Table of Contents
Why is understanding emotions important?
The only thing that we value in our lives (either individually or collectively) is our experiences.
Some of these are valued for their own sake, the others are valued as instruments for providing or enabling experiences.
There are only two dimensions to experience: Quality and quantity
The quality of our lives is measured by the quality of our experiences.
One kind of experience, maybe the most important kind, is our feelings.
One kind of feeling is emotion.
Thus, emotions are important.
Is it important to understand things that are important?
If the answer is yes, then it is important to understand emotions.
Is 'The Logic of Emotion' an oxymoron, i.e. contradiction in terms?
A list of rhetorical questions:
To answer 'no' to any one of these is to agree that there are implications (and thus a logic) in the language of emotion. So, what I will attempt to do is sort out the implications of emotional terms when they are correctly used in ordinary language. It is likely that we would not even be able to learn the language of emotion and apply the concepts successfully and consistently unless the language has a logic.
The theory of emotion is at least partially a semantical theory not a psychological one.
For example: When I seek a definition for 'anger' I am not trying to discover what it is like to feel 'angry'. Also, I am not trying to discover what causes anger or what anger causes. Instead, I am attempting to discover the role that the term 'anger' plays in natural language. From that we can get its meaning. One may be inclined to suppose that the role of the term 'anger' is a report about the kind of behavior associated with that emotion, i.e., angry behavior. I would like to suggest an alternative, possibly a supplement, to how we might be able to recognize and apply a term of emotion correctly.
Because the approach attempts to explain the role of a collection of terms , the theory is more a theory about the use of a part of our language (the part with the terminology of feelings) than a psychological theory. And in particular I propose that the function of emotion language is to convey information about satisfactions and dissatisfactions of a certain sort. More about this later.
The Theory:
An emotion is the pleasure or displeasure associated with the process of thinking. I shall break 'thinking' down into what I call 'cognitive states'. Usually 'I think that...' means 'I believe that' But let us take 'thinking' as a larger category. So, by thinking or cognitive state I mean to include things like believing, questioning, counting upon, expecting, wondering, preferring, etc., the objects for all of which are events or states of affairs.
All of these thinking states are really activities or processes that on occasion have the property of being pleasurable or displeasurable. With respect to beliefs, it is because we have the preference to be in that state (or not) and so when we are (or not) a pleasure or displeasure sometimes arises.
For most emotions, the relevant cognitive state is 'belief' and so most emotions of this sort, which I will call 'emotions(b)', or emotions whose cognitive state is based upon belief, are to be identified with the pleasure or displeasure of the attention to a belief about whether a preference is satisfied or not.
(To see examples of non-belief based emotions look ahead a few pages to the section on "What is thinking (A cognitive State)?")
To be more specific, let us break the definition in two and define negative emotions(b) and the positive ones separately.
A negative emotion(b) is to be identified with the displeasure of the attention to the belief that a preference is not satisfied. D(A(B(P)))
A positive emotion(b) is to be identified with the pleasure of the attention to the belief that a preference is satisfied. P(A(B(P)))
So, at the core of an emotion(b) we have a preference. Then one level out we have a belief about whether or not the preference is satisfied. On the next level we have the attention to that belief. On the last level we have the pleasure or displeasure of that attending.
One can imagine many other kinds of feelings besides emotions, like moods, sensations, primal feelings, but I would claim that the feelings of the sort that satisfy my theory above are in a special category. In particular, any feeling that I call an emotion can be accessed and possibly changed by reflection. Since emotions are thought based, we may change an emotion by reflection on our beliefs, our preferences and other thought states (attitudes like questioning, hoping etc.) about the world that are at the heart of that emotion. The belief based kind of emotion is the most accessible since it relies directly upon specific beliefs.
A most interesting thing about the nature of the most common type of emotion (emotions(b)) is that they depend upon our opinion as to what is true, not on what is in fact true. All emotions depend upon our cognitive states about the world, not the world itself. Thus hunger, for instance, is not an emotion, but still it is a feeling. It is the feeling that one has when one is not nourished in a certain way. It is not an emotion because, believing that one is nourished or changing one's attitude towards nourishment does not satisfy hunger. Only actual nourishment will satisfy hunger. The primary test as to whether something is an emotion of the belief based sort is to ask this question: If the belief that a preference was satisfied or not were to change would the feeling go away? If 'yes', then the feeling is an emotion(b). The major test as to whether something is an emotion of the more general sort is found by asking this question: Is it possible that a change in a belief or attitude would make this feeling go away? If 'yes', then the feeling is an emotion.
With every emotion it is our attitude towards reality, not reality itself that is the determiner of emotion. As an example, ask yourself the following: If someone has died but you believed they have not, will grief follow the truth of the matter or the belief? Compare that to the situation where you believe someone has died but in fact they have not. You get the same answer with both questions, that is; the emotion follows the belief in the matter, not the truth of the matter.
What are Beliefs?
I propose that 'beliefs' are an abstraction from the process or activity of believing. So, it is an activity that really is pleasant or unpleasant. Beliefs characterize what we are willing to believe about statements. Specifically, a belief is an attachment of a probability by a person to a statement which represents the likelihood of truth that the person assigns to the statement. The probability corresponds to the degree that the evidence supports the statement in question. (This is more like a consistency criterion than a definition). Thus, beliefs may change with new evidence or new reflections upon old evidence. Also, it follows that beliefs come in degrees. Because of 'beliefs' relationship to emotions, what this means is that the stronger the belief the stronger the emotion (or weaker if it is a belief in the other direction with respect to that emotions definition)
One cannot choose beliefs, except possibly in the sense of choosing to be in an environment that would promote the belief, a personal deception analogous to self brainwashing.
Only one method is recommendable for changing beliefs: Changing one's awareness of evidence for the belief. We can do this through reflection aimed at reevaluating the strength of the belief or by gathering new evidence.
So, I take any claim by P that a certain belief has a 50% chance of being true, together with the claim that P believes it 100%" as a self-contradiction. P believes it 100% in words only. Maybe assertions of this kind are meant to express that P wishes to believe it 100% or that P is committed to acting as if the belief were certain. In my definition of emotions, belief is meant as one's actual belief not what one hopes to believe or what one espouses. It is most important for the sake of clearness of thought about emotions (and anything really) to remind oneself of a distinction between what one wishes to be the case and what one is justified in believing. Hoped-for truths are the major source and force behind self-deception.
So, for example, if someone truly assesses the probability of an afterlife as 50% but espouses a 100% belief in it, one will still feel grief when the loved person dies. That is to say, emotions will correspond with the actual belief. However, if one truly believes that the probability of an afterlife is 100% then one would not feel grief. One might still miss a person and wish they were around, but that is not all the grief is. Thus one could use the theory in two different ways.
1) Gain insights into emotions by examining beliefs
2) Gain insights into beliefs by examining emotions
What are Preferences?
An individual's preferences can be thought of as an ordering of all the states of affairs the person believes to be possible from best to worst. So, in general to prefer X means that in the context of all the situations believes possible, one ranks the situations where X is true higher than the situations where X is false, holding everything else constant.
Because preferences are in the context of beliefs, some preferences change when the beliefs change. You may change your preference to go to the beach, for instance, if you discover that it will be cloudy at the beach. This does not negate your preference for a certain kind of experience, for example, the experience of feeling the Sun's rays and cool wind on your skin.
Conclusion: some preferences will change if the presuppositions of the preference change, possibly by reflection upon those presuppositions (being beliefs themselves), as in the earlier explanation.
It is useful to reflect upon the fact that our preferences change. We might ask why that is. One answer is that our beliefs change over time. But sometimes our preferences change at a fundamental level because our needs are different. A particularly interesting way that our preferences might change over time is when they do so because we have acquired a different sense of what all the possibilities are. Our focus on what we value can also be narrower at some times and broader at others. This gives us an interesting and immediate way to change a preference, or at least our perception of what our true preference is. When we see ourselves getting too narrowly focused, we may remind ourselves of our more persistent preferences by considering The Bigger Picture.
Because of the definition of emotion, (i.e. having to do with belief as to whether a preference is satisfied or not), an emotion will follow what one believes one's preference to be not what one's preference really is. Thus instead of D(A(B(P))) a more accurate formula for emotions would be D(A(B(B(P))))
This is very important. The effort to take in the big picture is the most direct way we have to push ourselves in the direction of wisdom and the technique of forcing ourselves to a larger perspective is a useful tool in shifting our perception of our preferences and thus the intensity of our emotions. Just as with beliefs, the intensity of our emotions is directly related to the intensity of (our perception of) our preferences.
So I have four approaches to changing a preference.
1) Reflect upon the presuppositions of the preferences. You do this by asking yourself a series of questions about why you prefer X.
2) Secondly reflect upon a broader perspective that attempts to take in your life as a whole including all those things you value, instead of what your are immediately addressing.
3) Switch contexts of your preferences. Example: Instead of focusing upon what happened compared to what used to be, reflect a bit on what happened compared to what negative thing could have happened. (This more changes the focus on the preference than it does the preference)
4) Consider whether the preference is one you really want to have. Sometimes awareness that you don't really want that preference can make it go away. However, it might not go if the preference from time to time provides some rewarding satisfactions.
What is Thinking? (a Cognitive State)
The general definition of an emotion is dependent upon thoughts or cognitive states, but what is a cognitive state? These are our attitudes towards the world, but not how we feel about the world. They all have a common form exemplified by the following:
Let us consider one of these. "John hopes that such and
such is true". This is likely to be able to be broken down
into statements about John's beliefs and preferences, and what
he is prepared for, thus it is not atomic in this sense, but 'to
hope' is not itself an emotion. However, when a person attends
to that hope and gets pleasure from that attending, then we may
very well say that the person is in the emotional state of feeling
hopeful.
Notice that all of these examples have a state of affairs as their
object of cognition. Let us consider something like "I am
afraid that such and such will be true". Is this a cognitive
state? Notice that this is not usually a statement that describes
emotional fear. I can say, "I'm afraid you didn't get the
job.", or "I'm afraid I'm not going to finish the marathon.",
and as such these are expressions of cognitive states but not
emotions as such. This 'fear' is likely expressible in more fundamental
cognitive states.
However, if we care about the potential result and not prepared for the potential negative result, and if we attend to this, and it this attention is unpleasant; then we may very well be talking about the real emotion of fear.
When surprise is not about a preferred or unpreferred outcome, it still may be a pleasant experience as in a book or movie when you are delighted by a surprise element. This kind of surprise is also an emotion. It is probably my clearest example of an emotion that is not based upon belief. Sometimes we are delighted by our thoughts when something unexpected happens, just because it was unexpected. Of course, surprise on some occasions may be a negative emotion, if, for instance, we are not in the mood for surprises.
