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Experiencing Emotions Aesthetics, Representationalism, and Expression

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Experiencing Emotions Aesthetics, Representationalism, and Expression 9 Experiencing Emotions Aesthetics, Representationalism, and Expression Rebecca Copenhaver and Jay Odenbaugh 9.1. Introduction In this essay, we offer an account of the basic emotions and their expression. On this account, emotions are experiences that indicate and have the func- tion of indicating how our body is fairing and how we are fairing in our en- vironment. Emotions are also objects of experience: our perceptual systems are more or less sensitive to the expression of emotion in our environment by features that indicate and have the function of indicating emotions. We apply our account to expression in art. What does it mean to say that an artwork expresses sadness? Is perceiving joy in an artwork the same kind of experi- ence as perceiving joy in a friend’s face? How may artworks express emotions without having emotions or any other mental states? In the next section, we provide an overview of unrestricted representa- tionalism about experience. In section 9.3, we offer a representationalist ac- count of the basic emotions that combines exteroception and interoception. On our view, emotions are perceptual experiences that represent properties of our viscera and properties in our extra- bodily environment. Exteroceptive and interoceptive systems combine to constitute a system whose states— emotions— indicate how we are fairing in our environment. In the fourth section, we survey aesthetic theories of expression in art, including the re- semblance, persona, and arousal theories, and argue that each faces signficant problems. Building on the work of Dominic Lopes (2005) and Mitchell Green (2007), we offer a teleosemantic account of emotional expression in art that is impersonal and continuous with a representationalist account of the basic emotions. Finally, in section 9.5, we apply our view to an example— Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa— in order to illustrate how we experience emotions as represented properties of a painted canvas. Rebecca Copenhaver and Jay Odenbaugh, Experiencing Emotions In: The Epistemology of Non-Visual Perception. Edited by: Berit Brogaard and Dimitria Electra Gatzia, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190648916.003.0010 214 The Epistemology of Non-Visual Perception We experience emotions by having them: by being happy, or frightened, or disgusted. Emotions are also expressed— in smiles and cringes, tones and gestures. They are expressed in artworks as well—in depicted figures and scenes, and in design, using non- depictive elements. Because emotions are expressed, we may experience them a way other than by having them; we may experience them as objects: surprise expressed in a friend’s face; de- light expressed in Mattise’s Dance. In doing so, we need not be surprised or delighted. Indeed, the expression of emotion does not require that any person have the emotion expressed. Your friend’s face may express surprise even though she knew about her surprise-party. Mattise’s Dance may ex- press delight even when no one is delighted— no one depicted or imagined in the painting and no one viewing the painting and its expression of delight. Whether a feature expresses an emotion—be it a smile or a design element— depends on whether it has the function of indicating the emotion, not on the presence of the emotion indicated. 9.2. Representationalism We hold a representationalist— or intentionalist— view of experience. Experiences are mental states for which there is something it is like for the subject of the experience to have or be in that state. In other words, experiences have a phenomenology. Experiences also convey something to the subject of the experience. Experiences present, to the subject, things in the subject’s environment as being a certain way, as having certain features.1 Representationalism, in the broadest sense, is a view about the relationship between these two apparent facts about experience. Put most generally, it holds that the phenomenology of experiences is a matter of how things are presented to the subject in her experience. How things look, the way things feel, what things sound like— these are presented in experience as features of things: things look to have a certain shape, things feel to be a certain temperature, things sound to be at a certain pitch, and so on.2 We hold an 1 Some reserve the verb “to present” for describing disjunctivist views of experience while reserving the verb “to represent” for describing representationalist views. This is a fine distinction with some merit. We use the terms interchangeably for what experience conveys to the subject of the experience. 