3.1 Darwin's ideas
Darwin tried to show that facial expressions are vestiges of behavior from our animal past. The facial expressions associated with emotions had certain functions in primates in our past. Some have since lost those functions and aquired other functions. Thus one and the same evolutionary trait acquired a secondary function and lost its primary function. This is adaptive-historical explanation.
Darwin only tried to explain why emotions are expressed the way they are. He did not try to give an evolution of emotions themselves. Later evolutionary theorists have and are trying that.
Interestingly, Griffiths speaks on P. 45 of a view of emotions that he presents as the normal way that modern theorists speak of emotions! But that does not include the propositional attitude theorists of the last chapter. The view is that emotions are syndromes: the belief, the facial expression, the other elements of an emotion are none of them THE emotion. THE emotion is the syndrome of all those things occurring together. Hence having a belief that this is dangerous is not fear. Nor is the physiological state typical of fear itself fear: that state could be caused by something else (electrodes?). Only all together ARE fear.
Darwin anticipated two common tools of research on emotions:
Some of Darwin's results are presented on pp. 48-50. The interesting part to me is that he compared primate with human expressions-the same expression can have different functions. And yet Griffiths will present research that shows that those expressions are part of "affect programs" that are homologous between humans and primates.
"Homology" refers to things in different species that are inherited. An example will make it clearer than an explanation would: tetrapods are animals with four feet. The term tetrapod is used only for four-legged animals that all are descended from the same original tetrapodous animal. At this point in time, there are tetrapods who have no legs at all, and some that have things sort of like legs but don't really. Namely, snakes are descended from tetrapods, as are whales. And yet snakes and whales are still considered tetrapods because they have homologous features (don't ask me what they are in snakes, however: just take Griffiths word that snakes do have homologous features).
Another way to make the concept clear is to look at birds versus bats. Bird wings and bat "wings" are not homologous, but rather analogous. That is because one is not inherited from the other. Rather, they both developed those flight appendages via different evolutionary routes.
Modern extensions of Darwin's work have used some interesting testing methods. They have explored human ability to identify emotion via facial expression. The test subjects have been isolated pre-literate cultures, literate cultures that are distant from each other (e.g. Japan and Africa), analysis of the expressions of blind-born infants (they could not use sight [or even touch in some cases] to culturally acquire facial expressions).
All of these tests confirm that for a certain range of emotions, facial expressions are pan-cultural. "Pan-cultural" means that they occur in all cultures, but does not necessarily mean that every single individual has the same facial expressions for those particular emotions. Rather, this is a statistical claim.
The range of emotions is surprise, joy, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, and contempt.
Section 3.3: "Innate" and "Universal" as terms
Griffiths wants to make some distinction clear. He thinks "innate" is an imprecise word and hence dangerous for scientific description.
The research about facial expressions cited above in his chapter is usually held to show that such things have evolutionary explanations and that they are part of universal human nature. Griffiths wants to be more careful than that in his claims.
First, an important point: the emotional expressions are similar across cultures, but what causes those emotions may or may not be similar. Hence he points out that those studies examine the output side of emotions.
The claim that such expressions are evolutionarily explainable is firstly a historical claim. It is a claim that at some point, that particular expression was evolutionarily selected for because of the genetic resources available to the population of our ancestors and their environment.
A developmental explanation is different from an evolutionary explanation but a developmental explanation may build on an evolutionary one: developmental explanations of something claim that it is a result of the development of the individual, that individual's interaction with the environment. Of course, a developmental explanation might include some evolutionary factor, but it is important to get clear what was evolutionarily selected for in terms of genes versus what environment did with those genes. The first is evolutionary, the second is developmental.
A further way of explaining is via competing explanations. Competing explanations are explanations which do not get along with evolutionary explanations. For instance, someone might come up with a seemingly great "evolutionary" explanation of why offspring are born smaller and are younger than their parents, but in the end, common sense tells us that if a baby is to come out of its parent, it's got to be smaller, and the whole thing of being an offspring involves being younger. That is why offspring are smaller and younger than their parents. That is a competing explanation which just renders the evolutionary explanation worthless.