It is interesting to note the differences between those cognitive states which are compound or complex and those cognitive states which are simple. We will explore this distinction.
The Definitions
A major portion of my book is an attempt to define particular emotions. Using the general definition of emotion, many specific emotions(b) are defined by identifying the preferences and beliefs at stake in that emotion. I am especially happy with my definitions of disappointment and anger.
Let me show these as examples:
A person P is disappointed about x if and only if,
1) P had an expectation (belief about a possible future event) that x occur and P has a preference that x occur, and
2) P has prepared for that expectation, and
3) This preference is not satisfied by a belief, and
4) P has displeasure arising from attending to the fact that P believes his/her preference is not satisfied.
Early in my pursuit of emotions I enjoyed thinking that disappointment was the result of a conflict between expectation and reality. This still has a nice poetic ring to it, but it is not technically correct for several reasons, one of which is that reality has little to do with the logic of disappointment It is our perception of what is real that determines an emotion and when expectations are involved it is the change in perception that is key.
The newest addition to my definition of disappointment has to do with clause #2. That is, we are not disappointed with some positive expectation not appearing if we did not in some way prepare for it. This could be a weak sense of 'prepare for'. Sometimes we prepare for something merely by making mental plans for it on the basis of the possibility of that future situation arising. Thus the uniqueness in this definition points to at least two ways of addressing possible future disappointments. Reflecting upon our method of arriving at expectations and reflecting upon to what extent and when we begin to prepare for the possible positive outcome.
Here's another example:
A person P feels anger with Q, if and only if,
1) P has a preference that Q be sufficiently harmed or removed,
2) P believes that Q is not sufficiently harmed or removed, and
3) P has displeasure arising from attending to the fact that P believes his/her preference is not satisfied.
Summary of the definition and Note.
Anger is the feeling we have when we have a unfulfilled desire for someone (or something) to be harmed or removed. One can be angry at objects. Often this desire to have an object removed is because it is a source of frustration. But note that not all anger is caused by frustration for there may be other reasons why we have a preference to harm or remove something. We can also think we are angry at a person but really we are angry at the person's behavior or type of behavior. This behavior may be the object of the anger and the object that the person wants removed. Thus, in this case strong assurance that the kind of behavior will not reoccur will make the anger go away.
These definitions are not based upon empirical research but are derived purely from counter-example methodology together with my experience as a person who has feelings and has learned like any user of the language how to use feeling terms in common experiences. This is why I regard my thesis as much semantical as empirical. One of my methods for gaining insight into a definition was to ask 'under what conditions would this emotion resolve or dissolve?' So, for instance, since I believe that sometimes indignation will go away when someone makes a sincere apology, indignation is more complicated than merely being based upon the preference that someone had not done something wrong. Sometimes indignation will go away when the right price is paid, and so I build this into the definition.
How can the pre-definition of a particular emotion be helpful?
It may be that not all emotions have been named, but if an emotion is common enough in our collective experience to have a name, then when we are having that emotion it might be helpful to see what definitions have been given for that emotion. If one of the definitions does fit the feeling then the definition will suggest an approach for possibly resolving or dissolving the feeling. If not, then you are no worse off. For instance, if we find that something meets the definition of indignation, not only can we ask what appropriate price might be paid, but we can also ask why we have a preference that a price be paid.
The Value of Negative Emotions.
It might appear that negative emotions are always to be avoided whenever possible, but I would like to suggest at least one positive function of negative emotions (if the emotions are not excessive to the point of being counter-productive). When we look at our definitions we can see that many may be highly dependent upon Metaphysical and Ethical views. It is clear, for instance, that in order to have guilt or shame one has to have a sense of right and wrong. Anger in some cases is enhanced by a sense of retributive justice. Thus, we can view our emotional events as opportunities to reexamine our Metaphysical and Ethical views.
The second reason that negative emotions are important is that they are often necessary to be able to have positive feelings. So, for instance, if one could get rid of grief by deciding not to care about the one lost, most of us realize that this may be too high of a price to pay
What is a Mood?
I would like to propose that moods are a propensity to fall into certain emotions under specific conditions. So, for instance, an angry mood makes it more likely that one find something to be angry about. Emotions have an object, moods do not. In turn moods may be caused by physiological states or one could fall into an angry mood by first having an angry emotion and having the feeling linger on.
One might think that some emotions are caused by drugs or physiological states. I would like to claim instead that drugs or hormonal states may bring about moods and that in turn the moods may make some emotions more likely. An example might be a drug that brings on a fearful mood. The person is then more ready to find something to be fearful about or be more ready to attend to it. Some have argued that because emotions can be brought about in this way that emotions cannot be defined in purely cognitive terms. But the thesis herein does not rule out the possibility that core preferences are physiologically based nor does it determine when or why we decide to focus our attention on their satisfaction, and thus this thesis is compatible with the view that emotions may result from physiological stimulus.
Most moods have the same name as the emotion they are likely to bring about.
So, my two main conjectures regarding moods are that moods are sometimes caused by emotions and are sometimes a contributing cause of an emotion.
What is the Language of Character?
Many character traits have the same name as a mood or emotion. So, for instance, we may describe someone as being an anxious person. This probably means no more than that person has frequent moods of anxiety. Some character traits are indications of life strategies for dealing with emotions. Courage and cowardice are example of habits or life strategies for dealing with fear. Shyness may be a strategy for dealing with embarrassment (not putting oneself in potentially embarrassing situations). I believe we could trace most of the language of character traits fairly directly to the language of emotions or feelings.
The language of character is important for conveying information to another about a third person. It helps us tell others, whom we may care about, what they can expect from a third person. To tell someone that a third person is a coward, for instance, is to suggest that in threatening situations, the person would be well advised to not count on that third person.
What is Ethics?
I propose that the language of ethics is a language concerned with conveying information about character and whose primary function is to give advice or recommendations on acts, kinds of acts or policies. Most of the time advice-giving is in the context of caring about the character or a person or the consequences of the action. If there were no ethical language, it would develop immediately from the need to convey character information and make recommendations
Often advice is of the strategic sort. When you tell someone to look both ways before crossing, this is advise that assumes the goals of the person and is attempting to be helpful in suggesting ways to accomplish those goals (goals like staying alive). There are three kinds of advice that are not strategy-advice. Non-strategy advises are the essence of ethical advice. Ethical advice is a suggestion about what goals be adopted or what character traits be developed. Here are the three types:
In every society when someone is referred to as a good person, either the focus is upon him/her being a person who exemplifies one of these kind of advise or a person who is judged to follow all of these advises and decide well when they are in conflict. There are degrees of goodness and a fuzziness associated with when two advises of similar strength are in conflict. My position is that the fuzziness comes from the incommesurability of the concepts. The degree of goodness, fuzziness of concept and the mixing of these three meanings for 'good person' has brought some to the conclusion that ethics is relative. One may as well believe that biology is relative because there are different meanings to the term 'animal'. The framework of relative ethics is seriously flawed and can be harmful to the individual and to society.
There are character traits associated with being a person who exemplifies each of these kinds of advice.
In general when we say of a person that they are good, we are recommending to those we care about that they would do well to associate with this person or emulate that person. What would our self-interested reason be for wanting to be a good person? Because we cannot without cognitive dissonance (bad faith?) recommend to someone that they not associate with a particular kind of person (i.e. bad) and suggest that they associate with us even though we are that kind of person. Most of us, almost all of us, want to be the kind of person that we would be able to recommend to those we care about. Because this is only true of most of us, this reason for being moral might not be an acceptable motivation for all.
Wisdom
One of the major features of my book is an emphasis on the close relations of many aspects of our lives. I attempt to tie our feelings in with our character, our ethics, our beliefs and our actions. The background believe that form the general understanding of the world are probably the most important. They are persistent and enter into most decisions, often without reflection. Many of these background beliefs are metaphysical, about the nature of ourselves, of others and the world.
In constructing a life, one could start with a concern with any one of these and use it as a criterion for generating the others. For instance, you could let the process of seeking the truth determine what kind of experience, feelings and person you are to become. Or you could go the other way: decide what kind of person you wish to be and let that determine what you believe and what kind of emotional experience you will be capable of.
In my view the wisest way to proceed when developing or attempting to change any of these entities, is to pay attention to what it means to all of the other aspects of one's life. I regard it as unwise to seek truth, with no regard for consequence. The mad scientist may be there paradigm of this. One can become a monster by focusing upon to narrow a concern, even if that concern is truth. I would also regard it as unwise to believe whatever it takes to become the kind of person you would like to become.
Being wise is mostly a function of a broad perspective, the ability to see things as connected and the ability to be attuned to our persistent values and to balance all of our concerns. There is no easy formula but developing a balanced perspective is what the wise person tries to do. If there is one thing that characterizes wisdom it is the ability to see The Big Picture, to see how the important things in one's life are connected and to act and feel accordingly. It is my hope that my views on feelings, beliefs, ethics, metaphysics and character may be a contribution to our personal quests for wisdom.
Summary
The most general and important thesis of this book is that a careful examination of the evidence for certain of our beliefs and a reflective assessment of certain of our preferences can result in a significant change in our feelings and emotions, and hence in the quality of our lives. In this book I attempt to be more specific on what kind of reflective experience that might be and how we might bring it about.
In my logic classes I often try to make the business of solving logic problems into a mechanical procedure, so that even the student that understands nothing can follow a flowchart to work through the problems. The flowchart attempts to address the question: If you are stumped, what is the proper question to ask yourself? My hope is that if the student begins to realize that for each problem there are questions one can ask oneself that they will begin to understand the reasons that the procedure works and maybe then there will be some carry-over into life. Do you have a new problem? To solve it, maybe you just have to ask yourself the right question. At least this was my initial thought.
In another area of my life, I have my VCR. I am not a person that would have trouble programming a VCR but even my complete understanding of the process is unable to prevent me from making mistakes from time to time that would lead to the failure of capturing the intended program. I developed a checklist. I had to make sure that...
The speed was correct.
There was enough tape remaining for the speed chosen.
The tape was not write-protected.
The clock on the VCR was correct, including the year.
The date of the onset of the recording was correct.
The time of the onset was correct, even the A.M./P.M. part.
The channel was correct.
etc....
But for most of our lives there are no flowcharts, there are no checklists. The most chaotic area in life may have to do with the area of emotions and feelings. What is the most successful way of dealing with emotions? If you have a feeling or emotion that you do not want to have, is there a question you can ask yourself that will make it go away? Is there a way to decide what the proper response to an emotion is?
