ROBERT C. SOLOMON

EMOTIONS, COGNITION, AFFECT: ON JERRY NEU’SA TEAR IS AN INTELLECTUAL THING1

ABSTRACT. Jerome Neu has been one of the most prominent voices in thephilosophy of emotions for more than twenty years, that is, before the fieldwas even a field. His Emotions, Thought, and Therapy (1977) was one of itsmost original and ground-breaking books. Neu is an uncompromising defenderof what has been called the “cognitive” theory of emotions (as am I). But theambiguity, controversy, and confusion sown by the notion of a “cognitive” theoryof emotion is what I would like to focus on here. In so doing I will indicate someof the ways in which my own theory has developed.

Jerome Neu has been one of the most prominent voices in the philo-sophy of emotions for more than twenty years, that is, before thefield was even a field. His Emotions, Thought, and Therapy (1977)was one of its most original and ground-breaking books, displayingthe added virtues of being solidly cross-disciplinary, being actuallysympathetic to Freud, and bringing in empirical data to support hisphilosophical analyses – all three venal if not deadly sins at thetime in mainstream analytic philosophy. In the title essay of thishis new book, “A Tear is an Intellectual Thing”, Neu takes on thewhole field of “affective” psychology and the very influential workof Paul Ekman in particular. It is one of the few extensive pieces ofsubstantial (as opposed to methodological) cross-disciplinary criti-cism before the previous decade. Thankfully such work is nowbecoming not only respectable but professionally obligatory.

Neu is an uncompromising defender of what has been called the“cognitive” theory of emotions (as am I). The label is not his (noris it mine). It has been imposed on us, transferred from psycho-logy. I long fought it, not because it was wrong-headed but because“cognition” is so variously or ill-defined. In particular, I want toreject (as I am not always sure Jerry does) the overly committedconceptions of “cognition” as knowledge (and thus in some senseveridical) and such overly narrow and passionless conceptions as

Philosophical Studies 108: 133–142, 2002.© 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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involving “information”. There is also the confusion, which Jerry(as a Freudian) does not make, between cognition and conscious-ness. Cognition does not necessarily involve the “higher” modesof consciousness, – self-consciousness, reflection, articulation, anddeliberation. But I thus want to reject his Blake-inspired title, “ATear is an Intellectual Thing”, on the grounds that it is not theintellect that is typically engaged in emotion.

But, then, the question is how we are to understand “cognition”and what exactly are the “cognitive elements” that are so crucial(I would say constitutive) of emotion? What continues to exerciseme is the ambiguity, controversy, and confusion sown by the notionof a “cognitive” theory of emotion, and that is what I would liketo focus on here. I am helped and encouraged by the fact that myco-symposiasts and chair have all written about the topic. In thisbrief comment, I want to examine one such “cognitive” theory ofemotion, Neu’s view of emotion as thought, and face the questionwhether any such theory excludes affect or feeling. It has beenargued that cognitive theories are pathologically dissociative insofaras they deny or neglect affective feelings (for instance, as put hereby Michael Stocker and elsewhere by Peter Goldie)2 I argue that anadequate cognitive theory includes rather than excludes affect. In sodoing I will indicate some of the ways in which my own theory hasdeveloped over the past quarter century.

Neu’s book is a gold mine of ideas and insights, and what isespecially valuable are his analyses of particular emotions, notablyjealousy, the subject of his best-known essay to date and one ofthe topics that has inspired commentary here. Accordingly, let mebegin with an example, something concrete instead of any generalhand-waving about the nature of emotions, cognition, and affect assuch.

