Judgment Day
A Review of Aaron Ben-Ze'ev's The Subtlety Of Emotions
Thomas Raab
Department for Philosophy of Science
University of Vienna
Sensengasse 8
A-1090 Vienna
AUSTRIA
tr@sil.at
Copyright (c) Thomas Raab 2002
PSYCHE, 8(18), October 2002
Previously Held: http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/v8/psyche-8-18-raab.html
KEYWORDS: emotion, judgment, folk psychology, mind-body problem, schema, Turing machine.
REVIEW OF: Aaron Ben-Ze'ev (2000). The Subtlety of Emotions.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. US $35 hbk. xv + 632 pp. ISBN: 0262024632.
ABSTRACT: This paper tries to cope with some crucial questions in the research on emotion, once more raised by Aaron Ben-Ze'ev's latest book. With reference to the obvious complexity of the topic, the author there circumvents any explicit theoretical commitment. Nevertheless, his arguments trend toward running along the lines of a sociologically based, cognitive theory of emotion. Although the book is -- especially in the second, analytical, part -- rich in description, I criticize the lack of an integrative theoretic approach. The book fosters a classical dualistic ontology which gets trapped within the problem of causation between mind and body (here: cognition and physiology).The folk psychological terminology used does not seem to be able to cope with emotions. I argue that folk psychological terms could eventually be replaced by automata theoretic metaphors as suggested by Oswald Wiener and propose the sketch of this model.
1. Introduction
The most puzzling fact about research on emotions in general seems to be
that -- contrary to many other scientific endeavors -- theorizing about
emotions obviously has to cope with missing consistent definitions.
Indeed, plainly all relevant scholars including Aaron Ben-Ze'ev in his
newest book and even dictionaries of cognitive science state that
establishing a stringent emotional theory would only yield such
definitions in the first place. What does that mean and why is this?
First of all, the proposition above seems to imply that in our times
emotions are still and foremost a philosophic question, as philosophy,
after all, primarily deals with the invention and clarification of
concepts, i.e. it is a definitional task. The reasons for this also seem
quite evident: (a) In thinking about the emotions one cannot circumvent
the notorious mind-body problem, and (b) scientific theories of the
emotions challenge even the deeply private "hard beliefs" of the
scientists themselves. As far as (a) is concerned, emotions are a bodily
thing and as theorizing is a matter of symbols and symbolic relations
one has to consider the relation of embodiment and symbols. In other
words, you need an (if not outspoken, then tacit) ontological
commitment. This is the crucial point and the reason why no stringent or
well-agreed theory of emotions has yet been established. And this is the
point that Aaron Ben-Ze'ev in his latest book The Subtlety of Emotions
has tried to omit silently. Although he contends that emotions are a
bodily phenomenon, he puts his "focus" on the conceptual level of
attitudes and dispositions. Yet, he does so on a psychological, folk
phenomenological level. On the one hand, this enables him to give
detailed folk psychological analyses of a range of emotions in the
second part of the book. On the other hand, he fails to even sketch the
outline of an emotional theory other than already existing cognitive
theories of emotions such as Ortony et al. (1988), for instance.
Yes indeed, emotions are a subtle and ticklish topic. Ben-Ze'ev has
taken on the sheer hopeless, yet necessary task of writing an up-to-date
compendium of research and philosophy on emotions. Concentrating largely
on psychological and some basic philosophical issues, he has succeeded
in bringing together a most thoroughly elaborated list of references and
combined it with his own insights. The outcome is a lengthy written
textbook with a nice selection of livening up quotes. Nevertheless,
after 632 small print pages a strange feeling of dissatisfaction has
overwhelmed the reviewer. Let me try to explain why.
