Longitudes: A Collection of Essays, Ideas and Writing in Progress

This Is Your Brain, This Is Your Brain on GLS:

A recent program on Radio-France presented a discussion between neuroscientists and psychiatrists who were interested in the possibility of a rapprochement between psychoanalysis and neurobiology. Until recently, such a concept would have been balked at by the scientific community who, generally speaking, have rejected claims––including those of Freud himself––that psychoanalysis can be properly considered as having any significant scientific application. It seems, however, that recent studies into emotion and the brain––such as those carried out by Damasio and his colleagues––have opened up potential avenues of communication between what were long considered as disparate realms of study that concerned separate modalities of being. Indeed, this new understanding of the psychological and the biological as parts of a complex integrated system––rather than as dual entities or substances––may allow both psychoanalysis and neurobiology to redefine themselves, with positive practical results. Indeed, new conceptions of mind, body, subjectivity and experience appear to be emerging on the horizon of human consciousness.

As the process of investigation creates new images of the self out of the combination and integration of older concepts of mind and body, so it seems that these developments will have profound effects in other areas, such as ethics, economy, artistic expression and our relationship to the environment. Although it remains to be seen whether or not we are on the verge of a major paradigm shift, it does appear that there is a growing need for a deeper integration of the disciplines of study as we currently as understand them––a cross fertilisation of ideas, perhaps resulting in new disciplines––so that we may more profoundly engage in the process of understanding ourselves.

This kind of process seems to be what GLS is all about. As a multidisciplinary field of study, GLS poses large questions which, for the most part, defy categorical solutions: What is the self? How are we to understand the relationship between passion and reason? What do faith and science have to do with each other; or nature and culture for that matter? Multidisciplinary study offers the opportunity to relate seemingly disparate elements to each other in an attempt to deepen the understanding of a given concept, or to create new questions which lead in new directions.

By examining a given concept in terms of its historical and cultural representation in literature, theatre, philosophy, psychology, music, art, economics, religion, and science; and by approaching this examination as a process with an aesthetic dimension rather than purely as a search for facticity, the student of Liberal Studies is in the position to form an evolving image of the given concept out of the diverse historical and cultural expressions he or she has studied in connection with it. For example: consider the image of Desire that may be formed by examining Emma Bovary, Darwin, automobile ads, Freud, Medea, St.Augustine, Weber, Damasio, Brittany Spears and … sub-prime lending? Clearly, a very complicated web of elements begins to emerge under the rubric of Desire––it takes on subtly different forms as we examine it from different perspectives. And, once we begin to interpose multiple idea images formed in this way, a great deal of crosstalk emerges between them. This is also of concern because this creates, in a sense, the landscape out of which our ideas are formed––or perhaps it is better think of this crosstalk landscape existing in conjunction with any ideas we might mould out of it. In any case, viewed in this way ideas do seem to take on a complicated life of their own.

The potential hermeneutic challenges associated with this kind of free multidisciplinary study are indeed daunting. And, with out recourse to specialised normalising theories through which to interpret data, the subjective and non centralising nature of this kind of study may be problematic for traditional Anglo-Saxon academia as well as for those trained in Continental thought, who might well view Liberal Studies as a kind of naive postmodernism. However, for those curious souls who for those who don’t engage in intellectual activity simply for the pursuit of facts or theories, but rather for some more mysterious, aesthetic reason, this kind of open intellectual process, despite its challenges, holds great appeal. And this kind of study has clearly shown itself to be of practical value as well––there is always the possibility for multidisciplinary studies to reveal connections that single discipline studies could find extremely useful.

Clearly, the pleasure and insight derived from facing the challenges of Liberal Studies––especially when these studies can find a healthy critical forum for expression and dialogue––greatly enhances the life of the individual and through him, the society. As a process of intellectual discovery and personal development, the value of multidisciplinary studies cannot be over estimated.

