The Mild Affective Phenomenology of Epistemic Feelings

In comparison to affective experiences such as migraines, fears or orgasms epistemic feelings are perhaps not as obviously experienced as positive, negative or highly arousing.

As we have seen based on empirical findings, however, they nevertheless exhibit a subtle positivity or negativity and a degree of arousal. Still, this is not unlike milder affective experiences in general (see also Colombetti 2011). In this regard, epistemic feelings resemble certain instances of aesthetic experiences that are plausibly affective in nature (e.g. Prinz 2014; Goffin 2019; for a treatment of aesthetic experiences as epistemic feelings see Reber, Schwarz, and Winkielman 2004; Dokic 2016; Renoult 2016).

However, as James’ approach demonstrates, when it comes to affective experiences, the focus tends to lie on a few “paradigm” cases of affective experiences such as pain and fear. In what sense are pains and fears paradigms of affective experiences? Without

doubt, they exhibit the features unique to affective experiences — valence, arousal and motivationality — to anextraordinarily highdegree. But in being “very loud”asaffective experiences, they are actually quite special,rare occurrences. A much bigger part of our affective life is constituted by the little, subtle movements of our affective sensibilities.

These affective experiences are not only all too often neglected in favour of their few

“violent” conspecifics but also easy to neglect because of their calm nature. It is very likely that the bad reputation feelings have acquired when it comes to our rational activities are to a good part due to the few “affective hooligans” that tend to get the lion’s share of our attention. This way we are likely neglecting the many essential roles that mild, low-profile feelings play in our “higher” faculties. This is a regrettable state of affairs since it gives away a great opportunity: an opportunity to understand better what drives us—what it is that guides our thoughts when we take ourselves to “deliberate”

and “inquire”.

Now, we might be able to “triangulate” this mild part of our affective life that is so often lost to introspection by considering this:¹⁷² phenomenally obvious “paradigmatic”

affective experiences are relatively rare occurrences in comparison to, say, perceptual experiences and thoughts which are with us all the time—literally. However, we know something about affective experiences that appears somewhat at odds with this apparent scarcity. Importantly, we can see the feature in question instantiated in paradigmatic affective cases: Feelings are caused by perceptual experiences and thoughts and they take them as their bases. Now, we have perceptual experiences and thoughts all the time. If these are involved with affective experiences, does it mean that they get only involved with them under exceptional circumstances? Does it mean that outside of these exceptional circumstances we go about our business as some kind of “Kantian Angels”

driven purely by thought and perceptual experiences—only to be sometimes thrown off our enlightened path by affective seizures?

I don’t think this is the case. A more natural explanation seems to me that our ever-present perceptual experiences and thoughts lead to affective experiences that are just as ever-present. The majority of them, however, are not present as phenomenal ruptures but as gentle guides of thought and action.¹⁷³ The reason why we tend to think about

172Thanks to Marco Inchingolo for making me think about this point.

173Note that their gentleness doesn’t have to make themless persuasive. Quite the opposite, actually:

they might be more likely to persuade usbecause of their measured nature—appearing to us in the form of the proverbial voice of reason. Maybe putting it metaphorically helps: when contemplating a subject matter I, for my part, am much more likely to be persuaded by the measured, tactful words of a well-respected friend than by my shrill, irascible uncle who, in his great and unmatched wisdom, is — once again — trying to impose his unsolicited advice on me. To who would you rather lend

affective experiences in the former “violent” way might be because we only tend to study the tip of the affective iceberg that happens to be phenomenally “on fire”. Furthermore, the function of affective experiences is likely not to be violent—it is to make things salient in the way echoed by Brady (Brady 2009, pp. 422 sq., see section 4.3.2 and 4.5). That is, they direct our attention towards something elsethan themselves, towards something that matters. It is thus not surprising that we are only able to get a good look at them in exceptional circumstances—such as when theyare violent or when there is—consciously—nothing else relevant to look at (see section 6.5.2).¹⁷⁴

Now, add to this our documented unreliability to introspect the nature of our experiences, especially affective experiences, and you get a sense for why becoming aware of mild affect

— while beneficial for theoretical and personal reasons — is not at all an easy task in itself (Haybron 2008; Schwitzgebel 2008).¹⁷⁵ If epistemic feelings are mild affective experiences, it is rather unsurprising that their affective nature tends to elude us.¹⁷⁶ This consideration is nicely echoed by Ben Bramble when reflecting upon the phenomenology of pleasantness (‘the pleasant feeling’) and unpleasantness (‘the unpleasant feeling’) in general:

Consider what ‘the pleasant feeling’ would have to be like [...] It would have to be the sort of feeling that can occupy an experience, and so make it count

your ear? And whose advice would you rather feel the urge to resist? I think this illustrates on, the one hand, how often we are willing to accept the insinuations of our calm affective guides as eminently reasonable (likely not even noticingthat they are affective) and, on the other hand, how we are regularly annoyed by the overdrive of their vociferous relatives.

