Affective Markers of Epistemic Feelings

As discussed in chapter 3, the hallmark of affective experiences is phenomenal valence.

Importantly, valence is something that is distinctive of affective experiences and not shared by other mental states such as perceptual experiences or beliefs. Thus, if it can be shown that epistemic feelings have phenomenal valence, then this can be taken as evidence that they are affective experiences and not other kinds of states such as perceptual experiences or beliefs.

Now, as in general with phenomenal qualities, valence cannot be measured directly. One thus has to rely on indirect evidence by measuring observable variables assumed to be as-sociated with valence. Luckily, a number of valence-asas-sociated variables have been iden-tified in the form of psychophysiological and behavioural responses, including subjective ratings and reports (Mauss and Robinson 2009). One important fact about valence is

157Here is some initial support from another angle: My claim is that intuitions are epistemic feelings.

And you might be sympathetic with the idea after you got a grasp on these states. Independently of what kinds of states epistemic feelings are, they might indeed appear to you as quite similar to intuitions. At the same time, remember the reasonable fit between the features of intuitions and affective experiences that I outlined in section 4.5. So if it is not implausible that intuition experiences are affective experiences and if it is, independently, plausible that intuition experiences are epistemic feelings, then it seems do give additional plausibility to that epistemic feelings are affective experiences.

that it is commonly assumed to be bodily realised (see e.g. Craig 2009; Damasio and Car-valho 2013). Now, epistemic feelings co-vary with interoceptive changes as well as with specific activity of facial muscles indicative of positive or negative affect (Winkielman, Schwarz, et al. 2003; von Helversen et al. 2008; Topolinski and Strack 2009b, experi-ment 4topolinski2009d; Fiacconi, Peter, et al. 2016; Fiacconi, Kouptsova, et al. 2017;

Forster et al. 2016).¹⁵⁸ Additionally, higher interoceptive awareness (i.e. the ability to pick up on one’s interoceptive states such as heartbeat) in subjects predicts a stronger association between reports on epistemic feelings and the presence of interoceptive cues (Fiacconi, Kouptsova, et al. 2017).

Another widely accepted bodily proxy of the presence of affective experience is the skin conductance response (SCR) which is associated with another characteristic feature of affective states: arousal. Capgras patients display a similar SCR to familiar and unfamiliar faces indicating, among other things, the absence of a FOF on whose basis they could discriminate between familiar and unfamiliar stimuli (e.g. Ellis, Young, et al. 1997; Ellis and Lewis 2001). The patients recognise their loved onevisually but the usualaffective response ordinarily elicited by the sight of the individual in question (inter alia a FOF) is missing (Pacherie 2010).¹⁵⁹ This is hypothesised to be the consequence of a disrupted connection between the ventral visual pathway that is responsible for the overt visual component in recognition and regions (notably the amygdala) that are responsible for the covert affective component in recognition (Breen et al. 2000). While the former seems to be intact in Capgras patients, the latter is lacking as is indicated by measurements of unusually low skin SCR vis-`a-vis loved ones.

Capgras delusion raises many interesting issues concerning the interaction between cognitive processes [...] and accompanying emotional responses, not least the basis for our sense of familiarity when encountering someone we know well, which can [...] involve an automatic concurrent ‘glow’. The same may well be true in the parallel domain of object recognition: those items with which we are particularly familiar or to which we are in some way at-tached may enjoy special cognitive status (Ellis and Lewis 2001, pp. 154 sq.).

158The interoceptive changes in question are changes in heart muscle activity. Note that these changes can also be understood as relating to arousal rather than valence, see further below. On the other hand, the facial muscle activity is a sure sign for valence: The facial muscles in question are the smiling muscle, zygomaticus major, for positive affect and the frowning muscle, corrugator supercilii, for negative affect.

159Alternatively, there might be a pronounced alienating feeling ofunfamiliarity(e.g. Bayne and Pacherie 2004, p. 4; Ratcliffe 2007b).

In healthy subjects, the occurrence of FOFs co-varies with a discriminatory SCR for familiar and unfamiliar stimuli (Morris et al. 2008).¹⁶⁰

Epistemic feelings have not only been shown to vary with SCR but also to lead to in-creased liking, a behavioural measure of positive affect (Reber, Winkielman, et al. 1998, experiment 3; Winkielman, Schwarz, et al. 2003; Forster et al. 2013; Trippas et al. 2016, experiment 1), additionally co-varying with ratings of apparently non-affective proper-ties such as truth (see e.g. Reber and Schwarz 1999; Unkelbach 2007, experiment 1;

Unkelbach, Bayer, et al. 2011a, experiment 1; Hansen, Dechˆene, et al. 2008, see also sec-tion 7.3.4), perceptual semantic coherence (Bowers et al. 1990; Bolte and Goschke 2008;

Volz and von Cramon 2006; Volz, R¨ubsamen, et al. 2008; Topolinski and Strack 2009b, experiment 10; Horr et al. 2014), linguistic semantic coherence (Bolte and Goschke 2005;

Topolinski and Strack 2009a, experiment 2, 2009c, experiment 4, 2009b, experiment 1-9), grammaticality (Topolinski and Strack 2009b, experiment 11) and logical validity (Morsanyi and Handley 2012; Trippas et al. 2016).

