What we call emotions are things that we understand from personal experience of these things within ourselves and their manifestation in others and from our ordinary notions about the world. We do not think we are speaking about a scientific matter when we talk of emotions. We do not even think we are talking about a technical matter. This is what Griffiths means when he says that our everyday understanding of emotions is "folk psychology."
Griffiths is part of a large body of technical literature that addresses the emotions technically. Among those who have addressed emotions are psychologists, philosophers, anthropologists, and some harder scientists (neuroscientists, for example).
Griffiths in particular is a philosopher first and foremost, but he is trying to bring hard science, psychology, and anthropology to bear on his study of emotions.
The Introduction goes through the plan of the book.
I'll start with some material about "natural kinds." "Natural" here means "having or constituting a classification or other method of arrangement based on features existing in nature" or "having a physical or real existence as contrasted with one that is spiritual, intellectual, or psychical." "Kind" means "a grouping." So a "natural kind" is a grouping of things that arises from their features that exist in nature (not in our minds). The chemical elements are used as examples. The idea is that whether or not any being realizes it, there are groupings in the world that reflect what things REALLY are. Natural kinds are usually held to be exclusive: if you are a member of one kind, you are not a member of any others. It used to be the case that one could speak of the essential nature of the things in a kind, but Griffiths will reject that notion. He thinks that natural kinds have the following trait: knowing that something is a member of X natural kind explains more about that thing than any other grouping to which that thing belongs. So I am a professor, a man, a clothes-wearer, a father, a woodworker, etc. Those are all groupings that apply to me. But none of them explain as much as the single grouping "human" does about me.
Just as we speak of "air," but a scientist speaks of "a gaseous misture of oxygen, nitrogen, etc.," so Griffiths thinks maybe we should also speak about emotions much more precisely if we want to explain what they are. In the case of air, we know that what air REALLY is is not "air," but a certain mix of chemical molecules made up of elements in a certain physical state. Once scientists figured out what air is, they stopped talking about "air" and started talking about what it REALLY IS. Likewise, people used to speak of fish, and they included whales among them, but then it was figured out that whales are actually mammals, who are vertebrates like fish, but are in a very different place on the evolutionary tree. At that point scientists stopped calling whales fish, because they REALLY are not fish, and the fact that a whale is a mammal explains a whole lot more about it than the fact that it swims in water. So Griffiths thinks that there is a good chance that when we speak of emotions (anger, sadness, elation, envy, hatred, love), we are at best talking about how we perceive those things. We may not be talking about what they REALLY are.
The most general question that Griffiths is talking about is how we cut up our world. Think of a baby. When the baby is born, that baby has at best an idea of what some things sound like. Other than that, it has had no previous sensory experience of the outside world. The baby must decide that those things that keep reappearing and have sounds coming out of them are "faces." Even before the baby has a word for it, it has a concept for "faces." It also must decide about all the things in the world. It must start to decide how to track them. For a while, surely certain smells mean "mommy" or "daddy," but then some other woman comes along with the same perfume or a man who has just drunk coffee too and is not daddy, and the baby gets confused. It must start to separate out certain things. How is it to know which things form coherent wholes, which do not? Which things really are what they are?
Well, if you think about different points of view in the world, you see that the world has been cut up very differently by different people, even scientists. For example a certain thing is one thing to a chemist, another to a physicist, another to a biologist, another to a geologist. How did they all come to agree that the chemist's definition is the one that REALLY tells you what oxygen is? Why is oxygen not just a bunch of energy/quarks/protons/electrons etc.? Why is it not simply the key element for life?
It turns out that the chemist's definition of it is the most productive definition, and tells you the most about what it REALLY is. The chemist's definition is the one that is most likely to explain any given question you have about that thing we call oxygen insofar as it is oxygen. Whether you are a geologist, an artist, a biologist, or what-have-you, you are more likely to find that what you want to know is explained by considering that stuff oxygen than any other categorization. The particle-physicist's account of oxygen just is not very explanatory about oxygen insofar as it is oxygen, although it is explanatory about oxygen qua matter.
