Review: [untitled] Author(s): Jesse Prinz Reviewed work(s): On the Emotions by Richard Wollheim Source: Ethics, Vol.

113, No. 1, Symposium on Ronald Dworkin's "Sovereign Virtue." (Oct., 2002), pp. 188-190 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/779655 Accessed: 28/04/2009 10:36
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Wollheim, Richard. On the Emotions. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1991. Pp. 208. $30.00 (cloth). Richard Wollheim's On theEmotionsoffers a grand theory of the emotions. Wollheim argues that emotions are neither beliefs nor desires, neither mental events nor motivations, but a sui generis class of mental dispositions that color our experience of the world. The arguments for this theory are underdeveloped in some places and unconvincing in others, but one can certainly profit from considering the conclusions to which they lead. Before examining Wollheim's substantive claims, it is worth commenting on his methodology. Wollheim calls his approach "applied philosophy." It is distinguished from conceptual analysis in that it purports to describe the world itself, rather than our concepts of the world. But Wollheim's use of this method suffers from two peculiarities. First, if one is learning by observation, then one should also look at the observations of others, including those doing experimental psychology. If we seek to describe the world as it is, we should study it by whatever means we have at our disposal. Wollheim does not call on experimental psychology. Nor does he call much on the many philosophers who have reflected on the emotions. However, Wollheim does draw from literature and psychoanalysis, where applied philosophy is, arguably, a regular practice. Second, Wollheim sometimes offers counterintuitive observations without adequate defense. Philosophers who avoid conceptual analysis are entitled to make surprising claims (some truths are not yet reflected in platitudes), but such claims stand in need of defense. Reading these lectures, one gets the impression that Wollheim is actually doing Martian conceptual analysis. He is making a priori pronouncements, but his concepts are strangely alien. More charitably, one might venture that Wollheim is doing what scientists (or psychoanalysts) do when they construct theories. He is presenting claims that may be surprising at first, but they gain support from the explanatory fruit they bear. If that is the case, one wonders, what are the explananda? Wollheim's theory is coherent, even elegant, but it is unclear what agreed-upon facts he seeks to systematize. Let us turn from methodology to content. Wollheim advances three core claims about what emotions are. First, he says they involve attitudes that color our view of the objects toward which they are directed. This is an interesting claim, but it never advances above the level of metaphors. We never learn what attitudes are, whether they are cognitive or noncognitive, or whether they are amenable to normative assessment (can an attitude of this kind be justified?). We are often told of the conditions that lead up to an attitude, but it sometimes seems that we never get to the attitudes themselves. Wollheim does offer the helpful suggestion that attitudes involve the perception of a correspondence between the object of an emotion and some desire that the object frustrates or satisfies. But Wollheim admits that the operative notion of correspondence defies explanation. He also draws a link between attitudes and narrative, approvingly citing R. de Sousa's proposal that emotions involve comparisons to paradigm scenarios (see TheRationalityof Emotions[Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987]). One wonders, here, whether "attitude" is a uniform construct or a catchall for

