The Hallmark of Affect: Phenomenal Valence

Perhaps the most central aspect is phenomenal valence, i.e. the felt positivity or nega-tivity of certain experiences (e.g. Charland 2005; Weiss 2016; Carruthers 2017b). This basic positivity or negativity is often made sense of in hedonic terms (“hedonic tone”) as pleasantness or unpleasantness or in value terms as a representation of value or disvalue or “seeming” goodness or badness (Carruthers 2017b). Affective experiences are essen-tiallyvalenced experiences.⁸⁵ As Frijda points out, the property of valence is essential to affective experiences (that is a broader category than emotional feelings) and contrasts them to other experiences:

[T]he essence of emotions is feeling, notably that of pleasure or pain. Affec-tive valence is commonly regarded as a criterial aspect. [...] Affects, pleasure and pain, certainly set the experiences in which they occur apart from all other kinds of experience—if only because, as feelings, they cannot be read-ily reduced to something else, such as cognitions or body sensations [...]

Yet, conversely, many valenced reactions are not usually classed as emotions.

Tasting sweet substances merely produces a pleasant sensation that usually is not regarded as an emotion. (Frijda 2008, p. 71)

Neither the visual experience of something blue nor the bodily sensation of one’s heart-beat are felt as intrinsically positive or negative. A lack of intrinsic valence seems to apply in general to exteroceptive modalities such as visual, auditory, gustatory, olfactory or tactile experiences (Fulkerson 2019, for an important qualification see, see also sec-tion 6.4). Similar points apply to propriocepsec-tion. In interocepsec-tion, it becomes trickier to keep the non-affective and affective realm apart. This is likely because some of the brain areas that are important for interoception are — together with other brain areas

— also the locus of valence (e.g. Craig 2009; Damasio and Carvalho 2013; Carruthers 2017b).

However, exteroceptive experiences and bodily sensations naturally prompt or co-occur with affective experiences such as pain, sadness, joy or fear which do feel positive or negative (see section 4.4).

Suppose you step into a bath that, being too hot, causes an unpleasant pain in your foot. This experience will be bad for you; and it will also motivate you to act, for example to lift your foot from the scalding water.

85I use the terms “valence” and “affect” synonymously.

[...] A table’s looking square to you, we might say, is neither bad for you nor good for you, nor motivational (independently of further desires). If that’s right, what makes unpleasant pain different? [...] An obvious answer is: its unpleasantness. (Bain 2013, S69 sq.)

It is a remarkable datum about consciousness that dissociable non-affective and affective experiences are unified in one single total phenomenal state of the subject (Bayne 2004;

Koksvik 2014). It is because of this unity of consciousness that it tends to be hard to tell seeing, hearing, imagining or judging from being afraid, angry or happy. Nevertheless, that these are distinct components blended together in a unified phenomenal state is indicated by the fact that these experiential components come apart (see the dissociation cases in section 4.2). This, in turn, implies that we might sometimes get the psychological units wrong and misattribute features of one state to another.

Some clarifications: First, when I talk of valence here I mean valence as a phenomenal property of affective experiences (see also Weiss 2016). Such phenomenal valence has been called elsewhere “affect valence” and needs to be distinguished from closely as-sociated but ultimately non-phenomenal properties such as emotion- or object-valence (Charland 2005; Colombetti 2005). Emotion valence refers to whether an emotion is negative or positive as such, regardless of whether the emotion is felt or not. Against this background, fear or sadness are considered ‘negative’ emotions while pride and joy are considered ‘positive’ emotions.⁸⁶ Analogously, object valence refers to whether an object or stimulus is negative or positive as such — objectively as it were —, regardless of whether it elicits emotions or feelings. One might, for instance, consider angry and sad faces, snakes, guns, crimes as ‘negative’ objects and happy and attractive faces, tasty food and erotica as ‘positive’ objects.⁸⁷

However, their functional profiles and the behaviours they facilitate seem to be suffi-ciently similar to merit calling both valence.⁸⁸ One might, of course, still attempt to

86One might want to argue that they are so considered because the related emotional feelings have positive or negative phenomenal valence. Though this is to already provide a theory of emotion valence in terms of affect valence or phenomenal valence, claiming that the former is e.g. derivative on the latter (see also footnote 84).