Most people think that emotions are so illogical that there is no way to even address these issues in a coherent fashion. Thus, some have told me that my title for this book is an oxymoron. But there is an actual logic to emotion. If there were not, we would not be able to identify person's emotions by their behavior as accurately as we do. Could someone be jealous without thoughts on two other people? Could one be envious without thoughts about the possessions of another (whether those possessions are of a material nature or merely some envied trait of the person)? I wish to claim that if one answers "yes" to either of these questions, one is misusing the language and does not understand the terminology of emotions. In a way my theory of emotion is a semantical theory, where criticism of a definition should be of the form 'Would we say that Emotion Y is the correct label for someone who is experiencing X?'. This can be addresses in classical counter-example methodology. I will try, as much as possible, to stay away from any empirical thesis, except to the extent that I may be making an empirical claim as to how people use language.
The definitions of particular emotions will play a key role in my attempt to make sense of this area, but we should realize that the language of emotions as it exists right now might need to be straightened out. Some terms denoting emotion may refer to many few different kinds of feelings and some emotions may have no term at the present time to identify it.
When we start looking more carefully into the language of feelings, we will realize that most people do not have much understanding of feeling terms at all, even though feelings may be one of their most common experiences and possibly one of the most important experiences. But what is the difference between a feeling, a mood, an emotion, a desire or a sensation? We use these terms, mostly successfully, without having been told very explicitly what they are. Sure, the most general of all these terms is "feeling", which includes all the rest, but how are the different? Even within an area that includes only emotions there are common mistakes. For instance, many times we have heard people use the word 'jealous' when they meant 'envious'?
Let's us look at some examples of these 'feelings'.. When I have hunger, I can say "I feel hungry" (sensation). I might also say I feel a need for food (desire). If I have a low spirit, it could be said "I feel depressed" (mood). If I have an opinion, I say "I feel that it is true that..." (belief) and when I feel pissed off I might say "I feel angry at..." (emotion). These are all examples of experience that for some reason have been put together into one category: feelings.
The theory presented herein will make distinctions between these areas and hopefully bring about some understanding to a rather fuzzy area of major importance. Feelings are important and understanding feelings may be the first step to answering the questions: What do we do with them? How do we change them? And what is an appropriate response to them? In particular, we will discover that there are rather definitive questions that we can ask ourselves when trying to wrestle with an emotion.
Value and experience:
Let us begin by considering this: If you were to assess your life, what would you look at? Wouldn't it be most directly a connection to your experiences? If, on the whole, you have had good experiences, then you would assess your life in positive terms. However, if, on the whole, your experiences have been negative, then you would probably assess your life negatively. If you were tempted to assess your life positively because you have made contributions but think that you have had mostly negative experiences, then I would suggest that the positive value assessment is because you believe you have created instruments for yourself or others that enabled positive experiences. But your experiences (as opposed to other's experiences) have a special place for you since you are in the best position to assess their value and usually in the best position to do something about them.
Why is the evidence that experiences are the bearer of real value? It's mostly a 'what else can it be' sort of argument. That is, it's not easy to find an example of something that has value that is not either an experience itself or identifiable as an instrument in creating or enabling valuable experience. You might think 'being a good person' is of intrinsic value. But notice that if being a good person always or frequently led to negative experiences for everyone involved, we wouldn't value it very much. It is because 'being a good person' contributes either to our experiences in a positive way or to the experiences of those whom we touch that we regard this character trait as recommendable.
In a very real sense, experiences are the only things of value in our lives. As the Eastwood character in the movie "The Unforgiven" said: When you kill a man, you take away all he has and all he ever will have. He may not talking just about the guy's material possessions. Instead we can see that the important thing that we take away from a person by killing him is his ability to experience anything ever again.
Now, of experiences there are at least three types:
1) Sensory experience: The perception of the world outside ourselves.
2) Experience of emotions and other feelings: The perception of needs, desires, satisfactions or dissatisfactions.
3) Imagination and reflective experience: The perception of thought.
It may be, and we may find out, that category #2 is really a combination of categories one and three. But my point is that when you refer to the quality of a person's life you are referring to the quality of their experiences, and category #2, i.e. feelings, is an important part of these experiences, and maybe the most important part.
Let us break this down in another way. In assessing your life, there are only two features of importance: quality of experience and quantity of experience. Feelings are a kind of experience, possibly the most important kind. Emotions are one kind of feeling. And so it is my hope that I might shed some light that could influence the value of a life by attempting to understand this important emotional area of our life.
In doing so, I hope to indicate what the connections are between our emotions and other areas of our life, including our character, our views of right and wrong, our metaphysical views and background assumptions and our actions. I am convinced that these areas are related in such a way that if one area were to change then the others would also be affected. I will try to be less vague about the exact relationships later in this book. In short, I will argue that in some cases if by reflection we can understand an emotion, we may be able to change it, if we wish to. I would also suggest that by preparing for future emotions we may actually affect the kinds of emotions that we are capable of, and may even change our very nature and become a different kind of person.
Furthermore, clarity about emotions can help us in the communication process. We may be able to express to others more exactly what are feelings are and why they are. This could be important in any relationship when emotional difficulties arise. Also, emotional clarity might be useful is in teaching children to understand their own feelings, possibly enhancing what has been recently referred to as 'emotional intelligence'. Most of the time children learn the language of feeling by seeing someone in an emotional state and then discovering the classification that the person has for the state. Or someone else might identify a child's apparent state by classifying it, helping the child learn the meaning of the label. This way of learning does not provide the child with great insight as to what the emotions really is.. However, if a child were to learn the language of emotions through definitions, instead of instances, (1) there is an opportunity for a deeper understanding of the emotion and (2) an opportunity for an understanding of what the options for a response and (3) an opportunity for understanding how the successful responses might be related to the features of the emotion.
In short, I believe that there are predetermined questions we can ask ourselves when we are trying to resolve or dissolve an emotion, or to choose a successful response to an emotion. Although it may not always lead to a perfect solution, it cannot help but put us in a better position to deal with an uncomfortable feeling. Sometimes we may decide that we have to just live with an uncomfortable feeling, but after understanding the emotion better, even choosing this option may make the emotion easier to live with.
So, in the following, I will attempt in many cases to:
1) Define what an emotion is.
2) Define a few specific emotions.
3) Indicate in some cases what questions one might ask oneself when one is trying to resolve or dissolve an emotion.
4) Indicate how emotions fit in with other feelings by giving a taxonomy of feelings.
5) Indicate how feelings and emotions are connected to other areas of our individual lives, like character, morality, and world view.
If you stick with me, I hope to be able to deliver on a promise to pass to you a greater understanding of a very important area of your life i.e. your feelings and in particular, your emotions.
There is one more point that should be made clear before we start. The nature of this thesis is mostly the result of an exploration into ordinary language with some reflection on ordinary experiences. It is at least partially a semantical enterprise designed to account for common experience. This is to say, I do not focus upon questions like 'What does it feel like when one feels X?' or 'What is the psychological cause of feeling X?' But instead, I will approach emotions by asking questions like 'Upon reflection what would one ordinarily attribute to a person when it is said truthfully of that person that he/she feels X?'
Since I have no special credentials in the field of Psychology, my claims are being made as a person who has the tools of Philosophy available to him to address common ordinary experience. I don't believe I need a laboratory full of neurotics and psychotics and special theoretical models with theoretical psychological entities in order to make some sense of the language of emotions.
I've discovered that most of the resistance to my theory comes from those who are well entrenched and committed to specific theories of psychology. It is one of my hopes that even these people will understand that this theory is not meant to be competitive with theories about what cause mental states. But there is semantical content conveyed when one says I feel some specific way. Often we can say 'because...' and then site a belief we have. It is only this relationship between the correct use of an emotional term and the beliefs that are necessarily connected to it that I am exploring.
However, there are going to be some instances where my account of emotions is competitive with some contemporary theories of emotions. I would at least suggest that my theory should not be discarded merely because it is in conflict with those theories, but instead that it should be critiqued on its own terms and ultimately be judged by whether its explanations are better or worse than the competition. However again I would like to remind you that I am not presenting a theory of Psychology. Instead am just trying to deal with some of the language of feeling.
In this book, I hope to convince you, the reader, that this is a solid common-sense approach to understanding emotion with no theoretical entities (i.e. ids ego's etc.) and that this language of emotions may give us (or a helping professional) an important power tool to understand, identify and possibly solve our emotional problems. Our beliefs can give us insight into our emotions and our emotions can give us insight into our beliefs. A most important overall thesis defended here is that a careful examination of the evidence for some of our beliefs and a reflective assessment of some of our preferences can result in a significant change in our feelings and emotions, and hence in the quality of our lives. Let us see to what extent that might be true.
The American Heritage Dictionary defines Emotion as follows:
1. An intense mental state that arises subjectively rather than through conscious effort and is often accompanied by physiological changes; a strong feeling: the emotions of joy, sorrow, reverence, hate, and love.
2. A state of mental agitation or disturbance: spoke unsteadily in a voice that betrayed his emotion. See synonyms at FEELING.
3. The part of the consciousness that involves feeling; sensibility
What I hope to do by offering my definition of 'Emotion' is present a clarity that is not available in the dictionary definition. My definition should be taken more as an explication of the notion of Emotion and may not agree 100% with our pre-theoretic notion. But I would contend that the definition will agree to a large extent with our pre-theoretic notions and will have the extra advantages that it will be useful and a lot clearer.
Let us start then with my definition of emotion.
An emotion is the pleasant or unpleasant experience that sometimes results from being aware of his/her thinking. The most common kind of emotion is dependent upon a certain kind of thinking, namely believing.
So what I am suggesting at this point is that there are many different satisfactions and dissatisfactions in life. The language of emotion's primary role is to provide the vocabulary for talking about those satisfactions or dissatisfactions having to do with processes of thinking. Not all satisfactions are related to thoughts.
Since 'belief emotions' is most common kind and since I have a deeper theory as to when a belief is in fact pleasant or unpleasant, let us proceed as follows with this important subset of all emotions.
In the following I abbreviate 'emotions for which the primary thoughts are beliefs' as 'emotions(b)'.
An emotion(b) is the pleasant or unpleasant experience that results when a person is aware that, or attends to the fact that, a belief satisfies or dissatisfies (to some extent) his/her preference.
To simplify it a bit, let us break it down into two claims...
A positive emotion(b) is the pleasant experience that results when a person attends to the fact that a preference is being satisfied (to as sufficient extent) by a belief
and...
A negative emotion(b) is the unpleasant experience which results when a person attends to the fact that a preference is not being satisfied (to a sufficient extent), by a belief, (or a dispreference is being satisfied by a belief).
