The Particular Objects of Affective Experiences

After having clarified this, here come the promised observations: imagine that Jake accidentally cuts his left index finger while cutting vegetables. In this event, assuming Jake is not pain asymbolic etc., This is different from, say, when Jake just focuses his attention on his finger during mindfulness meditation. He might be directly aware of his finger and certain sensations and events, but neither his finger nor the events that are seemingly taking place in it, are represented in some specific way. Imagine now, that as a result of Jake’s meditation practice, he feels his tensed neck relax. The events in his neck are represented as pleasant (in some determinate way). Note that the bodily pain and relaxation Jake feels is precisely localized.

Nevertheless, this does not have to be the case. Jake might feel tired, relaxed or energised after his meditation, without these bodily feelings being confined to any single body part.

Instead, Jake’s body and, consequently, Jake as a whole — with his whole being as it were — feels unpleasantly tired or pleasantly relaxed or energized. In fact, it does not seem out of the question that Jake’s global bodily feelings come to overflow his body, colouring his experience of the world and perhaps even making him lose the experienced connection between his body and his altered experience of the world (cf. Ratcliffe 2005).

This is not very surprising since neither the bodily sensations nor the pleasantness or

102Response-dependent properties seem to be not very popular as an account of the feeling-specific properties because they are usually couched in terms of dispositional properties (Prinz 2006a, p. 149;

Dokic and Lemaire 2013; Mendelovici 2014, p. 143). I think more promising accounts are available, however. These accounts would substitute or complement the dispositional analysis of response-dependent properties with Edenic phenomenal properties that are tailor-made for the phenomenal properties of specific feelings (Mendelovici 2014). Another proposal worth closer consideration is Cowan’s account of ‘phenomenally present as absent’ properties (Cowan 2015). Having said that, to discuss these now would take me too far afield.

unpleasantness arereally in Jake’s finger, neck or body to begin with. Bodily events are one thing, the registering of those in the form of bodily sensations and feelings another (Sizer 2006). Both can come apart. As Weiss notes:

We have known since Descartes (or at least since experimental psychology really got going in the nineteenth century) that a “pain in one’s hand” is not really in one’s hand. There can be tissue damage in one’s hand, for example, without pain and there can be “pain in one’s hand” without one’s even having a hand (as we see e.g. in “phantom limb” cases.) Pain (or pleasure) in one’s hand should, rather, be understood as pain in one’s mind/brain directed towards (putative) goings-on in one’s hand. (Weiss 2016, p. 39)

Bodily feelings represent bodily parts or events as, using generic and clearly determinable terms here, pleasant or unpleasant. And, perhaps, sometimes they can do so without being experientially bodily localised at all (cf. Mendelovici 2014). In fact, if they cease to be experienced as being in or about the body, one might start to wonder whether they haven’t ceased to be bodily feelings. Surely, they would continue to be brought about by bodily events and to be feelings, but they would no longer be experienced as representations of bodily events as pleasant or unpleasant. In other words, they would cease to have abodily phenomenology while retaining abodily aetiology and an affective phenomenology.

In a similar vein, emotional feelings often “transcend” the body and represent all kinds of things in characteristic ways, be they localised in the body, the external world or solely “in the mind”. Linda’s fear of an approaching bear represents the bear as fright-ening (or dangerous) while her joy upon winning theIron Man represents the victory as joyous (or, perhaps, as an achievement).¹⁰³ Linda might also be sad that her memory is degrading, or relieved that the US-Democrats got a majority in the House of Repre-sentatives. Equally, she might be happy that her surgical wound is healing promptly, regret that she didn’t learn the drums as a child or hopeful that she (and not Smith!) will get the job. At other times, Linda is amused by the concept of a Flying Spaghetti Monster or feels infatuated with Sherlock Holmes. Linda might also be pleased by her quickness of the mind, frustrated with her anxiety about speaking in public or proud of the way her body looks. Emotional feelings seem to be very versatile in what they