“.. nothing real is absolutely simple; each relation is one aspect, character, or function, way of its being taken or way of its taking something else..” ––William James

FELLED: BY ALEX ITIN
(MUSIC BY MORTON FELDMAN)

In terms of the study of emotions, Antonio Damasio describes the 20th century as “the century of neglect.” If the research of emotion is said to begin with Aristotle, then by the end of 19th century we have a body of work that includes the writings of Pascal, Spinoza, Darwin, Freud, Sartre and William James among many others. But all of this success in the study of emotions was cut short in the 20th century when the study of emotion was given increasingly short shrift by scientists and thinkers who embraced a philosophically outdated Cartesian model of the mind in order to support the computational theories of intelligence made so popular by the “cognitive revolution” of the 1950’s. Today, the computational model of the mind advocated by the strong AI theory and Chomsky’s theory of Universal Grammar, has been upset—-philosophically by Searle, Merleau-Ponty and Dreyfus; in mathematics and physics by Penrose; and in the field of neuroscience by Damasio. Remarkable advances in brain study have provided us with a very different perspective––an emotional revolution, claims Damasio––which positions emotion as the very basis of reason. As the first mechanism of rational processes, it seems that emotion is a primal and practical necessity.

It is becoming clear that there are a whole host of medical ills that can be illuminated by emotional studies. Indeed, understanding how the emotional system works is crucial for the effective treatment stroke and mood disorders. Emotional studies have important applications in the social space as well; for while it is clear that what goes on in a culture economically, politically, and legally involves decisions that emerge out of rational processes, it seems that these rational processes evolve out of, and work alongside, emotional processes that have their origin in the survival of the organism; it appears that the way we produce moral behaviour is very closely tied to the emotional system in an evolutionary sense. Clearly, emotion has an immense role to play in our decisions as individuals and as a society; but how are we to understand this relationship between emotion and reason? What is an emotion? What is a feeling? And why is reason so dependent on both of them?

Damasio redefines the concept of emotion by amplifying its description into three categories:

1. Basic emotions––fear, anger happiness, as studied by Darwin and others––appear to be universal; even without the same names they are represented by the same behaviour in different cultures and even across certain species.
2. Background emotions, which are the most prevalent emotions we have. We are always in an emotional state, ie.discouragement or enthusiasm. Consciousness is always an emotive state.
3. Secondary or social emotions include compassion, shame, contempt, pride, and jealousy. These are entirely tied to social concerns, to those with whom and towards whom we act, others.

Secondary or social emotions were initially thought of as purely cultural constructions, but this has been shown to be not quite the case. While culture and education––the social environment as a whole––clearly plays an enormous role in directing the specifics of how emotions are applied, animal research has shown that a number of these emotions are present in primates who have been observed behaving compassionately, even towards other animals of other species. It seems as though these secondary emotions permeate our genetics and are as much a part of our biological make up as the primary emotions are.

Using William James as starting point, Damasio outlines the distinction and relationship between feeling and emotion–James’ inversion of the traditional view of the physiology of the emotion/feeling cycle has been been borne out by later research. James writes:

Our natural way of thinking about these standard emotions is that the mental perception of some fact excites the mental affection called the emotion, and that this latter state of mind gives rise to the bodily expression. My thesis on the contrary is that the bodily changes follow directly the PERCEPTION of the exciting fact, and that our feeling of the same changes as they occur IS the emotion.

By interposing the body between the causative stimulus and the emotive mindstate, James shows the inseparability of mind and body; he also shows that body is represented in the brain, either directly or indirectly, and that the brain can map the body. However, James leaves out the possibility of an appraisal of the the stimulus itself. Although there is often no stimulus appraisal––fear may cause a direct body state––it does happen, especially when we are confronted with more complex situations. According to Damsio, James conflated emotion and feeling: on one hand James gives the impression that emotion is a variety of reactive behaviours; but then, on the other hand, he says that the perception that we get from the reaction is the emotion. This was shown to be an inconsistent view by the physiologists in the early 20th century.