So what Griffiths wants is to determine which way of dividing the things we call emotions explains the most about them. If he has to throw out the folk psychological labels and create new categories, as chemists did when they discovered the periodic table of elements, he does not care. He thinks he will have a superior explanation of what is REALLY going on.
So the questions Griffiths asks about emotions have to do with what they REALLY are, and what that notion of REALLY BEING means. In chapters 7-8, we will be looking hard at that "really being" aspect of Griffiths' project.
In the earlier chapters of his book (i.e. chapters 1-6), Griffiths is concerned to explain the prevailing views about what emotions are and to lay out his position among those prevailing views. It may seem as though he is explaining something only to say it is wrong (that has been the reaction of past students), but an essential part of advancing human knowledge is integrating one's findings with what has previously been discovered. Griffiths is doing that. Up to now, you have perhaps not seen much of this sort of thing, because you have been given textbooks that lay out answers without entering into the controversies that surround or have lead up to those answers. This book is seeking not just to address you as a student, but to address fellow-researchers and to convince them of certain things. In order to do that, Griffiths needs to deal with what those researchers think are the leading candidates for answers to his questions. In that sense, looking at the way Griffiths works is as important for our class as is looking at the actual results of what he does.
On page 2, Griffiths explains that research on emotions has been dominated by the "propositional attitude" theory, which thinks that emotions are the beliefs and desires that make up everyday explanations of human activity. I.e. emotions are beliefs combined with attitudes. The main opposing viewpoint has been the "feeling theory" that holds that emotions are "introspective experiences characterized by a quality and intensity of sensation." In other words emotions are very different from thoughts and have no particular identifying propositional content. The propositional attitude folks thinks that thoughts are an essential part of what emotions are, and so the two schools are opposed.
Another school of thought is the one spawned by cognitive science: cognitive scientists have identified certain "affect programs" in us that account for the emotions. Having an emotion is simply an activation of a part of our "programming." More will be said about this in chapters 3 and 4. An affect program can be thought of as something like whatever it is in us that programs us to breathe.
Yet another school is that which holds that emotions are socially constructed. This school holds that emotions are not comparable across cultures in the way that say oxygen in NY can be compared to that in Madagascar, because it is the same oxygen. Rather, emotions are comparable in the way that, say, clothing color schemes in Norway can be compared with those in Alaska: the two are just different. Yes, you can compare them, but you are not ever going to find two cultures alike.
On P. 3, Griffiths explains that he rejects propositional attitude theories in two ways. First, he shows that such theories have problems which will not go away: he calls this "substantive" rejection, because he rejects the substance of their claims. He also rejects them methodologically because they rely exclusively on conceptual analysis, by which is meant that they analyse the concepts we have when we think of various emotions. They do not, however, look at them empirically by, for example, studying their bodily manifestations or neuro-chemical traits. Concept analysis allows us to come up with definitions of emotions that say under what conditions the terms used for emotions apply. When a conceptual analyst is faced with neurological findings about "fear," she will say, "Well, most people who feel fear do not know anything about those neurological phenomena, and so they cannot be part of the meaning of fear."
Griffiths will point out that on the conceptual analysis scheme, there is no way to say that X emotion in Japanese culture is the same as Y emotion in US culture, because they have different causes, different bodily manifestation and different resulting actions. By contrast, the "affect programs" that are in us are the same in all of us because they are biologically inherited. So with affect programs, you can easily talk about the "same" thing across different cultures.
It turns out that defining a kind term by how it is generally used by competent speakers of a language is a cotnroversial thing to do. You might think that we cannot possibly be wrong if we endeavor to determine what people mean by "fear" and consider that an account of fear.