103It is interesting that seemingly response-independent properties that stand in some intimate connection to negative feelings such as pain (harmfulness), fear (dangerousness), disgust (contamination) and sadness (loss) come easier to mind than for positive feelings. What are the response-independent properties connected to bodily pleasure, joy, relief and pride, for instance? For the latter two it’s not even clear to me what the response-dependentproperties are if one sticks to common language.

are about, i.e. in what they represent and how they represent it as being. They can be about objects, (past, present and future) states of affairs, other mental states and about propositions.¹⁰⁴

In the case of propositions, one can distinguish between feelings with propositions as contents and those with propositions as objects (Grzankowski 2016). Contrast the case of fearing that Santa Claus does not exist and fearing the proposition Santa Claus does not exist. Only the former is a propositional attitude while the latter is a non-propositional attitude, and only the former has truth- or accuracy-conditions.¹⁰⁵ Usually, when we talk of propositional attitudes we refer to the propositions in question in terms of their contents. A belief represents the contents of a proposition as true while a desire represents the contents of a proposition as to be realized. If not stated otherwise, when I will talk of propositions as intentional objects, I will mean it in the sense of propositions ascontents, not as objects.

So emotional feelings can be about the body, but also about the external world, “the realm of ideas” as well as about the past, present and future. At extremes, they are about non-existent or abstract entities such as Swampsmans, Orfolei, Flying Spaghetti Monsters or propositions. Based on these observations it is easy to see that affective experiences typically have intentional objects, be they body part, entities in the external world, abstract and fictional objects, (past, present and future) states of affairs, mental states, propositional contents or propositions. Jake’s finger is the intentional object of his

104There seems also to be no reason to exclude activities and actions from what feelings can be about.

One can enjoy focusing on one’s breathing or be angry about someone’s offensive action. The same goes for properties and relations. One might feel comfortable wearing black and happy about one’s blooming friendship. Depending on one’s metaphysics, one can presumably make sense of some of these things in terms of objects, states of affairs or propositions. It doesn’t really matter here.

105Attitudes with propositions as objects appear odd but not impossible. In fact, in some constellations, they might be not odd. Consider Grzankowski’s tongue-in-cheek remark:

If one had a certain view about propositions, one might come to think that they could cause one serious harm (for example). Similarly for other attitudes. It is odd to love a proposition, but not impossible. In fact, maybe it isn’t even that odd. People often claim to have a favorite number. Is it so outrageous that someone might also love a number? If a number, why not a proposition? (Grzankowski 2016, p. 325)

On a more serious note: If one takes propositions to be just sentence-like mental representations (e.g.

Thagard 2008, p. 172), attitudes that take these as objects will be metacognitive in some sense or even metarepresentational but not necessarily odd. Perhaps, in fact, such attitudes are ubiquitous. Also:

there might bepropositional attitudes whose propositional contents include propositions as objects.

Consider suspecting thatthe proposition [Santa Claus does not exist] is ambiguous or fearing that proposition [A] entails proposition [B]. This, all of a sudden, does not sound that odd at all but rather like kinds of states philosophers are in all the time. Perhaps philosophers are odd and so it is unsurprising that they have odd states. Or perhaps I misunderstand the objects involved in the above propositions as propositions—perhaps they are states of affairs and all is well.

pain, Jake’s neck is the intentional object of his pleasure. The nature of the intentional object (at least, if they are consciously represented) can be thought to make the feelings in questionbodily pain andbodily pleasure, i.e. bodily feelings.¹⁰⁶

The bear is the intentional object of Linda’s fear and the propositional content (or state of affairs) that the US-Democrats got a majority in the House of Representatives is the intentional object of her relief. Though such intentional objects, often called theirparticular objects, are not the only things that feelings seem to be about. Feelings represent their particular objects as beinga certain way, as bearing some feeling-specific property such as being pleasant, unpleasant, frightening or joyous.