2. A Rather Implicit Theory
The main thesis put forward by the author is that emotions are first and
above all generated by judgments. This puts him on the side of the
so-called cognitive attribution theorists of emotion. In differentiating
between physiological aspects, cognition and evaluation in the generation of emotions, he interestingly draws a distinction between the two latter, although evaluation is usually being taken as a subcategory of cognition. However, definitions of the latter two concepts which seem so crucial for the author's argument cannot be found in the book. Emotions, according to Ben Ze'ev, arise from subjective evaluative judgments on the agent's situation, in other words, they generally emerge from cognitive, social constructions. "An emotion involves an ongoing activity in which we are constantly evaluating new information and acting accordingly." (p. 5). Contrary to James (1884), for instance, the causation is one-way from mind towards the body, that is, neurophysiological and visceral activity. The latter are explicitly not treated with in the book and, interestingly, the author also does not discuss the widely influential arousal-attribution theory of Schachter and Singer (1962).
Ben-Ze'ev goes on to argue that the background of all evaluative judgments is comparative, both in terms of social comparison and in comparison of one's present situation with earlier situations. Emotions arise when there is a change in the subjective conception of one's personal situation. Briefly, the typical emotional concern is described by referring to the following aspects: the comparative concern, the availability of an alternative, social comparison, and group membership (p. 18). Furthermore, the author states that the typical, yet not necessary emotion-triggering object is a human being or some other living creature. The four background variables together with the typical objects indicate that his primary concern is sociological. As sociological descriptions of situations do not seem to be sufficient, Ben-Ze'ev goes on to "clarify" the underlying cognitive mechanisms.
The basic cognitive assumptions to be found are (a) that the basic
mental dimensions of emotions are intentionality and subjective feeling,
(b) that there has to be a cognitive "component" of emotions which
carries the necessary descriptive information on the object, (c) that
deliberative and schematic evaluations are involved, (d) that there is a
motivational "component," and (e) that the feeling "component" can be
divided into pleasurable and painful feelings. The link between the
cognitive component and the others is contingent, as the same "cognitive
content" can give rise to different emotions depending upon the
situation the agent is in.
On phenomenological consideration, the generative variables listed above
are not enough to fully describe the idea of emotion. Here, the author
tries to specify emotional states by means of the variables stability,
intensity, partiality, and brevity.
All these variables above enable the author to classify affective
phenomena into emotions and moods, the latter less intense, without
specified object (less partial), more stable, and longer. Another
discrimination is between emotions and sentiments, the latter lasting
longer, being more stable, and more dispositional, as expressed in the
example of anger (emotion) versus hostility (sentiment). Even more on
the dispositional side are the affective traits which represent
tendencies to act in a specific affective manner and which can last a
lifetime.
From the beginning of the book, the author makes clear that not only the
classification of the emotions but also the relations among them are
"fuzzy." Pertaining to Eleanor Rosch's prototype theory, he believes
that the latter may be suitable for describing both emotional phenomena
and categories. Although all emotions can be described as a kind of
liking or disliking of something on a general level, a cognitive theory
has to refer to "contents", that is a taxonomy that involves more
specific dispositions of agents in the generation of emotions.
Therefore, Ben-Ze'ev adopts Ortony et al.'s (1988) emotional
classification that differentiates emotional evaluation into three
subgroups of concerns: the fortune of the agent, actions of agents, and
the agent as a whole (p.94). With the help of this generalization, he
manages to conceive of a classification scheme that grounds the emotions
in relations between agents or the relation of the agent towards himself
or herself. This classification yields pairs that somehow oppose each
other, but for reasons of interrelational complexity do not represent
exactly diametrical opposites. This is also for plainly linguistic
reasons, because there are more differentiated categories for negative
emotional categories, as the author observes (p. 99).
From the point of the amount of cognition involved in the generation of
particular emotions, Ben-Ze'ev discerns between a schematic evaluation
mechanism and a deliberative evaluation mechanism. The notion of
"schema" is used here in an informal sense (e.g., Neisser, 1976) as
involving "spontaneous responses depending on a more tacit and
elementary evaluative system" (p. 58). Contrariwise, deliberative
evaluations involve "slow and conscious processes, which are largely
under voluntary control." (p. 57). It would seem, then, that more
"primitive" emotions such as impulses connected to immediate survival
and procreation (e.g. sexual desire) or aesthetic emotions are more
schematic and hence more difficult to analyze. Anyway, emotions are --
according to the author -- never generated by either of the two
processes alone but always by specifically varying portions of them.
