Know With Feeling:The Epistemological Function of the

Emotions and Their Role in the Philosophy of William James

Marina E. BellNovember 9, 2011

"I think that yesterday was a crisis in my life. I finished the first part of Renouvier's second Essais and see no reason why his definition of free will — 'the sustaining of a thought because I choose to when I might have other thoughts' — need be the definition of an illusion. At any rate, I will assume for the present — until next year — that it is no illusion. My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will"

(The Letters of William James, ed. Henry James. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1926, p. 147).

On his Principles of Psychology

“…a loathsome, distended, tumefied, bloated, dropsical mass, testifying to nothing but two facts: 1st, that there is no such thing as a science of psychology, and 2nd, that W. J. is an incapable”

(The Letters of William James, ed. Henry James. Boston: Little, Brown, 1926, pp. 393–4).

The view to defend:“The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a

certain clash of human temperaments…Of whatever temperament a professional philosopher is, he tries, when philosophizing, to sink the fact of his temperament. Temperament is no conventionally recognized reason, so he urges impersonal reasons only for his conclusions. Yet his temperament gives him a stronger bias than any of his more strictly observed premises…There arises thus a certain insincerity in our philosophic discussions: the potentest of all our premises is never mentioned”

( “The Present Dilemma in Philosophy,” 6-7).

The general objection“Temperament is no legitimate reason to adopt a theoretical position! Such positions should be adopted when clear reasoning and evidence have given one reason to do so!”

My project

• Defend the view against this general objection and a specific objection by Russell.

• How? Argue that James is right, and use contemporary scholarship on the epistemological function of the emotions (Damasio, DeSousa, etc.) as support.

The Correspondence Theory of Truth

Truth = correspondence with reality, properly copying reality, absolute transcription of reality

Eg. “the cat is on the mat” is true if, and only if the mat referenced by the sentence a) exists, and b) has a cat on it (the cat must also exist).

Pragmatism: a novel approach to truth

we need a conception of truth that accommodates 2 things:

1) Our experience of the world is not static – the world changes, and we change.

2) We are active participants in what we come to hold as true, not passive observers recording facts.

“Theories thus become instruments, not answers to enigmas in which we can rest. We don’t lie back on them, we move forward, and, on occasion, make nature over again by their aid" (italics added)

("What Pragmatism Means" 26).

"We say this theory solves it on the whole more satisfactorily than that theory; but that means more satisfactorily to ourselves, and individuals will emphasize their points of satisfaction differently" (30).

"A new opinion counts as “true” just in proportion as it gratifies the individual’s desire to assimilate the novel in his experience to his beliefs in stock…its success in doing this, is a matter for the individual’s appreciation" (31).

The beans"A letter from Strong, two days ago…[he] still thinks that I deny the existence

of realities outside of the thinker; and [R.B.] Perry…accused Pragmatism…of ignoring or denying that the real object plays any part in deciding what ideas are true. I confess that such misunderstandings seem to me hardly credible, and cast a ‘lurid light’ on the mutual understandings of philosophers generally. Apparently it all comes from the word Pragmatism ― and a most unlucky word it may prove to have been. I am a natural realist. The world per se may be likened to a cast of beans on a table. By themselves they spell nothing. An onlooker may group them as he likes. He may simply count them all and map them. He may select groups and name these capriciously, or name them to suit certain extrinsic purposes of his. Whatever he does, so long as he takes account, his account is neither false nor irrelevant. If neither, why not call it true? It fits the beans minus-him, and expresses the total fact, of beans-plus-him. Truth in this total sense is partially ambiguous, then. If he simply counts or maps, he obeys a subjective interest as much as if he traces figures. Let that stand for ‘pure intellectual’ treatment of the beans, while grouping them variously stands for non-intellectual interests. All that Schiller and I contend for is that there is no ‘truth’ without some interest, and that non-intellectual interests play a part as well as intellectual ones. Whereupon we are accused of denying the beans, or denying being in anyway constrained by them! It’s too silly!“ (bold added)

(Letters Of William James, 2, pp.295-6).

Temperament

• “…temperaments with their cravings and refusals do determine men in their philosophies and always will” (Pragmatism, p.19).

Interest• “Millions of items of the outward order are present to my

senses which never properly enter into my experience. Why? Because they have no interest for me. My experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items which I notice shape my mind―without selective interest, experience is an utter chaos. Interest alone gives accent and emphasis, light and shade, background and foreground―intelligible perspective, in a word” (bold added) (Principles of Psychology, pp.402-3).

• "In the relative sense, then, the sense in which we contrast

reality with simply unreality, and in which one thing is said to have more reality than another, and to be more believed, reality means simply relation to our emotional and active life. This is the only sense which the word ever has in the mouths of practical men. In this sense, whatever excites and stimulates our interest is real" (bold added) (295).

• Interest: how a subject is situated• Temperament: the character of the subject

who is situated

“Nothing could be more absurd than to hope for the definitive triumph of any philosophy which should refuse to legitimate, and to legitimate in an emphatic manner, the power of our emotional and practical tendencies” (bold added)

("Sentiment of Rationality," p.88).