In Damasio’s terms, emotion and feeling can be understood separately. Feelings involve cognition and are composite perceptions of:

1. partcular states of the body that are real or simulted
2. states of altered cognitive resouces
3. the deployment of certain scripts (descriptions) which can be really in the body or generated in the brain––ie. a desctiption of happiness
4. different states of cognitve ability in different body states––ie. time perception, learning attentiveness etc.
And all of this is connected to a causative state which is intentionality––how we feel ‘about’ or ‘towards’ something.

And human emotions are understood as:

1. largely unlearned programs of automatic actions and cognitive strategies aimed at the management of life. Largely but not 100% automatic––we can have some measure of control over them.
2. programs aimed at the management of life; one cannot do without emotions; they play an evolutionary role for the self and/or for the group
3. triggered by objects or situations that act on the mind, whether they are real or in the mind as a recollection; defects in particular aspects of emotion can be traced to lesions in certain parts of the brain.

In Damasio’s view, emotion involves an appraisal of stimulus, a triggering of emotion, and an execution of emotion and/or emotional states. Feeling involves an emotional trigger which stimulates brain structures to initiate a set of internal chemical changes which create changes to the viscera in the central nervous system. Thus, the experience of an emotion and the feeling associated with it involves a variety of changes in cognitive resources. Emotions change how we recall past experiences and perceive time; and they alter the relationship between our bodies and the world––even way in which we reason changes profoundly with emotive states. In brief, emotions and feelings change the way in which we attend to the world.

This relationship between emotion and feeling developed out of complex mechanisms of reaction built out of many other processes that were tied to survival: reward and punishment, scaling of internal needs, pain and pleasure. And it is certain that early creatures relied on such mechanisms long before emotions appeared as we understand them. In terms of survival, emotions and their components can be understood as exercising homeostatic or bodily regulating goals–they have everything to do with how an organism manages it’s life cycle. In our life cycle there is a mandate in our genome which drives us to persist and prevail––the emotional system is the latest expression in this blind desire to stay alive. As Damasio points out, the multitudes of cells in the body have a drive to persist, prevail and stay alive; to homeostaically manage the process of energy acquisition and transformation. This is the genesis of emotions and the birth of feeling: pleasure and pain.

It seems that there really is no separating mind, brain and body. The mind exists because there is a body; the body is the context for the mind/brain. The mind’s principle task is to examine and manage the internal economy of the organism. Feelings are always tied to the body, directly or indirectly; information about the body is so selective that it goes into specialised channels in the brain. Indeed, the brain creates chemical markers that have to do with specific bodily states. These markers allow the brain to carry out somatic perception which is key in the appraisal of stimulus (decision making) and the ability of emotional response to vary with context. Somatic-marker associations are reinstated, or recalled, physiologically and bias cognitive processing. In cases where complex and uncertain decisions need to be made, the somatic markers recall all reward and punishment experiences associated with the relevant stimuli, which are then summed to produce a net somatic state––that gut feeling. This overall state is used to direct (or bias) the selection of the appropriate action. Utilising the somatosensory cortex, the brain can even run internal simulations of responses or transformations in bodily states as representations in the mind. This is what Damsio terms the “as if ” body loop: it is as if the body was actually sensing or undergoing this or that experience recreated internally. This allows us not only to predict possible bodily or emotive states for ourselves but also to project them onto others. This clearly has relevance with regards to the secondary emotions outlined above as well as to predictive mental behaviour that rationalise potential outcomes.

According to Damasio, emotions are action programs which preceed feelings (which are the perception of these programs.) Emotions operate in multistage cycles and cannot be understood as being about or in one area of the brain that is a centre for this or that. They are modified by context––socialisation plays an important role––and reflect the ongoing management of life inside the organism; feelings give us a window into this internal life. Internal needs cannot be repressed. In the case of food, for example, the body declares a state of hunger because it wants to reach homeostasis and therefore lets this situation come into consciousness so that the mind can decide on appropriate action.