An interesting point is made, when the author considers the recently
flourishing notion of "emotional intelligence." Recurring on Spinoza's
Ethics (Spinoza, 1677/2000), he links emotional knowledge, which is
the triggering of situation-specific "appropriate" action by immediate
emotional responses, to expert knowledge which others have described as
"intuitive" and "embodied" (Dreyfus, 1992; Merleau-Ponty, 1962; Raab and
Frodeman, 2002). In this sense, being emotionally intelligent is like
being skilled in driving a car, for instance, suggesting that emotional
intelligence can be learned and evolves during a lifetime. How this
learning and evolution is achieved, however, remains in the dark. Ben
Ze'ev neither makes a case for an underlying physiological nor for a
psychological mechanism but rather withdraws to statements of
resignation.
On several occasions we'll hear the author emphasize that emotions are a
complex topic. To clarify at least his general evaluation hypothesis, he
tries to describe the various interactions between different emotions
(or rather, emotional categories) and imaginations as well as factors,
which determine the intensity of the former. The second part of the
book, entitled "Analyzing Emotions" lays out some detailed descriptions
of these interrelations, focussing on the concepts of envy, jealousy,
pity, compassion, being happy for someone else,
pleasure-in-others'-misfortune, anger, hate, disgust, contempt, romantic
love, sexual desire, happiness and sadness, hope, fear, pride, regret,
guilt, embarrassment, pridefulness, and shame.
3. The Examples
Based on the attribution theory sketched above, Ben-Ze'ev analyzes these
emotions by a differential conceptual analysis. Which social situation
generates which emotion with what cognitive, evaluative, imaginative,
and motivational "reasoning" involved? Each and every of the emotional
categories mentioned above is systematically described by general cases
of their instantiation and comments on the semantic borderline, and the
relationships to other emotions, intensity variables, and their "moral"
value.
Since the author suggests that the most common emotions are concerned
with interpersonal relationships, the grouping into chapters is based on
comparisons of agents with other agents or the reflexive relationship of
the agent with himself or herself. Therefore, the chapter entitled "When
You Are Bad, I Am Mad", for instance, brings together the categories of
anger, hate, disgust, and contempt in a comparative manner. The only
reference to the subjective "feeling" of emotions is made in the chapter
on romantic love and sexual desire, entitled "The Sweetest Emotions."
In principle, the analyses presented in the book sketch the surface
mechanics of the generation of emotions within the normal western social
context. They are an attempt of providing explanations on the basis of
internalized representations of social situations (schemata) referring
to folk psychological notions such as self-esteem, imagination etc.
Because of the richness and length of Ben Ze'ev's elaboration, I will
very briefly try to duplicate "arbitrarily" chosen examples, romantic
love and sexual desire.
In contrast to sexual desire, of which the basic evaluative pattern
consists of the "appealingness" of other agents, romantic love comprises
both "appealingness" and "praiseworthiness." The author goes on to
contrast "enduring love", which is not so much an emotion but a
long-term attitude towards another person with all his or her physical
and psychological traits, with romantic love that is fueled more by
appealingness than praiseworthiness. Therefore, sexual desire is more
important a factor in romantic love than in enduring love. As one will
easily notice, appealingness arises rather spontaneously, whereas
praiseworthiness as a rational, linguistic argument implies a "more
cognitive" evaluation of the beloved. Love is, so to say, defined as not
having a describable cause, as one usually does not want to be "loved"
for reasons of social consensus such as "beauty", "money" or the like,
but for one's "deeper" and fuzzier traits such as kindness, humor, or
wisdom. Here one of the major contradictions in the author's
argumentation becomes fairly clear. Although being a social
constructionist of emotion, he misses the point that romantic love is
obviously built upon a somewhat "religious" consensus, that the lovers
are "made for each other", not in a sober sense of matching personality
traits but as a stroke of fate. He continues by stating that
appealingness and praiseworthiness are not independent either, as there
is much evidence that judgments of attractiveness influence judgments of
intelligence, sociality and morality. Hence, "attractive people are
socially assigned more praiseworthy personality attributes than are
unattractive people." (p. 409)
Regardless of the deep metaphysical connotation of romantic love rooted
in the dialectics of the Enlightenment, the author quite laconically
relates desirabilty of "beloved" persons to mere social comparison. This
is corroborated by results of studies, which seem to show that men who
are "discovered" having sex with "unattractive" women instead of "trophy
wives" suffer social humiliation by losing status and prestige within
their reference group. This leads on to considerations on sexual desire
which is, again, not entirely independent of romantic love. Although not
completely absent, praiseworthiness seems to play little role in the
generation of sexual desire. "The intentional capacities involved in
sexual desire are more primitive than those involved in romantic love."
