From the section: 7 On Emotions as Judgments (1988)
This is perhaps my favorite part of the book so far - it used a lot of terminology that I was familiar with but is still not too difficult for any person who has not been involved with emotions and philosophy of mind to grasp. I found it detailed where it needed to be and not where it didn’t need to be.
I make a contrast between emotions, rationality and existence with the following statement:
Mind is an ever changing dimension that is bound to reality, logic and emotion.
This is how I tend to define the mind - what is the reality component then? I view this as the external component to ourselves - in other words the information passed onto us from our surroundings. I believe emotions can help us to over produce that reality - giving it extra meaning - perhaps meta-information.
Philosophers often make contrasting examples of some component against another to help them make distinctions.
The first part of: On Emotions as Judgments - reads: “Philosophers have often contrasted “reason and the passions,” typically championing the former against the latter. Descartes and his compatriot Melebranch, for example, treated emotions as “animal spirits,” distinctively inferior parts of the psyche”.
Leibniz and Kant among others made their own contrasts.
[b]These contrasts serve a purpose and we all do it with everything - even when we are thinking emotionally . . .
. . . making contrasts helps us to define our reality . . .
. . . these contrast further intensify the clarity in the mind when not over produced . . .
. . . over producing some parts of our reality can help to bring meaning to our existence.[/b]
In defense of the passions, “David Hume, most notably, insisted that”
“reason is and ought to be the slave of the passions.”
Just the same however, Hume also contrasted emotions against rationality.
Robert goes on to talk about Aristotle, Seneca and Stoic:
Contrary to the above quote: I myself have been working with two models: one of which treats logic first — and the other — treats emotion and logic as equals - I also make the distinction. I am now however leaning toward emotions as judgements as a potential. I have also allowed for the possibility that emotions are nonsensical paradoxes of the sensed - reason fighting passion for instance. Robert writes: Emotions, I suggest, are self-interested, desire-defined judgments.
Perhaps they are just more than just beliefs and desires as I said they could be nonsensical paradoxes of the sensed - and to reiterate: reason fighting passion for instance — or quite possibly as Robert wrote: Emotions, I suggest, are self-interested, desire-defined judgments.
Roberts theses on page 82 are very informative . . . it is nice to see things put into a list in that manner . . . and I did like his use of the following:
Saint Augustine: "Voluntas est quippe in omnibus . . . "—“For what are desire and joy but the will saying yes to the things we want, and what are fear and sorrow but the will saying no to things we don’t want?”
Robert writes “my claim that emotions were judgments was interpreted as the claim that emotions were essentially about information, a claim I have always vigorously rejected (which is not to say, of course, that emotions do not involve all sorts of information and information-processing)” — to which I assert that emotions are indeed about information processing - just that the information being processed is being calculated against outcomes from former states; so here I kind of disagree, for the time being anyway - I do still think emotions are a special type of information however - some of it is beautiful and some of it is ugly.
This model might not tell you exactly what emotion is in action but is does give us insight into the idea of a spectrum of emotions that I also apply to logic. Further I would suggest that the physiological effects of such intensity would come about through a specialized feedback loop between the peripheral nervous system and central nervous system. From that point biochemical effects take place to provide for how we feel physically - in turn information is fed back into the loop via receptors.
I can see this because I do believe desires are cognitive by their nature.
I truly enjoyed this snippet of writing by Robert: an emotion is initiated by a judgment (or a system of judgments) but then carried on by (a system of) beliefs, but this then fails to explain the experiential content of the ongoing emotion. A very different solution is to suggest that emotions—like God’s universe according to some theologians—require not just creation but an ongoing effort.
I would agree here and add that emotions are judgements that are attached and very interested instances about a world that deeply concerns us. We have to attempt to understand emotions in line with logic if we are to understand them at all so a distinction no matter how temporary must be made. As Robert states we have to view the mind as a whole and that includes emotions - by viewing our experience over time. I think emotions are incredibly exciting and probably one of the things we value the most about our mind whether we admit it or not.