FEELING AND REPRESENTING: COMPUTATIONAL THEORY AND...

LOUIS C. CHARLAND

FEELING AND REPRESENTING: COMPUTATIONAL THEORY

AND THE MODULARITY OF AFFECT

ABSTRACT. In this paper I review some leading developments in the empirical theory of affect. I argue that (1) affect is a distinct perceptual representation governed system, and (2) that there are significant modular factors in affect. The paper concludes with the observation that feeler (affective perceptual system) may be a natural kind within cognitive science. The main purpose of the paper is to explore some hitherto unappreciated connections between the theory of affect and the computational theory of mind.

1. AN EMPIRICAL LACUNA

There was a time when philosophers had quite a lot to say about feeling and its relationship to emotion (e.g., Alston 1967, 1969; Aune 1963; Kenny 1963; Ryle 1949). More recently, philosophical discussions of emotion have shifted to its more 'cognitive' dimensions (e.g., Gordon 1987; Solomon 1977; Lyons 1980; Wilson 1972). Feelings have been left behind. * The situation is rather different in psychology and other branches of empi> ical emotion theory. There the feeling dimension of emotion, usually called affect, continues to attract a lot of attention. These developments have start- ed to reach philosophers concerned with the philosophical foundations of cognitive science.

In his pioneering book, The Rationality of Emotion, Roland de Sousa begins the task of trying to lay the philosophical groundwork for a 'perceptual' theory of emotion that is sensitive to empirical science (de Sousa, 1987). In Consciousness Explained, Daniel Dennett lists affect as one of the three important elements in his 'phenomenological garden' that require scientific explanation (Dennett 1991, pp. 43-65, esp. pp. 60-65). Finally, in Consciousness Reconsidered, Owen Flanagan also argues that cognitive science ought to pay more attention to consciousness and its infamous qualia (Flanagan 1992, pp. 42-45, 66). Like Dennett, he includes emotions among the phenomena of mind that deserve to be considered ('naturalized') in a more comprehensive cognitive science.

Although commendable, there is a problem with all of these initiatives. They fail to pay sufficient attention to what empirical theorists have said

Synthese 105: 273-301, 1996. @ 1996 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Pr#~ted in the Netherlands.

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about emotion. Dennett, for example, makes no reference to emotion theory at all (philosophical or empirical). Flanagan cites only one article (viz., Ekman, Levenson & Friesen 1983). De Sousa's discussion is much more empirically informed. But his selection of sources is limited and he does not systematically discuss most of those he cites (e.g., Panskepp 1982). The purpose of this paper is to take up some of the empirical slack in these timely philosophical initiatives. Specifically, my focus will be affect, the 'feeling' dimension of emotion. The strategy employed will be to intro- duce and assess the philosophical significance of several key developments in the empirical theory of affect. The writers we will be looking at are Robert Zajonc (experimental psychology); Jaak Panskepp (neurophysiology); Paul Maclean (evolutionary neuroanatomy); and Paul Ekman (social psychology). My primary focus will be the philosophical significance of these developments for the foundations of cognitive science.

2. TWO COMPUTATIONAL HYPOTHESES FOR AFFECT

The main hypothesis I will defend is:

(H1) Affect is an independent representation governed perceptual system.

(H 1) has important precedents. On the philosophical side, something very close to it has been advanced by de Sousa who argues that emotions are a form of perception (1987, pp. 107-204). On the empirical side, elements of it can be found in many developments in emotion theory, such as those reviewed in this paper. What is novel about (HI) is the claim that affect is a representation governed system; a notion taken from Zenon Pylyshyn's classic discussion of the foundations of computational theory (Pylyshyn 1984). There is an irony in transposing this computational notion to the theory of affect. Pylyshyn explicitly argues that emotions are not representation governed and are not computational. The empirical evidence I will review indicates otherwise. 2 Toward the end of the paper I will also briefly discuss a more refined version of (H1). This is:

(H2) There are significant modular factors in affective perception.

Like (H1), (H2) also has important precedents (Clarke 1986; de Sousa 1987; Frijda 1988, Griffiths 1990). 3 It is inspired by Jerry Fodor's suggestion that the mind may be divided into separate modular systems (Fodor 1983). However, Fodor also appears to believe that emotions are not representation governed and do not belong in the computational theory of mind (Fodor, 1975, pp. 197-205).

FEELING AND REPRESENTING 275

If the interpretation of the evidence reviewed in this paper is correct, then affect falls squarely within the explanatory domain of what computational representational theories are designed to explain. The reason is that feelings are representational and feeling is representing. Feelings are not the blind disruptive and disorganized responses that early psychologists made them out to be. 4 On the contrary, they can be argued to form a highly organized representational system that in fact has important adaptive functions. Affect, I shall argue, is a special representational system, demarcated and defined by its own special explanatory affective categories and principles, and governed by its own distinct laws and regularities. Therefore, computationalists like Fodor and Pylyshyn are incorrect in their assess- ment of the place of emotion in cognitive science. It is significant that David Mart, a committed computationalist, cites feelings as an example of a phenomenon that might benefit from an information processing account (Man" 1982, p. 4). He was right, as I shall argue. Of course, the symbol processing variety of computationalism advocated by Fodor and Pylyshyn is not the only way to interpret the empirical developments reviewed in this paper. However, if I am correct, then there is a strong case that can be argued along these lines, and that is one of the goals of this paper. The discussion will proceed as follows. First, we look at a few important methodological preliminaries. Then we consider the empirical evidence for (H1) and (H2) in a manner that highlights their philosophical assumptions and implications. The paper concludes with a few remarks to the effect that the concept 'affective perceptual system' may pick out a natural kind.

3. METHODOLOGICAL PRELIMINARIES

There are unfortunate conceptual difficulties that beset any attempt to generalize about emotion theory. One reason is that the explanation of emotion spans numerous disciplines. In addition to this problem of cross- disciplinary range, there are three semantic and conceptual problems that exacerbate the difficulty of generalizing about emotion theory even further. First, many emotion theorists don' t agree about what they mean by 'emotion' . Second, many emotion theorists don't agree about what they mean by 'cognition'. Third, many emotion theorists don' t agree about what they mean by 'perception'. Disagreements and confusion regarding the distinction between 'emotion' and 'affect' is a direct consequence of this imbroglio. To make matters worse, emotion theorists are not the only ones to disagree about the nature of 'perception' and 'cognition' and the relation between the two. This is true of a lot of cognitive science, where equivocations abound. The problem is significant, as it directly implicates


the question of what exactly the legitimate domain of 'cognitive' science is supposed to be. It is also a serious exegetical problem within the symbol processing representational view of mind. 5 Hopefully, the present case study will provide a few hints and lessons toward resolving it in at least one domain, namely, emotion theory. This I wilt try to do by being as precise as possible about what a theory of affective perception might be.

As regards the 'definition' of the topic of this paper, namely affect, my operating proviso will be to let the theoretical developments we discuss speak for themselves. They, and not some a priori definition, will circumscribe what exactly is meant by that notion. As Fodor once put it: "sciences generally determine their subject matter as they go along" (Fodor 1975, p. 76, nt. 16). So it is with the theoretical concept of affect. Thus, the proper answer to the question 'What is affect?' is not a definition of the term, but rather a theo~y. In this paper I hope to make a contribution to the general understanding of what, according to recent developments in the theory of affect, affect is. This will require some regimentation of the term 'affect' itself, as none of the writers we will be discussing agree in their exact usages of that term (a typical situation in emotion theory). Indeed, progress in the foundations of emotion theory is impossible without semantic and conceptual regimentation of some sort.