“Of two conceptions equally fit to satisfy the logical demand, that one which awakens the active impulses, or satisfies other aesthetic demands better than the other, will be accounted the more rational conception, and will deservedly prevail”

("Sentiment of Rationality," pp.75-6).

Hume

Russell’s Objections

• Objection 1: Takes James to be saying that a belief is true when it has good effects, when it is useful, or when it satisfies the believer. – And this is obviously wrong, because things that are true do not

always have good effects, are not always useful, nor always satisfying.

• Objection 2: James confuses the process by which we arrive at truth, with the content of truth itself.

Russell’s objection against Pragmatism

“Pragmatists are never weary of inveighing against those who say that our beliefs ought not to be influenced by considerations which in fact do influence them. [Pragmatists] point triumphantly to the influence of desire upon belief, and boast that their theory alone is based upon a true psychological account of how belief arises. With this account we have no quarrel; what we deny is its relevance to the question: What is meant by ‘truth and ‘falsehood’?”

(Philosophical Essays 96-97).

Hilary Putnam on Pragmatist notion of truth:

“Our grasp of the notion of truth must not be represented as simply a mystery mental act by which we relate ourselves to a relation called “correspondence” totally independent of the practices by which we decide what is true and not true”

(Pragmatism, p. 11).

Factors involved in projects of knowledge gathering:

• The epistemological commitments one currently holds• One’s method(s) for evaluating new ideas• What ideas one is commonly exposed to• What ideas one commonly pays attention to • What sorts of ideas one is accustomed to adopting as

true• Tenability of a new idea in terms of previous epistemic

commitments• One’s goals and motivations (epistemic or otherwise)

“A distinction in which we have a practical stake is one which we concentrate our minds upon and which we are on the look-out for. We draw it frequently, and we get all the benefits of so doing…Where on the other hand, a distinction has no practical interest, where we gain nothing by analyzing a feature out of the compound total of which it forms a part, we contract a habit of leaving it unnoticed, and at last grow callous to its presence”

(Principles of Psychology, p. 515).

Epistemological functions claimed for the emotions: Everyday Knowledge

• Salience: when we are presented with a variety of propositions, or large amounts of information, emotions

Epistemological functions claimed for the emotions: Everyday Knowledge

• Salience: when we are presented with a variety of propositions, or large amounts of information, emotions 1) allow us to narrow to our options. How? By

guiding us to place VALUE on certain options.

Rational deliberation without interest:

“I could take the 5…or I could take 101…or I could take the 5…or I could take 101…or I could take the 5…or I would take 101…or I could take the 5…or I would take 101…or I could take the 5…or I would take 101…or I could take the 5…or I would take 101…or I could take the 5…or I would take 101…or I could take the 5…or I would take 101…or I could take the 5…or I would take 101…or…”

Epistemological functions claimed for the emotions: Everyday Knowledge

• Salience: when we are presented with a variety of propositions, or large amounts of information, emotions 1) allow us to narrow to our options. How? By

guiding us to place VALUE on certain options.

Epistemological functions claimed for the emotions: Everyday Knowledge

• Salience: when we are presented with a variety of propositions, or large amounts of information, emotions 1) allow us to narrow to our options. How? By

guiding us to place VALUE on certain options.2) draw our attn to certain options, or aspects of a

situation, also by guiding us to place value on those options.

Scenario 1

Scenario 2

Epistemological functions claimed for the emotions: Theoretical Knowledge

• Emotions as Evaluative Tools:

Epistemological functions claimed for the emotions: Theoretical Knowledge

• Emotions as Evaluative Tools: – Feeling of doubt: motivates further inquiry,

seeking of evidence to deny a proposition or idea

Epistemological functions claimed for the emotions: Theoretical Knowledge

• Emotions as Evaluative Tools: – Feeling of doubt: motivates further inquiry,

seeking of evidence to deny a proposition or idea– Feeling of ease or conviction: confirms agreement,

motivates defense (James calls belief “the cessation of theoretical agitation”)

De Sousa“Whatever our level of logical sophistication, there are

inferences of which we feel the validity, others which we immediately feel are invalid. At the level of conscious policy, therefore, the dialectic of doubt and certainty is a fruitful one. But that dialectic is manifested below the level of conscious deliberation: epistemic feelings seem to serve precisely the function of providing premises elaborated at the subpersonal or intuitive level for use in explicit inferences” (“Epistemic Feelings,” p. 194).

"That theory will be most generally believed, which, besides offering us objects able to account satisfactorily for our sensible experience, also offers those which are most interesting, those which appeal most urgently to our aesthetic, emotional, and active needs"

(Principles of Psychology, p.312).

“Nothing could be more absurd than to hope for the definitive triumph of any philosophy which should refuse to legitimate, and to legitimate in an emphatic manner, the power of our emotional and practical tendencies” (bold added)

("Sentiment of Rationality," p.88).

Thank you!The end.