The concepts necessary to get this emotions(b) defined are "preferences", "beliefs", "attention to whether preferences are being satisfied", and "the pleasant or unpleasant experience resulting".
Notice that some of our feelings will change if we happen to change a relevant belief or a relevant preference. This definition sets an emotion apart from some other feelings we have, because with non emotional feelings belief is often not required. Let me give an example.
We might ordinarily think of 'anger' as an emotion. But by classifying it as only an emotion is likely an error. Remember, we are concerned with the use of the term. There are other uses.
So, for instance, there is the anger one may feel when one believes they have been betrayed. This is an emotion, by my definition, for if the belief of betrayal were to change in the appropriate direction then the anger would go away. But, there is also the concept of the "angry mood". Now I have not defined 'mood' but notice that often we can have a mood without our attention being focused up a specific preference or belief. Such moods are sometimes angry or sad without an object to focus on. By my definition, although these moods are feelings, they would not fall into the category of "emotion".
And then we have what I call 'primal anger'. This may be the kind of feeling independent of beliefs or language, and may be the source of the pain of anger. We can get a sense of what I mean here when we think of pre-cognitive humans without beliefs, without a language, seemingly they were nevertheless capable of anger, or at least behavior that seems to indicate anger. And so by the definition, although we probably have to admit that pre-cognitive humans have feelings of anger that are not classifiable as moods, we would nevertheless not label these feelings as 'emotions'.
I do not mean to imply by this that only pre-cognitive humans have primal feelings. I suspect that humans may have primal feelings also, but I wish to make a distinction between these different kinds of anger, because feelings that have belief components potentially have a different method for resolution than the ones that do not. I would think that primal feelings are not our dominant kind of feeling. We more often, on a daily basis experience emotions or moods.
And finally 'angry' can also be used to describe a character trait of a person as in 'He is an angry person'. Used in this way the term 'anger' is meant to tell us that this person is the kind of person who would have a propensity, more than usual, to fall into an angry mood, emotion, or primal feeling of anger.
Now, I believe this definition of emotion will fit with our common usage of the term (our pre-theoretic notion) but if it does not in fact, then at least it is an interesting enough distinction to warrant a special label which for convenience I will call 'emotion'. Thus, what I say about emotions from now on will only apply to those feelings that meet the definition. It is for the reader to decide if the definitions advanced are correct definitions of the terms being defined and to decide whether these feelings are really emotions in my sense of the term.
Let us explore the definition a bit with an example. Suppose that you have the preference that everything be going well. Suppose, you believe that things are not going well. This conflict between you belief and your preference is the kernel of an emotion(b), maybe a 'sadness' or 'unhappiness'. Let us not name it at this point. But it is not an emotion until we have been made aware that we have this preference and we have this belief and we are aware that the belief does not satisfy the preference. When we have this awareness, we almost have a complete emotion(b), but not quite. What we would need for it to be a full emotion is for the attention to bring about an unpleasant (or pleasant) experience. No one has emotions that are neutrally valued.
Most of the time when a preference is unsatisfied and we are aware of it, it is unpleasant, but this might not always be the case. We can imagine that having taken truth serum or being in a real strange mood might make it so that this awareness of a dissatisfaction was not in any way unpleasant. Then, I think you would agree that the person is not having an emotional experience. (At least not an emotional experience with respect to that preference.) The person may be having some other emotional experience like the enjoyment of feeling emotionally removed from their pain.
Consider the android character Data in Star Trek, The Next Generation. Until recently Data could not have emotions, and I think I know why. He has all the other material for an emotion. He has beliefs, he has preferences, he can attend to the relationship between the two, but he could not feel the pleasure or pain derived from this relationship. In fact ,this inability to experience pleasure or pain was at the core of why he could not have many other kinds of feelings besides emotions. (No hint is ever given in the show as to what it would take or mean to program an android to feel pleasure or pain.) He could not feel primally, he had no real desires and he had no moods. Well, maybe one mood, if we could call it a mood, it might be 'detached'. But this may be more a character trait than a mood.
One of the most interesting things about the distinction between emotions and other feelings is that emotions are not directly the result of a state in the world. For example, one will feel hunger if one's body is in a hungry state. Thus, hunger is not an emotion. Emotions depend upon one's beliefs about the world. A particular emotion may be the result of a belief that does not correspond with the way things are in the world (i.e. is not true). We have preferences that certain things be the case, and preferences are satisfied, or not, by the perception of what is true. And the perception of what is true is not directly and forcefully linked to what is really true in the world. Emotions are feelings that result from our view of the world and its contrast to what we would want the world to be or not to be.
Because emotions have the component of 'belief' and have the component of 'preference', sometimes it is possible through reflection to change an emotion. Many of our preferences also have belief components. We often only prefer certain states conditionally. If we realize that a state we thought we preferred isn't quite what we thought it was, sometimes we no longer prefer it. This belief component to 'preference' makes preferences accessible through reflection. I'll say more about this later.
Reflection may not be of much use for primal feelings, except possibly for discovering which situations bring about those feelings and then intentionally seeking out or intentionally avoiding those situations. Moods may not have the same access points for alteration. Some moods are clearly related to physical criteria, like drugs, or hunger, or dehydration or low blood sugar. So, these may not be as directly accessible by reflection as emotions, except by reflecting and intentionally avoiding those physical causes of them.
Emotions have the feature that you can often put your finger clearly on the preference that is not being satisfied by a belief. It may be that some kinds of moods can be changed into an emotion by identifying the preference that one might not originally be aware of. I suspect that some moods are emotions that have been put in the background and forgotten, and so one has the belief and the preference but no attention. The pleasantness or unpleasantness persists in the background, but one is not really attending to what the pleasantness or unpleasantness was about. We will have to explore this idea further, later on.
Some attention should be paid to the fact that emotions come in intensities. Notice, in the definition I say that the kernel of an emotion is expressed in terms of a preference that is being satisfied to some extent by a belief. And so we see that the degree to which one believes something might be true (the probability one would assign it) may be partially responsible for the intensity of the emotion. Another feature related to the intensity of the emotion would be the strength of the preference. A third feature might be to what extent you are attending to that satisfaction or dissatisfaction.
The fourth feature that will account for the intensity of an emotion is the degree to which one is predisposed to feel pleasantness or unpleasantness, pleasure or pain. This may be more of a physiological state than a psychological one. We know that we are more likely to feel things strongly at one time or another, depending upon features like lack of sleep, too much sugar, too much caffeine or a recent emotional event. For instance a recent anger can make it easier to be angry at something else. There are at least two reasons this might be true. First, the threshold for displeasure at irritation might be lowered by the first emotional anger. But also the degree of displeasure for that irritation is more likely higher. This degree of ability to feel pleasure or pain is undoubtedly a feature of the intensity of an emotion, so it should be noted.
Let us reflect on the nature of this definition of emotion. Notice it is not an totally an empirical claim, in the sense of telling us which things in reality have emotions and which ones do not. What I am suggesting is that as successful users of the language who have feelings and who are often successful at conveying feelings with language, we already have an understanding of how to use these terms. Now, it would be interesting to find a pattern in common with these usages. Without claiming that the pattern I present will cover all things previously thought of as emotions, I nevertheless believe it is useful for understand many feelings. So, let us understand my thesis in this way:
If you have a feeling, then ask yourself if there is a preference underlying that feeling such that if the belief about whether that preference was satisfied were to change then your feeling would change'. (A mouthful) If the answer is 'yes', then this kind of feeling is accessible by reflection. As an aside, let us call this thing when the answer is 'yes' an emotion.
For the emotions where the definition is given herein we have an easier task . So, if we have a definition of 'anger' that does agree mostly but not completely with the pre-theoretic notion then when a person identifies him/herself as angry, the first thing that person could ask him/herself is: does this feeling fit with the definition given of 'anger'? If so, then it gives the person other questions to ask, addressing particular aspects of the given definition. If not, then the particular definition might not be that helpful and so they could proceed by asking themselves questions about the core preference, as I indicate in the last paragraph.
Now given the definition of emotions, there are 6 strategies for changing or dealing with a negative emotion.
You can...
1) Work on changing a preference in the definition (or your definition) of that emotion (either its intensity or existence).
2) Work on satisfying a preference in the definition.
3) Attend to changing a belief in the definition.
4) Attempt to change your attention away from the belief and preference.
5) Try to change the displeasure or pleasure associated with the attention. (i.e. if you are especially sensitive, try to discover why you are especially sensitive to the believed state and address the cause of that sensitivity)
But if you have decided not to change it then you can try to...
6) Resign yourself to accepting the emotion.
For those interested in the more formal aspect of my notion of emotion, it is not literally true to say that a conflict between beliefs and preferences brings about the emotion. It is not a definition with 'and' as a the major connector. To give an example, we cannot define an emotion with the form 'I have this belief AND I have this preference.' It is instead the logic of functions. At the core we have preferences. On the next level we have beliefs about whether those preferences are being satisfied. One more level out we have our attention to those beliefs. And on the last level we have the pleasure or displeasure that results from that attention. So with negative emotions we are talking about (The displeasure of (The attention to (The beliefs about the dissatisfaction of (a Preference)))) That is: E = D(A(B(P)))
So, it is the attention to a belief that can be pleasant or unpleasant. We know that sometimes attending to things can sometimes be either pleasant or unpleasant. In this case we are talking about the attention to beliefs, a bit more abstract than something like sensation., but this should not disqualify it as an object to attend to and feel pleasant because of.
This may be a bit too technical for some but I would also like to note the following: It is not as if I should say "I am happy that I believe <thus and such>", as if believing is the object of my happiness. It is more to the point to say something like that "I am happy that <thus and such>", where <thus and such> is one of my beliefs.
In the most ordinary language you have things that you would like to be true (or not true) and beliefs about whether these hopes and wants are satisfied. This is at the heart of emotions.
Recently I found another work called "The Cognitive Structure of Emotions" by Andrew Ortony, Gerald L. Clore and Allan Collins that has a similar approach. This 1988 book has a category like my belief based emotions that they call "well-being emotions" They defined this kind of emotion as "paradigmatic psychological states of feeling that arise from attending to events insofar as they are appraised as being desirable or undesirable". I was surprised to see this similarity and even the same choice of the word 'attend'. My category is a bit different since I take the objects of my emotion category to be states of affairs not events. This makes the class of emotions a bit different.
Before we look at specific emotions, let us explore beliefs and preferences with some attention to what it would take to change them by reflection. And then in another chapter, let me present a method for discovering definitions of specific emotions. This will be the content of the next three sections.