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the information that comes to mind when we view the world through our emotions. Without more detail, we are also left wondering whether emotions can be reduced to some other class of mental states. Perhaps they are complex assemblies of evaluative judgments and value-informed perceptions. Desires lie at the heart of Wollheim's second core claim. He says that emotions generally occur when a desire is assessed as met or frustrated (the "originating condition"). This thesis enjoys support among some contemporary psychologists (e.g., K Oatley, Best Laid Schemes: The Psychology ofEmotions [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992]; and N. L. Stein, T. Trabasso, and M. D. Liwag, "A Goal Appraisal Theory of Emotional Understanding: Implications for Development and Learning," pp. 436-57 in The Handbook of Emotions, ed. M. Lewis and J. M. Haviland-Jones, 2d ed. [New York: Guilford, 2000]). Meeting and frustrating desires usually has an emotional impact. But the link may be looser than these authors presume. If I experience joy after receiving a gift, must we conclude that I had a prior desire for a gift? If I experience panic when someone pulls the chair from under me, is my emotional response preceded by a lightning fast judgment that losing support violates my goals? Desires are things we seek to achieve. Emotions can arise without prior pursuit. We are often surprised by what pleases and disturbs us. Emotions can occur in response to benefits and harms that we never considered. Other benefits and harms may be hardfrom rough and tumble play, fear of loud noises, distress when wired-delight a caregiver leaves. Here, we can imagine that natural selection has engineered a direct link between a perceived event (a loud noise) and an emotion (fear) (see J. LeDoux, The Emotional Brain [New York: Simon & Shuster, 1996]). To assume that a desire must precede each emotion seems to add a level of unnecessary complexity in the process of emotion generation. Wollheim admits that some emotions do not hinge on desires, but his exceptions are limited to those emotions that involve the self. He says that guilt and shame, in particular, arise when the sense of self "falls" in the eyes of a fantasized critic. Wollheim identifies this critic with the superego (he is an unabashed Freudian and is also given to uncritical Kleinean excesses). This proposal is more plausible for shame than for guilt. As Wollheim observes, guilt is usually directed toward particular acts, not the self as a whole. One can feel guilty about a transgression without feeling like a bad person. The reification of a superego also seems forced. One can feel guilty about a transgression without imagining an inner critic. The critic can be oneself. We sometimes think about how our actions would be regarded by an imagined other but not always. I can believe that everyone else would endorse my choices and still feel that they violate my own private standards. Imagining an inner critic that is dissociable from my agentive self is gratuitous in this case. Wollheim's third core claim is the most peculiar. He says that emotions are dispositions, rather than occurrent mental states. The feelings we associate with fear and joy are not emotions but emotional effects. Most students of emotion assume that emotions can have both occurrent and dispositional forms. A person can fear flying in a dispositional sense and experience that fear on particular occasions. Other emotion scholars assume that emotions are always mental events or processes. Wollheim's thesis is intriguing, but we are never told exactly why he takes it to be true. Does the person who experiences an intense feeling

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of fright when Godzilla unexpectedly attacks really harbor a dispositional fear of Godzilla before the attack? What if it had never occurred to her that Godzilla would attack? We are forced to say she had the disposition all along or that her feeling is not a case of fear. The former option is true only in a trivial sense (every mental event depends on the fact that we are creatures with certain capacities), and the latter is an insult to intuition. Wollheim acknowledges such counterexamples but does not revise his thesis, implying that it is just a verbal curiosity that emotion terms have both occurrent and dispositional uses (p. 11). An alternative possibility is that dispositional uses of emotion terms are parasitic on occurrent uses (see J. J. Prinz, Emotional Perception [New York: Oxford University Press, in press]). A dispositional fear is a disposition to have occurrent fear, but occurrent fear does not require dispositional fear. Wollheim's lectures touch on issues that will interest moral philosophers. In addition to his thoughtful analyses of shame and guilt, he defends a challenging claim about the relationship between motivation and emotion. It is widely assumed that emotions impel us to act. Not so, says Wollheim. Emotions are not intrinsically motivating. This thesis bears on debates in moral psychology. Those who think that moral convictions are intrinsically motivating sometimes assume that they have motivating force because they are essentially linked to emotions. Those who deny that moral convictions are intrinsically motivating often presume that they gain motivational impetus once they are conjoined with emotions (Hume can be read this way). Wollheim does not discuss this debate, but his thesis implies that both sides are wrong. Emotions cannot give moral convictions motivational force. One can feel passionate about a cause with no urge to act. If that is right, then the debate between internalists and externalists cannot be solved by tracing the link between moral judgment and emotion. The parties must focus instead (as some have) on the link between moral judgment and desire. Wollheim's motivation thesis also raises questions about recent work by neurologist Antonio Damasio (see his Descartes 'Error [NewYork: Putnam, 1994]). Damasio finds that patients with brain injuries that compromise their ability to assign emotional significance to situations often make bad decisions, despite their ability to name the decisions that would be best. This suggests that emotions play a role in the decision-making process. One possibility is that emotions provide motivational glue between the behavior options delivered by reflection and the systems that control action. If emotions do not motivate, as Wollheim suggests, this proposal cannot be quite right. It is easy to get trapped in some of the narrow alleys of Wollheim's book. Some of the dense arguments will concern only those who buy much of his story. But the wide boulevards are worth traveling. Wollheim's central claims are provocative. Are emotions dispositions? Do they follow on the heels of frustrated and satisfied desires? Do emotions comprise a sui generis class, or are they reducible to some other psychological genus? Can emotions leave us unmotivated? Even if Wollheim's answers do not convince, they will incite debate. That is progress.
JESSE PRINZ

Washington University in St. Louis