Emotions and Other Minds

Unisinos Journal of Philosophy, 2017

Recently, several philosophers have called attention to the idea that there are occasions on which we can perceive (at least some) mental states of others. In this paper we consider two recent proposals in this direction: the co-presence thesis (Smith, 2010) and the hybrid model (Krueger & Overgaard, 2012). We will examine the aforementioned alternatives and present some objections against both of them. Then, we will propose a way of integrating both accounts which allows us to avoid such objections. Broadly stated, our idea is that by perceiving other people’s behaviors we also perceive their mental states because behaviors co-present some features of the latter, and that this perception of others’ minds is direct and immediate because behavior is a constitutive part of the mental states in question.

Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition (eds. Newen et al), 2018

Understanding Emotions: Mind and Morals, Aldershot: Ashgate

What is the relation between emotional experience and its behavioural expression? As very preliminary clarification, I mean by 'emotional experience' such things as the subjective feeling of being afraid of something, or of being angry at someone. On the side of behavioural expression, I focus on such things as cowering in fear, or shaking a fist or thumping the table in anger. Very crudely, this is behaviour intermediate between the bodily changes which just happen in emotional arousal, such as sweating or the secretion of adrenalin, and reasoned actions done 'out of an emotion', such as breathing deeply to clam down, or writing a letter of complaint, for which a standard rationalizing hence of what we mean by 'existence' for such things, hence of what it is for them to exist as we understand this. So how could their existence-again, insofar as we have any genuine conception of this-possibly be detached entirely from their being perceived? It must, rather, be tied in some way to perception (to their being perceived, actually, by us or by God; or to the possibility of certain perceptions of them under various counterfactual conditions). 2 Analogously, in my view, one problem of other minds, at least, can be put like this. Being psychologically ψ is precisely what is recognized as instantiated in a person's own subjective experience of being ψ. This is the most basic source of her conception of what being ψ consists in, hence of what she means by 'being ψ', hence of what it is to be ψ insofar as she understands this. So how could what it is to be ψ-again, insofar as she grasps what this is-possibly be detached entirely from her subjective experience? It must, rather, be tied in some way to that very experience. But then how is she supposed to make any sense at all of another's being ψ? How could anything ascribed simply on the basis of another's observable behaviour possibly be just that psychological condition? II 2 There is also, I think, a strong structural parallel here with one strand in Michael Dummett's more general challenge to realism of various kinds (Dummett, 1978, 1991). According to Dummett, truth, for statements in a given area, is precisely what we recognize to obtain when we verify such statements in the most basic way available in that area (by direct observation, in the empirical case, say; or by actually giving a proof in the mathematical case). To observe that p, for some empirical statement 'p', just is to observe that 'p' is true. This is the most basic source of our conception of what the truth of such statements consists in, hence of what we mean by 'truth' for such statements, hence of what it is for them to be true as we understand this. So how could their truthagain, insofar as we have any genuine conception of this-possibly be detached entirely from this method of verification? It must, rather, be tied in some way to the possibility of such verification. The difficult issue is precisely what the relation is between truth and verification in any given area, and what slack this leaves between truth and actual verification by us now. Nevertheless, if Dummett's argument is sound, the realist picture of empirical truth, say, as utterly unconstrained by our observational recognition of it is a metaphysical prejudice.

2020

Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 2012

Philosophers and psychologists have often maintained that in order to attribute mental states to other people one must have a 'theory of mind'. This theory facilitates our grasp of other people's mental states. Debate has then focussed on the form this theory should take. Recently a new approach has been suggested, which I call the 'Direct Perception approach to social cognition'. This approach maintains that we can directly perceive other people's mental states. It opposes traditional views on two counts: by claiming that mental states are observable and by claiming that we can attribute them to others without the need for a theory of mind. This paper argues that there are two readings of the direct perception claims: a strong and a weak one. The Theory-theory is compatible with the weak version but not the strong one. The paper argues that the strong version of direct perception is untenable, drawing on evidence from the mirror neuron literature and arguments from the philosophy of science and perception to support this claim. It suggests that one traditional 'theory of mind' view, the 'Theory-theory' view, is compatible with the claim that mental states are observable, and concludes that direct perception views do not offer a viable alternative to theory of mind approaches to social cognition.