Comment (on the Calvin and Hobbes cartoon above):
If the definition presented here is correct then Calvin has put his finger on a key component of emotions, namely that you have to attend to beliefs in order for emotions to arise. Somewhat more dubious is his claim that without negative emotions one would be happy. Is that what happiness is? The lack of unpleasant emotions? Not likely. Also Hobbes correctly points out that there may be other important considerations to designing one's life than considerations of happiness. Calvin applies his new 'philosophy' in a recursive way to resist this suggestion.
Near the kernel of an emotion we have a belief. But what are beliefs and do they just change or is there a way to change them? I take beliefs to be an attitude towards the truth of a statement. So when one says 'it is my opinion that ..." or "I feel that..." it is easy to see that what one believes or has an opinion of or feels is that something is really the case, i.e. is true. So, belief to be associated either with a degree of willingness to assert that a statement is true (with full integrity) or the willingness to act as if its probability were more likely than not . We should note that if the degree of willingness is sufficient to assert a statement then the degree of willingness to assert its negation would be too low to actually assert in the same dialog. Thus, to say we believe something minimally says that we do not believe its negation. But, of course, whether the opinion is in fact true does not create the belief and, having the belief does not make it a truth, (with the possible exception of beliefs about what one believes).
There are other ways of using the word 'belief'. Some might say that they believe in their spouse. This does not mean that they believe their spouse exists, but something quite different. In any case, when I use the term 'believe', let us take it as expressing something that would take the form of "I believe that..." where what follows is a statement.
We know that beliefs do change and so because of the relationship between beliefs and emotions it is appropriate to ask to what extent it is possible to direct a change in a belief. Consider this: Suppose you want to believe something, but you do not really believe it. What is the natural mechanism for actively change this belief?
Without answering that right now, let me direct your attention to the kinds of beliefs that one may have. There are beliefs that are quite transient. I believe that I have $29 in my pocket right now. This belief may be of some worth, but its likely not of any lasting importance. In contrast, there are beliefs that work in the background almost all the time that clarify and color our transient beliefs. Metaphysical beliefs or general beliefs may fall in this category. The reason I wish to make this distinction, is to point out that some beliefs are with us for a long time and so they are the ones that will at least partially define what kind of emotions we can have. If, for instance, you do not believe that a government has responsibilities to its people, then you may not be capable of feeling anger at your government for not doing something.
Because of this, I think we would have to say that these background beliefs are going to have the largest influence on our emotional life. So, if there were a way to actively change one or more of these, we would be making an influential change in the emotions we are likely to feel for the rest of our lives. This, in turn, changes who we are and helps to define and change our character.
Another thing to note is that beliefs are logically independent of truth. By this I mean that it is possible to believe something when it is in fact false and it is possible to not believe something which is in fact true. This agrees well with our natural view of emotions. Take grief, for instance. Suppose that you grieve for John. But suppose in fact that John is not dead. You were misinformed. The actuality does not affect the grief at all until you find it out about it; that is, until your belief changes. In the same way you may feel no grief for John even though unbeknownst to you he has in fact died. This is our major indicator that grief, at least in this context, is a feeling we call an emotion. A change in belief, not reality, would change the feeling.
Now, I would like to suggest that there really is only one good way to change a belief, and that is to re-examine the evidence or attempt to gather new evidence for that belief. One cannot just choose beliefs and then adopt them, like stray cats, primarily because if you are aware that you have chosen a belief in this way and know you have chosen it this way, on some level you will know that they could easily be wrong. Knowing this will render the belief and any associated emotion vulnerable to the slightest wind of disconfirmation.
But sometimes, there are matters where you have to take a stand one way or the other. To do otherwise may make things way too uncertain. In this case I suggest that we realize that beliefs do not all necessarily come in only yes/no categories. Beliefs are capable of degrees.
Let me give an example. Maybe this sort of thing happened to you as a young person. You are concerned about the affections of a date. She smiles at you on the street. You conclude she must like you. You call her up but her phone is busy. You think: Maybe she is trying to avoid talking to you, so she is leaving the phone off the hook. You conclude that she does not like you. Which belief do you choose? Either way will leave you vulnerable to ever so many experiences that could go against it. Can you just pick a belief and stick with it, no matter what? This is possible, but not a very good life strategy.
It is important to see that you do not have to make your belief 100% one way or the other. If we allow the exemplified youngster to think 'there is a 60% chance she likes me and now she smiled at me, so I should raise it to 65%', we tone down the intensity of the emotional swing, the intensity being related to the degree of belief. This has to be a lot easier to live with.
William James argued that if we do not have any evidence one way or another for a belief then we have the freedom to choose which belief we want. In the context of emotions this would mean that we have to ability to choose some of our emotions, by choosing some of our beliefs. But how does this work? James was interested in the existence of God, and so let us take this as an example. Suppose James, in a rational spirit, discovers that he has no evidence one way or the other for God's existence. He might then think that according to the evidence it is just as likely that God exist as that he does not.
At this point he says "I choose to believe that God exists!" But on the other hand he acknowledges that evidence makes it a toss up. How does he square these beliefs? As loudly as he proclaims it, wouldn't we really say that to use the term 'belief' correctly we would have to say that his true belief in God's existence is approximately 50%? Maybe he thinks that by proclaiming it enough, verbally, that he will come to dismiss his percentage belief in favor of the full declaration of God's existence. Maybe, by declaring his choice, he has decided to embark on a self-brainwashing strategy, by saying prayers, going to church and other activities which will tend to promote his hoped for belief. But later at any time if he admits to himself that he really has no reasons either way, he will be back to where he started from, in an approximate 50% belief position. This swing would have to be emotionally upsetting.
Brainwashing oneself also has a bit of a dishonest quality to it. It is a bit like setting your watch 20 minutes ahead so you can fool yourself into not being late. We have to ask ourselves: Do we really want to go around fooling ourselves? Might this not be a bad habit to get into? I would suggest that it is, and when we do this we set ourselves up for emotional swings. As an alternative we acknowledge that our real beliefs are just as strong as the evidence we have for them, no more, and no less. This is a reasonable way of providing oneself with a bit of emotional stability.
There is another reason to not accept James' general position on how to choose beliefs. Sometimes one's belief, if false, can cause a great amount of damage, whereas its opposite, if false, would not. We cannot just freely choose to believe it. It would not be the moral choice. The moral choice would be to take the position that could do no harm, if wrong, or at least give weight to the positions in accordance with how much evidence you have for them.
As an example, solipsism comes to mind. This is the belief that declares that you are the only person in the world, i.e. that others are just a figment of your imagination. I do not subscribe to the standard arguments against solipsism, but there is a strong moral argument against it. Notice that if you are a solipsist and you are wrong, you can do a great amount of harm, because you would probably not be treating people as people and you would not act with the appropriate sense of responsibility.
But if you take an anti-solipsistic position and you are wrong, i.e. you are in fact the only person in the world, then there is not much harm in behaving as if those fictional creations are real people. So, if we have to choose a belief, let us choose not to be solipsists. And if we do not have to choose, then let us just weigh the different positions proportionally to their evidential strength.
Now, if you do not wish to accept that evidence is the only good way to change a belief, then at least for the purposes of this book, I would not be concerned. It just means that you are going to be able to find more ways to change an emotion that I would normally recommend. You might, for instance, attempt to change an emotion by just choosing the appropriately related belief. If it is possible to change beliefs in this way, then by my theory it will change your emotions. If you do decide to change things in this way, please be aware that changing beliefs and potential emotions is also likely to change other emotions you are capable of, and of course, each change will influence the kind of person you are to become.
In fact, we should also allow as a possibility that if one can choose beliefs, not only could one choose beliefs that provided emotional satisfaction, all emotions considered, but one could also choose beliefs based upon what kind of person you might be striving to be. This would at least meet my moral argument against James' argument, if you were striving to be a moral kind of person.
To me, this seems a better criterion for choosing beliefs that merely choosing the belief that you want to believe. That is, it does not seem that bad, if possible, to choose beliefs that would put you on the road to becoming your moral ideal.
These are the possibilities. Each has its own positive and negative consequences. In summary: I, for the most part, recommend that you set your beliefs according to evidence and justification, as Hume suggests. (And maybe if one is using the term 'belief' correctly it is not possible to do otherwise.) But if you do not want to do this and it is possible to do otherwise then I would not strongly discourage choosing beliefs based upon an ideal self. I suspect that the latter strategy would make for a less stable emotional environment, but really this your choice.
The last thing a person should do is choose his beliefs based upon the perception of whether or not they would bring about the right kind of feelings. Not only might one be wrong about what kind of feelings would result, but the practice would soon have one far removed from reality. Later on, I will attempt to indicate which emotions go with which character traits, for those who might wish to choose their beliefs to enable character traits.
What does all this mean in terms of a flowchart for emotional resolution? It implies that a main question that one should ask oneself in resolving an emotion is "Are the beliefs that make this emotion possible justified?" Maybe this is obvious. We should always make sure of our facts before we become jealous, for instance. But it also implies that we are able to ask ourselves about the background assumptions that make jealousy possible. Does jealousy require the notion of owning another person, for instance?
When we get to specific emotions, I will many times indicate what I think the relevant background beliefs are for that emotion.
But for now let us turn our attention to the other element at the kernel of an emotion: one's preferences.
In the section on "beliefs" It is proposed that a belief be associated with either a degree of willingness to assert that a statement is true (with full integrity) or the willingness to act as if its probability were more likely than not. In a similar fashion, I take preferences to be related to the degree to which one would want a statement or a cluster of statements to be true.
Image, if you will, that you could rank all of the possible ways the world could be, from the best world according to your values, to the worst world. If you could do this, we could tell you what your preferences are.
For instance, if every situation with the world at peace was ranked higher or equal to the situation similar it, except there was no peace, then we could say that you have a preference for peace. I am not saying that anyone ever does this sort of infinite prioritizing or that anyone would ever really want to, but only that if we saw this ranking we could infer from it all of the person's preferences.
There are some logical problems with the notion of 'similar situation' but let us skip past those for a bit since this construct will prove to be useful, even if slightly flawed.
The first thing we might notice is that this ranking would change from time to time as the person has different experiences, feelings, and moods. Likewise then, our preferences will change from time to time. But we might want to think a bit about whether there is such a thing as a true ranking, one that does not change or changes with less volatility.
So, for instance, we may wish to consider only those rankings that are the result of broad clear-minded reflection. By this I mean the way we would order things when we try to offset our impulsiveness and take all of our values into consideration and count events and states at a future time with the same intensity as comparable states at or near the present time. When a person is focused upon an impulse and is willing to act upon it, even though it will have negative consequences for other values that the person possesses but is not thinking about at the time, this is not a 'broad reflection'. Thus we can see that this 'true ranking' would be less subject to change from time to time.