One final caveat needs to be entered before we turn to the empirical material. This is that affective perception is in fact a two channel representational system. One channel, the exteroceptive one, is designed to pick up and register affective information about the external world. The other, the interoceptive one, is designed to pick up and processes affective information about an organism's inner physiological states and processes. The exteroceptive affective perceptual channel is the means by which an organism picks up and processes the information that, say, something is fearsome. The interoceptive affective perceptual channel is the means by which that organism is made internally aware of its internal physiological and somatic responses to external affective stimuli (e.g., the heightened pulse rate, and increased neurochemical and hormonal discharges normally associated with the 'perception' of fearsome things). Therefore, feelings face two ways. They face outward (what you are scared of), and they face inward (what you feel in your 'gut'). Although both of these sorts of feeling involve representation, the mechanisms and explanatory generalizations involved are very different. Both the outward and inward looking dimensions of feeling are essential to their adaptive function. You do not run from a predator unless you classit'y it as fearsome (exteroceptive affect), and you cannot run unless your physiological economy is properly mobilized for flight (interoceptive affect). Our discussion starts with the


exteroceptive side of the affective perceptual hypothesis. Here my concern will be the place of affective categories in the explanation and prediction of behaviour. The interoceptive and exteroceptive dimensions of affect are of course not mutually exclusive. Most empirical discussions of affect involve a bit of both, although it is also easy to equivocate between the two and commit the fallacy of assuming that the respective mechanisms involved are the same (an empirical matter).

4. DEVELOPMENTS IN THE EMPIRICAL THEORY OF AFFECT

In 1948, the psychologist Robert W. Leeper argued that the view of emotion as 'disorganized response', so prevalent in the psychology of his day, was totally empirically misguided. He argued that, on the contrary, emotion is a highly organized phenomenon:

Our factual knowledge says that if you can arouse anger in a person you can increase the probability that his behaviour will be directed and energized in a different direction. The stronger the emotional process aroused (short of extremes that will perhaps nan into qualitatively different effects), the more certainly will his behaviour be governed in a way consistent with his emotional reaction. This is a principle which permits prediction and control of human behaviour and conscious experience. (Leeper 1948, p. t 7)

Note the sense in which Leeper says emotions are 'organized': they facil- itate the prediction and control of behaviour. The reason provided is that many forms of behaviour are governed by emotional reactions. Two years earlier, a similar argument was advanced by the psychologist Donald Hebb. He argued that there are generalizations in human and animal behaviour that can only properly be captured by using affective terms and principles (Hebb 1946). This line of reasoning can be taken one step further. Accord- ing to Leeper, it leads to the hypothesis that emotion is an independent form of perception:

• .. emotional processes ought to be seen as one type of perceptual process. I don' t mean emotional processes d e p e n d on, or come f r o m perceptual processes, although this is also true. I mean a more drastic s ta tement - namely, that emotional processes fundamentally are

perceptual processes, Just as apparent movement is a perceptual process. (cited in Arnold 1968, p.243)

Hebb and Leeper's arguments involve the following philosophical assumptions: (1) affective categories and their correlative representational states are necessary for the explanation of large classes of animal and human behaviour; (2) relations between affective representations and other mental states requires adverting to special affective principles. Thus, there are many generalizations governing animal and human behaviour that can only

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properly be captured by supposing that there are fearsome situations, that they can and often are correctly represented as such, and that behaviour is often governed by special representational fear principles. In other words, in explaining why the hare ran from the fox it is necessary to suppose that it represented ('perceived') the fox as fearsome, and that its behaviour is governed by an affective principle such as 'If x is fearsome, then run from x'. Only with this theoretical matrix is it empirically possible to capture many of the subjunctive and counterfactual generalizations that govern hare behaviour. In particular, this explanatory matrix is also required for the prediction of many aspects of hare behaviour and to account for why we are successful at this. Call this the 'argument from generalizations'. It is the thread I will follow throughout this paper. The conclusion I will draw from this argument is (H1), namely, that affect is an independent representation governed perceptual system. The inspiration for the argument from generalizations comes from Pylyshyn, who uses it to argue that cognition is an independent representation governed system (Pylyshyn 1984, Chap. 1). 6 Hebb and Leeper provide us with a basic behavioral statement of the argument from generalizations as it relates to affect. We will now examine more refined versions of that argument.

Zajonc on Preferenda and the Exposure Effect

The hypothesis that affect is an independent perceptual system is perhaps the key foundational pillar of Robert Zajonc's early work on emot ion] He argues that feeling is an independent representational system. This can be philosophically interpreted to mean that feeling is a representational system that is demarcated and defined by its own special representational categories and principles, and governed by its own special laws and regularities. Like Leeper and Hebb, Zajonc's argument has primarily to do with the exteroceptive dimensions of affect.

In 'Feeling and Thinking' (1980), Zajonc addresses the relation between affect and cognition ('feeling' and 'thinking', respectively). His purpose is to challenge the view that affect is postcognitive (Zajonc 1980, p. 151). This is characterized as the view that "before I can like something I must have some knowledge about it" (p. 151). According to one version of the cognitive view of emotion Zajonc is challenging, emotion consists of a physiological component of wvusal plus cognitive labelling. The idea is that the experience and individuation of an emotion as, say, one of anger, requires the cognitive labelling of its associated physiological substrates as such (Schachter and Singer 1962). Thus, a given set of autonomic and other physiological indicators count as an instance of one emotion rather than another, depending on how they are labelled by the subject that


experiences them. In other words, there is no experience of emotion as being of a specific individual emotion type (say, anger) without cognitive activity and labelling. Therefore, properly speaking, there is no emotion without cognition. Diffuse and undifferentiated experience of autonomic and physiological indicators can certainly be felt without being experienced as an emotion, but to be felt as a particular emotion (as being an instance of that emotion), they need to be labelled and classified accordingly. This view is sometimes called the 'cognitive arousal' theory of emotion (Greenberg and Safran 1987, pp. 1t0-112).

In his 1980 paper, Zajonc argues for two main theses. The first is that affect is not postcognitive, but rather precognitive. The second is that affect constitutes an independent information processing system of its own. Although logically distinct from the first, this second thesis forms part of its defence. In this discussion, it is the second thesis that will concern us especially. In his argument for that thesis (the independence of affect), Zajonc distinguishes between cold cognitions, which are involved in standard perception, and hot cognitions, which are involved in affect (Zajonc 1980, p. 152). 8 Cold cognitions are the representational vehicles involved in the perception of what he calls discriminanda, while hot cognitions are the representational vehicles involved in the perception of preferenda (pp. 159, 168). The purpose of standard perception is to pick up and process discriminanda - the 'discriminant features of objects'. Discrim- inanda are what experimental psychologists typically posit as the basic objective substratum of perception. They are the features of objects and events that are typically operationally defined, quantified, and measured in experimental psychology. Discriminanda are often thought to be 'objective' features of things or situations (e.g., mass, weight, geometrical shape, surface reflectance, brightness, hue etc.). 9 Preferenda are very different. Understanding what they are requires that one first accept (at least for exegetical purposes) something like the standard conception of discriminanda just described. This is because Zajonc's conception of preferenda is largely negatively defined. Where discriminanda cannot do the explanatory job of capturing the right affective generalizations, there, preferenda - or something like them - must be. It is the purpose of the affective perceptual system to pick up and process preferenda.

