Emotional introspection

Abstract

One of the most vivid aspects of consciousness is the experience of emotion, yet this topic is given relatively little attention within consciousness studies. Emotions are crucial, for they provide quick and motivating assessments of value, without which action would be misdirected or absent. Emotions also involve linkages between phenomenal and intentional consciousness. This paper examines emotional consciousness from the standpoint of the representational theory of consciousness (RTC). Two interesting developments spring from this. The first is the need for the representation of value, which is distinctive of emotional experience. The second is an extension of RTC's theory of introspection to emotional states, revealing why emotional consciousness is so often introspective even though introspective abilities are not needed to experience emotions, and also explaining why introspection of emotional states is so much less reliable than that of other states of consciousness.

The biological function of consciousness

“…Evaluative feelings are based upon nonconscious evaluations of things, and innate responses or learned associations in relation to them (Zajonc, 1980; Tesser and Martin, 1996; Smith and DeCoster, 2000; Seager, 2002; Slovic et al, 2002; Velmans, 2002; Northoff, 2008). These feelings qualify objects, events, people, ideas, and so on, with regard to their meaning for us, our attitudes to them, or our judgments about them, and result from nonconscious and immediate evaluation processes (Arnold, 1960, 1970; Dixon, 1981; LeDoux, 1987; Lazarus, 1991; Tesser and Martin, 1996; Bargh and Ferguson, 2000).…”

Emotional consciousness: A neural model of how cognitive appraisal and somatic perception interact to produce qualitative experience

“…The neurocomputational theory of consciousness sketched below shows how emotional representations can combine perceptions and judgments. It also shows how emotions can involve a representation of value, which is required for a theory of emotional consciousness (Seager, 2002). …”

Intentionalism about Moods

“…It's a matter of controversy among intentionalists about emotions just what such affective properties end up being. Affective properties might be evaluative properties, like badness , or threateningness , which register the valence or significance of the intentional objects they qualify (see Seager , Seager and Bourget , and Tye for variants of this view). Or they might be ordinary physical properties, such as being prone to induce lacerations and other such changes in living things .…”

“…Existing intentionalist views of moods claim that while moods appear not to be directed at anything, upon closer examination, it turns out that they are in fact directed at special kinds of objects: bodily states or unusual external objects, such as the world as a whole, indeterminate intentional objects, or frequently changing objects (see Goldie , , Seager , Seager and Bourget , and Tye ). For example, a pervasive feeling of elation might represent the world as a whole as positive or good.…”