Cognitively speaking, we have multiple routes open to us. We have a fast route of decision making, which is biologically entrenched, and governed by powerful emotional, intuitive or “gut” responses to a given object or situation; and we have reason, traditionally understood as a slow methodical “cost-benefit” analysis. But these routes are not necessarily opposed to each other. In a healthy individual they work together in order to expedite the decision making process. Emotions also allow us to make decisions with out consciously confronting every option available to us; they allows us to freely and purposefully rationalise by removing or highlighting certain key options. Indeed, emotion seems to be the seat of practical reason itself; or, at the very least, it is the means by which it can function effectively. As some of Damasio’s patient studies have shown, damage to certain parts of the brain that are associated with emotion can have drastic effects in the realm of reasoning, both in terms of practical decision making and socialisation. And there have been those that, due to a break down in the somatic apparatus, have lost the ability to feel emotions while they can still intellectually understand their significance.

Emotion also plays a role in social processes that lead to social homeostasis. Most of our social engagements involve, to some degree at least, the projections into the social space of our biological needs. But the effectiveness and health of this social homeostasis would necessarily reflect the state of the culture itself and its emotional health and intelligence. It seems impossible, however, that a definitive account of this could be provided here. In the end it seems that everything we say about emotion needs to be put into context …

DAMASIO LECTURE: “Emotion, Feeling, and Social Behavior: The Brain Perspective”

DAMASIO LECTURE: MEDICINE TO SOCIETY I & II

Hubert Dreyfus on Merleau-Ponty, Computers and the mind:

PART II

Emotion research
Neuro science of emotion

Century of neglect … research of emotion starts with Aristotle.. end of 19th century we have William james , but also Darwin and freud after james… all of this success was cut short in the 20th century… emotion was given the cold shoulder especially in science..
comes from the fact that in the 50s we have the cognitive revolution … what have now is an emotional revolution which give a different perspective … in terms of reason … emotion is not inferior to reason… emotion is the basis of reason the first mechanism of reason… primal necessity
we have multiple roots… we have a fast route of decision making which is biologically entrenched and powerful.. and the reason , traditionally understood ( slow root) … not opposed to each other…
knowing about how the emotional system works is crucial for stroke, mood disorders etc..
practical medical importance … application in the social space, How we produce moral behaviour entirely tied to emotional system in an evolutionalry sense… what goes on economically , elections etc. jury system decisions … rational processes ?? emotional processes have an immense role to play in our decisions…
medical and social ills can be illuminated by emotional studies
What is an emotion ? What is a feeling?
reedefning the description of emotion by amplifying the description phenotype… basic emotion, fear, anger happiness studied by darwin and others , these are universal, even without the same name they are represented by the same behaviour

