tales of the Great Wall of China which is the longest man-made pillowy structure. In short I have many many beliefs about the pillowy softness of brick walls.

Anyhow, one day I go off into the world and encounter a brick wall, which is perfect timing because I'm really sleepy and could use something comfortable to rest against. I can't wait to feel that pillowy softness. I triumphantly yell "Geronimo!" and sprint head first into the brick wall. To my shock and awe, the wall does not feel pillowy soft. In fact, it feels as hard as a cloud (my parents also taught me that clouds are very very hard).  On the coherentist model, despite my experience of hardness, I shouldn't reject my belief that brick walls are pillowy soft. Why? Because I only have one belief "walls are hard" yet I have many many more beliefs that brick walls are pillowy soft and that support "walls are pillowy soft". If justification is a matter of coherence with other beliefs then the latter belief coheres better with the totality of my beliefs than the former.

In short, a problem for coherentism is that there will be at least some cases (perhaps not as far-fetched as my example) where we think a single experience-derived belief warrants over-riding many beliefs. However, on the coherentist model, we shouldn't do this because the single belief won't cohere as well with the totality of beliefs as will the contrary proposition. The single (recalcitrant) belief will not be justified.

It may be that a sophisticated account of coherentism can handle this objection but it's not clear that it can. I'll leave the matter as it is for now and move to my next point.

Emotional vs Perceptual Experiences
Earlier, I suggested that we should allow coherentism to admit perceptual experiences as being capable of justifying beliefs because of the short inference from the experience to the belief. In fact, Sayre-McCord says as much:

It's true, coherentism doesn't allow experience as relevant to justification unless and until the experience comes into the person's cognitive economy. Yet, especially in its recognition of cognitively spontaneous beliefs, coherentism leaves room for experiences to enter that cognitive economy unbidden, either thanks to the experiences themselves having cognitive content (in which case it is the content of the experience that serves as evidence or by their being the content of an appropriate cognitive attitude (in which case it is the fact that such an experience occurred that serves as evidence). (Ibid, p. 122)

Ultimately, the coherentist is able to admit experience as evidentiary but its justificatory status will still be cashed out in terms of its relations to other beliefs. Let's accept this. Now, what about emotions? They're a kind of experience and so if we've admitted experience it looks like my objection has been met.

Nevertheless, I want to argue that the category "experience" is too vague and is unable to satisfactorily capture both emotional and perceptual experiences.  Lumping both into the same category relies an an implicit analogy between the two types of experiences. However, it's not obvious that these two types of experiences share any properties relevant to our purposes. For example, the inference from the experience of seeing a red pen to the belief "I see a red pen" or "the pen is red" is short and obvious (philosophy of perception aside). It's not going to be so obvious in the case of emotions.

Perception is, at its core, representational, yet it's not clear what it is that emotions are representing. Here's where I think the analogy falls apart.  Because of this disanalogy, it's not obvious to me how an emotional experience gets us to a propositional belief.  Think back to the three ways I suggested emotions function as evidence in our moral reasoning. In the first way we ask our counter-part how they would feel if they were in such and such circumstances. In the second, a feeling (e.g., love) overwhelms a consistent set of beliefs (e.g., that gay marriage is wrong)In the third type of case, visceral images or experiences evoke strong emotions such that we come to endorse a position inconsistent with all our other beliefs. Suppose we are in a debate about the moral permissibility of drones.  For example, a proponent of drones might be shown interviews and footage of what families in a small Yemeni village endures on a daily basis as a consequence of drones and reverse his endorsement. To be clear, these interviews and images don't come in the form of argument, rather they are a montage that elicit certain powerful emotions.

In none of these cases is it clear how the emotional experience translates to a propositional belief. (I need to expand on this). And even if we can give some sort of account of how it might we're left with the isolation problem from above. There will be cases where all my previous beliefs cohere best with my previous position on the issue at hand yet the emotional experience over-rides them. The coherentist model tells us that I should reject my new position.

I suppose the coherentist could (coherently) reply that, "yup, you aren't justified in endorsing your new position because it doesn't cohere with the totality of your beliefs." At this point I'm not sure where to go. It looks like the issue turns on who can pound their fists hardest on the table.  I want to say that the person's post-emotional experience view is justified by the experience while the coherentist will pound back, with equal vigor, no it isn't!

It seems like we've ended up back at the normative/descriptive divide. As a matter of anthropology, yes, humans do use emotional experience as evidence for beliefs. Whether we should is another matter. And so we return to my conditional claim: If we think that emotions ought to count as evidence for moral claims, coherentism can't accommodate them as such.


Concerns:
1. I'm equivocating on what it is for a belief to be justified and what it is that justifies a belief.

2. What's the phenomenology of adopting a new belief in response to an emotion? How would you characterize it. In many cases it doesn't seem as though any of your other beliefs have changed, yet you adopt a new position.  In some cases, is the emotional reaction simply highlighting or giving greater weight to some beliefs rather than others?

3. Coherentist can say "yup, emotions are important to moral reasoning in that they can get us to reflect more deeply on the beliefs we ascribe to yet the emotions themselves don't justify beliefs." In which case I need to throw this whole paper away and start from scratch.  But still I want to resist this and say (while pounding my fist on the table) that at least in some cases the emotional experience is providing evidence for a new (?) moral belief.