Interestingly, in the second and third experiment, Trippas et al. 2016 also find that epistemic feelings that are presumably triggered by logical validity lead to higher ratings of physical brightness as well. This appears puzzling at first but is actually construed as a plausible consequence of the affective nature of epistemic feelings: affective experiences have been shown to facilitate content-encoding, presumably in part via the influence they exert on attention (e.g. Schupp et al. 2003; Kensinger and Corkin 2004; Sharot et al.

2004; Phelps et al. 2006; Pessoa 2011). That is, if paired with an affective experience, representational content appears as morevivid or to use a theoretically better-established term: salient.

Furthermore, positive epistemic feelings can serve as affective primes (Topolinski and Strack 2009c, experiment 2). In affective priming subjects evaluate a target stimulus with an affective connotation, say, the word “snake” as positive or negative after being presented with an affectively-laden prime stimulus, say, the word “poison”.

If prime and target have the same affective connotation, the evaluation that is associated with the prime word typically facilitates the processing of af-fectively congruent target words [...] and thus leads to faster evaluations of the target [...] [T]his should be understood as anindirect affective priming,

160This reminds of the dissociable sensory and affective component of pain, only for recognition (see section 4.2).

because it is not the affective value of the triad constituents per se that is ex-pected to prime subsequent evaluations but the [...] valence that results from the processing of the triad. Specifically, we assumed that the fluency-induced increase in [...] valence in processing a coherent triad should facilitate subse-quent processing of positively evaluated concepts and hamper the processing of negatively evaluated concepts. (Topolinski and Strack 2009c, pp. 1474 sq.) In the experiment in question previously presented coherent word triads were shown to lead to positive affective priming effects via triggering epistemic feelings. For incoherent word triads, no such effect occurred.

It appears furthermore that the induction of positive or negative mood enhances or impairs performance in tasks capitalizing on epistemic feelings (Baumann and Kuhl 2002; Bolte, Goschke, and Kuhl 2003; Balas et al. 2012; Sweklej et al. 2014; Remmers and Zander 2018). This point is further reinforced by the finding that said performance is impaired in major depression (Greifeneder and Bless 2008; Remmers, Topolinski, Dietrich, et al. 2015; Remmers, Topolinski, Buxton, et al. 2017; see also Goldie 2012).

In general, it has been broadly pointed out that epistemic and emotional feelings in-fluence judgments in similar ways and that the reliance on these feelings in making judgments is mediated by similar factors (Schwarz and Clore 2007; Greifeneder, Bless, and Pham 2011). As Greifeneder and colleagues summarize:

The review revealed that moderators of the reliance on affective and cog-nitive feelings are remarkably similar and can be grouped into five major categories: (a) the salience of the feelings, (b) the representativeness of the feelings for the target, (c) the relevance of the feelings to the judgment, (d) the evaluative malleability of the judgment, and (e) the level of processing intensity. Based on the reviewed evidence, it is concluded that the use of feelings as information is a frequent event and a generally sensible judgmen-tal strategy rather than a constant source of error. (Greifeneder, Bless, and Pham 2011, p. 1)

A natural way to explain these findings is to parsimoniously assume that they do so in virtue of both being affective experiences. Therefore, we do not need a strict division between affective feelings and epistemic feelings as upheld in the cited reviews because both are affective.

To sum up: Epistemic feelings covary with interoceptive changes, variations in SCR and facial muscle activity, all well-established bodily proxies for the affective properties of valence and arousal. Furthermore, positive epistemic feelings lead to increased liking and can serve as positive affective primes—behavioural proxies for the presence of valence.

Additionally, performance capitalizing on positive epistemic feelings are enhanced in a positive mood. On the negative side, performance that relies on positive epistemic feel-ings is impaired under conditions of negative mood and depression. Further behavioural evidence comes from studies of the influences of emotional and epistemic feelings on judg-ments. They bring to light that both kinds of feelings influence judgments in a similar way and that similar factors moderate the reliance on them when making judgments.

Coming from the affective to the epistemic side: Induced affect co-varies with judgments of seemingly non-affective properties such as truth, grammaticality, logical validity and semantic coherence. I think this shows that epistemic feelings robustly co-vary with affective properties such as valence and arousal. This, in turn, makes a good case for the thesis that epistemic feelings are affective. Is what we observe in the experiments affective experiences, though? Perhaps the affective components in the studied cases areunconscious — non-phenomenal valence and physiological arousal —, giving out un-conscious epistemic nudges (i.e. unun-conscious functional analogues of epistemic feelings) but not phenomenally guiding the behaviour of subjects (see section 4.3.1). This is well possible. I want to grant that this is what might sometimes happen in the observed cases. However, the next section will show that what at least also sometimes happens is that there areconscious epistemic feelings at work in these situations—in the form of affective experiences.