A CASE OF JEALOUSY

Joshua sits in an agitated state of disbelief in the microbiologysymposium as he realizes that this colleague of his, with whomhe had worked for several months, had stolen his idea. Well, notactually “stole”, since they had pretty much come up with theidea simultaneously. But she had, now, presented it first, receivedacclaim from his colleagues, and the paper was already scheduled

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for publication! His mind crowds with thoughts, some downrighthostile (even homicidal) towards his colleague. He thinks about anappropriate response, what to say. He wonders how this could havehappened, why he delayed and dawdled in putting together his ownpaper and presentation. He momentarily worries whether his careeris effectively over. He finds himself thinking more extensively aboutother missteps in his fledgling career, about his inability to do thecomplex mathematical analyses needed for some of his intendedprojects, about his comparative lack of presentational skills. His facefeels as if it is on fire, and he is sweating profusely.

After the presentation, Joshua raises a provocative (not to say“rude”) challenge to the paper. He is flushed and agitated and hisvoice betrays his tension but he is still “under control”. Although he(obviously) agrees with the conclusion of the paper he raises severalpicky points about its presentation and its handling of the evidence.Other people in the room cool the increasingly heated situation bypraising the paper and making some slightly overblown commentson its importance in the field. Joshua becomes livid. His thoughtsnow include an unspeakable fantasy about releasing a lethal virusfrom the lab and destroying everyone in the room. He almost yellsout, “that’s my hypothesis”! but he finds himself speechless. Hestomps out of the room, muttering to a horrified friend as he goes,“I just can’t help myself”.

This is a case of jealousy, or more precisely, what we wouldcall “professional jealousy”. It raises a number of important andinteresting questions about the nature of emotion and about thenature of that green-ey’d emotion in particular. Notice, first, thatthe description of the emotion (and I have quite intentionally nottried to produce a first-person “phenomenological” description) isfilled with thoughts. It is Jerry’s contention (and mine too) that noemotion, but in particular jealousy, is conceivable with out them.

Second, in contrast to the usual romantic paradigm of jealousy,there is no question of “loss of love”, unless this term is stretchedunmercifully to include collegial respect and career success. And,even then, it is evident that the loss is not the loss of affectionfrom the putative object of the emotion (as the loss of affection orattention of the beloved is said to be the object of romantic jeal-ousy). Indeed, is the object of jealousy the colleague, the thesis,

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the presentation, one’s other colleagues? Thus jealousy emerges asa complex emotion with a complex “object”, indeed, not a singleobject (thing or person) at all.

Third, notice the essential importance of the rival in this situa-tion. Jealousy is a social emotion in that it involves not only oneother person but minimally three (thus the classic “triangle” talk)and arguably four or more (there must be an audience, a communityin which to be humiliated). In romantic jealousy this triangular(or quadrangular) structure is pretty straightforward. In the case ofprofessional jealousy it is not.

And, fourth, notice how impossible it would be to describe this asan “emotional” situation without frequent allusion to the physiolo-gical arousal and agitation that accompanies (or, perhaps, is anessential part of) the emotion.

There are other questions about jealousy that I will not broachhere, for instance, In what sense (if any) does the notion of “rights”enter into the case (perhaps something even akin to property rights)?What is the relation between jealousy and envy? Or jealousy andresentment? Jealousy and anger? Jealousy and shame? Thus thecomplex structure of jealousy is a subject that still invites muchmore scrutiny, but I am interested here in some much more generalconcerns about emotions. I am keenly aware that not all emotionsare the same (they do not form a “natural kind”) but nevertheless,there is a wide range of phenomena that are generally understoodas falling under the heading of “emotion”, including such primitivepassions as panic and rage and such cerebral emotions as jealousyand moral indignation. Regarding jealousy, I would like to focuson the role of two key but seemingly opposed “ingredients” or“components”, thoughts (as “cognitions”), on the one hand, andfeelings (or “affects”), on the other. Historically, and in my ownwork, an over-emphasis on one has led to the denigration or neglectof the other. I would like to correct this here.