Also we have background emotions which are are actually the most prevalent emotions wew have : discourage ment or enthusiasm … we are always in an emotional state .. if we are concioiuss we are in an emotional state…. new group of emotions (secondary or social emotions) compassion, shame , contempt, pride , jealousy … entirely tied to socoiet and others toward whom we act (group)
was thought of a purely cultural … but this is not quite so… as much a part of our biological make up, as the primary emotions … but of course culture , education tunes … plays a role of directing the specifics of these emotions are applied.
How do we know this ?? research in animals that a number of these emotions are plresent in primates who rejects unfair behaivouer … chimps have behaved compassioately towards even other animals … genetics
physiology of the emotion/feeling cycle … James contributed ( made a mistake in terms of language )”our natural way of thinking about emotions is that hte mental perception of some facts of some facts excites the mental states of emotion and this gives rise to a bodily change .” , James : you percieve something that ought to cause fear in you bodily chages proceed directly after the prception… and our feeling IS the emotion…
James inverts the trad view : things go to a bodily reaction and then ther is an interpretation … and this is borne out by research …
then James interposes the body btween the causative stimulus and the emotive mindstate … cant separate mind and body… body is representd in the brain.. either directly or indirectly … brain can map the body… also a critical step
but james left out the possibility of an appraisal of the the stimulus, generally there is no appraisal but it does happen, fear may cause a direct body state but this does not happen all the time
conflated emotion and feeling … gives the ipression athet emotion is a vaiety of reactive behaviours but then says that the perception that we get from the recation is the emotion
this was shown to be inconsisten by the psyiologists in the early 20th century
emotion and feeling are separate …feeling is cognition over what has happened … human emotions are largely unlearned programs of aoutomatic actions and cognitive strategies aimed at the management of life… not 100p unleanred ,, automatic .. can have a measure of contreol but not 100p … even if facial expression is supressed etc… all of these programs are aimed at the management of life … you cannot do without emotions… evolutionary role ..for the self or for the group… 2 emotions are triggered by objects or situations that act on the mind (wether real or in the mind as a recollection that act on brian deviceds implemented by evolution) within certain ranges you need the stimulus wether apriori or not … seem to be the similar across many species … amygdala : is present in many other species … does fundamentally the same thing in all species … helps to trigger the appropriate response ( mostly concerned with fear) … defects in particular aspects of emotion can be traqced to lesions in certain parts of the brain.
amygdala
ventri medial frontal cortex
anterior cingula … disgust : rejection of abnormal poisonous protiens
triggering of emotion

4levels : appraisal of stimulus, tigger of emotion , excecution of emotion anf then emotional states
4 structure: trigger ––neeed brain structures , set of changes in the internal chemical changes which create changes in the viscera
central nervous system as you have an emotion you have a varity of changes in cognitiv resources … learning changes … do not attend to the world in the same way … changes the way we reason … emotions change how we recall
emotion is associated with subcortical to the … associated with lifife … emotional programs have , the regulation of life … built from simpler programs .. emotions don’t appear de nuovo … develop out of complex mechanisms of reaction that are built out of many other processes : reward and punishment , scaling of internakl needs… pain and pleasure … eary creatures had mechanisms of reward or punishment before emotions … and they were tied to survival.. long before happiness, sadness etc..
Emotions and thier components excersice homeostatic (bodily regulating goals )
when you have an emotion you recruit a long history of elements that came in the history of evolution with are about how an organism manages it’s life cycle
during our life cycle ther is a mandate in our genome with makes us persist and prevail … the desire to prevail… all of theis emotioal sysytem is the latest experssion inthe blind desire to stay alive … all the cells have this desire to stay alive and be home ststic… mam]nage the process of energy aquisition , process of transformation of energy … and tit is here that you find the genesis of emotions … whith pleasure , pain, punsishment an reward,
we have some controll over this, fear can go wrong , emotions can go wrong… but fear has saved more lives that it has destroyed

feelings are composite perceptions of: 1 a partcular states of the body that are real or simulted 2. state of altered cognitive resouces 3. the dply ment of certaimn scripts descriptions which can be really in the body or generated in the brain (desctiption of happiness) different states of cognitve ability in different body states.. time, learning attentiveness etc but all of this i connected to a causative state which is intentionality
psysiological changes : is waht james had in mind but did not distinguish between feeling and emotion …
“as if ” body loop: as if the body was actually senseing or undergoing this or that experience recreates internally stses of our own body … compassion for others.
brain exisst because there is a body … musty manage the internal economy … somatosensing ares bring the news of the body … feelings are always tied to the body , directly or indirectly
information about the body is so selective that it goes to specialised channel in the brain …
can have chemical markers for the pats of the brain that have to do wit tht einterior…
James, since … percieve stimulus, evaluate it … cortex carries out the somatic perceprion… depending on the contecxt the emotion will be different (appraisal of stimulus) … new! internal simulation… transfomations in the representations in the brain
… emotions are action programs which pereceed feelings… which are the perception of these programs … they operate in multistage cycles …never about one area that is a center for this or that … modified by context … socialisation plays an important role … emotions reflect the ongoing manage ment of life inside the organism … feelings give us a window into this internal life