Consciousness and Cognition, 2015

A very common way of approaching the topic of social cognition is to note that our ability to understand, anticipate and respond to others' psychological states is a truly remarkable achievement. After all, according to this idea, perception only gives us access to lines, surfaces, colors, etc., and from this we must somehow infer a world of hidden causes, with other people's psychological states being among the most hidden causes of all. Now, one may take this observation to be just obviously right, or one may regard it is as a harmless rhetorical device. In recent years, however, a number of philosophers and cognitive scientists have expressed the concern that this apparently innocent starting point in fact debilitates research on social cognition, because it smuggles in the false assumption that we cannot perceive the psychological states of other people. Although there are substantial differences among the positions espoused by these theorists, they are united in their defense of the central claim that it is possible to perceive (at least some of) the psychological states of other people. We will refer to this as the direct social perception thesis (DSP). According to DSP, social perception provides us with some form of (implicit or explicit) awareness or knowledge of (at least some of) the psychological states of others. Expressed in these terms, one may have the sense that DSP is so obviously true that there should be little reason for controversy. But if so, then there is a tension between two seemingly innocent and intuitive ideas: on the one hand, the DSP thesis, and on the other hand, the observation (alluded to above) that we must somehow infer others' psychological states from the low-level information we perceive. This tension raises essential questions that must be formulated clearly in order to pinpoint exactly what is at stake in this debate, where the disagreements lie, and what could possibly resolve them. The aim of this introduction is to articulate these questions and to clarify their relations among each other. To begin with, it is important to locate exactly where the disagreement between these two seemingly innocent and intuitive ideas lies. In elucidating the mainstream view which proponents of DSP oppose, Bohl and Gangopadhyay (2013) distinguish several versions of what they call the unobservability assumption (UA). First of all, UA may be understood as a phenomenological thesis to the effect that one does not experience oneself as perceiving others' psychological states, i.e. that others' psychological states do not (ever?) have the same kind of vividness or experiential presence as colors and shapes. Against this version of UA, phenomenologists might urge that perceiving someone's sadness, for example, is a qualitatively different experience from merely believing that they are sad, and that this is a distinction to which we should do justice. Second, UA may be interpreted as a metaphysical thesis stating that psychological states cannot be perceived because they are immaterial (implying a naïve dualism that few would want to endorse), because they are abstractions, or because they are brain states hidden within the skull. Third, it may be read as an epistemological thesis to the effect that perceptual experiences do not ground judgments about others' psychological states, at least not without the help of inference and background knowledge. Finally, UA may be understood as a psychological thesis about the processes by which we come to ascribe psychological states to others-i.e. that these are not perceptual processes. A common response on the part of mainstream approaches, however, has been to argue that even if we do perceive (some of) others' psychological states, we still need to account for how this is achieved, and mainstream accounts of mindreading are attempts to do just this. In this vein, Herschbach (2008), Michael (2011) and Lavelle (2012) have all argued that mindreading approaches offer accounts of the subpersonal inferential processes that underlie psychological state ascriptions. A first cluster of questions, then, is just what version of UA is affirmed or presupposed by what approach.

2007

Philosophia, 1983

In this paper I discuss (1) the nontechnical nature of the term "behavior"; (2) the need to revisit the Aristotelian concept of soul as the prime naturalistic subject matter of psychology; (3) the incompleteness of meaning when behavior is identified with movements or actions; (4) the implication of behavior in episodic and dispositional words and statements including mental terms; (5) that mental concepts are not learned by inner or outer ostension to physical properties of the speaker or of others; and (6) the concept of behavior involves a two-fold abstraction, involving speaking with terms about doing and saying, on the one hand, and speaking about those terms with which we speak, on the other.

Franz Brentano’s Philosophy After One Hundred Years

This paper offers a phenomenological interpretation of Brentano's view of mentality. The key idea is that mental phenomena are not only characterized by intentionality; they also exhibit a distinctive way of appearing or being experienced. In short, they also have a distinctive phenomenology. I argue this view may be traced back to Brentano's theory of inner perception (hereafter IP). Challenging the self-representational reading of IP, I maintain the latter is best understood as a way of appearing, that is, in phenomenological terms. Section 1 addresses Brentano's claim that IP is one mark of the mental alongside intentionality. Sections 2 and 3 present support for a phenomenological interpretation of IP. And Section 4 briefly discusses two objections.