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Reason and Emotion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Chris Provis
Chris Provis*
Affiliation:
Macquarie University
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Extract

It has been widely held, and still is held to some extent, that emotion and reason tend to be incompatible, that if a person is influenced by emotion to hold the beliefs he does, or perform the actions he does, then they tend to that extent to be unreasonable. This opinion manifests itself in a variety of ways. For example, it is no coincidence that Sherlock Holmes, the archetypal person of reason, is emotionally cold and detached. In a recent philosophical work, Robert Trigg has written of the emotions

[They] overwhelm us; we do not choose to adopt them …. They have always been thought to be the enemy of reason rather than its adjunct. A man who acts in anger is acting as he feels he wants to because of something that has happened. He is not necessarily acting as he would think best if he reflected on the matter. His emotion may have clouded his judgment.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 11 , Issue 3 , September 1981 , pp. 439 - 456
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1981

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References

1 Trigg, Robert Pain and Emotion (Oxford: Clarendon 1970) 49.Google Scholar

2 Ruskin, John Modern Painters (London: George Allen 1901)Google Scholar part IV, ch. 12 (‘Of the Pathetic Fallacy’), 164-5.

3 Cf. the O.E.D. under ‘feeling.’ See e.g. Pitcher, George ‘Emotion,’ Mind 74 (1965),Google Scholar for a criticism of the view that ‘to have an emotion is Just to have a certain unique inner feeling or group of inner feelings, to undergo a special inner experience.'

4 See e.g. Pitcher, op. cit.; Donnellan, Keith ‘Causes, Objects, and Producers of the Emotions,’ Journal of Philosophy, 67 (1970);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Solomon, R.C. ‘Emotions and Choices,’ Review of Metaphysics 27 (1973)Google Scholar and ‘The Logic of Emotion,’ Noûs 9 (1977); Thalberg, Irving ‘Constitutents and Causes of Emotion and Action,’ Philosophical Quarterly 23 (1973).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 On what follows see also ch. XI of S.G. O'Hair, Foundations in Epistemology (unpublished, circa 1968)

6 An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation (La Salle: Open Court 1946) 339.

7 Cf. the work of Karl Popper, followers of his like lmre Lakatos, and critics of theirs like Paul Feyerabend: also cf. note 15 below.

8 See Quinton, Anthony ‘The Foundations of Knowledge,’ in Williams, Bernard and Montefiore, Alan eds., British Analytical Philosophy (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1966)Google Scholar

9 Op. cit., 339.

10 Cf. Hume, Treatise, ed. Selby-Bigge, (Oxford: Clarendon 1888) 416.Google Scholar

11 Gordon, R.M. ‘Emotions and Knowledge,’ Journal of Philosophy 66 (1969).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Unger, Peter Ignorance: A Case for Scepticism (Oxford: Clarendon 1975).Google Scholar

13 Op. cit., 173.

14 That the perception might involve acquisition of a belief, would not be to the point, even if it were true. One would not be aware of having the new belief, given that the perception is subliminal. Therefore it would not be what actually leads me to discard the earlier belief. Noticing one has the beliefs, etc., one does, is necessary for changing them in the kind of way which is relevant here. But note that, on the proposed view, unreasonableness of having beliefs, etc., does not depend on attention being directed either to them or to their being absurd in the light of others one has.

15 In that case, of course, we need not worry about such questions as how observation of past instances gives us reason to believe something about a present one. Induction may be a cause which is not a reason, but still leads to conclusions which it is reasonable to believe, unless one has prior reason to believe something conflicting. It may even be that it is unreasonable to have a belief which conflicts with ‘inductive evidence,’ if one has certain very general beliefs about the nature of the world, like a belief about the uniformity of nature or the existence of causal connexions, together with more detailed beliefs about what phenomena would exemplify a lack of uniformity or connexion. On the view presented here, it would not be generally unreasonable if one did not have some such beliefs, but that is not a problem. On the one hand, it is quite common for people to have beliefs like that (even if they do not articulate them), and that explains how we often are correct in Judging beliefs unreasonable which conflict with inductive evidence. On the other hand, if people did not have such beliefs then it is not clear that it would be unreasonable for them to believe things which conflicted with ‘inductive evidence.'

16 ‘Emotions and Choices,’ 27. Solomon's emphases. See also the criticism of Solomon's general account presented by Frithjof Bergmann in his review of Solomon's book, The Passions (New York: Doubleday 1976), in Journal of Philosophy, April 1978.

17 Incidentally, we may note here that Just as it is unreasonable to be amused at something while believing it is not funny, so it may be unreasonable to hate something while believing it is not hateful, to pity someone while believing he or she is not pitiable, and so on. This points the way to showing how emotions which are not propositional attitudes may be assessed as reasonable or unreasonable, but it is beyond our scope here to explore it further.

18 An earlier version of this paper was presented to the Australasian Association of Philosophy Conference in Canberra in August 1978. I am grateful to a number of participants in discussion for pointing to possible improvements. In particular, I am much indebted to Peter Herbst, who acted as commentator. I must also thank D.M. Armstrong, G.A. Cohen, Max Deutscher, Barry Shorter, J.J.C. Smart and Michael Stocker for helpful comments on various drafts.