87Again, one might want to argue that they are so consideredbecausethey trigger positive and negative feelings that are more fundamentally positive and negative in that they have a phenomenal valence and represent the objects in questions as positive or negative through their phenomenal valence (see section 4.4). Nevertheless, this again is to provide a theory of object valence as derivative on other kinds of valence.

88Taking one’s lead from Carruthers, one can say something instructive on the functional difference between unconscious affective responses and affective experiences, i.e. on what the first-order con-sciousness of valence adds to the mix:

deny that there is such a thing as non-phenomenal valence. One could, for instance, draw attention to the important distinction between something being unconscious, conscious and reflexively conscious.⁸⁹ Then one could point out that the only way employed to experimentally test whether something is conscious or not is to simply ask the subjects (e.g. Winkielman, Berridge, and Wilbarger 2005). Taking this as a point of departure one could argue that what such experiments really test is notexperience (i.e. conscious-ness) but the awareness of experience (i.e. reflexive consciousconscious-ness) (for a similar point on interoceptive feelings vs. interoceptive awareness see de Vignemont 2018, pp. 261 sq.).

Consequently, what such experiments show isnot that subjects lack valencedexperiences but that they lack awareness of valenced experiences, perhaps due to their briefness or other factors. Naturally, the subject will be unaware of them – after all, the experiments quoted in support usually usesubliminal, i.e. very brief, presentations of affect-eliciting stimuli (e.g. Winkielman, Berridge, and Wilbarger 2005; Pessiglione et al. 2007; Childress et al. 2008). Unsurprisingly, the subject will be unaware of the briefly occurring valenced feeling in response to an even briefer encounter with an invisible stimulus. There is no consciously perceived stimulus that could direct a portion of her attention inwards at the time of the valenced experience’s occurrence.⁹⁰ It seems unwarranted to assume that the

[A]ll affective states can issue in action via either one of two partly separate routes. They can enter into practical decision-making, interacting with one’s perceptions and beliefs to issue in decisions about whether and how to act. But they also give rise to behavioral dispositionsdirectly, independently of anything resembling belief-desire practical reasoning.

In fact, all affective states tend to activate related motor plans directly, in such a way that these will need to be inhibited if one is not to act. [...] consider the fear caused by the sight of a bear on the trail ahead. This might interact with one’s knowledge that black bears will normally retreat if one is noisy and looks large, leading one to shout and stretch oneself fully upright. But it will also give rise to an immediate and unplanned impulse to run away. This impulse (and the motor-system activation that accompanies it) will need to beinhibited if one is to do the sensible thing and stand one’s ground.(Carruthers 2018, p. 7)

Now, it is plausible that unconscious affective responses and affective experiences both influence be-haviour via the direct route, interacting with specialised behavioural systems triggering habitual emotional behaviour. In order to influence behaviour via the moreindirect routeof practical decision-making, however, the affect will need to be simultaneously accessible to a large number of sub-systems.

This is what consciousness brings to the table: In becoming conscious, the valence is made “accessi-ble by virtue of being globally broadcast”, engendering practical decision-making and more informed behaviour. This is what Carruthers’ example illustrates.

89For simplicity, I omit breaking down first-order consciousness into access and phenomenal conscious-ness. Though interesting points could be made there as well, I presume.

90One might argue that affective experiences qua being affective automatically draw attention to them-selves. Nonetheless, this does not seem to be the case. It is true that affective experiences determine patterns of salience among the contents of our representations of the world, body and mind. How-ever, they make us usually attend tothese contents, not the affective experiences themselves. This makes good practical sense since what needs to be done is usually something about the object of the affective experience and not the affective experience itself (cf. Bain 2013, 2019). It is in virtue

valenced experience lasts substantially longer than the inducing subliminal presentation itself, so as to be detected and reported.⁹¹ So by the time the subject’s attention is pointed inwards by being questioned about her feelings, the valenced experience has long subsided.⁹² However, that a valenced experience has occurred is evidenced by the trace it left: characteristic behavioural dispositions that lead the subject to engage in the observed affective behaviours – characteristic products of affective experiences. Thus, the experimental observations can be explained more parsimoniously via the workings of good old phenomenal valence. There is no need to postulate the existence of some dubious non-phenomenal valence.

