2. What are animal emotions "about", and what is each basic kind of animal emotion about?
We still need to address the question of what emotions are "about". If emotions cannot be "cashed out" in the language of subjective feelings, behavioural dispositions, or cognitive states, can we understand them better in "physicalist" terms? I examine two popular physicalist accounts of emotions, which envisage them either as brain states (Panksepp's (1998) neurophysiological account), or internal bodily feelings (e.g. LeDoux's (1998) "feedback" theory). I argue that Panksepp's neurophysiological approach to the emotions offers the most promising avenue for investigating emotions in animals. By situating animals' brain states within their historical, environmental and physical contexts, it explains (as bodily feedback theories cannot) how physical states can possess the property of intentionality. Panksepp's account also sheds light on the question of how intentional agency could have arisen in animals.
(a) Are emotions best understood in neurophysiological terms?
At first glance, the notion that the "aboutness" of animal emotions can be explained in terms of their underlying brain states looks distinctly unpromising. Brain states do not seem to be "about" anything, so a neurophysiological account of intentionality appears doomed from the start. The prospects of a brain-based account explaining the other features of animal emotions look equally dim. It is by no means clear how these states can explain the mentalistic quality of animal emotions; nor does it appear that brain states alone can account for the bodily manifestations of animal emotions, let alone their social role.
To attempt to reduce the meaning of an emotion or feeling to its neurophysiology would indeed be tantamount to a Rylean "category mistake", but that is not what I am proposing. It is now widely acknowledged that animals' emotional responses are regulated by their brains. I shall argue that there are good reasons to support the view that the study of neural processes, in their physical and environmental context, enables us to explain all of the essential features of animal emotions, identify and distinguish between each kind of emotion in animals, and determine what each kind of emotion is for.
I suggested above that each kind of emotion has its own generic intentional object that explains its "aboutness" and makes it what it is. One merit of Panksepp's (1998) neurological approach to the emotions is that it allows us to identify the generic object of each emotion in a straightforward way. On a generic level, at least, this offers a promising solution to the philosophical problem of how a physical state of affairs such as a brain state can be "about" something.
Panksepp (1998) argues that the basic kinds of emotions in animals arose in response to different kinds of environmental challenges their ancestors encountered. Each emotion arose in response to a unique environmental challenge in the lives of certain groups of animals, which their ancestors' brains evolved to meet. Meeting that challenge is what each kind of emotion is "about". An animal's response to each of these challenges is mediated by several "emotion systems" within its brain, easily identifiable to specialists, that give each kind of emotion its characteristic neurological "key signature".
A neurophysiological account of the intentionality of the basic kinds of animal emotions
How does this help us with "aboutness"? I propose that there are two robust senses - one mind-neutral and the other mentalistic - in which the various kinds of emotions are "about" the environmental challenges they evolved to meet. First, each environmental challenge has caused the evolution of a distinctive suite of emotional responses which are directed at it. This has been accomplished through natural selection over millions of years: an animal's emotional response to a challenge (e.g. jumping back at the sight of a snake) promotes its survival. Second, as emotions are capable of motivating intentional actions as well as reactions, we can say that each environmental challenge has caused the evolution of a kind of mental capacity which is specifically directed at it. (For instance, an animal's emotion of fear can motivates it to not only react, but also act intentionally, in a way that saves its life.) Thus the environmental challenges facing animals are not only the ultimate causes, but also the objects, of the different kinds of emotions in animals.
Of course, bacteria and plants also have many organismic traits that have evolved to meet environmental challenges. These traits possess "aboutness" in the first but not the second of the two senses described here. Their "aboutness" is thus non-mentalistic.
Searle (1999) criticises causal accounts of intentionality, on the grounds that "[y]ou can always get the causal relations without the intentionality" (1999, p. 91). It is certainly possible to contruct "wayward causal chains" in which a mental state is caused by one physical event but is about something else entirely. However, I believe that Searle's criticism does not undermine the account defended here, for two reasons.
First, the causal relationships described here are very strong ones, as (i) the features of animals' emotion systems have been shaped directly, by the very properties of the environmental challenges they have evolved to meet, and (ii) animals' emotion systems promote survival in virtue of their intrinsic properties. There is no room for wayward causal chains here, as natural selection (unlike variation) is non-random: certain organismic traits are selected for they are inherently survival-promoting in the animal's current environment.
Second, the environmental challenges that shaped the evolution of animals' emotion systems are not only their causes, but also their objects, insofar as animals' emotion systems are directed at them.
Searle elucidates the intentionality of individual mental states (including emotions) in terms of their role in intentional agency. For Searle, intentions are causally self-referential: "If I want to drink water, and then I drink water by way of satisfying my desire to drink water, then my mental state, the desire (that I drink water) causes it to be the case that I drink water" (1999, p. 105).