(p. 411). This sounds like a more sophisticated argument for the
commonsensical and hardly deniable stance that sexual desire represents
an animalistic feature of human agents.
What are the characteristics of the relation between lovers? "In love,
we wish to know the beloved and be known by the beloved, to form a
unique and intimate relationship with the beloved, to improve the
beloved's situation, and so on." (p. 415). Since the most prominent
feature of romantic love is the exclusivity of its object (high value of
the variable "partiality"), we tend to care for the beloved most, to
"intrude" his or her thoughts in order to form a unity. According to
Ben-Ze'ev, love does paradoxically not imply a general concern for the
beloved's happiness and well-being, which is exemplified in the fact
that lovers often hurt each other. This is interpreted by the author as
a "warning signal" to change something in the relationship.
Ben-Ze'ev states that, in contrast to sexual desire which seems to imply
an intrinsically replaceable and nonexclusive object, romantic love is
based on the non-replacability of the beloved, although this cannot be
accepted from a pragmatic perspective. Drawing on anthropological
research and evolutionary theory, the author invokes brain chemistry
which suggests that romantic love expires after about four years, the
time "primitive" couples stayed together to rear one child through
infancy (p. 423). In modern society, this seems to be the time when
"enduring love" must start which is less intense and more connected to
commitment.
Since the basic factor underlying emotional intensity is situational
change, it is not surprising that sexual desire seems to decrease in
intensity over time with the same partner. Given the fact, that romantic
love is -- according to Ben Ze'ev -- strongly connected to sexual
desire, the intensity of enduring love is smaller. In the line of this
reasoning, the author explains the abundance of extramarital sex
affairs, which do not necessarily harm the love relationship directly,
but does so more often by other usually accompanying dispositions such
as lying, illoyalty etc.
Summing up, the second part of the book presents thoroughly investigated
analyses of socially determined emotional categories in terms of the
situation that leads to their attribution. In avoiding
oversimplifications, the author manages to give a well understandable
account of the instantiation of various emotional categories. However,
he again refrains from conceptual generalizations which makes it hard to
figure out a theory behind his accounts that is deeper than common
sense.
4. Some Comments
Although very thoroughly researched and supplied with an excellent
bibliography, I believe that the book has two shortcomings on the formal
level. First, with no consistent theory at hand and by trying to
incorporate all conceptual and philosophical ambiguities (without
discussing the philosophical roots of the conceptual problems in
detail), the author fails to keep the reader focused. On numerous
occasions he leaves his cautious attempts of analysis by withdrawing to
the stance that each and every theory available may be right to a
certain degree. Hence, although the well placed introductions and
summaries pick up the thread every time the reader has lost it, a
general argumentative line is hard to distill. The style of the text is
quite clear but lengthy in nature. Secondly, a complex topic like this
would definitely need a more handy layout, more figures, tables or even
loosening up comics than the merely two found in the book.