WHAT IS A “COGNITIVE THEORY” OF THE EMOTIONS? NEU’STHOUGHTS

What is a “cognitive” theory of emotions. I said that I want to rejectNeu’s Blake-inspired title, “A Tear is an Intellectual Thing”, on the

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grounds that it is not the intellect that is essentially engaged inemotion, although, I would point out very quickly, by no meansis the intellect essentially opposed to emotion and is often verymuch part of emotions. The common phrase, “Intellectually I knowthat but emotionally . . .” has a great many legitimate applications,most obviously in the case of phobias and other irrational fears andirrational emotions more generally, but it does not follow that intel-lect and emotions as such are opposed. In many social and moralemotions – moral indignation, a sense of injustice, and jealousy,in particular – it is hard to think of a case in which the intellectdoes not play an important role. Joshua’s thoughts are surely aprimary component and not just a symptom or manifestation of hisemotion. But, nevertheless, as more and more evidence and neuro-psychological theories emphasize the subcortical and in some sensesubconscious aspects of emotional response, it is important for usphilosophers to adjust our understanding of even the most sophisti-cated and culture-bound emotions with an eye to such claims andfindings.3 I would still argue that nothing can be an emotion if itdoes not involve experience, and nothing can be jealousy if it doesnot involve the recognition of a threat and a potential loss (andmuch else besides). Nevertheless, jealousy may well involve (andnot just as cause) some more basic neurological and psychologicalprocessing.

What is not clear to me is to what extent Neu’s Spinozistic“thoughts” are indeed “intellectual” and thus share in this “intel-lectualization” of emotion. He does not quite equate thought andemotion, but the relationship is intimate, and it is pretty clear thatone cannot have most emotions (especially such emotions as jeal-ousy) without certain types of thoughts. Emotions, simply stated, arethoughts, or dispositions to have thoughts, or defined by thoughts (Iam not allowing here the very general Cartesian sense of “cogita-tiones” that would include virtually any mental process, state, orevent). But I have always found the appropriately precise notion ofa “thought” to be too episodic and (like “intellect”) too sophisticatedfor the analysis of most emotions. Even in jealousy, the recognitionand the response need never be articulated. To be sure, a personwith an emotion will have thoughts appropriate to the emotion andthe context, shaped and constrained by language and culture. But I

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do not see any apt analogy with animals or infants (who are, I think,capable of jeaousy), and I think Neu is often a bit too quick withthis. My dog Fritz gets jealous when I pet my other dog Lou, but Idon’t think that they don’t have thoughts about this.

Our immediate emotional responses often seem devoid ofthoughts, although, to be sure, immediate emotional responsesnecessarily involve cognitions, if only the immediate recognition ofa situation or a face as threatening or hurtful, for instance. Thereis room for rampant confusion here, thinking that the cognitioninvolved in emotion is the reflective recognition that one has anemotion rather than the recognition constitutive of the emotionalresponse. Joseph le Doux has been particularly instrumental infoisting this confusion on the emotion research community with hisargument that immediate emotion response precedes cognition bya significant amount of time, and conscious feeling is only “icingon the cake”. But the argument does have merit regarding the thesisthat thoughts are essential to (or themselves constitute) emotions.Thoughts are present in many emotions, but thoughts represent oneparticularly advanced form of cognition and not the basic form.

Philosophers confuse the matter by taking “the thought” to bethe proposition expressed by the thought, but the proposition alone(a logical construction) is never tantamount to a thought in thepsychological sense, as an episodic phenomenon. Much less is aproposition (or a set of propositions) ever tantamount to an emotion.Thus the absurdity of Donald Davidson’s much heralded analysisof emotion (following Hume’s example of pride) in terms of asyllogism of propositions in logical sequence.4

Philosophers also confuse the matter by conflating thoughts andthinking, but although both might be involved in emotion (someemotions certainly “get us thinking”) it is having thoughts andhaving them without necessarily thinking that is most pronouncedboth as symptom and as constituent of emotion. When I have recur-rent thoughts of violence or recurrent sexual fantasies a plausiblehypothesis is that I have the appropriate (or rather, inappropriate)emotion. But insofar as thought is an aspect of emotion (rather thanjust a symptom or sign), it cannot merely be a proposition (or a setof propositions), and it must not be tied too tightly to the activityof thinking (although I would argue that it is again important not to

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insist that thinking cannot be an aspect of emotion but rather onlyan antecedent or consequence of emotion).