Zajonc introduces preferenda and the rationale for positing them in the following passage:

It is unlikely that calculations based on discriminable component features of objects and their affective values will reliably predict our overall affective reactions to objects and events. These reactions do not seem to be composites of such elements. An affective reaction to a person we meet emerges long before any of these features can be identified, let None evaluated. The assumption that component affect, utilities, or values attach themselves

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to the very same features that the subject attends to in a typical detection, recognition, discrimination, or categorization task is likely to be wrong. The analysis of preferences is not simply the analysis of cold cognitive representations that have become hot, that is, cognitive representations that have some affect attached to them. (p. 159; our emphasis)

He goes on to add:

The stimulus features that serve us so well in discriminating, recognizing, categorizing objects and events may not be useful at all in evaluating those objects. If this is indeed the case, then there must exist a class of features that can combine more readily with affect and thereby allow us to make these evaluations, to experience attraction, repulsion, pleasure, conflict, and other forms of affect, and to allow us to have these affective reactions quite early after the onset of the sensory input. These features might be quite gross, vague, and global. Thus, they might be insufficient as a basis for most cognitive judgements - judgements even as primitive as recognition, for example. In order to distinguish this class of features from simple discriminanda, I call them preferenda. (p. 1 59)

What is especially important here is Zajonc's claim that the explanation of affect-related phenomena (e.g., preferences) requires positing a special class of affective representational types, namely, preferenda. This is the argument from generalizations, now deployed in the context of experimental psychology.

Preferenda do not designate the same features that discriminanda do. As representational posits, they pick up and processes something different. Zajonc admits that he "cannot be very specific about preferenda" (p. 159). However, he does note that "they must be constituted of interactions between some gross object features and internal states of the individual - states that can be altered while the object remains unchanged, as, for example, when liking for a stimulus increases with repeated experience" (p. 159; our emphasis). Preferenda are very much like what Ronald de Sousa calls 'tertiary qualities' (de Sousa 1987, pp. 151-152). They are not reducible to primary or secondary qualities, although they can be argued to supervene on them. An interesting way to interpret preferenda might be to construe them as enacted perceptual posits (Varela 1989; Varela, Thomp- son and Rosch 1991). This enactive interpretation might be extended to affective categories in general (e.g., 'fearsome', 'anger provoking', 'sad', etc.). Clearly, the epistemological and ontological status of preferenda and affective categories is extremely problematic. 1° For present purposes, however, the point is simply that, if Zajonc is correct, then we need to posit preferenda (or something like them) in order to properly capture and account for many documented psychological generalizations. The matter admittedly requires a far more detailed examination than is possible here. Nevertheless, it must be emphasized that Zajonc's argument for preferenda is only one among a number of different empirical arguments in emotion theory where it is argued that affective categories are required for psy-


chological explanation. This additional evidence needs to be considered in order to properly assess the case for affective categories as a whole. 1 examine some of that evidence below. With this caveat in mind, we return to Zajonc.

As an example of why preferenda are required Zajonc cites experimental work on colour preferences and facial recognition. His argument is that in both cases the experimental evidence shows that the preferences in question do not attach to the 'same' features as these are delineated by the relevant discriminanda. Accounting for the existing evidence and the regularities that arise from it, requires an appeal to posits other than the standard discriminanda normally associated with those phenomena. Thus, brightness, hue and saturation, standard discriminanda for experimental work on colour, are inadequate posits in explaining colour preferences. These are not the features that ground colour preferences. Likewise, standard physical features alone are insufficient for facial recognition. The question then is this: "what is it in colour that 'holds' affect if it isn't brightness, hue, and saturation and what is it in a face that 'holds' affect if it isn't physical features" (p. 159). Assuming that there must be something that is responsible for the regularities in question, Zajonc's suggestion is, preferenda. There must be 'something' because, as a matter of fact, preferences can and often do systematically attach to all and only those things that have the 'same colour' even though this cannot be defined in terms of brightness, saturation and hue. Moreover, the 'same' face can be repeatedly and systematically picked out over others (preserving the right subjunctive and counterfactual conditionals, and so on), without any identifiable fixed set of physical features to ground those generalizations in the discriminanda that define 'the face' (as that face).

Much of the evidence cited for the existence of preferenda has to do with the so-called 'exposure effect'. This Zajonc defines as "the phenomenon of increasing preferences for objects that can be induced by mere repeated exposure" (p. 160). His main concern with this phenomenon is with the role traditionally allocated to recognition in explaining it. Recognition here is conscious recognition of the representational order of judgment (p. 163). Furthermore, judgment here is typically propositional representation (e.g., singular terms and reference plus general terms and predication). Therefore, representation in standard recognition must involve sufficient conceptual resources to permit singular reference. That also involvespred- ication and the use of general terms designating properties that are either true or false of the denoted token singular items. Zajonc's argument is that past theorists were wrong in allocating a central role to recognition in their attempts to explain the exposure effect. According to him, what the exper-


imental evidence shows is that preferences that arise in the exposure effect do not depend on or arise from, stimulus recognition of standard discriminanda through representations of a propositional order. He writes: "these experiments establish, I believe, that affective reactions to a stimulus may be acquired by virtue of experience with that stimulus even if not accompanied by such an elementary cold cognition as conscious recognition" (p. 163). The moral of the argument is that "a class of features (preferenda) exists that allows individuals to experience affect toward objects but does not allow them to accomplish tasks as simple as those in recognition memory tests" (p. 163). In other words, recognition of the propositional order of judgment is neither available nor required for explaining the regularities that define the exposure effect. The evidence cited in defence of this conclusion is very eclectic and diverse (pp. 160-170). It ranges from experiments involving preferences for auditory stimuli, facial expressions, colours and other phenomena. Some of the results involve intricate experimental settings. These diverse experimental results are impressive. They also raise difficult questions and are also open to any number of objections (e.g., Ekman 1984, pp. 338; Leventha11984, pp. 279-283). As noted above, however, in this paper I am interested in the philosophical significance of empirical work on affect, not its empirical validation.

In conclusion, if propositional judgment is neither involved nor required for explaining and capturing generalizations relating to the exposure effect, then maybe there is some other mechanism at work. According to Zajonc, this is feeling, a distinct affective representational system, defined by its own special representational 'perceptual' categories, and governed by its own special principles and regularities. The 'perceptual' categories of this affective perceptual system are the putative designata of preferenda. These in turn are the basic representational kinds and information processing units of the system. What emerges from all of this is the hypothesis that there exists a special-purpose exteroceptive affective perceptual representational system that operates on representational items that are informationally less complex than the standard propositional ones involved in cognition (and re-cognition). The argument for this hypothesis is that it is empirically impossible to state and capture generalizations relating to affective phenomena (e.g., preferences, the exposure effect) without positing a perceptual affective representational system. Here, then, is a much more detailed variant of the argument from generalizations first put forward by Hebb and Leeper.

Before we leave this discussion of Zajonc it is worth noting a few important observations he makes about the nature of the representational processes involved in affective perception. Most of these observations


are derived from experimental work, although sometimes the point is put more or less anecdotally. One theme that runs through his comments is that rational persuasion is often basically helpless in altering and influencing affective reactions and attitudes. Affective reactions are not easily subject to conscious, voluntary correction or control (p. 156). Many, in fact, are automatic and inescapable. For example, we often, immediately like or dislike persons when we meet them for the first time, often without knowing anything about them or knowing why. These initial likes and dislikes are also usually very stubbornly resistant to change. Zajonc notes that "even the most convincing arguments on the merits of spinach won't reduce a child's aversion to this vegetable" (p. 159).I1 What these observations amount to is the hypothesis that some of the processes in affective perception may be modular. This is hypothesis (H2), which we will look at later.