Let us take an example of a preference in an ordinary context. What would it mean to say that you prefer to go out to dinner tonight? Should we imagine that what your are saying is that you have viewed all possible situations and all of the situations where you go out to dinner are preferred to all of the worlds where you do not? This cannot be right. Instead, it is more like the following: You have in mind a context, or a set of assumptions that limit and fix the domain of consideration. Within this small set of possibilities (in that context), you regard the situations where you go out to dinner as better than the possibilities where you do not. You do not compare 'going out to dinner' with 'taking a ride on the space shuttle'. The ride on the shuttle is not one of the possibilities in consideration.
So, it is not only preferences that matter for purposes of emotions, but preferences in a context. We have in mind a certain set of situations when we assess our preferences. Some of the contexts that are important for purposes of emotions are as follows:
1: The context where we compare what is the case now with what we believe was the case. An example of this is the emotion of grief. Notice when a person grieves, they are comparing what is with what was.
2: The context where we compare what is the case with what one had expected to happen (our expectations i.e. what we believed was likely to be the case). An example of this would be disappointment or relief. When a person has positive expectations and when these expectations do not work out, then the person is disappointed. When a person has negative expectations and these expectations do not come to pass, the person is relieved.
3: The context where we compare what is the case with what we believed could have easily happened. Envy might be an example of this. If a person compares the life of another, say a lottery winner, with his/her own life, then one might feel envious. A person might prefer that they had won the lottery.
4: We can compare what is the case with what we believe should have happened. Some kinds of anger might be an example of this kind of emotion. When we are angry with someone (or with their behavior), sometimes it is because what they did was in contrast with what we believe they should have done.
We may find that there are more ways to focus on our preferences. If fact, there might be quite a few possible ways to compare situations that did not come to be to situations that did, but these four above are probably the most common and will do for now. The important thing to realize is that for the purposes of emotions, a person compares what happens (actually what they believed happens), or some relevant features of what happened with some other limited set of possibilities.
Another thing to note about preferences is that they often have beliefs as presuppositions. So, for instance, as in the above example of 'should' and anger, if we discover later on that the person actually did what was right, not wrong, then if this was the major reason for the anger, then the anger will go away. In a non-emotional example, we might think that we would prefer to go to the beach today, but if we then discover that it is raining at the beach, this preference will leave. Maybe the reason we wanted to go was because we wanted to lay out and get a tan. Thus, it appears that preferences, once you peel away some of the beliefs, are often built from more fundamental preferences.
Because of this understanding of preferences, it suggests at least four approaches to changing or dealing with a preference. The first is to change one of the beliefs that underlie the preference. How would we do that? To find the beliefs that underlie a preference, you may ask yourself 'why do I prefer such and such?' So, for instance, suppose that you prefer to go to a specific movie this evening. If you had a reason to want to change that preference you might ask yourself 'Why do I want to go to this specific movie?' Your answer might be because you believe that it will be a good movie and you have a preference to see a good movie (over the other alternatives for the evening). And so, if you do some research and discover that the movie is likely not to be a good one, then this preference will change under the influence of new information.
So asking 'why?' is one of the methodologies that one could use to discover what one would 'really prefer'. By 'really prefer' I mean 'what one would prefer upon reflection and given complete knowledge'. Using this approach, changing a preference reduces to changing a belief. As I indicated earlier, finding the evidence for the belief may be on the path for this change. We will have opportunities when dealing with examples to see how this might work with specific emotions.
Because there is a sometimes a difference between our preferences and the preferences that we would have upon broad clear minded reflection on all our values, this gives us our second mechanism for changing preferences. In the modern life it is easy to become focused upon one narrow concern, so that for that time one may lose perspective and forget about the preferences that would always be there upon clear reflection. For example, I play chess a lot. When I am really into it, and I make a mistake, it might seem like the worst thing that could happen to me in my life. This is what it means to "lose perspective". Some small transient value gets overrated when your focus has narrowed. While I was playing well, this focus made my experience seem more exciting and greater than it would in a broader context, and this may be part of the reason we narrow our focus, so that we can experience this narrow satisfaction with greater intensity.
The preference would change if, by reflection, we remind ourselves of how this narrow situation fits in the context of our whole life. In fact, it would be handy for an individual to have a prepared broad perspective that they could whip out whenever a narrow focus was causing emotional stress. I believe this is usually referred to as 'The Big Picture' and it is not surprising that it is often associated with a concept of wisdom. One of the benefits of wisdom is that it is supposed to give us a perspective that should help us deal with life, and in particular with our feelings in and about our life.
The third method is more for dealing with a preference than changing it. Because an emotion is a function of which possible worlds one is focused upon, it might seem that all one would have to do to change an emotion is focus on a different comparison. Here is an example. Suppose you get second prize in a beauty contest (as in Monopoly). Some might be disappointment because they did not get first prize. This is because the comparison is being made between what happened and what one had hoped would happen or even what one expected to happen.
But, you might say, it was also possible, to get last place in the contest. Would reflection on this fact change the disheartened feeling? Probably not. However, it might serve to introduce a positive emotion to offset the negative glitch on the emotional landscape brought about by disappointment. The other comparison is still there, but now you may also feel a bit lucky that you did not get last place because you at least avoided an embarrassment.
The last and maybe the most important method of changing a preference is to come to an awareness that you don't want that preference. At that point, sometimes, but not always, you can choose to not have that preference. Sometimes just this awareness will make the change: the awareness that you have a second level preference to not have the preference. At other times you may have to mull over for a while the place of this preference in your life. It's not clear to me to what extent we may actually choose our preference, but it does seem to be an option in some cases.
For most contexts the word 'desire' could probably take the place of 'preference' without much harm, but using the notion of preference keeps our attention on the fact that most of our 'desires' are relational, which is to say that we desire things in relation to the alternatives that we believe are viable options. To use the word 'desire' is to focus on something and value it as if it could be valued out of context. Thus, we have two ways to go in this article/book. We could use the word 'desire' and keep in mind that very few desires could not be overridden by bringing in more choices or we could use the word 'preference' which already conveys ordering in context. Let me use 'preference' mostly from now on, even though some definitions of particular emotions may seem a little strained with this word. When there is such a strain, remember its closely related term 'desire'.
There is one other small problem with using the concept of desire in defining particular emotions and that is in some contexts 'desire' is almost synonymous with 'unfulfilled desire', thus to fulfill a desire is to eliminate it. Preferences hold as their object that certain situations BE THE CASE over other situations. If we find that something preferred is the case, the preference does not disappear. A satisfaction will appear instead. This satisfaction will disappear immediately if we discover that we were wrong about the truth of our judgment.
Anyway, this is probably more than we need to know to understand emotions and it admittedly is not yet as clear as it could be, but it is food for thought and should count as a sufficient starting point for what is to follow.
Additional Comment (On Calvin and Hobbes cartoon above)
Note that Calvin's dad is able to bring out a larger perspective (bigger picture) to help him deal with his feelings. I don't believe that this perspective was useful in resolving the anger. The anger was muted or dissolved by Calvin who was sufficiently apologetic and indicated that he had learned something. The broad perspective is used by Calvin's dad, seemingly successfully, to deal with the intensity of his disappointment by realizing that his binoculars are not the most important thing in his life. His future car is much more important!
When I first developed this theory, I only had considered believing as the kind of thinking that was relevant to defining an emotion. But with the help of others and their counterexamples, I realized that a more general theory was possible. Bill Jarrold, a friend, asked me if 'surprise' was an emotion. Of course, there is 'pleasantly surprised' or 'unpleasantly surprised', but what about 'surprise' itself? Sometimes. during a movie for instance, we are delighted by a surprise in the story. A twist that did not expect. That is, sometimes we enjoy being surprised independently of the content of the surprise. Humor may be an example of this.
When we are pleasantly surprised we may note that our belief that something would occur has changed for the better and the thought of this better state is pleasant, thus the pleasantness of the surprise. But how are we to think of surprise itself? Should we think, I prefer to be surprised and now I believe I am surprised and that is the source of the pleasantness? I don't think so. It is more likely that the state of being surprised is itself a pleasant state. I do not have to reflect upon my preference to be surprised for the surprise to be a positive experience.
Thinking about this and realizing that I had had problems trying to define things like 'awe', 'wonder' or boredom with mere beliefs and preferences, I had to generalized to thinking of emotions as pleasant or unpleasant states of thinking. Again, we see that emotions are not direct functions of the world but are instead a function of our thoughts (mostly about the world).
So what is thinking? Besides 'believing' we have other things that we do on a cognitive level. Here are some examples.
We even have grammatical forms that correspond to some of these. For instance, 'believing' is something we do to statements. 'Wondering' could be thought of as having questions as their objects and 'intending' may be thought of as having commands as their objects of thought. This is speculation at this point, but interesting speculation. I hope others pursue this line of thinking.
Notice that in every case, at least the way I've expressed it here, the notion of the truth of a state of affair is at the core of these thinkings. Our various attitudes towards these states make up all varieties of thinking, which we shall call 'cognitive states'. It seems that a core notion of emotions is that of being 'about' something.
We may wonder if "John is afraid that such and such is true" constitutes one of these cognitive states? This will be treated as complex. Let's take an example. If I said "I am afraid that I can't make it to the party", clearly this is not an expression of the emotion of fear. It is more like, "I'm not going to make it" and "This disappoints me." However, if it were really the case that I am not prepared for the possibility of not going and I think about this and it leads to an unpleasantness, then it may very well be thought of as the emotion of fear.
In order to give the clearest definitions of emotions, it would be nice to see which of the above examples are more fundamental, more atomic than the others. With this in mind, let me suggest that belief and preference are close to fundamental. 'To be counting upon such and such' is likely expressible as 'not being prepared for it not to be the case that such and such'. I think 'to be prepared' is more fundamental, but it's hard to tell from this definition since it looks like 'to be prepared for' could similarly be defined in terms of 'counting upon'.
To be surprised that such and such is true is a function of the change in beliefs. We need the concept of 'belief' but also 'change', so strictly speaking it cannot be defined purely in terms of belief.
To hope that something be the case is to be counting on it more than is warranted by the evidence. There may be an element of pretending in hope and pretending can sometimes be pleasant or unpleasant. Thus, we can imaging that the feeling of 'being hopeful' itself may be a positive or negative emotion, or both at the same time.
So, in terms of the emotions that I decide to treat here, I take the following emotions to be ones that are not belief based : awe, wonder, curiosity, boredom, loneliness, love (in one sense), hope, surprise (in one sense). Remember though, that by 'not belief based' I mean emotions that do not disappear if the belief that the preference is not satisfied disappears.
