EMOTIONS AND UNDERSTANDING

Flavio Williges (UFSM)

Eros Moreira Carvalho (UFRGS)

Introduction
Elgin (1996, 2008, 2009) advanced a theory of understanding according to which
it is a system of cognitive commitments in reflexive equilibrium (ER). The theory has
many virtues. Among them, that fictional and metaphorical elements may enhance
understanding, and that the notions of truth and objectivity are replaced by the notions
of tenability, truth enough and acceptability. It also admits something seldom
discussed in epistemology, namely that emotions can, when linked to other
commitments in a system, strengthen, deepen, and modulate a persons understanding
of herself and the world (2008, p. 48). However, emphasis on the need for adjustments
through reflection seems to rule out the possibility that some emotions carry with them a
kind of understanding that is not brought about through reflection. We intend to show
that there are non-reflexive capacities linked to emotions that enable and enhance
reflexive equilibrium.
1. A turn in epistemic investigations
The contemporary epistemic tradition tends to think of our cognitive condition as
guided by the search for understanding as well as knowledge. From this point of view,
notions earlier important in epistemology such as those of truth, objectivity, and
justification were not thrown away but connected to other notions such as those of
tenability and acceptability that have value in the enhancement of understanding. The
way the latter notions were inserted into the vocabulary of epistemology was
determined by the view one has of understanding. One of the most influential current
views of understanding is the one put forth by Catherine Elgin.
2. The objects of understanding
Elgin argues that the kind of understanding that matters for epistemology is the
one that exhibits epistemic success (a cognitive or informational grasp). There are kinds
that are irrelevant for epistemology: for example, when someone says, I understand the
pain youre going through, the word understand conveys empathy. In the cases that
do matter, understanding enables an epistemic entitlement: a cognitive or informational
grasp. Often this is explained by comparison with cases of knowledge. When someone
says, I know that the abolition of slavery came late in Brazil, an epistemic authorization
is issued (that person knows that Brazil was the last country to abolish slavery or
something to that effect). In cases of understanding, the person who understands this

seems to grasp not only a proposition but also a wider body of information, such as the
inhumane nature of slavery, the economic interests that were involved, peoples racism
at the time, the political context, etc. In understanding, Elgin says, the proposition
derives its epistemological status from a unified, integrated, coherent body of
information (Elgin, 2009, p. 2).
The sort of understanding of interest to epistemology then is in the first
instance a cognitive relation to comprehensive, coherent sets of cognitive
commitments. The understanding encapsulated in individual propositions
derives from an understanding of larger bodies of information. I understand
that the Comanches dominated the southern plains, because I grasp how that
proposition fits into and is justified by reference to a more comprehensive
understanding that embeds it. (2009, p. 3)

Understanding can then be conceived as a web or system of cognitive

commitments that contain not only propositions but also methods, values, principles and
epistemic sources such as perception, beliefs, emotions, etc. Given that with such a
variety of elements some particular items may conflict or contradict each other, the
cognitive commitments held presuppose some kind of mediation or adjustment in
mutually supporting relations. Elgin puts the notion of reflexive equilibrium to play that
role.
3. Reflexive equilibrium
The individual cognitive commitments that make up understanding must be
reasonable in the light of other commitments, and the whole system must be reasonable
in the light of other available models. This result comes through reflection, by weighing
the mutually supporting relations of the various commitments that make up the system.
This process or method reviews the elements that make up understanding. The
elements must be revised whenever necessary so that an acceptable degree of
coherence is reached. This suggests that reflexive equilibrium happens at a personal
level, consciously. Emotions would participate only as sources of information. In this
paper we would like to challenge this point.
4. The cognitive dimension of emotions
Although Elgin usually speaks of theoretical commitments in propositions and
beliefs, she also concedes that a system of understanding may contain emotional
elements.[2] The deliverances of emotions are part of the cognitive commitments of
understanding. Elgin uses a theory of emotions that is broader than traditional cognitive
theories, which view emotions as containing beliefs and beliefs as attitudes towards
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propositions. These traditional theories view the cognitive status of emotions as