early on as a result of certain gene traits we have been able to employ a scaling mechanism of reward an punishment , of need…. role in social processes leads to social home stasis as well… internal needs cannot be repressed , like food, body declares a state of hunger because it wants to make homeo stasis … lets this situation come into consciousness

but to social homeo stsis … managing social relationships … most of our engagements social lly the projections into the social space of our bio needs …. we have to deal with these things or else we die … how do we transfer this into the social realm… high pitched reject cost benefit analysis in which conflict situations(throw the guy off the raft) … so everything we say av.=bnout emotion needs to be put into context …

For many critics James’ model of the emotions falls short as it does not explicitly demonstrate the role of emotion in higher cognition. Indeed, Sartre’s Esquisse d’une Theorie des Emotions attacks James’ conception of emotions as being too concerned with physiology. For Sartre, emotions are––whether we are willing to admit it or not––our own actions; they are ways in which we make prereflexive choices about how we deal with the world; they are acts which allow us to escape from the world or transform it according to our desires: spite, resentment, love, fear, joy and sorrow are kinds of “magical transformations of the world.”

Sartre was profoundly influenced by Hiedegger, and by Husserl, who influenced them both. For Heidegger, Husserl’s philosophy was incomplete because it did not take into account the historical being for whom such questions about existence and consciousness make philosophy possible in the first place. Heidegger views experience as necessarily situated in a world and in ways of being—Dasein is the being that cares about Being. Heidegger argues that Dasein, finding itself thrown into the world amidst things and with others, is thrown into its own possibilities, including the possibility and inevitability of its own mortality. The need for Dasein to assume these possibilities––the need for it to be responsible for its own existence––is the basis of Heidegger’s notion of authenticity.

Heidegger created the term “thrownness”––which is also used by Sartre––to describe the idea that human beings (Dasein) are “thrown” into existence without having chosen it. Existentialists consider being thrown into existence as prior to any other thoughts or ideas that humans have or definitions of themselves that they create (there are of course great differences here between Atheist and Christian points of view). In Kierkegaard’s words:

How did I get into the world? Why was I not asked about it and why was I not informed of the rules and regulations but just thrust into the ranks as if I had been bought by a peddling shanghaier of human beings? How did I get involved in this big enterprise called actuality? Why should I be involved? Isn’t it a matter of choice? And if I am compelled to be involved, where is the manager—I have something to say about this. Is there no manager? To whom shall I make my complaint?

Heidegger’s conception of authenticity, simply stated, revolves around the individual’s “throwness” into the world and the integrity and honesty with which the individual creates his own authentic subjectivity, only to reintegrate it back into the world. Sartre systematises Heidegger in his own way by positing that for humans, existence preceeds essence: thrown into the world, man makes himself because man asks ontological questions (Being for itself). Objects do not engage in ontological questioning, thus for objects essence preceeds existence (Being in-itself). But also Sartre believed that humans can also engage in Being for Others: A person who cannot embrace their freedom to confront existential absurdity and define their life seeks, in effect, to be “looked at”—to be made an object of another’s subjectivity. This creates a clash of freedoms whereby person A’s being or sense of identity is controlled by––in the mind of A at least––person B’s thoughts about A.

