Emotion

Do these emoticons really represent emotions?

Introduction

• We are going to include emotion as a way of knowing. Do you think we are right to do so? Are emotions obstacles to knowledge rather than ways of knowing?

• There is good reason to think that without using emotions we would be unable to make any decisions or gain knowledge

Primary Emotions• The word ‘emotion’ comes from the Latin

‘movere’= to move

• It includes: feelings, passions and moods (all of which are external representations of internal sentiments)

• Psychologists generally agree that there are only 6 primary emotions that are common to all cultures

Can you recognise them in the following robot photos?

Primary Emotions

• Happiness• Sadness• Fear• Anger• Surprise• Disgust

Social Emotions• These are offshoots of the primary

emotions and include:– Ambition– Contempt– Gratitude– Guilt– Jealousy– Pride– Shame– Sympathy

Plotting Emotions

Where would you place each of the primary emotions on this graph?

The James-Lange Theory

William James Carl Lange

The James-Lange Theory

• Suppose you are walking in the woods and you see a grizzly bear. You begin to tremble your heart begins to race and you feel sick in the pit of your stomach.

• If you could somehow get rid of the symptoms: the trembling, the increased heart rate and the sickness – what would happen to your emotion (fear)?

The James-Lange Theory• The theory suggests that emotion is just

an inward projection of physical symptoms

• If you can control the symptoms, you could therefore suppress the emotion

• What do you think this suggests about situations where you are able to create the physical symptoms?

The Cannon-Bard Theory• The James-Lange Theory is now

largely discredited

• Most psychologists now suggest that the reverse is true: physical reactions are produced by the body in response to the emotion itself Walter Cannon Philip Bard

• This is proposed by the Cannon-Bard Theory

• However, there is some evidence that we CAN change our emotions by creating physical symptoms in our bodies

• For example, practitioners of a form of yoga called Hasyayoga believe in laughter therapy

Can emotions be an obstacle to knowledge?

• Perception– Percy Sledge - 'When a Man Loves a Woman'

• Reason– Louis Theroux and the most hated family in America

• Language– BBC journalist looses it with Scientology Spokesman

Emotional Response

Is your emotional response different for each painting? Why is this?

Rationalisations• A famished fox saw some

clusters of grapes hanging from a vine, She resorted to all of her tricks to get at them, but wearied herself in vain, for she could not reach them. At last she turned away, hiding her disappointment and saying “ Those grapes are sour and not as sweet as I thought”– Aesop’s Fables

In an emotional state, many people manufacture bad reasons for justifying something

Irrational DecisionsHow should we conceptualize this rational consumer whom all of us know and who some of us are, who in self-disgust grinds his cigarettes down the disposal swearing that this time he means never again to risk orphaning his children with lung cancer and is on the street three hours later looking for a store that’s still open to buy cigarettes; who eats a high calorie lunch knowing that he will regret it, does regret it, cannot understand how he lost control, resolves to compensate with a low-calorie dinner, eats a high-calorie dinner knowing he will regret it, and does regret it; who sits glued to the T.V. knowing that again tomorrow he’ll wake early in a cold sweat unprepared for that morning meeting on which so much of his career depends; who spoils the trip to Disneyland by losing his temper when his children do what he knew they were going to do when he resolved not to lose his temper when they did it?

Tom Schelling, Nobel Laureate and Professor of Economics

Stoicism• The Stoics were a group of philosophers in Ancient Greece

who advocated apathy

• This means a way of life in which nobody is troubled by emotion and therefore is able to meet all the problems of life in a calm and untroubled way

Questions

• Do you think Stoicism would really lead to a calm, happy, untroubled life?

• What kind of mood do you think you need to be in to make rational judgements and decisions?

Can emotions help us to gain knowledge?

• A study was carried out by the psychologist Antonio Damasio on a brain damaged patient who had suffered an injury to the part of his brain responsible for emotions.

• The patient’s life fell apart because he lost the ability to make rational decisions

• Damasio speculated that emotion helps us to come to rational decisions by narrowing down the available options

Emotions as a source of energy

• It is difficult to get involved in something if you don’t have the energy

• This is true in many fields of work: art, writing, science, maths...

• Involvement generally comes from “emotional attachment”

• However, this does not mean that emotion is a source of knowledge (although we have already labelled it a WAY of knowing)

Charles Darwin• Darwin´s only real interest in life

(apart from his family) was the natural world

• He spent 20 years thinking about his findings before he finally published “On the Origin of Species” in 1858

• He spent the last 20 years of his life doing experiments with plants and earthworms with his son Francis

• Could he have achieved this without emotional attachment?

Joseph Heller

• Joseph Heller began work on Catch 22 shortly after he returned from the war himself

• He didn’t finish it until 20 years later

• It was published in 1961• He managed to use themes

from the Iliad, The Odyssey, Shakespeare, The Bible...

Michelangelo

• Michelangelo spent 4 years sculpting his statue ‘David’

Marie Curie

• Marie Curie was the first person to win 2 Nobel Prizes

• She died in 1934 after working with radioactivity for over 30 years

• It later transpired that the anaemia that killed her was caused by her exposure to radiation (she used to carry her test tubes around in her pocket)

Beethoven

• Beethoven began composing when he was still a child

• He started losing his hearing in his twenties (maybe as a result of lead poisoning)

• He wrote most of his greatest works when he was stone deaf including ‘Eroica’ and his 3rd to 11th Symphonies

Genius• All of these people are considered

geniuses in their fields• We associate genius with ease of

producing complex works• But without emotional energy, maybe true

genius can never be achieved– “ Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety

nine percent perspiration” Thomas Edison (1847-1931)

Are reason and emotion related?

• Your textbook suggests that it is difficult to truly separate reason and emotion and they therefore exist on some kind of a continuum:

• This continuum suggests that emotion and reason are somehow opposing. But that is not really true either. Emotion (or types of emotion) can be more ‘rational’ at some times than others perhaps.

Emotion Reason

http://edrontheoryofknowledge.blogspot.mx/2013/02/emotion-and-reason.html

http://edrontheoryofknowledge.blogspot.mx/2009/12/reason-and-emotion.html

Reason and Emotion

• Aristotle was one of the first to suggest that reason and emotion are related. He observed that:– “Anyone can be angry – that is easy. But to be

angry with the right person to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose and in the right way – that is not easy”

Emotion and Rationalism

• Even though we can rationalise our emotions now, there is still a problem in ‘switching them off’

• For example, how easy would you find it to eat a chocolate bar shaped like a dog poo, or drink apple juice from a perfectly new and clean bed pan?

Using Emotion

• It has been suggested that some people are better at reading emotions (and body language) than others

• Some people unconsciously (or perhaps consciously) mimic others’ body language in order to appeal to their emotions

• It has been suggested that Adolf Hitler had this chameleon-like quality

Or is this perhaps reading too much into people’s expressions in old photographs?

Animal Emotions

• Do you think animals possess emotions in the same (or similar) way to humans?

• Some scientists suggest that while animals have feelings (even animals closely related to us), only humans can truly have emotions

• Others think that our closest relatives can be said to possess emotions

Animal Emotions• Two brothers (Keisho and Alf) were reunited at a UK

safari park after 2 years apart. Their keepers thought they might not even recognise each other

• Do you think the following photos suggest they are experiencing joy at seeing each other?

• Do our own emotions cloud our judgement and make us anthropomorphise animal behaviour?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOWnXJW9LjI