Even if in part II Ben Ze'ev manages to shed some light on a multitude
of consensual emotional categories, he makes the general topic of
affective phenomena even more confusing with regard to theory. His
refusal to explicitly commit himself to one of the already existing
theories by rejecting certain aspects of each, yet adopting some portion
for his own ad hoc argumentative purposes, leaves the reader standing in
the rain. At each point of reading one has to ask oneself whether the
aspects chosen is a scientific or rather a pragmatically therapeutic
one. With regard to the scope of the book, one may assume that it is
supposed to be used in the classroom. This, however, cannot be
recommended, because the lack of an explicit stance forces the reader to
interpret each portion of the text on his or her own, which seems
somewhat counterproductive for a textbook. Readers interested in
cognitive theories of emotions are better off with the shorter and more
concise Ortony et al. (1988).
Naturally, Ben-Ze'ev does not imply that all evaluations which trigger
emotions necessarily take place within the reach of our awareness as
indicated by his distinction between deliberative and "schematic"
(intuitive) evaluations. Although the value of the notion of schema is
widely accepted in psychology in general, a consensus on its definition,
let alone on its formalization, is still lacking. How are schemata
implemented in our bodies and how do they relate to the visceral aspects
of emotion? Instead of dealing with this obviously central question, the
authors contents himself with fluffy statements, such as: "Physiological
factors are crucial in dealing with simple feelings, and intentional
components in dealing with emotions." (p. 91).
As other theoreticians of emotion, it seems that the author conceives of
cognition as temporally prior to physiological reactions. This one-way
causality is the opposite of James' (1884), which is therefore rejected
in the book (p. 75). The evaluative background (context) of emotional
judgments is not considered cognitive which let the reader assume that
Ben-Ze'ev equates "cognition" with "thinking we are aware of." Although
the search for a definition of the latter has fueled much debate on
"mental images", "inner speech" and so on, the concept has not more than
heuristic value in the context of this book.
The author's dualistic and judgmental conception of emotions also forces
him to take a rather strange stance on moods and "affective disorders"
that are abundant in modern society, e.g. depression, anxiety. Lacking a
clear "intentional object" in the classical interpretation of the notion
following Brentano, Husserl, and more recently Searle, Ben-Ze'ev
replicates the commonsensical idea that these phenomena are seen rather
as causes, and not reasons for specific behaviors. Lacking a cognitivist
explanation for moods and "disorders", he does not hesitate to leave
them to the physiologist (or rather the physiological pathologist),
thereby providing good arguments for our Prozac society (p. 89 ff.).
This leads me further to consider other subliminally ideological aspects
of this work.
Although there is no doubt that the basic function of all affective
phenomena is the selective "filtering" of specific situational aspects
in order to spare time for bodily action and that emotions are generally
rooted in phylogenetic development, the issue of human emotions gets far
more complicated. As social mechanisms, emotions do not only regulate
action dispositions of the individual but also control the overall
behavior of the social group (Harre, 1986). The major tool for social
regulation is usually referred to as "morality" which is expressed as
consensual evaluations of what should be done and what not. One could
say that the instantiation of many of our emotions (not their
existence!) is controlled via "ideas". Affective regulation also depends
on socioeconomic design, so to say. Hence, political issues cannot be
left out when we talk -- like Ben-Ze'ev does -- chiefly about
interpersonal emotional categories. Although Ben-Ze'ev does stress this
claim, however implicitly, he does not enter the topic in detail. The
omission of acknowledging ideological (i.e. morally normative) aspects
of the emotion categories discussed drowns his analyses in rather
traditional bourgeois arguments of the West.
In the section on envy (chapter 10), for instance, the author argues
that "the claim to equality is merely a desire to improve our personal
situation and thus does not appear when inequality favors us." (p. 316).
He believes that egalitarian societies such as the kibbutz, for
instance, do not eliminate but foster an increase of envy in the
individuals. Mainly, this results from the fact that the comparative
concern of envy is based on comparisons within the reference group of
the individual which tends to be similar to the social group in
egalitarian societies. If the "social gap" between two individuals,
expressed by symbolic variables such as income difference, is too large,
envy does not arise. Therefore, Ben-Ze'ev argues, the background and the
opportunities of each group member are more or less similar, which makes
them responsible for their own social status. Greater responsibility for
one's own situation typically intensifies emotions, hence the author
predicts that egalitarian societies would have an increase of envy.