The point I wish to make, however, is that while individual emotions have the property of "aboutness", the various kinds of emotions possess this property too. I find nothing to disagree with in Searle's account of the intentionality of individual emotions, but it is not designed to answer the question of what each kind of emotion is about. The chief merit of a neurophysiological account of emotion, as opposed to rival cognitive or "body-based" accounts, is that it tells us what the generic object of each kind of emotion is (a distinctive kind of environmental challenge), and where to look for it (in animals' brains, where the emotion systems that regulate their emotional responses are located).
Conclusion E.13 The generic intentional object of each kind of emotion felt by an animal is not a property or a "thing", but an environmental challenge that the animal's ancestors evolved to meet.
Brains also have a history. Each neurologically distinct "emotion system" in an animal's brain which regulates its response to an environmental challenge reflects the way in which its brain evolved to meet this challenge. The variety of emotions we see in an animal constitutes a repertoire of challenges, to which its brain and body are adapted.
Studies of animals' brains can thus reveal (i) the original motivational context of the basic animal emotions, (ii) the "generic intentional object" of each basic emotion, (iii) the proper taxonomy of the basic animal emotions, (iv) the evolutionary history of these emotions, and hence (v) which animals possess these emotions.
The adequacy of a neurophysiological account of emotions
A neurophysiological account which sitautes the emotions in their environmental and physical context, can also explain the five features of animal emotions we identified above.
As we saw in chapter two, intentional agency, which is what makes an emotions a mental state, is mediated through an animal's brain, which stores its internal representations of the animal's goals, as well as the means to obtain them, and moves the animal's body accordingly. Feedback from the body allows the animal to continually update its neural representations. Insofar as a neurophysiological account sheds light on the evolution of intentional agency, it can help explain how emotions originally arose as mental states. Comparisons between different phyla of animals, of varying degrees of complexity, are relevant here. Prescott's (2000) outline of the evolution of action selection, which allows an animal to "select" rapidly between competing behavioural alternatives, lays the groundwork for a possible future investigation into the evolution of intentional agency.
The possibility of a neurophysiological explanation of phenomenal consciousness remains controversial. Panksepp (2002) regards affective experience as an emergent product of the animal brain's neurobiological complexity; for McGinn (1999), consciousness is elusive and may always remain so. Since I have argued above that consciousness may not be an essential feature of animal emotions, I shall return to this issue in section 4 below.
It might be thought that a brain-centred approach is too narrow to encompass the second feature of animals' emotions: their bodily manifestations in animals' physical responses and intentional behaviour. However, even proponents of a rival "bodily feedback" theory of the emotions (discussed below) acknowledge that it is the brain which generates the body's response to emotions (LeDoux, 1998, pp. 292-295).
Neurophysiology accounts for the third feature of animal emotions very well, as it explains the different kinds of feelings animals have, the range in their intensities, and the variety of their intentional objects, in terms of the environmental context in which the "emotion systems" in animals' brains originally evolved.
Neurophysiology also sheds light on the fourth and fifth features. Since animals' emotions arose in response to different kinds of environmental challenges their ancestors encountered, we can say that these challenges motivate animals to seek, fight or avoid them. Feelings also play a role in animals' social lives, because they can motivate them to seek the company of others, to play and to care for their young.
A final objection to a neurophysiogical account of emotion is that the same emotion could have multiple physical realisations in different groups of animals, but if we identify emotions with brain states we will have to say that this is impossible. This objection rests on a misunderstanding. It is entirely possible that two lineages of animals (say, mammals and birds) evolved very different neurological systems (call them A and B) for coping with the same kind of environmental challenge. On the neurophysiological account being defended here, systems A and B mediate the same emotion, as they arose in response to the same generic challenge.
Conclusion E.14 Panksepp's (1998)neurophysiological approach to animal emotions, which situates them in their environmental and physical contexts, can account for all of the essential features of animal emotions.
Before we can conclude that a neurophysiological account of the emotions is true, however, we have to show that rival theories of the emotions fail to explain them adequately. We have already examined cognitivist accounts and found them wanting, but our discussion would be incomplete without mention of another group of accounts in the physicalist mould which warrant serious consideration: body-centred accounts, which reduce emotions to internal feelings.
(b) Can emotions be explained as bodily states?
One popular scientific theory of the emotions, known as the James-Lange theory because it was originated independently by Williams James and Carl Lange in 1884, holds that emotions are internal feelings that are generated by the body's internal physiological reactions to events. These reactions centre on the body's autonomic and motor functions:
[W]hen we see [a] ... bear, we run away. During this act of escape, the body goes through a physiological upheaval: blood pressure rises, heart rate increases, pupils dilate, palms sweat, muscles contract in certain ways... Fear feels different from anger and love because it has a different physiological signature. The mental aspect of emotion, the feeling, is a slave to its physiology, not vice versa: we do not tremble because we are afraid or cry because we are sad; we are afraid because we tremble and sad because we cry (LeDoux, 1998, pp. 44-45).