To be sure, Neu distinguishes thoughts in the explanatory sensefrom thoughts the phenomenological sense. But insofar as anemotion is an experience – which he also holds – it is surelythe phenomenological sense that is at stake here. Thoughts in theexplanatory sense are often appropriate in the third-person case(even, speaking loosely, in describing animal behavior). They areoccasionally appropriate in the first-person case (and often, ofcourse, in retrospective explanations of one’s own behavior). Butfor “thought” to provide an account of emotional experience it isonly the phenomenological sense that is ultimately relevant. I amnot saying that one cannot have a thought without recognizing it asa thought. That is surely too strong a demand. Nor am I denying thatwe have thoughts that are not necessarily “put into words”. But forme to have such a thought I must in some sense be able to identify(“label”) my memory, Of course, a memory might spontaneously“pop” into my head, and I may not be able to identify it. (At my age,this is becoming more often the case.) But a “flashback” is not yet athought. I must recognize it as a memory of something, and then thisis phenomenologically sufficient to count as a thought (Peter Goldieinterestingly distinguishes between thought and imagination, but Icannot go into this here). In short, thoughts may be present in manyemotions and indispensable in adult human jealousy but thoughtsare too articulate and too episodic to be adequate by way of a generalaccount of emotional phenomena.

AFFECT: EMOTIONS, FEELINGS, AND THE BODY

What has increasingly concerned me, in the twenty-five years sinceI first argued my own cognitive theory, is the role of the body inemotion. In my original theory, it was by no means clear that thebody had any essential role in emotion. I presumed, of course,that all emotional experience had as its causal substratum variousprocesses in the brain, but this had little to do with the nature ofemotion as such, as experienced. I suppose I would have defendeda certain perspectivalism, anchored in the body, but as I describedmost emotions and their constitutive judgments, not even this was

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much in evidence. And as for the various physiological distur-bances and disruptions that serve such a central purpose in WilliamJames’ analysis and in most accounts of emotion as “arousal”, Iwas as dismissive as could be, relegating all such phenomena to thecausal margins of emotion, as merely accompaniments or secondaryeffects.

It is therefore my own fault that I have long had to weather theobjection that my cognitive theory is too “intellectual”, that what Icall “judgments” are too cool and deliberative to be candidates foran emotion’s identity. This is the crux of Michael Stocker’s objec-tion but it is also the target of a great many less sophisticated (andultimately less sympathetic) critics. It is certainly aimed at Neu aswell. has to do with the phenomenology of feeling in emotion. Anemotional experience cannot be just cognitive. Thus Stocker chargesthat cognitive theories leave out (or sneak in) reference to “affect”and “affective states”. I agree that something has been “left out”,but I do not think that “affect” gives us anything very useful aboutwhat that might be. I also believe that “cognition” or “judgment”,properly construed does capture that missing ingredient.

What has made me increasingly concerned about the role of thebody in emotions is my realization that bodily sensations (and notjust the “visceral” disturbances suggested by James) have much todo with the nature and role of feelings in emotion. To be sure, Ihad been as adamant about treating those feelings as I had beenregarding their physiological causes, as secondary, again the exactopposite of James, who said, with all of the oomph that italics andcaps can capture, that the “sensation IS the emotion”. But I nowappreciate that accounting for the feelings (not just sensations) inemotion is not a secondary concern, and not independent of appre-ciating the role of the body in emotional experience. By this I do notmean anything having to do with the tricky mind-body relationshiplinked with Descartes and Cartesianism but rather the concern aboutthe kinds of bodily experience that typify emotion.