174As Mangan relatedly points out (he refers to epistemic feelings as “non-sensory experiences”):

Even if we indirectly recognize that non-sensory experiences are present in consciousness, it is still very difficult to grasp them as objects of direct attention. The attempt to do so, in at least the great bulk of cases, instantly changes the character of the non-sensory experience, and brings a sensory content squarely into attention. (Mangan 2001, p. 15) He goes on to quote James on this observation:

It is very difficult, introspectively, to see the transitive parts for what they really are. If they are but flights to a conclusion, stopping them to look at them before the conclusion is reached is really annihilating them. Whilst if we wait till the conclusionbe reached, it so exceeds them in vigor and stability that it quite eclipses and swallows them up in its glare.

(James 1890, pp. 243 sq.; for similar points for intuitions see Chudnoff 2011b, pp. 642 sq.)

175Affective experiences likely do not rely on this kind of reflexive consciousness to assume (the lion’s share of) their functional roles. As Carruthers observes:

Indeed, it would be quite odd if the first-order causal role distinctive of a given type of mental state [...] required a higher-order representation to be present specifying that a token of that type of state is currently active. (Carruthers 2017a, p. 73)

176That’s why we need to go beyond introspection and do empirical and theoretical work.

as pleasant, by permeating it. Consider, for example, pleasant experiences of listening to Bach, eating a juicy peach, solving a puzzle, sunbathing, etc.

Clearly, if ‘the pleasant feeling’ exists, it does not make these sort of experi-ences pleasant by being ’tacked on to them’, so to speak, in any crude fashion.

Instead, it must be the sort of feeling that can come in extremely low intensi-ties, and very finely discriminable locations within one’s experiential field, so that it can come scattered throughout one’s experiential field. lf [...] I enjoy listening to Bach, while you do not, then the difference between our experi-ences of Bach has got to be that mine is permeated by ‘the pleasant feeling’, while yours is not. In this way, ‘the pleasant feeling’ might ’brighten’ a whole experience, or lend it a ’warm glow’ [...] This explains, it seems to me, why [...] we should not expect to be able to gain a clear sense of ‘the pleasant feeling’, or the way in which all pleasant experiences feel alike. The reason is that [...] most instances of ‘the pleasant feeling’ are, taken by themselves, virtually imperceptible. They occur in extremely small quantities (or low intensities), and in very abstract or ethereal locations in one’s experiential field, locations that are not at all easy to direct one’s attention toward, or focus upon. [...] That said, one can perhaps gain some sense of ‘the pleasant feeling’ by thinking, say, of the experience of orgasm as ‘the pleasant feeling’

delivered in a very large quantity (or a high intensity), explosively. Similarly, one might gain some sense of ‘the unpleasant feeling’ by thinking of a painful experience like stubbing one’s toe as ‘the unpleasant feeling’ delivered in a large quantity, and a particular bodily location, explosively. (Bramble 2013, pp. 209 sqq.)¹⁷⁷

Apart from that, there are straightforward reasons for the milder affective nature of epistemic feelings. A central one is that bodily sensations, while being not affective by themselves, are components of the paradigmatic affective experiences such as pain and fear. As a consequence, much of the phenomenology that people ordinarily take to be affective is actually somatic in nature.¹⁷⁸ Thus, in deciding whether a given

177Similar considerations can be found in Mangan’s discussion of James’ concept of the fringe of con-sciousness (Mangan 2001).

178Prinz — following James’ famous subtraction thought experiment — makes a similar point to the effect that if one subtracts all somatic phenomenology, no affective phenomenology remains. His primary reason for doing so is introspective.

The hypothesis that valence markers have a distinctive feel is certainly bolstered by in-tuition. It seems that negative and positive emotions feel significantly different in virtue of their difference in valence. There is, however, an alternative possibility. Perhaps the felt differences between negative and positive emotions is a consequence of the embodied

experience is affective people will not (only) look for affective (i.e. valenced) but for somatic phenomenology. However, bodily sensations are not very present in epistemic feelings. One reason for that lies in the intentionality, another in the motivationality of epistemic feelings: 1) In contrast to bodily and emotional feelings, epistemic feelings do not typically take bodily sensations but exteroceptive and cognitive states as bases. 2) In contrast to bodily and emotional feelings, epistemic feelings naturally motivate mental rather than bodily behaviours (Proust 2008). Though only the motivation of bodily behaviour goes together with the (global) behavioural preparation of the body (physical action readiness), adding a myriad of attendant bodily sensations (Frijda 1986).¹⁷⁹ These two factors explain why there is a lack of bodily phenomenology in epistemic feelings.¹⁸⁰ This lack of “mock-affective” bodily phenomenology will occlude the affective nature of epistemic feelings.