Panskepp on Basic Affective Categories and the Hypothalamic Hypothesis

Further evidence in support of the hypothesis that affect is a distinct mode of perception can be found in the neuobiological work of Jaak Panskepp. In an article entitled, Toward a Psychobiological Theoi3~ of Emotion, he argues that there are four different classes of primitive stimulus bound affective behaviours in humans and other mammals (Panskepp 1982, pp. 411-412).

These behaviours are held to fall, respectively, under the command of four distinct circuits originating in the limbic cortex and ganglia. The circuits are rage, panic, expectancy, and fear (pp. 411-412). Panskepp suggests that the hypothalamus is at present the "best site at which to pursue systematic properties of these circuits" (p. 415). The main evidence he presents in defence of this hypothesis has to do with how and where the circuits are realized and operate in the brains of rats (pp. 414-421). However, in his discussion he also alludes to evidence derived from work on limbic lesions in humans, as well as experimental work on dogs and other higher mammals, All of this evidence is held to be relevant to a general understanding of emotion on account of our 'shared mammalian heritage' in the relevant neuroanatomical and neurophysiological respects. This is because "the functional terrain of the subcortical limbic brain across mammalian species is remarkably similar, in kind if not in precise organization" (p. 408). The basic affective circuits Panskepp posits are therefore held to be "inherited components of the limbic brain" (p. 407). They are "to a substantial degree a shared mammalian heritage" (p. 407).

According to Panskepp, some of our feelings are basic. This adds an interesting refinement to Zajonc's argument that there is an independent


affective representational system. Basic feelings are stimulus bound in their activation and response (p. 412, Figure 2). Their respective neuroanatomical and neurophysiological circuits are "genetically hard-wired and designed to respond unconditionally to stimuli arising from major life-challenging circumstance" (p. 411). On the evolutionary side, these basic feelings serve to "organize behaviour by activating or inhibiting classes of related actions (and concurrent autonomic/hormonal changes) that have proved adaptive in the face of those types of life-challenging circumstances during the evolutionary history of the species" (p. 4 t 1). It is crucial to Panskepp's argument that the workings of these feeling circuits require representation. He calls the sort of representation involved affective representation (pp. 449-456). The focus of his discussion is exteroceptive affective representation.

A corollary of Panskepp's hypothesis that there are four basic affective categories (e.g., rage, fear, etc.) is that these categories are tied to the affective perception of specific eliciting situation types. These basic affective situation-types, in turn, are mirrored in the basic representational categot~.-types of the affective perceptual system ('rage eliciting', 'fear- orovoking' etc.). In other words, what Panskepp's research shows is that certain classes of mammals may be perceptually 'hardwired' to processes information regarding various situation types in a special, automatic sort of way, using representational category types 'designed' for just that purpose. Examples of basic affective situation types are things like 'social loss', 'threat', 'positive incentives' of various sorts, and so on. The idea is that the exteroceptive affective representation of these special types of situations is done through evolutionarily selected and moulded categories. The end result of this genetically 'hardwired' program is the production of whatever the evolutionary adaptive response turns out to have been. This could be flight in the case of threat, mating in the case of the positive incentives that relate to it, attack in the case of rage, and so on (p. 411, Figure 1).

Panskepp is far from alone in his suggestion that there may be basic affective perceptual categories. This is an area of emotion theory where theoretical activity is busy and opinions diverge greatly. For example, Philip Johnson-Laird argues that there are five basic affective categories: happiness, sadness, anger, fear and disgust (Johnson-Laird 1988, p. 371). Paul Ekman argues that there are probably six: fear, surprise, anger, disgust, distress and happiness (Ekman, 1980, p. 330). Robert Plutchik, finally, suggests there are eight: fear, anger, joy, sadness, acceptance, disgust, expectancy, surprise (Plutchik 1984, p. 200). It is important to realize that these are not simply the result of 'conceptual analysis'. They are


highly technical proposals, derived from sometimes very different theoretical premises, with very diverse kinds of experimental and empirical corroboration. For example, in some cases an attempt is made to link the processing of basic affective categories with specialized neural circuits and mechanisms (e.g., Panskepp 1982; Maclean 1990, pp. 422--465). In other cases, an attempt is made to link basic affective categories with their corresponding facial expressions (e.g., Ekman 1980 t984). 12 Finally, in many cases special attention is paid to relating basic affective categories and their associated behaviourial manifestations to evolutionary considerations (Johnson-Laird 1988; Plutchik 1984).

Maclean on the Limbic Hypothesis and the Triune Brain

Panskepp's work on the neurophysiology of affect is part of a much larger research project originating with LW, Papez's seminal paper, A Proposed Mechanism of Emotion (Papez 1937). The guiding hypothesis of Papez's paper is that there is a more or less autonomous 'limbic brain' responsible for emotion. Like Panskepp, Zajonc also draws heavily on this hypothexis and the research tradition associated with it. He locates the primary mechanisms for the generation and processing of affect in the subcortical limbic regions of the brain. Both Zajonc and Panskepp suggest that affective perception is primarily a nonverbal information processing system. Zajonc, for example, argues that "the communication of affect relies much more on nonverbal channels" (Zajonc 1980, p. 157). In defence of this claim he cites the case of young human infants, pointing out that an "infant knows how to cry and smile long before he acquires any semblance of verbal skills" (Zajonc 1980, p. 169). These ontogenetic considerations are then extended to phylogenetic ones:

The limbic system that controls emotional reactions was there before we evolved Ianguage and our present form of thinking. It was there before the neocortex, and it occupies a large proportion of the brain mass in lower animals. Before we evolved language and our cognitive capacities, which are so deeply dependent on language, it was the affective system alone upon which the organism relied for its adaptation. The organism's responses to the environment were selected according to their affective consequences (Zajonc 1980, p. 169-170; see also pp. 157-160).

Thus, Zajonc attributes a central role to the limbic system in affective perception. Panskepp's hypothatamic hypothesis is in fact a specific proposal within this tradition. One researcher whose work has done a lot toward furthering the limbic hypothesis is Paul Maclean. His work lends further support to the view that affective perception might be governed by a relatively independent and anatomically distinct set of neurophysiological mechanisms and structures. Maclean's evidence for the existence of such


a system derives in part from an evolutionary hypothesis in neuroanatomy. This is the Triune Brain Hypothesis:

In its evolution the primate forebrain expands along the lines of three basic patterns that may be characterized as reptilian, pateomammalian, and neomammalian. There results a remarkable linkage of three cerebrotypes which are radically different in chemistry and structure and which in an evolutionary sense are eons apart. There exists, so to speak, a hierarchy of three-brains-in-one, or what I call, for short, a triune brain. It is inferred that each cerebrotype has its own special type of intelligence, its own memory, its own sense of time and space, and its own motor and other functions. Although the three brains are extensively interconnected and functionally dependent, there is evidence each is capable of operating somewhat independently. (Maclean 1980, pp. 13-14; see also 1990, pp. 8-9)

In this cerebral triumvirate, the paleomammalian brain is held to conform to what is commonly called the limbic system (Maclean 1980, p. 14, Figure 2). Like Zajonc and Panskepp, Maclean maintains that the limbic system plays a central role in emotion (Maclean 1980, pp. 20-30; 1990, pp. 16-17,422- 465). For our purposes, the upshot is as follows. First, there is evolutionary evidence that affect may have been an independent representational system at one time and still functions more or less independently in humans today. Second, many important dimensions of affect can be traced back to specific neural mechanisms and processes in the limbic system, which is the seat of emotion. Third, before the development of the neocortex and the higher conceptual capacities associated with it, the limbic system processed affective information on its own. But fourth, it could only do so with limited representational conceptual resources of its own. For this reason, information processing in affective perception was nonverbal (Maclean 1990, pp. 11-12). This suggests (but does not imply) that there is a clear enough sense in which there could have been an affective representational system without representation of the informational order of full-fledged propositional judgment. The conceptual resources simply were not there. The reason is that the relevant neuroanatomical structures were absent. It is a small step from these considerations to the suggestion that the limbic system still operates more or less on its own in adult humans and other higher mammals that have operative cortical structures. Zajonc, Panskepp, and Maclean all make this step. Thus, the addition of cortical mechanisms and their associated conceptual abilities (e.g., language, singular reference etc.) does not annul the independence and nomological autonomy of the affective perceptual system. It merely supplements this system and makes the overall representational workings of emotion a more complex affair that can also include affective representation with a propositional factor.