In some cases, "It may be true that my ancestors had the trait, but the competing explanation suggests that I would have it even if they had not, as a consequence of other traits I inherited." "The general aim of such competing explanations is to show that the trait would exist whether or not it conferred any selective advantage."
A problem with competing explanations is that they require us to concentrate on a single trait of the organism-to be atomistic in our approach. So there may be a competing explanation of trait X, but when it is considered in connection with other traits, it may turn out to be something that results from an evolved trait and a particular environment.
Griffiths claim about the affect program responses which Darwin and his successors have analyzed in their research about facial expressions is that they can be explained by evolution rather than competing explanations. That is because the responses are pan-cultural in humans and because our related species exhibit homologous responses.
Competing explanations can of course be offered for pancultural traits.For example, all humans name tools, but that is not a matter of evolution. It's just so useful to name tools that all humans do it. Our general cognitive abilities and the general utility of naming sufficiently explain tool-naming.
Competing explanations are ruled out for these particular facial expressions because they are arbitrary: there is nothing about the facial expressions themselves which logically link them to particular emotions. Just as a tool can be called a schraubnzieher, destornillador, tournevis, cacciavite, chave de fenda, or screwdriver, so sadness could be expressed by any sort of facial expression. So, the fact that we have the same facial expressions across cultures is an argument for evolutionary selection rather than a competing explanation. The same sort of argument applies to the homologous trait in related species.
Next, Griffiths wants to reject the idea that such responses are innate. He wants to do that because innateness can mean: 1. having an evolutionary explanation, 2. being insensitive to environmental factors in development, 3. being present at birth, 4. being universal in some sense. Of course, these responses are "innate" in some of those ways, but calling them innate is confusing because it does not distinguish which senses. Hence Griffiths does not like talk of innateness: he prefers more precise language. Harrah for him! The English language is capable of precision, so use it as a precision tool!
It is important to keep in mind too that just because some trait is "caused" by the environment the individual is in does not mean it is not amenable to evolutionary explanation. Evolution is a matter of the interaction between environment and "hardwiring" if you will. Some evolutionary traits involve no particular change in hardwiring. Rather they involve the adaptation of existing hardwiring to a new environment.
Remember that parents often recreate the same specific conditions that led to their own development, and we are talking about non-human as well as human parents. Hence the environment can be shaped by the parent, and that environment can cause certain hardwired options to be selected for, and those hardwired options can lead to creation of that same environment for further offspring etc. Hence evolution is a matter of reacting to as well as creating environmental input.
In terms of those emotional affect programs, fear expressions in monkeys that have been isolated during development are not as identifiable by other monkeys as those that have developed in interaction with other monkeys.
Griffiths wants to point out that some traits are present in every individual of a species, and so should be called monomorphic, while others are different in different individuals, and so should be called polymorphic. SO, having eyes in humans is a monomorphic trait, but eye color is a polymorphic trait.
Evolution can give rise to monomorphic as well as polymorphic traits. That every human have eyes is probably evolutionarily selected for. That all humans respond in the same way to aggression is probably not advantageous (it is better for the group if some are subservient, others not) and so polymorphism may be selected for.
Furthermore, not all traits that are evolutionarily selected for are pancultural. Some isolated populations may develop traits that other populations of the same species do not share.
Another point: just because two traits in two different species are homologous (e.g. fins on whales and legs on horses) does not mean they have the same function.
Darwin's theory of the evolution of emotion
Darwin had three principles he used to explain the evolution of emotional expression. The third one is bad science that has been overtaken by better science and so I will ignore it.