"When social and economic gaps are large, the chances of rage, hate,
frustration, and several types of violent reactions are greater. When
these gaps are narrow, a reduction in these attitudes usually follows,
together with an intensification of envy." (p. 321). Here again, a
thorough argument yields a somewhat ambiguous conclusion, because envy
is obviously strongly related to rage, hate, frustration, and violent
behavior.
In rejecting the claim that the function of all emotions is
motivational, i.e. that emotions control actions and thoughts, Ben-Ze'ev
invokes two examples, aesthetic emotions on the one hand and temporally
backward-looking emotions on the other. While the second objection can
be ruled out quite easily by adopting the author's own view that many
emotions involve imagination and that imagination allows to suspend
time's arrow, thereby putting the agent in a position "as if" she could
control her past emotions another way, the first objection is worth
considering. Quite similar to moods with respect to a rather vague
emotional object and unclear evaluative criteria, aesthetic emotions
indeed pose a problem to the motivational grounding of affects in
general. Elsewhere, I put forward and defend the working hypothesis that
such emotions of "being touched" in certain landscapes (the "Romantic
sublime") is based on an evolutionary old substrate, the autonomic
triggering of which is overruled by top-down modulation. The latter is
specific to "free" societies which -- due to their economic wealth --
allow a larger number of individuals to experience this originally
negative physiological reaction as "aesthetic."
5. Circumventing the Mind-Body Impasse in Emotion Theory by Turing Machines
As already mentioned I sense two fundamental problems at the heart of
Ben Ze'ev's enormous effort of trying to put the various emotion
"theories" at hand into a unified picture: (a) with regard to theory he
gets trapped into the traditional mind-body or, here,
cognition-physiology impasse, and (b) with regard to terminology the
framework of folk psychology keeps him from being able to dig deeper.
The author rightly contrasts "thought" and "emotion" -- as possibly to
be observed phenomena -- with the underlying "schemata" which produce
and control this thought and emotion. It is certainly right that the
latter are -- as mechanisms -- not accessible to direct introspection,
but instead of picking up the task of clarifying these relations,
Ben-Ze'ev seems to give in.
In the following I will briefly sketch the general premises of a
universal mechanistic model for the interplay "cognition" and "emotion"
which I believe of being capable of circumventing the ontological
mind-body impasse. By doing so, I will draw on more than thirty years of
research of Oswald Wiener (e.g., Wiener, 1995; Wiener, 1996; Wiener,
2002). Note that Ben-Ze'ev does not in principle rule out the idea of
computational models for emotions, when computation is understood as the
simple transition of one state to another, that is, computation without
meaning or content attached to those states (p. 59 f.). Yet, he does not
touch on this crucial topic in the further course of the text.
By and large, Wiener's project aims at ruling out folk psychological
terms by replacing them with concepts of automata theory. The basic
building block of his psychology is that the above mentioned central
notion of "schema" can be formalized as special purpose Turing machine
(henceforth: TM). From an ontological perspective this clue has one
great advantage: a special purpose TM is both a concept and to be
implemented as a material object (i.e. a computer program), a fact which
yields a fundamental ontological equivalence of "cognition" and
"physiological mechanisms" on the level of mechanistic explanation. The
main advantage of this trick is not only the bold circumvention of the
notorious ontological discussion (the so-called "hard problem of
consciousness") but -- more importantly -- a very pragmatic explanatory
one: It can be proven that for each and every TM which accepts as
input a specific string or a specific set of strings there exists an
effective procedure which -- with the program of TM as input -- computes
a TM' which generates the same string or set of strings as output.
With regard to our problem this implies that "emotion modules" can
communicate and control "cognitive schemata" and vice versa, which not
least matches our everyday intuition that affective states we happen to
be in control our thoughts and vice versa.