If the idea that there may be affective representation that is nonpropositional seems mysterious, consider the example of human infants in the early stages before they develop full-fledged cortical capacities and func-


tions (e.g., language). Infants at these stages clearly manifest and express affect, and they respond affectivety to stimuli in highly systematic, often predictable ways. On a primitive affective level, their behaviour is representation governed (governed by its own special representational rules and regularities etc.). But these tiny creatures are clearly not yet verbal or capable of propositional conceptual and representational activity. Thus, in many cases where affective perception is nonverbal, it is also nonpropositional. Of course, there may be propositional cognitions that are nonverbal in the sense of not being verbalizable (because e.g., of motor deficiencies, repression etc.). But the case that interests us is where what is nonverbal is also nonpropositional. The above points also apply to higher mammals such as dogs, chimps, dolphins, apes, and so on.

Ekman on Facial Expression and the Nonpropositionali~ of Affect

Zajonc, Panskepp and Maclean are not the only researchers to have argued that representation in affect is, indeed often must be, nonverbal and nonpropositional. The social psychologist Paul Ekman has also argued in favour of this hypothesis. Ekman's research provides another provocative hypothesis of what an affective perceptual system might be like. This is the last empirical theory of affect we will surveyJ 3

Inspired by Darwin's The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animal (Darwin, 1867), Ekman's hypothesis is that there are universal forms of affective facial expression across humans. The hypothesis has been repeatedly experimentally tested with considerable ingenuity (Ekman 1971, 1973, 1980; see also Izard 1971). The experiments undertaken by Ekman and his colleagues involve things such as showing photographs of what are taken to be basic facial expressions in our culture to individuals in remote cultures, and testing for agreement on the identification of affective facial expressive types. This general hypothesis has been supplemented by several ingenious subhypotheses over the years. One has to do with how learned 'display rules' can function in masking and reconfiguring facial expressions (Ekman 1969). Another is that there exist specific autonomic individuating factors for the various basic emotions (Ekman, Lev- enson and Friesen 1983). Ekman and his colleagues have also devised a special measurement system for mapping the musculature of the face, thus providing an operationalized procedure for identifying affective facial types and measuring deviations from them (such as in masking). Finally, some of Ekman's recent work indicates that there may be different neural mechanisms and pathways responsible for voluntary and involuntary facial expressions (Ekman 1984, pp. 321-324). This has got interesting


consequences for work on deception and the limits of masking (Ekman, Hager and Friesen 1981).

The facial expressive affective system is nonverbal. It is Nso nonpropositional, as evidence of its operation in organisms incapable of that level of conceptual ability clearly demonstrates (cf. Leventhal 1984, esp. pp. 2 7 4 -

275). Recognit ion in Zajonc's conscious, inferential, propositional sense is neither required nor usually involved. And yet some level of representational activity clearly is, and must be, involved. In Ekman's theory this element enters through the hypothesis of an appraiser Mechanism, which "selectively attends to those stimuli (external or internal) which are the occasion for activating the affective program" (Ekman 1980, p. 83). The affect program is a mechanism that stores and directs facial expressive responses to the interpreted stimuli delivered by the appraisal mechanism (Ekman 1980, p. 82). Ekman describes the affect program thus:

The organization of affective responses dictated by the affect program has a genetic basis but is influenced also by experience. The skeletal, facial, vocal, autonomic, and central nervous system changes that occur initially and quickly for one or another emotion, we presume to be in largest part given, not acquired. (Ekman 1980, p. 82)

The appraisal mechanism must be capable of operating very quickly and automatically, as many of our emotive responses are quick and immediate. It "must be constructed so that it quickly attends to some stimuli, deter- mining not only that they pertain to emotion but to which emotion, and then activating the appropriate part of the affect program" (Ekman 1980, p. 84). This sounds very much like the suggestion that the facial expressive system has important modular characteristics (on which more shortly).

The last e lement in Ekman's theory is elicitors. These are the representational inputs o f the appraiser mechanism. In an hypothesis reminiscent of Panskepp, Ekman argues that there are 'pan-human commonal i t ies ' in the elicitors for each of the basic emotions he identifies. He writes:

While the specific elicitors for emotion may vary with individual expectations, there is also some commonality apparent in the general outline of what elicits, through the appraisal/affect program, the emotion. Disgust elicitors share the characteristic of being noxious rather than painful; and, in all cultures, taste stimuli are among the elicitors of disgust. Surprise depends upon the details of what would be unexpected for a particular person in a particular situation, yet surprise elicitors share the characteristic of being unexpected, novel, and usually sudden rather than gradual. People learn how to avoid impending harm, avoid danger. Fear elicitors share the characteristic of portending harm or pain. One of the common characteristics of the elicitors of happiness is release fi'om accumulated pressure, tension, discomfort, and the like. Loss of something to which one is intimately attached might be a common characteristic of sadness elicitors. (Ekman 1980, pp, 85-86; see also 1984, pp. 337-339)


Thus, "specific elicitors will share common characteristics") (Ekman 1980+ p. 86). For our purpose, what needs to emphasized is the element of representation required in the identification of elicitor types. The organism must first represent a situation as an instance of an affective category (say, fearsome) before the affective program can generate the appropriate response. The entire affective facial expressive system and its associated coping behaviours requires this representational element in order to get off the ground. Like Zajonc's preferenda system and Panskepp's hypothalamic proposal, the facial expressive affective system is representation governed. This is because it is empirically impossible to capture the regularities governing affective facial behaviour without appealing to how the eliciting situations (which may include facial expressions of emotion) are affectively represented and how those representational states relate to other representational states and processes (e.g., deliberate masking of a facial expressive response via learned display rules). This by no means implies that all of the relevant processes involved in an affective response are representation governed. Many are not.

To conclude, on Ekman's account the ability to represent a smiling face as such, and the fact that we almost always instantaneously smile in response to a baby smile is no accident. Happy faces are simply a pan-human affective representational category which we, as a species, are programmed to honour with a smile of our own. Moreover, on the Ekmanian account, there is a point to the popular recommendation that you ought to try and smile if you want to feel happy. For much of what it is to be happy is to smile.

In this section I have tried to empirically document the hypothesis that affect is an independent representation governed perceptual system, namely (H 1). Along the way we have encountered many pieces of evidence that corroborate the hypothesis that affect may also in some respects be a modular representational system, namely (H2). This is the hypothesis that there are significant modular factors in affective perception. In the next section I briefly explore (H2). To start, a brief introduction to the notion of modularity.