something derived from the beliefs they contain (Elgin, p. 146): fear of dogs is an
emotion that has a cognitive aspect, because it contains the belief that dogs can bite
and hurt people. Without that belief, we would not fear dogs. Beliefs are what makes us
run away from dogs, or keep our eyes on them; beliefs are what respond for the
cognitive content of emotions.
Elgin rejects that view. She does not view beliefs as essential components of
emotions (we can feel afraid of something we believe to be false, for example), and
argues that emotions enhance understanding even when they are not about anything in
particular. She intends not to anesthetize emotion but to sensitize cognition to show
that the understanding we achieve is not indifferent to emotion but that understanding is
none the less objective for that (p. 147). Sensitizing cognition involves treating
emotions as a frame of mind or pattern of attention that synchronizes feelings,
attitudes, actions, and circumstances (Elgin, p. 149) 1. An example may be useful here:
Parental love [] is not just or even mainly a warm, fuzzy feeling that wells
up whenever ones child happens to impinge on ones consciousness. It
involves a concern of well-being, an interest in his interests, happiness for his
success, sadness over his setbacks, pride in his achievements, hope for his
future. (Elgin, p. 148)

Emotions thus have a preeminent role in the configuration of a system of

understanding, by setting thinking and action patterns. Elgin especially empathizes the
cognitive role of emotions associated with response-dependent properties and
saliences. Emotions are response-dependent, because they reveal aspects of reality
that would not be there without them. They are genuine properties of the objects that
possess them, but they owe their identities to responses they evoke (Elgin, 2008, p.
36). In other words, some properties are only accessible epistemically through the
emotions they bring about. If contemptibility is the property it is because of the
contempt it is apt to evoke, it would be astonishing if feelings of contempt did not afford
epistemic access to contemptibility (p. 36).
Besides this dimension, Elgin also points out that emotions enable us to perceive
some things as salient in the environment, and to respond emotionally to those things in
an advantageous way. For example, if we see someone in danger, we are able to
perceive (emotionally) the danger and identify saliences that otherwise we wouldnt and
that help appropriately with fear and the urge to flee. Parental affection allows us to
recognize saliences in the behavior of children in situations that require care or
intervention. Emotions are thus sources of saliences, because they bring to attention
some aspects of a situation. They act as spotlights (Peters, apud Brun & Kunsler,
2006, p. 17). They allow us to recognize saliences with an intensity and impact that
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would not be there without them, and they thus change the global pattern or structure of
thought.
By focusing attention, emotions even effect refinements in sensory
discrimination. To the uninitiated, babies cries sound pretty much alike. But
parents who are dismayed over their infants distress and concern alleviate it
learn to discriminate among cries. They acquire the ability to differentiate the
sounds of hunger, pain, frustration, and fear. What we hear depends on what
we listen to and what we listen for. (Elgin, 2008, p. 154)

Focusing on saliences associated with emotions we learn what is relevant, we

make inferences that otherwise we wouldnt or that wouldnt present themselves
convincingly. Hence, only agents equipped with an engaged affective sensibility see
some aspects or saliences of a situation.
This cognitive approach is susceptible to criticism. The two main challenges
come from emotions that are impermeable to reflection and emotions that are
misleading (i.e. they bring about biases and filters in cognition).

5. Bias and Emotions

There is evidence that our cognitive capacities filter information through

emotions. People tend to pay attention and become emotionally engaged with facts and
arguments that agree with their own views and interests, although they also tend to
scrutinize arguments and evidence contrary to their views and interests (Edwards &
Smith, 1996; Ross & Lepper, 1980). These kind of cognitive filter derives from beliefs
and interests. But there are also filters more directly associated with emotions, that
make a piece of information more (or less) vivid. According to Goldie, information is
vivid if it is likely to attract and hold our attention and to excite the imagination to the
extent that it is (a) emotionally interesting, (b) concrete and imaginary-provoking, and (c)
proximate in a sensory, temporal or spatial way (see Nisbett & Ross, 1980, apud
Goldie, p. 152).
Regarding (a), emotional interest, events tend of course to have more
emotional interest if we are ourselves directly involved. [] Regarding (b), a
concrete and imaginary-provoking event will be one which, roughly, has more
emotional content in virtue of the way what happened is grasped; the more
emotional detail there is available, the more salience and impact it will have.
And discussing the proximity of information (c), Nisbett and Ross give this
example: The news that a bank in ones neighbourhood has been robbed just
an hour ago is more vivid than the news that a bank on the other side of town
was robbed last week (Goldie, 2008, p. 152).
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Besides vividness, there is evidence that reasoning is motivated by sympathy or