Like Heidegger, Sartre leans towards the view that consciousness and the world are a unified phenomenon and that there is no separating them; that even in attempting to ‘bracket’ conscious phenomena out of common notions of reality we cannot neglect the innate unity of what we have separated. However, Sartre also continues the tradition of the Cartesian dichotomy between the consciousness and the world. Creating what often seems to be an infuriating paradox, on one hand Sartre embraces Heidegger’s Dasein, on the other he extends the Cartesian/Husserlian distinction between Mind––or perhaps more acurately in Sartre’s case, the freedom of the will––and World. Despite the virtuosic and often confusing double talk Sartre employs to deal with this apparent contradiction, he is always clear about the ultimate point of his thought which rests firmly in his concepts freedom and responsibility. For Sartre consciousness is freedom and responsibility is the idea that we are the sole authors of our actions; we must accept the consequences of our actions—there are no excuses. In order to understand the apparent incoherence in Sartre’s position we must realise that he has no wish to justify his philosophy in terms of scientific or logical truths. For Sartre the only truth is action in “good faith.” Sartre is, above all else, concerned with individual and political honesty; the individual and the individual alone creates his own essence:

“If man, as the existentialist conceives him, is indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing. Only afterward will he be something, and he himself will have made what he will be.”

Existentialist phenomenology, as put forward by Sartre, critiques and extends the Husserlian method by taking the position that a phenomenological examination of consciousness must take the world into account in terms of action, not simply passive intention. Like Husserl, Sartre’s concept of consciousness requires intentionality–-it is always about the things of the world. And again, like Husserl, Sartre is concerned with making the distinction between the phenomenal experience in the conscious mind and the immediate experiencing of material objects of the world. But, for Existential phenomenology, abstract consciousness is not a passive Husserlian realm like the transcendental ego, rather it is an active, dynamic engagement with or towards the things of the world. Thus Sartre views emotion as imposing itself on the world, transforming it according to a subjective scheme that works in accordance with the modified notions of being and authenticity that he took from Heidegger.

By postulating being as nothingness Sartre tries to separate it from the realm of worldly causality. In order to protect his conception of freedom, it is crucial for Sartre maintain consciousness as independent from the causal relations of the word, as distinct from the deterministic laws of physics. Introducing his own version of epoché, Sartre takes the position that, as we see ourselves as something distinct from the causal categories we impose on matter, we are obliged to make the distinction between the objective or scientific view, and the perspective of active, subjective, first person engagement. Therefore, from the point of view of Existentialist phenomenology, consciousness itself can be in no way considered as an object of itself––hence the break with Husserl––and, more importantly, it cannot be understood as being caused. For Sartre, consciousness is freedom itself.

Sartre’s conception of freedom allows him to hold the position that all action is chosen, and that the emotions are the pre-reflective choices which inform and permit action. Sartre removes causality from emotions, and––perhaps in an attempt to find a middle ground between physical determinism and the freedom of consciousness––describes them as “the terms by which” we make the choices that we do. An obvious argument emerges at this point: if emotions set the terms by which by which we make conscious choices, does that not imply––at least indirectly––causality? Sartre responds that emotions are not causes of behaviour but rather that they are “spontaneous out pourings of consciousness in which one takes the world in a certain way.” For Sartre, emotions are a way of structuring consciousness and he rejects any form of determinism with regards to the acts of the mind––the Freudian sub-conscious is impossible in Sartrian psychoanalysis; and the idea that emotions are fundamentally naturally selected responses to natural stimuli is rejected.

Sartre’s reading of James seems to reduce to James’ concept of emotions to naturally determined physiological responses that inform psychological states; and he criticises James for not giving enough weight to the free mental evaluations that cause emotions. Indeed, James’ essay on the emotions, taken alone, seems to describe only the essential mechanism of emotion and feeling; and while this explains ‘primal’ or early emotional responses that are completely concerned with survival, it does not explain emotional responses which are born out of more complicated mental processes. From this perspective James’ conception of emotion seems reductive and omissive when it fails to provide an alternative to the bodily means by which emotion can be generated in the organism and when it does not take the influence emotion on cognition and behaviour into account.