Some feelings, to be sure, are no more than the signs andsymptoms of autonomic and various visceral responses. In Joshua’sjealousy, the workings of the autonomic nervous system (quickenedpulse, galvanic skin response, the release of hormones, sweating)have obvious phenomenological manifestations (feeling excited,

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“tingly”, feeling flushed). I used to say that these were only contin-gently related to emotion, but I am willing to ease up on thatclaim now. I am even willing to say that, in Peter Goldie’s aptphrase, they have “borrowed intentionality” and are thus more thanmerely associated with the judgments that constitute the jealousy.But more important, not all or even most of the feelings that seemto be part and parcel of this emotion are of this sort. Most of themare intentional and judgmental in a more direct way. For instance,Joshua takes on a great many bodily preparations and postures,many of them but not all of them within the realm of the volun-tary, and these have phenomenological manifestations. These are,it seems to me, to be about the object of emotion in much thesame way that inarticulate judgments are. Here the well-cataloguedrealm of facial expression in emotion (squinting, frowning, pursingone’s lips) plays an important role as do other forms of bodilyemotional expression in the constitution of emotional feeling (Isometimes wonder how having a tail that wags or ears that cometo full alert add an interesting aspect of bodily feeling in animals).The category of “action readiness” defended by Nico Frijda andothers seems to me to be particularly significant here, not in termsof dispositional analysis of emotional behavior but rather as anaccount of emotional experience. Jealousy, notably, involves takingup a defensive posture. Many of the distinctive sensations of gettingjealous are the often subtle and not explicitly noticed tensing of thevarious muscles of the body, particularly those involved in physicalaggression.

To put my current thinking in a nutshell, I think that a greatdeal of what is unhelpfully called “affect” and “affectivity” and issupposedly missing from cognitive accounts can be identified withthe body, or what I will call (no doubt to howls of indignation)the judgments of the body. George Downing has put the matterquite beautifully in some of his recent work. He writes of “bodilymicro-practices” and suggests that emotions are to a very extentconstituted by these. This could, of course, be taken as just anotherattempt at behavioral reductionism, but Downing also insists thatan emotion is essentially an experience. He also is quite happy toinsist that cognitions (judgments) are also an essential part of anyemotional experience. But he adds, and I have come to agree, that

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a good deal of cognition is radically pre-linguistic (misleadinglycalled “pre-cognitive”). Building on the work of Hubert Dreyfusand suggestions in Heidegger and Bourdieu, Downing insists thata good deal of emotional experience and even emotional knowledgecan be identified in the development of these bodily micro-practices.Whether or not one learns to be jealous (a matter of considerabledebate), one learns (through one’s culture and through experience)to hone and shape one’s jealousy as well as to choose its objects.That is still quite cognitive by way of “knowing how” as wellas “knowing that”. It remains to be seen to what extent suchan extended phenomenological analysis, combined with a furtheranalysis of the various modes of cognition, can further clarify thecognitive theory of emotion.

NOTES

1 This essay was first delivered as a talk at the American Philososophical Asso-ciation meeting in San Francisco, March 2001. Co-symposiasts were AmelieRorty, Michael Stocker, Jeffrey Murphy, and Jerry Neu. Neu’s book A Tear isan Intellectual Thing was published by Oxford University Press in 2000.2 Stocker, in this symposium and at length in his Valuing Emotions (CambridgeUniversity Press, 1999; Peter Goldie in his Emotions (Oxford University Press,2000).3 Notable controbutions to this literature are Jaap Panksepp, Affective Neuro-science (OUP, 2000), Joseph Le Doux, The Emotional Brain (Simon and Schuster,1996). See, for a good summary of much of this material, Richard Lane and LynnNadel, The Cognitive Neuroscience of Emotion (OUP).4 Donald Davidson, “Hume’s Cognitive Theory of Pride” Journal of Philosophy,1977. Davidson’s view was taken very seriously by many philosophers who nevershowed any interest in emotion, much less in any cognitive theory of emotion.But what gets left out of Davidson’s reconstruction – as Hume himself clearlyrecognized – was pride, that is, the emotion.

The University of Texas at AustinAustin, TX, USAE-mail: rsolomon@mail.utexas.edu

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