I have been fighting here a somewhat defensive battle concerning the power of introspec-tion to shed light on the affective nature of epistemic feelings. Yes, epistemic feelings are usually mild affective experiences – typically the positive or negative affect integral to them does not, as Bramble has described it, come “in a very large quantity (or a high intensity), explosively”. This is, however, not to say that epistemic feelings cannot be reasonably intense, giving us some introspective evidence for their affective nature.¹⁸¹ To demonstrate this, I ask you to read the following passage (while trying to understand what it is about):

A newspaper is better than a magazine. A seashore is a better place than the street. At first it is better to run than to walk. You may have to try

appraisals they contain. [...] it could turn out that the feeling of the emotion is exhausted by the appraisal. Alleged commonalities between the feelings of different negative emotions could be an illusion. Perhaps there is no phenomenal thread linking disgust, betrayal, and grief. I favor this view. I do not think that valence markers have any phenomenology in their own right. That claim may seem untenable. [...] Is there any reason to deny that valence markers have intrinsic feels? My main motivation is introspective. Despite a strong intuition that there is a special feeling associated with unpleasantness, I cannot find anything that answers to this feeling when I introspect. When I mentally subtract away the feelings associated with the embodied appraisals of disgust, betrayal, and grief, I do not find any remainder. (Prinz 2004b, pp. 176 sqq.)

The empirical findings and reflections presented above suggest that he is mistaken (see also Mitchell 2018).

179Part of Bramble’s and mine observation above is perhaps also explained by the assumption that a larger amount of affect is needed to mobilise us globally, with “body and mind” as it were. In most instances, it presumably takes less affect to motivate a simple “move of the mind”.

180However, as the tip-of-the-tongue experience and the measures of facial muscle activity mentioned above attest, it is not that epistemic feelings are never tied to bodily sensations.

181As we have seen, when James brackets out some emotions from his analysis, he willingly grants this.

several times. It takes some skill but it is easy to learn. Even young children can enjoy it. Once successful, complications are minimal. Birds seldom get too close. Rain, however, soaks in very fast. Too many people doing the same thing can also cause problems. One needs lots of room. If here are no complications it can be very peaceful. A rock will serve as an anchor.

If things break loose from it, however, you will not get a second chance.

(Bransford and Johnson 1972, p. 722)

How do you feel? Probably confused, unable to understand—thisfeeling of confusion or incomprehensionis another negative epistemic feeling (e.g. Silvia 2010; Lodge et al. 2018;

Arguel et al. 2019). Now try to attend to what phenomenally happens when I give you the following hint: kite. You likely feel much better now; all of a sudden everything seems to fall into place. What you just experienced is a feeling of understanding, sometimes also calledaha-orEureka-experience (e.g. Trout 2002; Bowden et al. 2005; Dodd 2014).

I hope that this example does away with the idea that epistemic feelings cannot be intense.¹⁸² I’ll provide more examples of relatively intense epistemic feelings in section 7.2.

In this section, I hope to have addressed some worries about the idea that epistemic feelings are affective experiences. In the course of this endeavour, I also strived to illus-trate and explain some points about the affective phenomenology of epistemic feelings:

that they are usually only mildly valenced and arousing and that the behaviours they motivate are often of a covert mental or cognitive nature. The next section will concern the affective intentionality of epistemic feelings.

182In case the above example didn’t do the trick for you or you just like to engage another time with this phenomenal curiosity try to get this:

The procedure is actually quite simple. First you arrange things into different groups. Of course, one pile may be sufficient depending on how much there is to do. If you have to go somewhere else due to lack of facilities that is the next step, otherwise you are pretty well set. It is important not to overdo things. That is, it is better to do too few things at once than too many. In the short run this may not seem important, but complications can easily arise. A mistake can be expensive as well. At first the whole procedure will seem complicated. Soon, however, it will become just another facet of life. It is difficult to foresee any end to the necessity for this task in the immediate future, but then one never can tell. After the procedure is completed one arranges the materials into different groups again. Then they can be put into their appropriate places. Eventually they will be used once more and the whole cycle will then have to be repeated. However, that is part of life.

(Bransford and Johnson 1972, p. 722)

Confused? Frustrated? Well then: trydoing the laundry.