The first one is the retention of serviceable habits. What used to be useful in certain situations for our primate ancestors is still useful for us, but not for the same task. This is also called secondary adaptation. In the case of emotions, an important function of facial expression is communication between members of the same species, but the expressions that accomplish that may not have had that function in our progenitors.
The second principle is antithesis. This is the idea that because communication requires clarity, it is useful that emotions that are mutually exclusive have very different expressions. Hence sadness and joy would not be easily communicated if their expressions were to close to each other. That means that means of expressing such "opposite" emotions are selected for if they are antithetical, i.e. opposed, to each other.
3.5 Frank's theory of emotions
This section concerns Frank's theory of emotions. Frank is concerned to explain that although in a given situation it may be "irrational" to get angry or sad or happy, it may still be rational all things considered.
So, for instance, one may stay loyal to an agreement even if in this particular case one suffers a significant loss, because overall one would suffer greater losses if one broke agreements and others knew that. It might just be that loyalty is overall more rational than disloyalty.
"Frank's theory depends on the ability of individuals to communicate their emotions, and hence their behavioral dispositions, to one another. Verbal threats and promises are insufficient, as they are not strong guarantors of future behavior. Information about other times when an individual has faced the same situation is not usually available. The intrinsic connection between facial behavior and emotion might sometimes function as a solution to this problem."
The problem with Frank's ideas is that they are just ideas. Griffiths has some ideas how to set about verifying them scientifically, however, which he sets out in the next section.
3.6 Adaptationism and the study of emotion
Evolutionary explanations often take the form of telling a plausible story about how such a trait might have evolved.
Griffiths is deeply dissatisfied with that because plausibility is not a good criterion.
Griffiths points out that evolution is like history: it is full of what-ifs and historical accident. If you could play the tape of life again, it would not sound the same, he claims.
Griffiths suggests that there are ways to test such explanations.
First of all, one must map out the phylogenetic patterns of the trait in question in related species both past and present. Once one has done that, one can ask whether the supposed explanation fits the pattern in the following ways.
There is a theory that humans were aquatic apes, and that is supposed to explain many of out traits. The problem with the theory is that we can tell from the phylogenetic tree that the traits that are supposed to be explained by being aquatic apes do not all date to the same time. If they don't date to the same time in the phylogenetic tree, they simply cannot all be explained by the same aquatic ape theory.
So any trait that is supposedly explained by an evolutionary adaptational story must be coherent with the other stories that are told.
Furthermore, if in order to explain our having trait X, we theorize that our great great grandparent species developed that trait in response to certain conditions, then we ought to be able to see some homologue to that trait in all other descendants of our great great grandparent species. If we cannot, that argues against that explanation.
So once again, the story has to be coherent with other stories.
Another way such stories have to work is that if we theorize that we have trait X because we needed it to react to another species or we were in the same environment as that other species (say we are talking about a parasite), then the other species out to exhibit some sort of congruent evolution. What is more, species that are related to us and the other species but were NOT in the same environment or were NOT in interaction with us ought NOT to exhibit congruent evolution.
I.e. the story has to be coherent with other stories in yet another way.
Griffiths uses this idea of the need for the stories to be coherent to question a theory on P. 74 f. Plutchik's emotion solid is a good map of how we use certain emotion terms in our everyday life, but Plutchik claims that it is more than that. It is supposed to be an adaptive story about the formation of human emotion. Griffiths' claim is that Plutchik has a plausible story, but because all it really does is tell us how humans use emotion terms in everyday life, it is just a plausible story when it comes to evolution. It does none of the work needed to test whether it could possibly be the true evolutionary story.
A further factor against Plutchik is that he or she has not started by proving that the emotions he or she is talking about exist. He or she takes a set of things he or she wants to explain, viz. certain emotions, then asks people what they are, then claims that his or her results explain what they are.
Frank's theory at least starts by trying to prove that the things he or she is trying to explain exist.
The last paragraph of chapter 3 is a particularly good summary of the material covered in chapter 3.