But it is a limited account of "fear." It is an analysis of what people at a certain time mean by fear. That is something worth investigating and Griffiths knows that, but he is looking for what fear REALLY is, not what people think it is.
That conceptual analysis is probably not an analysis of what fear itself is, assuming there is such a thing. We will examine later in the class arguments that there is no world outside of our own minds and so there is no such thing as fear itself or anything itself. For now, we will assume there is such a thing.
What Griffiths is looking for is some account of the natural kind "fear" that is caused by fear itself. In other words, the features of what fear REALLY is should cause us to hold the account we do. How do we know that they are causing us to have that account? Empirical investigation of the phenomenon. Such an account must be revised as new aspects of the phenomenon are discovered. So, for instance, we revise our account of "atom" every once in a while as some physicist discovers some new particle.
What Griffiths wants is some precise theoretical and methodological framework within which we can refer to things like "fear" and be confident that we are referring to "the same" thing as an ancient Greek text refers to, a modern psychologist, and a modern anthropologist. He thinks that a causal theory of natural kinds produces that sort of methodological framework. It is always subject to revision, and it allows for inter-theoretical reference. By "inter-theoretical reference" is meant that two different theories that explain fear in very different ways can still be referring to the same thing.
On pages 5 and 6, Griffiths talks about natural kind theory. He says that recently it has come in for criticism. The first criticism is that it involves assumptions about metaphysical realism: that means that it involves assuming that natural kinds reflect the REAL structure of the world and exist independent of our minds and observations. The second criticism involves the problem that all the sciences cannot be reduced to one basic underlying science: the unity of science is not a commitment to the view that all sciences are reducible to one overall explanation of everything. Rather, each science seems to be its own theoretical framework from which the single reality that is the world is studied. Thus each science has its own natural kinds: chlorine, schizophrenia, inflation, etc. are all natural kinds. So "natural kinds are not the most fundamental categories of nature." Rather, natural kinds are nonarbitrary categories-they classify the world in ways the reflect the real structure of the things they classify. There are of course also arbitrary categories which classify things but do not do so in accordance with the real structure of the things they classify.
Griffiths will explain all of this in greater depth in later chapters. For now, it is important to realize that what he wants to do is to convince people that he is using a method that is most likely to produce the result he and they want: an accurate assessment of what emotions really are.
He does not want to commit himself to metaphysical realism. He wants to use natural kinds. He wants a methodology that responds to findings from empirical science.
He is not unaware that our use of concepts is not just a matter of how we explain the world. It is also a matter of political and social importance that can promote certain agendas or stymie others. For example, the concept of child abuse has changed radically in the past few decades. That change has been as much political and social as it has been scientific.
Griffiths, however, is mainly concerned with explaining the world, and so he will cleave to his own version of the natural kind as the best way to approach emotion.
Current theories of emotion: section 1.2
Chapter 2 looks at propositional attitude theories of emotion.
Chapter 3 looks at evolutionary explanations of emotion.
Chapter 4 looks at Affect Program theory. That theory differs from Darwinian evolution's approach, but is inspired by it.
An important distinction to draw is between the input that leads to an emotion and the output that the emotion causes. In other words, between the situation that causes and emotion and the resulting emotional phenomena.
Griffiths will argue that across cultures, similarity of facial expression on the output side does not mean that emotions are innate. He will question the very idea of innateness. He will come up with a more complex way of looking at the matter which avoids some difficult problems which the concept of "innateness" leaves unsolved.
After that, in chapter 5, Griffiths will suggest that higher cognitive emotions are just different in kind from the lower emotions that are a matter of affect programming.
First, he will sift through a certain evolutionary approach in order to reject what he finds problematic in it, but retain what is valuable. The approach he examines will claim that emotions are irruptive motivational behaviors: by this is meant that an emotion does not smoothely fit into a person's motivations: it irrupts them-it breaks them.