Let's keep in mind also we may not have a complete list of fundamental cognitive states here, and to get a complete list would be interesting but left for another time. For now, let us go on to defining 'emotion'.
In order for us to understand a particular emotion and for us to understand what our options are for resolving the emotion we need to be able to define it. By define it, in this context, I am using the strong notion of 'definition' meaning that we should explicitly state the necessary and sufficient conditions for us to classify that emotion as the one being defined. I do not just mean 'drawing boundaries around', which might be our most frequent usage of the term 'definition'. At the core of a definition is a preference and near the core some belief about whether the preference is or is not satisfied. Thus, to define a particular emotion we have to ask ourselves 'what preference does a person have who is experiencing that emotion such that if they did not have that preference, then they would not have the emotion. So, for instance, we might be able to see that disappointment has at its core the preference that positive expectations be satisfied.
When we define an emotion in this sense we should realize that we are engaging in a semantical inquiry. We are attempting to ask the question, 'How would we characterize the way we usually successfully apply the term "disappointment" (for example), in terms of a core preference.' or other thinkings. Just so this task not be too easy, we should also realize that sometimes a term is used in several different ways. "Sadness" comes to mind as an emotion with several meanings. My empirical claim, to be examined by ordinary experience and reflection upon how we might have used the term in the past, is that once you have identified a feeling as an emotion there is at least one definition (maybe more, if the emotion has various senses) that fits the structure of my definitional schema.
So herein, I will attempt to find at least one definition for some of the more popular (familiar) emotions. Once this is done, if one had identified an emotion by name, then by consulting the definition of the emotion one would understand what the possible avenues for resolution are. However, it might be that we is not able to identify an emotion by name. In fact, we should even allow for the possibility that some emotions do not have names yet. Even in such a case, there is a procedure to attempt to understand what the possibilities of resolving that emotion are.
Suppose you have a feeling and you know that the feeling is at least partially supported by beliefs. How would you know this? You ask yourself, 'if some of my beliefs were to change, would this feeling go away?' If the answer is 'yes', then that feeling is an emotion. Now, with or without a name for this emotion you can still define it. You may ask yourself 'What preference do I have, such that if it were to go away, the feeling would also go away?' At first this may seem too broad a question, for we have all sorts of preferences in the background, and we might not know how to sort through them all. To narrow the focus, realize that emotions, maybe in contrast to moods, have a focal object. When we say
'I am angry about (or at)...'
'I feel guilty about...'
'I am sad about...'
'I am disappointed that...'
'I am jealous of....'
there is an object for each of these feelings. Now, it is true that one can be just plain 'angry', but in this context (when there is not an object) we would not call the feeling an emotion but instead a mood.
So the question one might use to help one focus on the preference is 'What is this emotion 'about', or 'of'. What is the object or event or state of affairs of the emotion? The preference, then is related to why you wanted or did not want that event to occur, or that state of affairs to come to pass, or why you did not want that object to do what it did. On some level every emotion in the belief sense can be traced to an event or situation or fact perceived as favorable or unfavorable.
As an example, let me share a personal experience with you. I live in the mountains of California. When it snows, people from other parts come up here to sled and toboggan. The area isn't really set up for it, so on occasion, for instance, someone will be sliding down a mountain and zip across the road.
It was on such a day that I was driving along, not completely aware of how quickly I could stop if need be, the roads were icy but I had studded tires. There was a car ahead of me about 10 car lengths and although I was only going about 25 mph, I decided to be more cautious and slow down a bit. In this particular case, I was really being too cautious, and if I had gotten much closer I would not have been concerned.
Within about 20 seconds a kid from nowhere came sliding off the mountain to land directly in the path of my car. I put on the brakes as forcefully as I could and still be somewhat assured that I would not slide. My car wheel stopped within 2 feet of the middle of the kid's body.
The interesting thing to me is that the memory of this event comes back to me from time to time and when it does I have strong feelings, but I have not been able to put a precise label on those feelings.
I do not have to think too long to discover the core preference of this emotion. It has at its foundation the fact that I strongly prefer the situation where I do not hit the kid to the situation where I do hit him. This, with the belief that I did not hit him, is enough to generate the emotion when I focus on it. If I wanted to change this emotion, which I do not, I would probably ask myself why I did not want to hit him. Actually in this case the answer to the question is not likely to change my preference, but in some cases it might.
Another interesting thing about the situation is that one of the things that makes the emotion so strong is that the alternative situation where I hit him seems so close. As a possibility, it seems very real because it could have easily been the case. The fact that I slowed down almost by accident just before and the fact that he was only 2 feet away from my tire, reminds me of its closeness.
I still do not have a name for this emotion. I am tempted to say I feel lucky or I feel relieved or thankful, but these do not quite do it. They don't seem specific enough. I know that if things had gone the other way, I would have felt regret and sorrow and maybe some other negative emotions like guilt. But even in such a case I would still not need the name of the emotion in order to deal with it and in fact because the emotion is somewhat positive, there is no challenge to dealing with it. I expect that the intensity of this emotion will decrease as the alternative possibility where I hit the kid seems less real.
Also, if the emotion is of the non belief sort, then one may ask oneself what thinking state is one in that is either pleasant or unpleasant.
One might ask: if all emotions are satisfactions or dissatisfactions of beliefs then why don't all emotions feel the same? What accounts for that difference in quality of feeling? One answer is that sometimes other thinking states are involved. like expectations or hopes, but it may also be that the difference in quality of feeling is to be found in the quality of the pleasure or displeasure from attending to the belief. We know, for instance, that the pleasure of a satisfactory eating experience is a different kind of pleasure than a satisfactory sexual experience, for instance. I would suggest that in the same way the preference at stake in the emotion may bring about different kinds of pleasure or displeasure when attending to the belief.
When we are young, the response to an emotion is less complex. For negative emotions we naturally take a course of action that we perceive might resolve or dissolve the emotion. For positive emotions, we try to hold and maintain the pleasant feeling. These responses are natural, for we are just trying to stop the displeasure and enjoy the pleasure. Because we humans are similar in how we approach things it is easy to identify when a child is feeling angry, for instance. The child tries to shut down the source perceived to be the cause of the anger. There are limited ways for a child to do this, like hitting, and so when a child exhibits this behavior we know he/she is angry.
But as a child learns more ways to 'shut down the source', his/her responses may become harder to interpret. Furthermore strategies that have worked in the past for dealing with this emotion may become reinforced, including the strategy (possibly) of not showing the emotion. Thus as a person gets older it might become harder to identify their feeling merely from their actions. It is tempting to believe that the response is the defining aspect of the emotion, for that is one way we learn the language, by associating the feeling with the reaction to the feeling. But it becomes clear as responses become more complex that this will not do. It would be too hard to characterize these possible responses without referring to the intention of the response, which is what it takes to address the emotion.
In the case of negative emotions, we are attempting to resolve or dissolve the emotion through our behavior. The thing that complicates this process and makes the response seem natural or automatic or forced is that over time we develop habitual ways of responding to emotions of a similar sort. So we have seen people who automatically hit someone, as if by instinct, when conclude they are angry. They may claim that it was forced by the feeling. "They could do nothing else."
But often what one thinks of as instinct is merely a strong deeply established habit. The habit was acquired because it was successful at resolving the emotion in the past and thus it was satisfying. So, what I would like to propose that the response is not part of the definition of the emotion but is instead a learned reaction to the dissatisfied emotional preference.
Let us define a successful response to a negative emotion as a response that resolves or dissolves that emotion and does it in a way that does not bring about other negative emotions. So, for instance, it might not be a successful response to deal with anger by hitting someone, since this may result in feelings of regret or guilt, depending upon the situation. If hitting someone is in general a successful way to resolve the emotion without consequence, then it would have a tendency to become habitual.
I would recommend that we reflect upon the habits that we have developed in responding to emotions with a critical eye on whether we have adopted habits that are going to be generally successful. One of the ways we can do this is by reflecting upon our responses in the past and identifying the habitual responses that did not work out, so that the next time we are in a similar situation we can remind ourselves that these responses do not work. It may not be enough to deter the habitual response at first, but after a few self-reminders it could be.
So, suppose you have an uncomfortable emotion that needs resolution. Try reflecting on the possible ways to resolve the emotion before responding to the emotion. What would make the emotion go away? One should not just focus upon changing the external world. Sometimes the thing that will make the emotion go away is an examination of the beliefs and preferences involved. Sometimes reflection will change the nature of these beliefs or preferences, thus this ought to be considered as one of the possibilities when we are faced with trying to resolve a negative emotion.
But what might be the proper response to a positive emotion? I would think that one would try to enjoy it as long as possible. We know that positive emotions eventually fade. Why is that and are there ways to hold on to the feeling? This will often depend upon the emotion and the nature of the preference being satisfied. We will talk more of this when we address particular positive emotions.
But now let us try to define the most commonly named emotions and some that are not so common, at least in name.
If you asked the person on the street to list 3 basic emotions, probably none would come up with emotional satisfaction or emotional dissatisfaction. This will not deter me from claiming that these are the most fundamental and general emotions. In fact, in my taxonomy of emotional terms, all particular emotions will just be a specific kind of emotional satisfaction or dissatisfaction or mixture of the two.
What this implies then is that if there are general methods for dealing with emotional dissatisfaction then those methods will be potentially applicable to every negative emotion.
Let us look at my definition:
A person is emotionally dissatisfied if and only if the person is having an unpleasant experience resulting from attending to the fact that any preference (by any comparison) is not being satisfied by a belief.
You will note that this is pretty much the definition of a negative emotion. Since, all definitions will have this form, that is, all definitions will refer to a preference not being satisfied by a belief, the method of comparison, attending to the beliefs, we can shorten the general form of a definition of an emotion. Let us call the particular preference relevant to the definition the core of the emotion. Let us call the preference together with the belief that either satisfies it or not the kernel of the emotion. So...
The Definition
A person is emotionally dissatisfied if and only if,
1) The person has a preference for a belief.
2) The preference is not being satisfied.
3) P has displeasure arising from attending to the fact that this preference is not satisfied by P's beliefs.
Summary of the definition and Note.
The core of emotional dissatisfaction is any preference.
The kernel of emotional dissatisfaction is any preference that is not satisfied by a belief. (No restrictions on type of belief or preference is needed)
Resolution and Preparing (for that kind of emotion in the future)
As I noted before, the way to resolve such an emotion is to see if a relevant belief can be changed or a relevant preference. If one wished to prepare so that he/she had less dissatisfactions in the future, what could he/she do? Is it possible to decide to care less about the truth of things? Could we do this by just refusing to compare how things worked out with any other possibility? I do not see how, although there do seem to be those who do care less about what comes about. It would seem, though, that to prevent dissatisfactions in this way would also prevent some satisfactions. Would this be a good trade? Would one want to combat grief, for instance, by caring less for others and thus insuring little reaction if they were to die? There are many unanswered questions here. These issues shall be left for another time. They may be left to the reader.