5. COMPUTATION AND THE MODULARITY OF AFFECT

In Modulari~ of Mind, Jerry Fodor proposes a tripartite functional tax- onomy of psychological mechanisms. Each kind of mechanism is held to be functionally individuated, typically in terms of the kinds of processes it effects (Fodor 1983, pp. 10, 25). He distinguishes transducers, input systems and central processors, "with the flow of information becoming


accessible to these mechanisms in about that order" (pp. 4t-42) . Fodor's hypothesis is that"input systems are modules" (p. 46). A system is modular if: (1) it operates only on certain kinds of representations and not others and so is domain specific; (2) its operations are unlearned and innately specified; (3) its basic operations are primitive and not 'assembled'; (4) its operations are neurally 'hardwired' in identifiable circuits or locations; and (5) it doesn't share computational resources with other systems in doing what it does (p. 37).

Modules (also called input systems) are computational mechanisms. They mediate between central processors and transducers. As their input modules take the n-tuples of atomic symbols delivered by transducers, and they deliver representations (or sets of representations) to central processors as their output. Modules invariably alter, because they elaborate on, the informational content of their transduced inputs. This is possible because, unlike transducers, but like central processors, they are designed to perform inferences (pp. 42, 83). Modules are representation governed mechanisms. This makes them different from transducers, which are physical mechanisms that merely encode physical information into representations, or vice versa (pp. 38-42; see also Pylyshyn 1984, pp. 147-153). Modules, therefore, require explanation in terms of representations and semantic level principles. Transducers, on the other hand, are physical mechanisms for which a physical explanation suffices. Finally, modules are also informationally encapsulated (pp. 71-73) and their processes are cognitively impenetrable (pp. 52-55, 133). That is, they basically do their computational job without assistance or interference from other computational systems (e.g., other modules), and the processes they effect are not rationally alterable according to changes in beliefs and desires. This makes modules very different from central processors, which are not informationally encapsulated and are cognitively penetrable. Furthermore, unlike central processors, which operate on propositional dox.astic representational items such as beliefs, modules operate on infradoxastic representational items that are epistemically and semantically less informationally complex than beliefs (pp. 73, 102, 112). Modules do not operate on beliefs, nor do their operations ensue in the fixation of belief. This is an important part of what is involved in the claim that modules are 'perceptual' mechanisms, while central processors are 'cognitive' ones. The modularity of emotion therefore has primarily to do with its perceptual dimension, namely affect.

As noted above, there are precedents for (H2). For example, in a land- mark article, The Laws of Emotion, Nico Frijda argues that modularity is the basic major theoretical fact about emotion (Frijda 1988, p. 355).


He characterizes modularity as the fact that "emotions tend to be closed to judgments of relativity of impact and to the requirements of goals other than their own" (p. 344). Along the same lines, Ronald de Sousa argues that emotions mimic the encapsulation of perception (de Sousa 1987, pp. 152-153, 156). He also notes that emotions are modular in the sense of being traceable to identifiable neurophysiological circuits: "most researchers now seem to agree on some basic facts of localization: the emotions would not exist if we had only a neocortex; they would not exist if we had no thalamaus and hypothalamus" (p. 65). This, we have seen, is an important area of research in emotion theory. The connection between Fodor's notion of modularity and the research reviewed in the preceding section is compelling. Take Panskepp, for example. He argues that: (i) affective processes involve the representational appraisal of stimuli followed by inferences to more complex elaborations of those stimuli; (ii) the basic mechanisms involved are unlearned and probably genetically programmed; (iii) the basic operations involved can be traced to distinct neurophysiological processes and mechanisms; and (iv) that once initiat- ed, affective processes are for the most part automatic and insusceptible to voluntary control (they are encapsulated and impenetrable). The hypothalamic hypothesis is therefore a good example of a modular hypothesis. It is part of a larger hypothesis, the limbic hypothesis, which also exhibits many characteristics relevant to modularity.

It may not be obvious why affective processes on Panskepp's model need to be inferential and symbolic. Why are they not simply a matter of transduction? The answer lies in the fact that transductive processes are not representation governed, while modular processes are. It is because the explanation of the empirical regularities that Panskepp alludes to requires appealing to affective representations and affective principles defined over and in terms of those representations that the processes in question can be said to be representation governed. An interesting strategy to test the representation governed nature of Panskepp's hypothalamic circuits might be to try and experimentally demonstrate that they are not transductive; that is, that the purely physical assumptions of transduction are insufficient to capture the relevant regularities on their own. This would involve demonstrating that there is more involved in explaining affective processes and behaviour (in e.g., rats, dogs, chimps, human infants etc.) than simply the encoding of physical information according to purely physical terms and principles into representational form (input transduction), and the consequent decoding of representations into purposive behaviour or other physical outputs (output transduction). Panskepp's data suggests that


the processes he describes are more likely modular and inferential than transductive.

One writer who has important things to say about the transductive dimension of affect is Philip Johnson-Laird. His focus is mostly on the interoceptive dimension of affect. Johnson-Laird argues that "feelings are signals that have no symbolic structure" (Johnson-Laird 1988, p. 382). 14 It follows that they (feelings) cannot be modular in Fodor's sense. This is because as inferential mechanisms, modules operate on symbols, and symbols according to Fodor have both an interpreted semantic content (which specifies what they are about) as well as a combinatorial structure (Fodor 1980, pp. 22-23). Symbols then are complex representational items. Therefore, they are not 'signals' in Johnson-Laird's sense.

In so far as signals are transduced representational feedback from the viscera and other physiological centres, the idea that feelings might be only signals is plausible. That suggestion was made famous by William James (James, 1884). It now has numerous variations in emotion theory (Green- berg and Safran 1987, pp. 116, 153-154, 160). Nevertheless, it remains to be experimentally determined whether interoceptive affective perception of this sort may not also involve more than simply representation of the order of signals. In adult humans, at least, transduced internal representational states appear sometimes to be subject to all sorts of semantic level regularities, meaning that affective 'signals' may sometimes also function in inferences. For example, many of our overall emotional reactions are a function of interoceptive affective representation plus exteroceptive affective representation. If interoceptive affective representation is limited only to signals, then it is unclear how these signals can enter into inferences in combination with other states and processes that are combinatorial and symbolic. This suggests that interoceptive affective representation probably involves symbols. It also raises the possibility that interoceptive affective representation may not be a matter of signals at all, although transductive process are of course involved (in which case they merely yield symbols rather than signals). None of these questions and distinc- tions would be possible without the computational theory of mind and its distinction between transduction and modularity. These two options demarcate importantly different alternatives regarding the nature of interoceptive affective representation. They are also susceptible of relatively clear operational definition and are experimentally testable. This is a good example of where the theory of affect may have something to learn from computational theory.

The feedback hypothesis provides an interesting model for explaining what the qualia in emotion are and how they are generated. Qualia are


transduced interoceptive representational feedback from internal physiological centers. These internal affective processes are often generated through the exteroceptive affective perceptual process, although they can also sometimes be chemically induced by altering levels of neurotrans- mitters (serotonin, dopamine etc.). Thus, in the case of the basic affects at least, it is the perception of a situation as fearsome that leads, via an affective modular process, to the physiological reactions and responses that are then experienced as fear (anxiety, heightened autonomic activity etc.). This of course is only a sketch of a model, and the issue deafly deserves a much fuller treatment than is possible here. But hopefully the outline is clear enough to establish that the model is worth developing.