2 For a selection of standard representationalist views, see Byrne 2001; Dretske 1995; Harman 1990; Jackson 2004; Lycan 1996; Rey 1991; Thau 2002; Tye 1995, 2000, 2009. Byrne (2001) credits Armstrong (1968) with presenting the view first in the analytic tradition. Experiencing Emotions 215 unrestricted version of representationalism that applies to perceptual expe- rience but also to other experiential mental state kinds: bodily sensations, memories, and emotions (Byrne 2001, 205). The contents of experience need not be conceptual. Adult humans have experiences, but so do infants and non-human animals, creatures that lack the conceptual sophistication that adult humans possess. A book can look large and red to an infant though she may yet be incapable of forming the perceptual belief that the book is large and red. A refrigerator may sound rhythmic to a dog, though he is unlikely to experience it as a refrigerator or as rhythmic. Nevertheless, the infant and the dog have experiences with content. This is evident from the fact that their experiences can be inaccurate— the book may look large and red to the infant when it is not, and the refrigerator may sound low- pitched and rhythmic to the dog when it is not. The contrast between adult humans on the one hand and infants or non- human animals on the other illustrates how the contents of experience need not be conceptual, but beware of drawing the conclusion that the contents of adult human experience are conceptual, while the contents of infant and non- human animals are not. Rather, the point is that an experience may have content— it may present things to the subject as being a certain way without the subject whose experience it is possessing any of the concepts used when describing the accuracy conditions.3 The contents of experience differ from the contents of mental states such as belief in being rich and fine- grained.4 Take Rebecca’s perceptual belief that there is a large, red book, formed on the basis of her experience of the book looking large and red. This experience conveys more information than is contained in her belief. It includes information about the placement of the book relative to other features in her visual field and relative to her perspec- tive as an observer. It contains information about features of the book other than its relative size and color: perhaps the words on the spine, the color of the pages, the shadow it casts on the table, and so on. And the experience conveys information about other objects, properties, and relations in the environment occupied by the book. One way to express this difference in 3 May adult human experience have conceptual content? The answer depends on an adequate ac- count of concepts and concept- possession. For a survey of standard views on the nonconceptual content of experience, see section 4.1 of Bermúdez and Cahen 2015. 4 These features are used to support experience nonconceptualism. See Bermúdez and Cahen 2015 and Siegel 2015. We offer them here merely as observations about the phenomenology of experience and about what information experience conveys. 216 The Epistemology of Non-Visual Perception informational content is as a difference between digital and analog encoding.5 We can think of beliefs as encoding information digitally: Rebecca’s belief that the book is large and red conveys that information and no more. By con- trast, experiences are analog. Rebecca’s experience of the book conveys in- formation in addition to what it conveys about the book. Her experience of the book is also more fine- grained than her belief that it is large and red. She experiences the book not only as large, but as a determinate (if relative) size, and a determinate shade of red (Raffman 1995). In addition to representationalism, we hold a liberal view about the contents of experience (Bayne 2009).6 Conservatives hold that the contents of perceptual experience are confined to low- level properties. The contents of visual experience are confined to color, illumination, figure, motion, while the contents of audition are confined to pitch, volume, timbre, and so on. Conservatives hold that the features presented in the contents of experience are best understood as features that are visible, audible, gustable, olfactable, and so on. By contrast, liberals hold that experience presents some features that are not strictly visible, audible, gustable, and so on. In particular, liberals hold that some high-level features are represented in the contents of expe- rience: “These include being an artificial kind, being a natural kind, being a specific individual, causation, the nature of the backsides of objects, the na- ture of the occluded parts of objects, directionality” (Macpherson 2011, 9). Some liberals, including us, hold that the high- level features that may figure in the contents of experience include multimodal features (what a strawberry looks to taste, how a bell sounds to look) as well as evaluative features (sounding dangerous, smelling rotten, looking ill) and affective features (looking sad, sounding angry). The liberal view is intended to be compatible with nonconceptualism about the contents of experience: some- thing can look to be an acorn to a squirrel; something can smell rotten to an infant, something can sound angry to a dog.
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