Character traits associated with that emotion
How would we characterize a person who had mastered this ability to not care about anything? Uncaring? Would a person who lives purely for the moment, having no expectations and no regrets be in this category? Minimally, we would classify this person as unemotional (or a person with little emotion)
Other meanings of these terms or terms with related meanings.
'Satisfaction' and 'dissatisfaction' also function to refer to other feelings besides emotions. One can be satisfied in a purely physical or primal sense and also a mood could sometimes be described as satisfying or dissatisfying. For instance, a person can be dissatisfied by being hungry or physically uncomfortable or itchy. The reason that these are not emotional dissatisfactions is because they do not involve attention to beliefs. Obviously these terms were constructed. Upon reflection they are probably most closely related to the emotions of happy and sad as in 'I am happy that...' and 'I am sad that....'
The Definition
A person P is emotionally disappointed about x if and only if,
1) P had an expectation that x occur and P has a preference that x occur, and
2) P has counted upon that expectation, and
3) This preference is not satisfied by a belief, and
4) P has displeasure arising from attending to the fact that P believes his/her preference is not satisfied.
Summary of the definition and Note.
Disappointment is the dissatisfaction that occurs when counted upon expectations are not fulfilled. Note that if something were expected but not prepared for in any way that this emotion would be just classified as 'unpleasantly surprised'. By 'prepared for' in this context, all I mean is that at least some fantasizing or planning has taken place. In adding the 'counted upon' clause, I wanted to account for something that seems to me to be the case, and that is that not all positive expectations that fail to be realized result in disappointment. Here's an example. Suppose one expects that one's car be in the driveway. But one wakes up one morning and looks out and it's gone. Would we call the accompanying emotion "disappointment"? I don't think so. Only when the person starts to realize that they will now not be able to do a few things that they counted up would we say that they are disappointed. But even then it is disappointment about not being able to do something that they were counting on or prepared from, not a disappointment about the car being gone.
But I would not be opposed to having two definitions of disappointment, one where 2 is included and the other where it is excluded.
When we say 'I am disappointed that <fill in the blank> happened' the object of the disappointment is an event. But the object of a disappointment could also be a state of affairs, or even a conceptual truth. To say that P expected X to occur means that P believed that X would occur, where X is about a future state or a present state not yet known. To say that this preference is not satisfied by a belief may be true for a couple of reasons. One is that the time of X has arrived and P realizes X is not true, or X is still in the future or unknown but now new information or reflection indicates that X will not be true.
How could one change disappointment in progress? (Pros, Cons)
We should note that disappointments are a specific form of dissatisfaction. So any successful method of getting rid of dissatisfactions in general will work here. Another thing to note is that disappointments go away by themselves after a while as our expectations gradually change or as we cease to count upon those expectations. To hurry the process we could reflect on the specific expectation and possibly make it less real by asking ourselves if the expectation was justified. If it was, then we must take another approach, but if it was not, then reflection on the fact that it was not reasonable to form that expectation in the first place should weaken its force as we get a chance to learn and to laugh at ourselves.
Another way to deal with this emotion is to actively find alternative ways to not prepare for or not count on the expected result.
Preparing for disappointment (to lessen or eliminate it) (Pros, Cons)
It seems unlikely that one could stop having expectations. Expectations, after all, are beliefs that are future tensed (or beliefs about present or past situations that are so far unknown). We use such beliefs with their various degrees of probability to help us make decisions as to what to do. But we might ask ourselves if we should be forming our expectations in a different manner. Some, for instance, might play down to themselves the possibility of good things happening. This 'pessimistic' strategy although would guard against disappointments, would likely be paid for with a pessimistic mood.
Colleagues have argued for the position that understanding and reflecting on emotions is not the way to go to resolve them, and yet it seems that it may have been due to some reflection on one's disappointments that one develops a strategy of pessimism. Minimally I would like to suggest that if this is a strategy developed that it should be developed in a more intentional way, so that one is really choosing to lower ones expectations reflectively instead of reactively.
On the other hand, an optimist, whose mood might be quite high, because expectations are set high, would be setting him/herself up for more disappointments. Personally I believe that if one wants to balance one's mood with one's possible disappointments that the optimal strategy would be to not compensate one way or the other with expectations but instead give them the weight that the evidence supports. In order not to be subject to extreme swings then, a person should not have expectations in all or nothing categories but instead should have expectations in degrees, like probabilities. Each individual disappointment gives us an opportunity to rethink our method for inferring things about the future, i.e. setting up our expectations. An erratic method for forming expectations, not based upon evidence, is more likely to result in erratic moods and emotions.
Another approach to preparing for disappointment is to focus upon another aspect of the definition is to not prepare for or count on the possibility that the expectation actualize. Develop a backup play if possible and if time permits. The problem is that its not always easy or timely to reflect enough to know that one has formed an expectation. But, a bit of practice of reflecting on unfulfilled expectations should help one discover expectations as they form.
The Opposite Emotion
There are different senses of 'Opposite' here.
When something we prefer but did not expect to happen and did not count on, happens we are 'pleasantly surprised'. This is really more the opposite of "unpleasantly surprised" than it is the opposite of "disappointment".
When a counted upon expectation is satisfied, there does not seem to correspond a specific emotional state
When a negative expectation is unsatisfied, we might refer to that as feeling relieved or thankful or lucky.
Other meanings of these terms that do not refer to an emotion.
A person could have a mood of being disappointed in general, not about any particular object. This may be what is referred to when we say someone a persons mood is depressed. There may also be non-cognitive disappointment, since non-cognitive animals do seem to form something like expectations.
Additional Comments:
This is the first emotion that uses the notion of expectation. As I suggested, an expectation is a belief about the likelihood of a future state of affairs or event. This is also the first emotion that refers to beliefs being counted upon. A disappointment gives us the opportunity to reflect upon what it was that led us to falsely set up the expectation. This reflection should provide assistance in setting up future expectations more wisely. A disappointment may also be thought of as asking us to reflect upon how and when we should decide to count upon something.
It might be more like a play-on-words than anything, but it is almost as if disappointment is what happens when you find that an appointment (that you are counting on) has been canceled.
The Definition
A person P is emotionally frustrated by x, if and only if,
1) P prefers that it take no more effort to accomplish x than what P expected would be necessary.
2) P is counting on accomplishing x, and
3) P intended to bring about x, and
4) P believes he has put in the appropriate amount of effort but x is not complete, and
5) P has displeasure arising from attending to the fact that P believes his/her preference is not satisfied.
Summary of the definition and Note:
Frustration is the dissatisfaction that occurs with the realization that more effort will be required to accomplish a counted-on accomplishment than was expected. It differs from disappointment in that the object of the expectation is the length or difficulty of a task that one is attempting to perform. It appears by this definition that frustration is a kind of disappointment, but more than merely disappointment.
How could one change frustration in progress? (Pros, Cons):
The definition suggests many ways to address this emotion. First of all, finish the task. The emotion will go away at that time, probably with a residual mood of frustration taking its place. But, of course, finishing the task is not helpful advice for someone to try to deal with frustration during the task. Looking at the components of the definition, you could
1) Abandon the task, or
2) Try to lower your expectations of how much effort it might take to accomplish the task, or
3) Try not to count on the task being completed (or completed without a lot more effort).
The unique thing about this emotion is that one of the components is constantly changing as the task is performed, namely the expectations of how much effort it will take. The expectations often, but not always, have several stages as one realizes new aspects of the problem.
Abandoning the task may not be an option and even if it is, one might have set up a competition with the task with a win or lose perspective. This could add an extra emotional dimension of feeling less worthy or like a loser, if one gives up. The short answer to this is to critically examine whether one is in fact a loser if one gives up one's commitment to the task. One could also reassess whether the task is worth doing with the effort that now seems to be required. If the answer is "no" then abandoning the task seems appropriate, probably followed by disappointment. If you discover that the task is really better off not done, then even the disappointment will go away.
Trying to lower your expectations is the most common way of dealing with frustrations and usually happens most naturally as you realize the difficulty of the task. But the frustration may be replaced with disappointment that your earlier expectations were not being realized.
Trying to not count on the task being completed without a lot more effort is probably the easiest way, in most cases, to mute the emotion. If one can stay aware of early clues that the task will take more effort then one can change the degree to which one is counting on it being done early on, making the duration of the emotion shorter.
If the task is under time-pressure, that is, if it turns out that if the task cannot be done in a certain amount of time then it will not be done at all, then the importance of the task and the uncertainty of it, may bring along worry.
Again, we should note that frustration is also a kind of dissatisfaction and anything that worked there, may work here. Thus, just doing the task and not thinking about it while your doing it, might be a way of having the pain of the emotion not present, (thus not having the emotion present, by definition.)
Preparing for frustration (to lessen or eliminate it) (Pros, Cons):
If one has a special problem with frustration, then there are several strategies for preparing for it. Just as with disappointment, we might try modifying our expectations, in particular those expectations about how easy a task will be. If you have been consistently wrong about the effort required in the past, then it would be appropriate to reflect upon the source of error and compensate with expectations that are more realistic. Furthermore, you may wish to limit the number of such tasks so that you are not under the time pressure that would cause worry and stress. The con on this is that, of course, you will not accomplish as much.
The Opposite Emotion
In one sense of "opposite" there does not seem to be a strong emotion that corresponds to a task accomplished within expected effort estimations. Maybe a self-satisfaction will present itself, especially if ones sense of self-worth was tied into the task. One might get excited, relieved, or self-satisfied, if one finds that a task was a lot easier than one expected.
Other meanings of these terms that do not refer to an emotion:
It is possible to have a frustrated mood. We might suspect that this is a remembered feeling from many or strong emotions of frustration. As a mood it makes having a new frustrating emotion more likely. Also there does seem to be a non-cognitive form of frustration, since some non-cognitive animals seem to demonstrate frustration behavior.
Additional Comments:
This is the first emotion covered that has characteristics of an individual's performance as part of the object of preference. To think of frustration as a kind of disappointment might seem wrong. I would not be a bit surprised to discover that one of these definitions is incomplete. But it might be that frustration is the stronger of the two and thus it is hard to feel disappointment by itself while being frustrated.
The Definition
A person P is fearful (has fear) about event x, if and only if,
1) P has a preference to have assurance that x will not arise, and
2) P believes that he/she does not have assurance that x will not ar