Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Did Descartes Have a Jamesian Theory of the Emotions?

2007; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 20; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09515080701422041

1465-394X

Gary Hatfield,

Pragmatism in Philosophy and Education

Abstract René Descartes and William James had "body first" theories of the passions or emotions, according to which sensory stimulation causes a bodily response that then causes an emotion. Both held that this bodily response also causes an initial behavioral response (such as flight from a bear) without any cognitive intervention such as an "appraisal" of the object or situation. From here they differ. Descartes proposed that the initial processes that produce fear and running are entirely mechanical. Even human beings initially run from the bear as a result of physiological processes alone, without mental contribution. These physiological processes also cause a mental passion, which is a cognitive representation of the situation (as regards novelty, benefit, or harm), and which motivates the will to continue the behavior already in progress. According to James, emotions are caused by instinctive bodily responses that are triggered by noncognitive but nonetheless conscious perceptual states. Emotions are bare feelings of internal physiological stirrings that accompany an instinctual response that has evolved through Darwinian natural selection. Jamesian emotions initially have no motivational or cognitive content, which they subsequently acquire through learning. The methodological legitimacy of comparing these positions across the centuries is defended, and the two theories are compared to recent theories. Keywords: Cognitive Theories of EmotionRené DescartesEmbodimentEmotionsEvolutionHistorical MethodologyInstinctMechanistic Theories of BehaviorMind–Brain RelationsPassionsWilliam James Acknowledgements This work was supported in part by the Adam Seybert Professorship in Moral and Intellectual Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. Krisanna Scheiter served as my research assistant. Notes Notes [1] References to Descartes' works are to the pagination of the Adam and Tannery edition, Descartes (1964–1976 Descartes, R. 1964–1976. Oeuvres, Edited by: new, Adam, C and Tannery, P. Vols. 1–11, Paris: Vrin/CNRS. [Google Scholar], abbreviated "AT"), by volume and page number (e.g., vol. 11, p. 356 is cited as 'AT 11:356'). AT numbers are printed in the margins of most translations. For the Passions of the Soul, my quotations usually follow Stephen Voss's translation (Descartes, 1649/1989); for convenience, I append the original article number to the AT citation (e.g., AT 11:356, a. 36). For the Treatise on Man and Description of the Human Body (also AT 11), I use Stephen Gaukroger's translation (Descartes, 1664/1998). For the "Early Writings" (AT 10), correspondence (AT 1–5), Discourse (AT 6), Meditations (AT 7), and Principles (AT 8A), I follow Cottingham, Stoothoff, Murdoch, and Kenny (Descartes, 1984–1991 Descartes, R. 1984–1991. Philosophical writings, Edited by: Cottingham, J, Stoothoff, R, Murdoch, D, Kenny, A and Trans. Vols. 1–3, Cambridge, , England: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar]). Where I've found it necessary to alter a translation, as in the present case, the AT citation is followed by an asterisk (*); where no translation is readily available, I italicize the citation, as in AT 11:519. Finally, although Descartes uses the term 'soul' above (originally writing in French), he preferred the term 'mind' in theoretical contexts (metaphysics and natural philosophy, including psychology), and in such contexts he spoke of soul without religious intent (AT 7:161, 356). [2] James (1890 James, W. 1890. Principles of psychology, (Vols. 1–2). New York: Henry Holt. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], vol. 2, pp. 443–446) acknowledged similarities between his theory and that of Lange (1885/1922) on their "body-first" approach, and James' theory subsequently came to be known as the "James--Lange" theory. Scholars have since suggested that the two theories differ substantially: For James, an emotion is a feeling; for Lange, an emotion is the cardiovascular subclass of the wider class of physiological activity that, in James' theory, causes the feelings that are the emotions (Lang, 1994 Lang, PJ. 1994. The varieties of emotional experience: A meditation on the James-Lange theory. Psychological Review, 101: 211–221. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], p. 212). My focus is on James, and I will speak of "James' theory." [3] Unless otherwise identified, all references in this section are to James (1890 James, W. 1890. Principles of psychology, (Vols. 1–2). New York: Henry Holt. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), by volume and page number (e.g., 2:450) or by chapter number; in subsequent sections, James (1890 James, W. 1890. Principles of psychology, (Vols. 1–2). New York: Henry Holt. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) is explicitly cited where needed to avoid ambiguity. [4] James first published his conception of the "inverted" order among fear, running, and trembling in 1884 (p. 190), and repeated the passage verbatim in 1890. He explicitly denied that we run because we are frightened, but when he turned the case around, he wrote that we are "afraid because we tremble," not mentioning the running, which, as discussed below, he considered to be an instinctive response that may precede the emotional response. In his 1894 article on emotions, James uses the phrase "afraid because we run" in describing the original passages and also as an example of the "slapdash brevity" that he himself, among others, had used in characterizing his theory (1894, p. 519). I regard James (1894 James, W. 1894. The physical basis of emotion. Psychological Review, 1: 516–529. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) as a consistent elaboration of the theory presented in James (1884 James, W. 1884. What is an emotion?. Mind, 9: 188–205. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) and (1890, ch. 23–26), and so I treat these works together (contrary to Dixon, 2003 Dixon, T. 2003. From passions to emotions: The creation of a secular psychological category, Cambridge, , England: Cambridge University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], ch. 7). In this article, I do not consider whether James developed a later theory of emotion in connection with his analysis of religious feeling, as Averril (1992 Averril, JR. 1992. "William James's other theory of emotion". In Reinterpreting the legacy of William James, Edited by: Donnelly, ME. 221–229. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. [Google Scholar]) maintains. [5] Earlier, addressing the mind's relation to extra-brain objects, James (1890 James, W. 1890. Principles of psychology, (Vols. 1–2). New York: Henry Holt. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) partitioned such relations into the "cognitive" and the "emotional": "It knows them, and it inwardly welcomes or rejects them" (1:216). Talk of welcoming and rejecting suggests that emotions make us perceive objects under a pro or con aspect, apparently belying my claim that emotions are not motivational for James. Two considerations tell against this result. First, James could be speaking here of the developed emotions, which can present objects under a pro and con aspect. Second, James is almost certainly using the term 'emotions' here as shorthand for the three major classes of feeling-caused movements, instincts, emotions, and volitions; instincts originally involve welcoming or rejecting behaviors, produced "reflexively" outside consciousness, while some developed emotions and some volitions (all of which are developed) present objects in consciousness under a pro or con aspect. [6] Descartes used 'passions' as a technical term for a group of body caused states that we would reasonably classify as emotions. He did not use the term 'emotion' as a technical term but applied it to any changes occurring in the mind (AT 11:350*, a. 28). Still, he considered it especially appropriate for states that "agitate" the mind (AT 11:350) and he applied it to purely intellectual states, such as intellectual joy, that are "like" the passions but are not body caused (AT 11:440, a. 147); in noting this likeness, he implies a broader category of "emotions of the soul" (contrary in spirit to Smith, 2005 Smith, R. 2005. The history of psychological categories. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 36: 55–94. [Crossref], [PubMed] , [Google Scholar], p. 86, citing Dixon, 2003 Dixon, T. 2003. From passions to emotions: The creation of a secular psychological category, Cambridge, , England: Cambridge University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], p. 4), and indeed this usage of 'emotion' by Descartes may be the source of the term in David Hume, whose usage Dixon (2003 Dixon, T. 2003. From passions to emotions: The creation of a secular psychological category, Cambridge, , England: Cambridge University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], p. 108) believes might have given rise to the modern English term. I defend my classing of Cartesian passions with Jamesian emotions in §5. [7] I here leave aside questions about Descartes' account of mind–body interaction, e.g., whether he was an occasionalist of some sort or a causal interactionist (on which, see Hatfield, 1998 Hatfield, G. 1998. "Force (God) in Descartes' physics". In Descartes, Edited by: Cottingham, J. 281–310. Oxford, , England: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar], p. 306, n. 87, 2005b). [8] On the details of Cartesian brain function, see Beyssade (2003 Beyssade, JM. 2003. "On sensory–motor mechanisms in Descartes: Wonder versus reflex". In Passion and virtue in Descartes, Edited by: Williston, B and Gombay, A. 129–152. New York: Humanity Books. [Google Scholar]), Hatfield (1992 Hatfield, G. 1992. "Descartes' physiology and its relation to his psychology". In Cambridge companion to Descartes, Edited by: Cottingham, J. 335–370. Cambridge, , England: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar], 2005b Hatfield, G. 2005b. "Rationalist theories of sense perception and mind-body relation". In Blackwell companion to rationalism, Edited by: Nelson, A. 31–60. Oxford, , England: Blackwell. [Google Scholar]), and Sutton (1998 Sutton, J. 1998. Philosophy and memory traces: Descartes to connectionism, Cambridge, , England: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar]). Animal spirits may seem fanciful today, but they represented Descartes' attempt to explain brain function using the resources of the "mechanical philosophy" of his time, a new scientific outlook that he promoted (along with Galileo and Robert Boyle). [9] Canguilhem studied the origin of the reflex concept, which he (1955 Canguilhem, G. 1955. La Formation du concept de réflexe aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. [The formation of the concept of reflex in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries] [Google Scholar], pp. 3–4) defined in the "narrow loop" sense already mentioned (§2). Starting from that definition, he concludes that Thomas Willis first developed the concept by distinguishing (which Descartes did not) cerebrally mediated automatic responses and from those mediated by lower anatomical