LeDoux (1998, pp. 292-295) has recently proposed a more sophisticated version of the James-Lange theory, which he calls a "feedback theory" of the emotions. LeDoux holds that emotions are generated in the brain's amygdala, but acquire their distinctive feeling as a result of bodily feedback.
Theories which construe emotion in terms of bodily feedback do a good job of accounting for the second of the five features of animal emotions identified above - their bodily manifestation - as well as part of the third feature - their distinct kinds. Contrary to criticisms voiced by Cannon in 1929, we now know that the body's somatic feedback system has the requisite speed and specificity to account for the rapidity and diversity of our emotional responses (LeDoux, 1998, pp. 292-295). If we confine ourselves to emotions that do not presuppose language, each kind of emotion can be characterised in terms of its distinctive pattern of bodily response. For instance, fear can be characterised by an increase in heart rate and blood pressure, decreased salivation and increased perspiration, respiratory changes, scanning and vigilance, an increased startle reflex, defecation and either freezing (at low intensity) or flight (at high intensity) (LeDoux, 1998, pp. 144, 172; Panksepp, 1998, pp. 208, 213).
However, I would argue that no theory of emotions which describes them in terms of bodily feedback can explain why emotions are mental states and why they have intentional objects - the first and third of our five essential features of animal emotions.
Even though a "bodily feedback" theory allows us to construe emotions as unconscious mental states which are experienced bodily before being felt consciously by human beings (and possibly some other animals), the problem is that bodily reactions per se give us absolutely no warrant for regarding animal emotions as mental states of any kind, whether conscious or unconscious. It has been argued in Conclusion E.3 above that there is nothing about a bodily reaction as such that requires explanation in terms of mental states. A mind-neutral intentional stance can account for the behaviour observed. If we characterised emotions in terms of their bodily reactions, we could ascribe them to any organism capable of responding to an environmental stimulus, but at the cost of robbing them of their mental status.
Additionally, de Sousa (2003) argues that "feeling theories, by assimilating emotions to sensations, fail to take account of the fact that emotions are typically directed at intentional objects". Of course, bodily feelings have a cause, but that does not mean they have an intentional object. In any case, the cause of an emotion and its object may be quite different: if A, while drunk, gets annoyed at B over some trifling matter, drunkenness is the cause of A's annoyance, yet its object may be some innocent remark of B's, which merely occasioned (not caused) the annoyance (de Sousa, 2003).
In particular, bodily feelings, which are states of the body, cannot account for the fact that the intentional objects of emotions are generally states of affairs outside the body:
Suppose I am delighted that my son has become a doctor. I may have various sensations in my body that express this emotion - say, lightness in my limbs and a warm feeling in my viscera. But the object of my delight is not my body; it is my son's success. My bodily sensations are directed to my body and my emotion is directed to my son. Therefore my emotion cannot be identical to my bodily sensations - for the two have different objects (McGinn, 2003).
The James-Lange theory can be faulted on other philosophical grounds. First, the undeniable fact that bodily states can induce emotions does not show that they always or even typically do so. McGinn (2003) argues that "[t]here is causal interplay between feelings and their bodily expression, rather than a one-way dependence".
Second, the language we use to describe emotions does not translate into descriptions of bodily states. McGinn (2003) cites Wittgenstein's observation that the horribleness of my grief when someone I love dies cannot be explained as the horribleness of the sensations I feel in my body. The neurophysiological account of emotions defended above fares better here: on a generic level, grief is about the environmental challenge it arose to cope with - separation from a socially significant other (Panksepp, 1998, p. 50) - and in this particular case, it is about the death of the person I loved.
Panksepp (1998) also criticises theories of emotion that are based on bodily reactions for their implicit cognitivism: emotions are supposed to arise from "our cognitive appraisal of the commotion that occurs in our inner organs during certain vigorous behaviors" (1998, p. 56). Thus Damasio (1994) differentiates emotions according to the entire pattern of somatic and visceral feedback from the body, arguing that feelings are "mental sensors of the organism's interior" (2002).
However, this characterisation overlooks the motivational aspect of emotions. There is an impressive body of evidence (Panksepp, 1998) that animals possess several basic motivational systems, which Panksepp refers to as emotional "operating systems". Each emotional system has its own neural circuitry and evolved to meet a special kind of environmental challenge, which motivates emotional behaviour in animals. These emotional systems in animals are thus defined by their brains, rather than their bodies. I will discuss these systems below.
Conclusion E.15 Internal bodily feedback cannot account for all of the essential features of animal emotions.
