February 7

In The Experience of Emotion, Barrett, Mesquita, Ochsner, and Gross address the philosophical issues that make emotions a problematic subject for scientific objectivism to approach. The authors begin with a discussion of two important viewpoints of the philosophy of mind- materialism and naturalism. They identify these opposing viewpoints as influential models for neuroscience and psychology in the study emotion but greatly favor the naturalist approach.

Materialism is portrayed as an accurate, yet incomplete paradigm for work on emotions. The authors define materialism as “the theory that mental contents are caused by and can therefore be redefined as nothing but physical processes”(2006). Materialist theories reduce emotion to pure physical phenomenon, therefore allowing mental states to be analyzed in terms physical states. The authors identify different analyses of materialism frequently used in scientific work on emotions- behaviorism (James, LeDoux), which analyzes mental states in terms of behavior; identity theory (Ekman, James, Damasio), which assigns mental states to unique brain states, and functionalism which determines mental states to be tokens of experience.

Barrett et al. reject materialism on the foundation that although these material approaches to emotions may symbolize the cause of emotions, they cannot be accurate because they do not take into account the phenomenological aspect of emotion. This phenomenological aspect is inextricable from the physical occurrence of an emotion because it is precisely what distinguishes an emotion from any other mental or physical phenomenon, like a thought or memory. I found the authors' rejection of materialism refreshing after reading James, Damasio, and LeDoux. LeDoux, in particular, I feel is overly reductionist in his definition of emotions (“biological functions of the nervous system” p. 12) as well as his description of emotional phenomenon. LeDoux's position fails to take into account the effects of complex social environments on the dynamic biological processes of brains. Instead, LeDoux seems to lapse into genetically determined representations of brain structure that rely almost solely on an unconscious basis of emotion. He uses evolution to explain the necessity of unconscious emotional processing but does not offer an evolutionary explanation of the benefits of conscious emotional experiences.

LeDoux's causal approach to emotions, however, is not surprising. Perhaps it is Barret's background as a social psychologist that provides her with a different agenda for emotions than either Damasio, or LeDoux, who are both neuroscientists and consequently, materialists. Barrett et al. favor biological naturalism as a philosophy for investigating the nature of emotions. They place an equal amount of emphasis on the “descriptive psychology of mental contents and a detailed neurobiology that entails them”. Here the authors point to verbal communication as the key to our biological emotional experiences.

How might we improve or enhance our access to introspective states? Maybe if we had a more detailed way of linguistically describing and understanding the inner processes of our mind the study of emotion would be far better off. Lisa Feldman's work on language and emotions seems to indicate that she thinks so too.