Now the proponent of non-phenomenal valence might counter: It is true that awareness is not aninfallible guide to consciousness, but it isa – perhaps the only – guide to con-sciousness. A lack of awareness can thus be taken as nondemonstrative evidence for a lack of consciousness.⁹³ And, on second thought, is non-phenomenal valence really such an outlandish construct? Aren’t we happy to grant that perception can be unconscious (cf. Prinz 2005)? Why not valence? After all, we could deny that the perception of sub-liminally presented stimuli is unconscious following the same logic applied in the denial of non-phenomenal valence.⁹⁴ I think we reached a venerable impasse here. Whether something is first-order phenomenally conscious or not is a notoriously vexed question.

And I won’t attempt to solve it here. I am happy to grant that non-phenomenal valence exists as long as its existence is not at odds with the existence of phenomenal valence which is necessarily conscious (cf. Prinz 2004b, pp. 176-178).⁹⁵

of doing something about these objects that we do something about the affective experiences. It is running away from the frightening bear or tending to one’s aching wound that does away with one’s fear or one’s pain, not attending to (the negative valence of) one’s fear or pain.

91After all, something that can be barely unconsciously perceived for a few milliseconds can’t be that important for the survival of an organism in natural circumstances. Andtheseare the circumstances that forged our affective apparatus.

92It is also unlikely that, at the time of the occurrence of the valenced experience, the subject forms a memory of the occurrence that she could later consult when reporting.

93One might question this, though, by pointing out that while it might well be that awareness is a good indicatorfor consciousness, it is not a good indicator for its absence. That is, one can easily grant that if someone isaware of a certain state, this is good evidencefor the state being conscious. One can deny, however, that not being aware of a certain state is good evidenceagainst the state being conscious.

94One could further try to make the point that we need non-phenomenal valence in order to account for affective reactions in non-human animals (Berridge and Kringelbach 2008, pp. 459 sq.; Winkielman and Berridge 2004, p. 122). Why would one try that? Because the cortical regions that are by some believed to add consciousness to the more basic unconscious affective reactions are more developed in humans. However, this point can be countered by pointing to extensive evidence for consciousness without a cerebral cortex (Merker 2007).

95Is phenomenal valence necessarily conscious only by definition? Only to the degree that perceptual experience is necessarily conscious only by definition, I submit.

Back to questions about phenomenal valence and affective experiences: note that the claim here is that all affective experiences intrinsically have a valence, not that they intrinsically have aspecific valence. Surprise by itself, for instance, might be indetermi-nate: there are positive and negative surprises (but see Knight et al. 2013; Noordewier and Breugelmans 2013; Noordewier, Topolinski, et al. 2016). This is compatible with surprise being an affective experience as long as it always comes with positiveor nega-tive valence and not whollywithout valence. Third, I want to leave open the possibility that some feelings such as surprise or nostalgia can feel (to different extents) positive and negative at the same time, i.e. they can be ambivalent.

[A]ll emotions are valent. Some emotions may be intrinsically negative (sad-ness, fear), some may be intrinsically positive (joy), and some may have variable valence markers (surprise). [...] It also turns out that some emo-tions areintrinsically both negatively and positively valent. Some emotions are intrinsically mixed. (Prinz 2004b, p. 164)

This implies that valence is not a bipolar negative/positive continuum but that negative and positive valence are two independent dimensions (see e.g. Cacioppo et al. 1999; but see Russell and Carroll 1999).⁹⁶ Note, what I grant here is that a single feeling can feel positive and negative. This is different from cases where we have mixed feelings, i.e.

concurrent or sequences of individual feelings some of which are positive and some of which are negative (Larsen and McGraw 2014; Schneider and Schwarz 2017).