Another important source of evidence for the existence of modular factors in affect comes from the research on facial expression reviewed above. First, basic facial expressions of affect appear to be unlearned, innately programmed responses issuing from the representational appraisal of a given stimulus. Perhaps the best source of evidence for this aspect of the facial expressive hypothesis is Izard's work on infant facial expressions (Izard 197t). Also relevant is the work of Ekman and his colleagues regarding modularity in adult facial expressions. Izard and Ekman's work indicates that the perception and classification of affective facial expressions by infants and adults is, in many respects, a modular process. This is also true of the elicitation of facial expression and the specific facial configurations that result. Thus, an angry facial expression is a modular response to a stimulus situation deemed to be 'anger provoking' (an affective category). The reaction is automatic and very fast and usually not subject to voluntary control. It is also ineliminably representational.

Another source of empirical corroboration for the presence of modularity in affect is provided by the work of Zajonc. Perhaps the most fundamental result here is the argument that affective perception in the exposure effect and other phenomena involving preferences is representation governed. Zajonc also makes an interesting case for the claim that these processes are cognitively impenetrable, fast, automatic, and in some cases possibly traceable to localizable circuits and mechanisms in the Iimbic system. These features are all criteria for counting a system as modular. Like Ekman, Zajonc also makes the suggestion that representation in affect is mostly a nonverbal and nonpropositional aft'air. The relationship between this claim and the modularity of affect requires a closer look. tt is an area where computational theory and the theory of affect both have a lot to learn from one another. My remarks here will be tentative as the area is intricate and requires far more attention than can be provided here.


First of all, the idea that feelings might be nonpropositional has note- worthy precedents. One can certainly 'feel thatp', where p is a proposition. Such schemas are popular in 'cognitive' theories of emotion (e.g., Solomon 1977; Lyons 1980; Gordon 1987). But not all expressions or attributions of feeling take this form. The 'grammar' of feeling is in fact very varied and idiosyncratic, as some of the best analytical philosophers of this century have shown. For example, Anthony Kenny distinguishes three main uses of the term 'feeling', one where it takes a direct object, as in 'feeling an itch', another where it is followed by an adjective, as in 'feeling sick', and another where it is followed by a that-complement clause, as in 'feeling that the moment was wrong' (Kenny 1963, p. 52). He also lists a number of other idiomatic uses of the term such as, 'feeling up to', 'feeling like' (in the two senses of 'feeling like a lord' or 'feeling like a drink'), and 'feeling in good spirits' (p. 53). Finally, he also notes cases where the term is used as a verb on its own, as in 'the meanest thing that feels' (p. 53). 15 Gilbert Ryle's discussion of feeling is equally filled with trenchant and subtle analytical insights. He defines feelings as "the sorts of things which people often describe as thrills, twinges, pangs, throbs, wrenches, itches, prickings, chills, glows, loads, qualms, hankerings, curdings, sinkings, ten- sions, gnawings, and shocks" (Ryle 1949, p. 81). He then goes on to argue that feelings cannot be assimilated to agitations, inclinations, or moods (pp. 81ft.). Ryle's focus is on the more bodily senses of feeling. Here he is inspired by James (p. 82). But he does note senses of the term that are less bodily, such as when persons are said to feel 'qualms of apprehension'.

One thing these discussions show is that ordinary language is not a good place to look if one wants to develop a theory of feeling. Any theoretical use of the term will evidently have to be a theoretically regimented one. This is why I did not start this inquiry with a definition of 'affect', but rather with the claim that it is the theory of affect that will tell us what affect is. Nevertheless, there is an important lesson to be drawn from the above examples. This is that feelings are invariably representational. Furthermore, they are often representational in a manner that is not propositional. For sometimes feelings may take intentional items other than full-fledged propositions as their intentional relata. For example, they may take only simple grammatical units such as noun phrases, verbs, or even proper names as their relata. This, for instance, is the case in third person attributions of the form 'x has a fear of snakes', or 'x feels exas- perated', or 'x is angry at Fido', respectively. It can of course be argued that allegedly infradoxastic and 'less' than fully propositional constructions such as these either presuppose standard propositional ones, or can at least be reinterpreted as such. But what counts for our purposes is that


as a matter of fact these nonpropositional states can and often do function combinatorially in inferences without any such propositional correlates or mediation. This in fact appears to be the case in creatures lacking the cortical capacities for token indexical singular reference. Moreover, feelings are never just feelings simpticiter. They are always experienced as feelings of this or that sort, or feelings of this or that. In conclusion, there is no feeling without representation. Feeling is a kind of representing - a special epistemic, intentional modality or 'attitude', though not necessarily a propositional one. Feelings therefore are intentional, even if they are only 'quasi-intentional' (de Sousa 1987, pp. 96-103). How exactly feelings are to be computationally modeled is a difficult question which it is not possible to explore here. Suffice it to say there exist important precedents for the inclusion of infradoxastic computational states (of which feelings are a species) in some areas of computational theory; for example, David Marr's account of the early stages of vision (Marr t 982). Notwithstanding such difficulties, there is nothing incoherent in the idea that some humans and many mammals live their affective representational lives on a purely infradoxastic level. They are like Quine's 'natives' before the arrival of singular reference and the analytical hypothesis required to fix it (Quine 1960, Chap. 2). This is also the world of the young infant while it is struggling to grasp the 'roots of reference'; a representational world of event time-slices where the 'language of emotion' consists of general term constructions only (cf. Quine 1974).

6. CONCLUSION

In this paper I have tried to supplement some recent initiatives on emotion in the philosophy of cognitive science with empirical evidence which they do not mention but which is relevant. My philosophical evaluation of that evidence suggests that affect is an independent perceptual system that exhibits significant modular factors. Like vision (Mart 1982), it appears that affect may be a separate modular system of its own. I have also suggested that feeling is representing and that, although nonpropositional, representation in affect is often symbolic and combinatorial nonetheless. At one point in his discussion of modularity, Fodor suggests that the concept 'input system' very likely picks out a natural kind (Fodor 1983, p. 44, 93). There are good reasons for thinking that affect is an input system. Thus, affective perceptual system may be an instance of the natural kind 'input system'. In other words, feeler may be a natural kind within cognitive science. 16