structures (the cerebellum, for Willis). However, on James' wider notion of "reflex" or "semi-reflex" automatic actions, Descartes did identify a group of involuntary, automatic, reflexive behaviors in human and nonhuman animals. As with James, these responses involve a loop of neural activity through the central brain mass or cerebrum. Fearing (1970 Fearing, F. 1970. Reflex action: A study in the history of physiological psychology, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (Original work published 1930) [Google Scholar]) examines the historical development of various notions of reflexive response, both wide and narrow. [10] There is a limited parallelism among Descartes' three successive uses of the phrase 'we refer to', with respect to external sense-perceptions, internal sensations, and passions (AT 11:346–347, a. 23–25). We refer external sensations to external objects and internal sensations to our body as the causes and the represented objects of such perceptions; we do not refer our sensations to the external object as if it were their experiencing subject. We refer the passions to our own soul because they are perceptions "whose effects are felt as in the soul itself, and of which no proximate cause to which they may be referred is commonly known" (AT 11:347, a. 25)—i.e., Descartes assumes that most people don't know that the passions are caused by animal spirits flowing from the pineal gland. Before we understand the nature of the passions, we might well "refer" them to the soul as a report of the state of the soul as self: The self feels sad. Descartes subsequently explains that the passions proper are, nonetheless, obscure and confused perceptions that relate to our situation (AT 11:349–350, 372, a. 28, 52). Whereas we do properly capture the functions of the external and internal senses by "referring" them to—seeing them as caused by and as telling us about—external objects and internal bodily states, it takes further theorizing to determine the function of the passions proper. [11] In Descartes' metaphysics there is a question of whether the notion of the "good of the body" can be defined independently of the mind–body union. Descartes invokes the notion in relation to soulless animals (e.g., AT 11:519), implying that there are well-functioning animal bodies. However, in a pre-Darwinian world in which Descartes has officially excluded appeal to final causes arising from God's designing intentions (AT 7:55, 8A:15, 81), it is unclear what funds such attributions. Some scholars (e.g., Rodis-Lewis, 1978 Rodis-Lewis, G. 1978. "Limitations of the mechanical model in the Cartesian conception of the organism". In Descartes: critical and interpretive essays, Edited by: Hooker, M. 152–170. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. [Google Scholar], and Guèroult, 1984–1985 Guèroult, M. 1984–85. Descartes philosophy interpreted according to the order of reasons, Edited by: Ariew, R and Trans. Vols. 1–2, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. [Google Scholar], ch. 17) have suggested that the well-functioning machine of the human body must be understood in relation to the mind–body complex, as suggested by some wording in Meditation VI (AT 7:85) about the functioning of clocks; however, this passage concerns whether nature or God can be ascribed "errors" and may not generalize to other discussions of animals as machines. Moreover, Descartes subsequently invokes the "well-being of the [human] body" (AT 7:89). In conceiving the body as a machine, we might assess its well-functioning by considering its machine-like design (Hatfield, 1992 Hatfield, G. 1992. "Descartes' physiology and its relation to his psychology". In Cambridge companion to Descartes, Edited by: Cottingham, J. 335–370. Cambridge, , England: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar], in press). Further, the existence of the mind–body complex presupposes a well-functioning human bodily machine; the mind leaves a body that is "broken," i.e., one that, like a broken clock, no longer performs the movements "for which it is constructed" (AT 11:330–331, a. 6). [12] In the passage quoted from Article 70, Descartes says that the impression in the brain (not a mental state) "represents" an object as rare. This raises questions concerning the representational content of brain impressions. Must they inherit their representational content from the mental states that they cause in human beings? Or do they represent external objects in virtue of a mind-independent causal relation (or other non-intentional relation, such as resemblance) to those objects, in which case corporeal memory alone would have to function to mark the impression as dissimilar to previous impressions, and hence as "rare"? These questions are beyond the scope of the present article (for more, see Hatfield, 2007 Hatfield, G. 2007. The Passions of the soul and Descartes' machine psychology. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 38: 1–35. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). [13] Sutton (1998 Sutton, J. 1998. Philosophy and memory traces: Descartes to connectionism, Cambridge, , England: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar]) and others, including Cottingham (1978) and Gaukroger (1995, pp. 278–290), question whether Descartes actually denied genuine sentience (as opposed to reflective consciousness) to nonhuman animals, contending that he invoked felt sensations and passions to explain nonhuman animal behavior. I reject this interpretation (Hatfield, 2005b Hatfield, G. 2005b. "Rationalist theories of sense perception and mind-body relation". In Blackwell companion to rationalism, Edited by: Nelson, A. 31–60. Oxford, , England: Blackwell. [Google Scholar], in press).