However, James’ views on emotions very complicated when viewed in the larger context of his work. James’ Principles of Psychology describes the relation of subjective consciousness in relation to the world and society and offers extensive examinations of how the phenomena of experience, including emotions, are interpreted by the individual and evolve with experience; The Will to Believe offers a view of the function of metaphysical mental states and their necessity in the creation of belief, which is in James’ view, of practical necessity to understanding the phenomena of experience spiritually. Emotion is seemingly always present, albeit sometimes tacitly, in the work of James. A broader reading of James indicates that, although emotions and feelings may be phylogenetic in origin and fundamentally physiological in nature, they are experienced, and enter the stream of consciousness where they are interpreted with regards to the highest interests of the individual. As James makes clear, experience is an unbroken stream that unifies the world, the body and the mind; it willfully looks backwards and projects forward in time and thereby constructs meaning, belief and truth out of existence.

Indeed, James’ view would seem to imply the following: the environmental context and physical manifestations of emotions, as they come to be represented as phenomena of experience, develop into mental states which are themselves recalled and reinterpreted; now not only with regards to the demands of the environment and the primal needs of the organism, but also in relation to each other. This creates the internal psychological states that create ideas of right and wrong, good and evil, personal belief and normative social values, and, indeed, subjectivity––the self in its various forms. Higher emotions––and this is not clearly stated by James––seem to emerge from conflicts between these mental states which may be only indirectly caused or influenced by events or stimuli considered external to the mind such as threats to the body and self, the extended self (ie. family, society, possessions etc), or belief and values. And, as Sartre also implies, these conflicts often seem imply choices which are driven pre-reflexively by the emotion that accompanies them. However, Sartre views any kind of implication of causal relations between biological/natural necessity and emotions as a negation of the soveringnty of the will; he rejects the existence of any kind of biological, psychological, historical or normative social determiner on the mind, asserting that this view ultimately leads to a deterioration of true conceptions of freedom and individual responsibility.

Sartre managed to instrumentally employ the structural and theoretical aspects of Husserl and Heidegger to critique the late 18th and early 19th century malaise and complacency brought on, in part, by Darwinian biological determinism, the historical determinism of Hegel, and later, the Psychological determinism of Freud. Sartre understood this condition to be a negation of human nature which is, above all, burdened with the responsibility of total freedom. Sarte’s “Existential Idealism” is born our his reaction to the action (and inaction) of his countrymen during the second world war; he accepts no excuses for collaboration with the Nazi’s, nor does he accept excuses for the absence of action against them. For Sartre freedom is transcendent; it cannot be repressed by science or logic and ultimately rests in the soverignty of the subjective will; emotions are the intentional assertions that the subjective will projects on to the world. But this unrelenting assertion that individual existence is the responsibility of freedom––which is rationalised by the seemingly unvalidated claim that consciousness is freedom precisely because it is not caused––raises problems.

The question that looms largest concerns meaning. Because Sartre’s conception of consciousness appears to move psychically in one direction––the emotions assert themselves pre-reflectively and intentionally towards the passive matter of the world, “magically transforming” it according to subjective choice, and thereby allowing the will to act––it is difficult to to know how or in what context the Sartrian notion of conscious freedom is to exert itself. Indeed, context would imply a causal influence, as a goal would imply a need or a desire. And what about ethics and cultural differences?

Whereas James describes consciousness as caused by an evolutionary process akin to natural selection that favours conscious traits in the survival of an organism—as a complex system of mind, body and world which informs and feeds back upon itself, thus creating understandings and beliefs out of the phenomena of experience which function in the highest interests of the organism—Sartre offers his concept of “bon foi”, which represents the universal spirit of existential responsibility. Where James’ pluralistic view gives play to individual, environmental, and social factors with regard to the interpretation and cause of emotion, Sartre’s philosophy seems to put all its faith in the subject…
TBC

What is an Emotion? William James (1884)

Jean Paul Sartre: The Emotions (fragment)

This is 1 out of 7 in a BBC series on Sartre