Abstract: Abstract Among the phenomena that make up the mind, cognitive psychologists and philosophers have postulated a puzzling one that they have called “epistemic feelings.” This paper aims to (1) characterize these experiences according to their intentional content and phenomenal character, and (2) describe the nature of these mental states as nonconceptual in the cases of animals and infants, and as conceptual mental states in the case of adult human beings. Finally, (3) the paper will contrast three accounts of the causes and mechanisms of epistemic feelings: the doxastic account; the mental scanner account; and the heuristic mechanism account. The paper will argue in favor of the heuristic mechanism account. Keywords: Emotions Feelings Mental Actions Metacognition Nonconceptual Content Acknowledgements This work was funded by a grant from the Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany. I received valuable comments and corrections from William Bechtel, Anne-Sophie Brüggen, Robin Dennis, Jérôme Dokic, David Fajardo, Peter Goldie, Kirk Michaelian, Chris Moulin, Jennifer Nagel, Kevin Reuter, Megan Stotts, Will Swanson, Tobias Schlicht, Bennett Schwartz, Eric Schwitzgebel, and two anonymous reviewers. Notes Notes [1] Many psychologists and writers also use other terms to refer to this kind of experience, such as ‘intuitions’ or ‘hunches’ (Gladwell, 2007 Gladwell, M. 2007. Blink: The power of thinking without thinking, New York, NY: Black Bay Books. [Google Scholar]; Volz, Rübsamen, & Von Cramon, 2008 Volz, KG, Rübsamen, R and Von Cramon, DY. 2008. Cortical regions activated by the subjective sense of perceptual coherence of environmental sounds: A proposal for a neuroscience of intuition. Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience, 8: 318–328. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). I will avoid using these terms because, in contrast to ‘epistemic feelings’, they are philosophically loaded. [2] In philosophy of mind, intentionality is the property of referring to objects in the world. My belief that “the Earth is round” refers to the planet Earth and is true if and only if it is the case that the Earth is round. This use of ‘intentional’ differs from the common use of this term to refer to a deliberate act. [3] An anonymous reviewer suggested that it is an error to adopt the representationalist framework because my account of E-feelings as non-transparent, conceptual experiences conflicts with this view. However, the aim of this paper is not to confirm representationalism point by point, but to use it as a framework for explaining E-feelings. To see why non-transparent experiences pose no serious difficulty to representationalism, see section 3.3. [4] This discriminatory capacity enabled by the TOT shows that it is not directed towards “whatever,” as a reviewer feared; it does have a determinate content that shapes behavior, even if the subject is unaware of the object. [5] This kind of value has nothing to do with moral or ethical value. The value at issue is relative to the subject and the basic cognitive functions (see Seager, 2002 Seager, W. 2002. Emotional introspection. Consciousness and Cognition, 11: 666–687. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Tye, 2008 Tye, M. 2008. The experience of emotion: An intentionalist theory. Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 243: 25–50. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). [6] Here I am using a very precise sense of ‘introspection’ which is not accepted by all philosophers. I am following Carruthers’ (2009 Carruthers, P. 2009. How we know our own minds: The relationship between mindreading and metacognition. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 32(2): 1–18. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) view, according to which introspection starts when a subject engages in second-order thoughts or reflection about her thoughts, feelings, emotions, or phenomenology in general. For example, a subject introspects when she starts thinking about her pain and trying to determine whether it is more or less intense than the pain that she had last week. You are not introspecting simply in virtue of being aware of the pain in your finger after the smash of the hammer, nor when feeling sad because you fail your exam, nor when you appreciate the colors of the rainbow. It seems that the capacity for introspection is reserved for those living beings that possess the mental concept of PAIN, but to be able to use that concept in reflection it also seems necessary that one possess a language (Bermúdez, 2003 Bermúdez, JL. 2003. Thinking without words, Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], 2009 Bermúdez, JL. 2009. “Mindreading in the animal kingdom”. In The philosophy of animal minds, Edited by: Lurz, R. 145–164. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) and a theory of mind (Bogdan, 2010 Bogdan, R. 2010. Our own minds, sociocultural grounds for self-consciousness, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]; Flavell, 1998 Flavell, JH. 1998. The mind has a mind of its own: Developing knowledge about mental uncontrollability. Cognitive Development, 13: 127–138. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). [7] Representational theorists often draw the distinction between experiences and thoughts in terms of nonconceptual versus conceptual mental states (Dretske, 1995 Dretske, F. 1995. Naturalizing the mind, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. [Google Scholar]; Tye, 1995 Tye, M. 1995. Ten problems about consciousness: A representational theory of the phenomenal mind, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], 2000 Tye, M. 2000. Consciousness, content and color, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). Given that my proposal that epistemic feelings are conceptual experiences violates this distinction, this seems to create a tension between my view and classic versions of representationalism. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for this remark. [8] The assumption here is that there should be at least one kind of nonconceptual primitive experience concerning mental activities, and that this experience is neutral concerning the cognitive task to which it points. I am assuming here that this kind of experience is the experience of certainty, but it may turn out that you also need the concept of certainty to undergo this experience. This is not a problem for my account. I am using ‘certainty’ as a name that refers to a particular kind of mental state that has a particular cognitive function, and as a name, it may be interchangeable with others. What really matters is the mental state that it refers to and the particular function that it carries out. [9] This account is quite sympathetic to Russell's (2003 Russell, JA. 2003. Core affect and the psychological construction of emotion. Psychological Review, 110: 145–172. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) theory of the psychological construction of emotions, specifically the claim that each emotion—E-feelings included—is the product of a contextual recreation given a set of psychological concepts. However, the main difference is that in my view, psychological concepts do not merely redescribe the experience, as in Russell's account, but rather constitute it. [10] This account of E-feelings is consistent with the bodily appraisal theory of emotions. Adopting this conceptual framework, one would classify nonconceptual E-feelings as primary emotions and conceptual E-feelings as secondary emotions: “primary emotions are part of our evolutionary inheritance, shared by all normal humans and tied to specific types of stimuli. Secondary emotions are acquired during development, show cultural and individual variation and are sensitive to more complex and abstract features of the stimulus situation” (Griffiths, 2003 Griffiths, PE. 2003. “Basic emotions, complex emotions and Machiavellian emotions”. In Philosophy and emotions, Edited by: Hatzimoysis, A. 39–67. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], p. 49). [11] For example, Dretske (1995 Dretske, F. 1995. Naturalizing the mind, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. [Google Scholar]) and Tye (1995 Tye, M. 1995. Ten problems about consciousness: A representational theory of the phenomenal mind, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], 2000 Tye, M. 2000. Consciousness, content and color, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) hold that the content of experience is entirely exhausted by the represented object. [12] Notice the contrast with the case of perception. Perception represents an object without attaching a positive or negative value to it. So, in the absence of a represented object, there is nothing left for the subject to be conscious of. That's why perceptual experience cannot be opaque as E-feelings are. [13] An anonymous reviewer suggests that this case can be explained in a doxasic way, postulating the general background belief that “it is important not to forget something.” This belief can be the cause of the FOF. I partially agree with this remark since I agree that the FOF needs a conceptual frame of mind (as shown in section 3.2). But it is still necessary to explain why a general background belief triggers a particular E-feeling on a given occasion, and this phenomenon cannot be accounted for in doxastic terms alone. Moreover, the central point of my discussion is that a token FOF cannot be caused by the particular belief “I’m forgetting something”; rather, it is the other way around. [14] I use the term ‘low-level metacognition’ to refer to the experience-based kind of self-control that has been conceptualized by Arango-Muñoz (2011 Arango-Muñoz, S. 2011. Two levels of metacognition. Philosophia, 39: 71–82. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), Koriat (2000 Koriat, A. 2000. The feeling of knowing: Some metatheoretical implications for consciousness and control. Consciousness and Cognition, 9: 149–171. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), and Proust (2007 Proust, J. 2007. Metacognition and metarepresentation: Is a self-directed theory of mind a precondition for metacognition?. Synthese, 159: 271–295. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 2009a Proust, J. 2009a. “It there a sense of agency of thought?”. In Mental actions and agency, Edited by: O’Brien, L. and Soteriou, M. 253–279. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], 2009b Proust, J. 2009b. “The representational basis of brute metacognition: A proposal”. In The philosophy of animal minds, Edited by: Lurz, R. 165–183. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), in contrast with the “high-level metacognition” that has been discussed by Carruthers (2009 Carruthers, P. 2009. How we know our own minds: The relationship between mindreading and metacognition. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 32(2): 1–18. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and Flavell (1998 Flavell, JH. 1998. The mind has a mind of its own: Developing knowledge about mental uncontrollability. Cognitive Development, 13: 127–138. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Shea and Heyes (2010 Shea, N and Heyes, C. 2010. Metamemory as evidence of animal consciousness: The type that does the trick. Biology and Philosophy, 25: 95–110. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) use these terms to draw a different distinction. [15] An anonymous reviewer pointed out that this account of E-feelings as elicited by a mechanisms working according to a heuristic, and not scanning real mental states, is incompatible with the realism proposed by the representational theories that this paper assumes. However, on one hand, my claim is about the format of stored information in memory, and representational theories do not have a clear thesis about this. And on the other hand, this model fits very well with the wide consensus among memory researchers on the constructive nature of memory (Loftus, Coan, & Pickrell, 1996 Loftus, EF, Coan, JA and Pickrell, JE. 1996. “Manufacturing false memories using bits of reality”. In Implicit memory and metacognition, Edited by: Reder, L. 195–220. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. [Google Scholar]).
Publication Year: 2013
Publication Date: 2013-01-11
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 111
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