attachment to certain views (e.g., political or theoretical). Among people with adequate
mathematical and statistical skills, the probability of correctly assessing empirical data in
charts vary according how faithful the charts are to the views with which those people
sympathize or feel loyal to (Kahan, Dawson, Peters, Slovic, 2013) [3]. This suggests that
emotions such as sympathy bring about biases and filters in the objective interpretation
of mathematical and statistical data.
Elgin concedes that there are misleading emotions, which induce people to
develop aspects of their views, which otherwise they wouldnt. But a system of
understanding without filters would eventually stall. An emotionless agent would be
epistemically inefficient, even in terms of tenability. Even biased emotions have a
positive role for understanding, insofar as vividness and sympathy provide cognitive
instruments.
A problem for Elgins theory is that there seem to be emotions impermeable to
reflexive adjustments. Goldie (2008) provided some reasons for viewing pessimistically
adjustments through emotional filters. Some emotions seem to be systematically
misleading. An example may be useful here:
The xenophobe tends immediately and unreflectively to react adversely to
those who are not like us, and to treat them with suspicion or ever worse. The
fast and frugal nature of such responses has some quite robust support from
well-known Harvard implicit association test for race, in which we are found to
respond much more quickly to terms such as good and nice when
juxtaposed with white faces than we do when they are juxtaposed with black
ones (Goldie, p. 156). The xenophobe, who believes that much of his
countrys troubles are due to immigrants, is faced with reliable statistics
showing that this is far from the case, and indeed that immigrants have done
much good for the economy. But with his xenophobia already in place, he
ignores the reliable data, and instead latches on to the vividness of the stories
in his Daily Mail of the latest crime by blacks against property or person.
(Goldie, p. 160)

In-group cohesion behavior and conflict with other groups seem to have played a
relevant evolutionary role, and tend to be resistant to reflexive adjustment. But this is
not too much of a problem for Elgins theory of understanding, since these kinds
emotions (such as xenophobia) are not too common or widespread. A system of
understanding may contain peripheral falsehoods.

6. Emotions and abilities

Elgin does not directly explore another possibility of an emotional sensitization of
the intellect, which is that emotions may in part cause what we perceive as making
sense or being relevant. For something to make sense meaningfully it must somehow
touch or move us. Consistency and explanatory coherence are not enough. The main
suggestion we would like to make in this paper is that emotions may play that role in our
understanding. They may do that at a pre-reflexive and sub-personal level. Emotions
are not in this sense be mental structures or patterns of attention (as Elgin says) that
synchronize attitudes, feelings and circumstances with epistemic ends, but emotional
patterns associated with a system of understanding. Emotions then act prior to any
reflexive equilibrium by activating or enhancing capacities associated with them.
We suggested initially that a system of understanding based on reflexive
equilibrium is incomplete. Emotions can contribute to understanding without being
directly involved with the bits of information that make up the understanding. Emotions
can be non-conscious immediately motivating processes that act on the cognition at a
sub-personal level.
One body of evidence for this derives from studies of the so-called trolley
problem by Cushman, Young and Greene (2010). This is the problem of explaining
divergence in the assessment of two similar situations. In the first, a trolley is running
out of control and might kill five people that are on it. If one pulls a lever next to the
tracks the trolley will change direction and stop. Those five persons will be then out of
danger, but someone else will certainly die (because the trolley will then run into her).
Most people tend to say that it is best to pull the lever. In another scenario, the trolley is
running out of control and the five people on it might die. But this time the only chance
of stopping it is by pushing someone (presumably someone big) onto the tracks. Most
people in this case say it would be wrong to push that person, even though the number
of people killed and saved in this case is the same. There is evidence that in this latter
case because of the personal nature of the interaction brain regions associated with
emotions become activated. This emotional trigger overcomes any consequentialist
reflexive inclination one might have had in the first scenario, and apparently indicates
that some sort of moral judgment is involved in the emotional response.
A second body of evidence comes from the role of positive and negative
experiences (Kahneman, 1999). Positive affection pushes thought towards greater
flexibility in information processing strategies, usually increasing strategic thinking and
solving problems that need to be solved (Isen, 2008, p. 549). People who are happy
and satisfied with their lives seem more flexible in this regard. Positive emotions are
markers of general well-being and happiness. This is a kind of emotion that increases
peoples current repertoire of thought-action and leads them to actions that build long
lasting personal resources (Fredrickson & Cohn, 2010, p. 782). Happiness, for
example, creates the need for playing, broadens ones boundaries and creativity in
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social, intellectual and artistic behavior. Satisfaction brings about the need to rekindle
past circumstances of ones life and to integrate them into new thoughts about oneself
and the world (Fredrickson & Cohn, 2010). Gratitude stimulates reflection and
reconceptualization of ones experiences, inclines towards reciprocating behavior, and
may increase ones concern for the prospects and desires of others. In morality and
personal interactions, experiments have shown that positive emotions increase attention
towards others and softens the distinction between others and I, or between groups.
This seems to happen at a sub-personal level. But insofar as it structures thought and
regulates ones focus, positive emotions are cognitive and informative, even when they
operate autonomously.
What these cases suggest is that: (1) emotions are not only special internal
operations that mutually adjust propositions and values in a system. They also operate
at a pre-reflexive level: there seem to be discrimination capacities associated with
emotions that operate non-consciously. This limits what reflexive equilibrium can
achieve. (2) But it does not entail that there are no reflexive mechanisms guided by
affective processes. Mental operations at a personal reflexive level can be enhanced by
emotional operations at a sub-personal affective level.
Conclusion
Elgin emphasized the role of emotions in the formation of beliefs and epistemic
commitments. The evidence discussed here is not conclusive regarding the nature of
emotions, but nonetheless seem to indicate that there are autonomous emotional
operations that enhance the reflexive equilibrium in Elgins model. Since emotions that
seem impermeable to reflexive equilibrium are not too many, and since most emotions
seem to influence reflexive equilibrium positively at pre-reflexive level, we conclude that
Elgins model can be nicely extended by admitting autonomous emotional mechanisms
that influence the choice of a coherent system of beliefs.
References