NOTES

1 But see (Goodman 1976, esp. pp. 245-252) for one important exception. Martha Nuss- baum is a more recent example of a philosopher who takes the feeling dimension of emotion very seriously indeed (Nnssbaum 199t; esp. pp. 40-43, 286-313). It would be interesting to explore the consequences of the argument advanced here for her views. 2 Pylyshyn says that emotions m'e"govemedprimarily by biochemical principles" (Pylyshyn 1984, p. 265; our emphasis). On his terms, this means that they are basically noncognitive. This, in turn, means they "do not operate on the basis of rules and representations" and "are not inferential or otherwise knowledge dependent" (Pylyshyn 1984, p. 268). There- fore, unlike cognitive processes, which are inferential and require explanation in terms of rules and representations, emotions are not representation governed. Pylyshyn's view appears to be that 'emotions' are transduced affective feedback from the viscera and other somato-sensory centres. Perhaps here he is inspired by James (e.g., James, 1884), but the lack of any references makes this impossible to verify. What he does say is that moods and emotions "can be caused by cognitive states", where the sort of causation involved is "mediated by a highly constrained process called transduction" (Pylyshyn 1984, p. 269). To this he adds that "moods and emotions may have noncognitive causes as well, such as hormonal and other biochemical fluctuations, disease, lesions of the central nervous system" (Pylyshyn 1984, p. 269). The overall conclusion of his discussion is that, regardless of whether emotional states are caused by cognitive or noncognitive factors, the biochemical transitions and chan~es involved in those states "may lead to further generalized effects on subsequent cognitive processes by affecting the functional architecture or the symbol level principles of the system" (Pylyshyn 1984, p. 269). Basically, then, emotions may be caused by cognitive factors (via transduction) and they may cause cognitive changes (via transduction), but they are primarily biochemical processes governed by principles of that sort. Unfortunately, Pylyshyn makes no reference to emotion theory at any point in his discussion. This is also true of John Haugeland's important discussions of the place of emotion in cognitive science Haugeland 1981a, pp. 32-34; Haugeland 1981b, pp. 270-272; 1985, pp. 237-239). This is a surprising omission in an area of inquiry that is normally sensitive to developments in empirical science. 3 Although the notion of modularity has stimulated a lot of good discussion in emotion theory, no one yet has really taken its symbol processing computational origins seriously. In this paper I attempt to do just that. 4 See (Leeper 1948) for an excellent discussion of the 'emotion as disorganized response' view and what is wrong with it. 5 For example, according to Pylyshyn, transducers are perceptual, and not cognitive, mechanisms. They are "primitive mechanisms of the functional architecture (Pylyshyn 1984, p. 180). Moreover, they are also cognitively impenetrable (pp. 135, 155, 180). Cognitive pen- etrability is essentially a matter of the "rational alterability of a component's behaviour in response to changes in goals and beliefs" (p. 133). A process then is cognitively penetrable only to the extent that it is representation governed. As Pylyshyn deploys the penetrabil- ity criterion, it would appear that a process is exclusively either cognitively penetrable, and therefore representation governed, or cognitively impenetrable, and therefore not representation governed (p. 135). In particular, it is the truth of the second disjunct that is responsible for characterizing a process as transductive, as opposed to cognitive. Now according to Fodor, like Pylyshyn's transducers, input systems are also typically cognitively impenetrable (Fodor 1983, p. 73). But according to him input systems are inferential and representation governed. If nay interpretation is correct, then this leads to a serious


problem. The problem is that for Pylyshyn the cognitive impenetrability of a mechanism implies that it is not representation governed, while for Fodor input systems can be both cognitively impenetrable and representation governed. Therefore, input systems are both representation governed and not representation governed, which is a contradiction.

Another related problem arises from the fact that, according to Pylyshyn, a process or mechanism can be 'perceptual" and cognitive ill the sense of being representation governed. For example, in a discussion of visual perception he writes: "what one sees - or, more accurately, what one sees something to be - depends on one's beliefs in a rationally explicable way" (pp. 134). This fact is cited in defence of the claim that "the perceptual process is cognitively penetrable" (p. I34). However, according to Fodor it would appear that a mechanism or process is either 'perceptual' or cognitive, but not both (Fodor 1983). These two discussions apparently employ two non-coextensive senses of the term 'perception'. As a result, they equivocate on the relation of 'perception' to cognition. Another example along these lines arises in the case of the interpretation of Marr's computational reconstruction of the early stages of vision (Man" 1982). Here we find Pylyshyn suggesting that the processes in question are not genuinely inferential, and therefore not representation governed, which makes them a matter of transduction (pp. 214-215). On the other hand, Fodor's discussion of the matter suggests that low-level vision is a function of input system processing and i.s therefore inferential and representation governed (Fodor 1983, pp. 73, 93-94). 6 For a detailed statement of" what I am calling the argument from generalizations see (Charland 1995). 7 Zajonc has been productive since his seminal 1980 paper. However, the paper itself is still one of the most cited in emotion theory. It was cited over 120 times in the years 1992- 1993 (Social Science Citation Index). This is sufficient to make it exegetically worthy of discussion in its own right, quite apart from later developments and modifications (such as e.g., the ~motor theory of mind' discussed in Zajonc and Markus 1984).

Zajonc also argues that all cognition is hot. He writes: "we do not just see 'a house', we see "a handsome house', 'an ugly house', or 'a pretentious house' (Zajonc t980, p. 154). He argues, further, that "in nearly all cases feeling is not flee of thought, and thought is not flee of fee!ing" (p. 154). However, it is important to note the qualification 'nearly' in 'nearly all cases'. For what Zajonc really wants to argue is that all cognition is hot, not that all feeling requires or is accompanied by thought. In other words, "affect is always present as a companion to thought while the converse is not true for cognition" (p. 154). It is important to realize that, according to Zajonc, this claim that all cognition involves affect is supposed to be consistent with the fact that affect and cognition are nevertheless different, relatively independent, representational information processing systems. This is a seldom appreciated aspect of his argument. But it is certainly significant. If true, it means that we are emoters (affective systems) before we are cognizers (cognitive systems). 9 "Objective" here apparently means something like operationally definable in terms of standard experimental discfiminanda. Hue and brightness are objective features of things in this sense, even though they are not properties of things in the same way as, say, mass or shape. It is difficult to be exegeficalty more specific about the matter than this, to Perhaps affective categories can be interpreted instrumentally, along the lines of (Dennett 1981 a, 1987a). It is significant that Dennett himself sometimes alludes to such categories. For example, in (Dennett 1987b), the attribution of intentional states such as fear is held to play an integral part in the explanation of some classes of animal and human behaviour (e.g., p. 241). The implications of the argument from generalizations tor Dennett's account of intentional explanation are tremendous. If Hebb and beeper and others that argue like


them are right, then beliefs and desires alone are not theoretically sufficient for psychological explanation as Dennett and many others appear to suppose. Psychological explanation requires affective categories and the attribution of affective intentional states. These affective intentional states, moreover, are governed by their own special principles of rationality which, in turn, delimit equivalence classes of behaviours that cannot properly be captured by the standard belief/desire explanatory matrix. la This point has its funny side but its implications are serious indeed. As Zajonc puts it, "we sometimes delude ourselves that we proceed in a rational manner and weigh all the pros and cons of the various alternatives. But this is probably seldom the case" (Zajonc t 980, p. 155). There is "no evidence that this is indeed so" (p. 155). It would be interesting to explore the implications of this point for the epistemology of ethics. Equally interesting are its implications for the theory of rationality. t2 Ekman goes so far as to argue that "if there is no distinctive universal facial expression associated with a given state, which functions as a signal, then I propose that we not call that state an emotion" (Ekman, 1984, p. 330). 13 See (Griffiths 1990) for an excellent discussion of the evolutionary significance of Ekman's view. 14 Johnson-Laird also writes that "you do not just experience feelings, you have concepts of feelings too" (Johnson-Laird 1988, p. 381). He qualifies this statement with the claim that "a concept is a mental construct - a symbolic representation - that enables you to categorize your experience" (p. 381). This would appear to imply that, in addition to being signals, which are not symbolic and not representationally complex, feelings are also symbolic and therefore are symbolic and are representationally complex. This comes close to sounding like a contradiction. To be sure, an affective process can have both a signalling (non-combinatorial) and a symbolic (combinatorial) dimension in the sense of being, say, both a matter of transduction at one stage, and a matter of inference and modularity at another (later) stage. Perhaps this is what Johnson-Laird has in mind. All of this is new territory in emotion theory, and the matter certainly deserves a closer look. 15 Kenny argues that feelings cannot be assimilated to sensations or perceptions. In what is perhaps the best contradictory of the main thesis of this paper he claims that "emotions, unlike perceptions, do not give us any information about the external world" (Kenny 1963, p. 56). 16 Emotions can also be argued to constitute a natural kind along their cognitive, doxastic dimension. I develop this line of argument in (Charland 1995).

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