A problem he will find is that such a theory does not use empirical findings enough and is stuck with the nature-nurture dichotomy. Griffiths own approach will be to suggest that it is too simple to see things as nature versus nurture. Rather, things are complexly intertwined in such a way that untangling them and calling one thing natural and another cultural makes little sense. He will find that different higher cognitive emotions arise from both biological and cultural "resources."
In Chapter 6, Griffiths will examine social constructionism and emotion. His conclusion will be that social constructionism does not adequately explain what emotions are, but it is important to take its theories into account.
One thing that social constructionists point out is that our "folk psychology" of what an emotion is is not just a description of emotion. The way we explain emotions to ourselves is a social product, not just one individual's ideas about what his or her emotions are. Griffiths will argue that just as traditional sexist constructions of gender fall apart when one understands what they are and how they function rather than simply accepting them, so too our social construction of emotions will fall apart and will no longer be adequate to say what emotions are when we understand those social constructions.
Homology, Analogy, and Psychological Categories: Section 1.3 Darwinian evolution has taught us that species are not fixed things that have essential natures and are permanent parts of what the world is. Rather, they are historical entities, rather like you and I are historical entities in relation to our ancestors and future offspring.
Homology is a name for the fact that the same inherited gene can account for things in both mice and lizards. The same gene! So if we follow the inheritance path of a gene, we come up with a sort of family tree for a particular gene. Now,the idea here is that what that gene does in a given species might change drastically: it might lead to something that enables flight in one species, be useless in another, and enable swimming or jumping in another species. Those different manifestations of the gene are called phenotypes. One gene can have several phenotypes that each perform different functions.
Analogy is a completely different way of classifying things: the wing of a bird and the membrane of a flying squirrel that enables flight are analogically the same. So classification by analogy looks at function: whatever makes a thing fly performs that function and you can classify all such things together. Analogy is a functional classification: things are sorted out and explained by their function.
Psychologists use functional analysis rather than homologous analysis for the most part.
Griffiths thinks functional analysis is not as good as analysis by homology for reasons he will explain in chapters 7 and 8. The affect program theory uses homologies rather than analogies. So he will find the affect program which is fear in many animals, but not in octopuses, even though it seems obvious that octopuses need something that performs the same function as fear, namely avoidance of danger. That will enable him to deny that octopuses feel fear (i.e. they lack that affect program), although they have some analogous traits that perform the same function as fear does.
One result of Griffiths analysis will be that he claims that the current view of biologists about species is closer to traditional notions of natural kind than was previously thought.
Eliminating Emotion: Section 1.4 Griffiths' overall result will be the suggestion that emotion as a general concept is not useful for explaining the phenomena that are usually grouped under it. It will turn out that we need to separate off those "emotions" that are associated with affect programming from other "emotions" in a strong way. The separation will be so clear and distinct that it will make no sense to talk about both affect programs and higher cognitive emotions as all being emotions just as it makes no sense to a biologist to put all things that swim and have fins into one category.
He will also find that there are some "emotions" that are like play acting rather than being real emotions and so should be separated off.
He will also find that the same single underlying biological structure can cause several different phenotypic "emotions" in different cultures. It only causes them in conjunction with that culture's influence.
What he will find is an underlying mechanisms for certain phenomena. Those mechanisms are the affect programs, they are ancient in the sense that they are inherited from several levels of ancestor species to our species. They are reflexlike and do not depend on what culture they are found in.
He will also find some higher cognitive states that are usually called emotions that do not have something like an affect program underlying them in that they have different phenotypes depending on the culture they are found in. They have a different neuroscience from the affect programs. Thus he will argue that a scientific approach to "emotion" ought to reject the category "emotion" in favor of three categories: 1. the affect program responses, 2. socially sustained pretenses, and 3. higher cognitive states.
What we currently call a single emotion such as "anger" might turn out to have some instances that are 1, some that are 2, and some that are 3, and so we should reject the category "anger" as well if we are to be scientific.