ELGIN, C. Considered Judgment. Princeton/New Jersey: Princeton University Press,

1996.
ELGIN, C. Is understanding factive? In: Epistemic Value, ed. Duncan Pritchard, Allan
Miller, Adrian Hadock. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009, pp. 322-330.

ELGIN, Catherine. Understanding and Emotions. In: BRUN, G. ; DOGUOGLU,

U.KUENZLE, D. Epistemology and Emotions. Hampshire: Ashgate publishing, 2008.
P.33-51.
GOLDIE, Peter. Seeing What is the Kind Thing to Do: Perception and Emotion.
Dialethica, 2007.
GOLDIE, P. Misleading emotions. In: BRUN, G. ; DOGUOGLU, U.KUENZLE, D.
Epistemology and Emotions. Hampshire: Ashgate publishing, 2008.p. 149-167.
CUSHMAN, F; YOUNG, L. GREENE, J. Multi-System Moral Psychology. In: DORIS, John. The
Moral Psychology Handbook. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.p. 47-72
FREDRICKSON, Barbara; COHN, Michael. Positive Emotions. In: LEWIS, Michael; HAVILAND
JONES, Jeannette; BARRET, Lisa. Handbook of Emotions. New York: Guilford Press, 2010. p.
777-797.
LUCAS, Richard. ; DIENER, Ed. Subjetive Well-Being. In: LEWIS, Michael;
HAVILAND-JONES, Jeannette; BARRET, Lisa. Handbook of Emotions. New York: Guilford Press,
2010. P. 471-484.
ISEN, Alice. Some Ways in which positive affects influences decision making. In: LEWIS,
Michael; HAVILAND-JONES, Jeannette; BARRET, Lisa. Handbook of Emotions. New York:
Guilford Press, 2010. P. 548-574.

[1] According to Elgin, Kvanvig assumes that the kind of understanding that matters to
epistemology comprises a coherent body of beliefs. However, coherence alone is not enough,
because a body of false beliefs makes no understanding. Kvanvig insists that we cannot
understand a subject matter unless most of the propositions and all of the central propositions
that constitute our coherent take on that subject matter are true. He allows that a few peripheral
falsehoods might degrade ones understanding of a subject matter, but not destroy it. (Elgin,
2009, p. 5). Elgin argues against Kvanvig that understanding must be thought as a grasp of a
comprehensive general body of information that is grounded in fact, is duly responsive to
evidence, and enables non-trivial inference, argument, and perhaps action regarding that
subject the information pertains to it (Elgin, 2009, p. 11).
[2] Linda Zagzebski maintained that understanding is fundamentally a matter of grasping how
various pieces of information relate to one another; it is a matter of making connections among
them, of seeing how they hang together (see Grimm, 2006, p. 517).
[3] Knobe and Sinnott-Armstrong point out that understanding intentional action, causation and
doing and allowing are influenced by moral judgments. How we assess people having
intentions, causing events and actively doing or passively allowing something would not be
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determined by standard cognitive mechanisms, but by prior moral judgements (Cushman,

Knobe,Sinnott-Armstrong; 2008; Knobe, 2010).