From developmental observations on children the aforementioned two
primitive emotions defined as having as modules a positive or negative
action disposition are defined as pre-models. Pre-models are hard-wired,
whereas models -- which may or may not include pre-models as modules --
are learned during one's lifetime. Only models can run in detached mode,
i.e. they can generate their output on an "internal screen." Only then
we say: "the organism 'thinks'." Pre-models cannot print onto the screen
which can be easily intuited by the simple observation that we cannot
remember emotions directly but only reproduce the situation an emotion
was felt in, and then some similar, yet usually less intense emotion may
occur.
Also in accordance with our intuitions we can state that not all
models we have are ready to accept input all the time. We thus name the
currently running model activated, the potentially to be activated
models in the "running environment" of the activated model actualized,
and all other models "out of use". With reference to Piaget (1967) I
emphasize that all schemata "want to be fed," so when an agent gets into
a new situation all actualized models will try to accept (i.e.
"interpret") the sensory (body-external and somatosensory) strings
generated by the situation. The emotion categories Ben-Ze'ev uses in
part II of his book are labels of specific models. So when an autonomic
positive or negative primitive emotion is generated as output, all
actualized models of emotions will try to accept as input. Only in
ambivalent situations, i.e. if and only if more than one of these
emotion models is suited to accept the autonomic signal, the emotion
will be printed ("broadcasted") onto the screen. In everyday words, only
then we "feel" an emotion. With regard to Ben-Ze'ev, one has to say that
emotions only get attributed, if they reach the screen which necessarily
occurs after the fact. Only then, they are hence registered and
attributed by the human agent: She or he will then "give them a name".
This model, hence, can be viewed as a more formalized version of the
arousal-attribution theory of Schachter and Singer (1962).
Since this is a functionalist approach, as affective phenomena are seen
mainly as motivational. For this purpose, Wiener (2002) introduces the
notion of "pressure towards an end." With regard to what is happening on
the screen (and is hence first-person empirical, so to speak), one could
think of the function of the "emotion module" as evolutionarily
pre-modeled part of the heterarchy of TMs of the running environment
that "chooses" certain modules ("aspects") of other machines to become
focal on the screen in order to save time of action. The "pressure
towards an end" thus operates on models which are nothing but more
complex modulations of evolutionarily hard-wired survival mechanisms.
Fully aware that this very raw sketch of a theory can at most hint
towards the explanatory strength of Wiener's model (Wiener, 1995; 1996),
I believe it sufficient to attempt consistent re-definitions of
affective phenomena without getting lost in the bewilderment of folk
theories of emotions as exemplified in Aaron Ben Ze'ev's Sublety of
Emotions.. The fully formulated model is to be published soon.
6. Conclusion
Drawing mainly on traditional cognitive theories of emotions, Aaron
Ben-Ze'ev's The Subtlety of Emotions is a largely descriptive book
that concentrates on the (definitely) socially constructed instantiation
of emotions. Especially the second part of the text is rich in --
unfortunately merely folk psychological -- description and represents a
very thorough investigation of the social generation of a multitude of
emotional concepts. According to the author, those concepts are always
connected to the "evaluation" of specific social situations of the
emotional agent. On the theoretical level, the text lacks a unifying
conceptual framework, not to mention a theory in a strict sense. In this
essay, I have tried to shed some light on the fundamental conceptual
difficulties of attribution theories of emotion. I sense their
fundamental flaw in not being able to reconcile the mentalistic notions
of psychology ("cognition", "perception" and the like) with
materialistic ideas of physiology (e.g. "bodily arousal"). The sketch of
a terminologically alternative model based on the stringent terminology
of automata theory in the formulation of the Turing machine was
suggested. The model suggested could be a starting point for coping with
the fundamental theoretical problems Aaron Ben-Ze'ev's book points to.
Acknowledgments
Thomas Raab's current post-doc research on a machine model of
(aesthetic) emotion is supervised by Oswald Wiener and was funded by an
Erwin Schroedinger grant of the Austrian Science Fund (No. J1877-ARS).
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