The Argument from Cognitive/Hybrid Theorists 64

Cognitive and hybrid theorists of emotion argue that some kind of judgment, belief or thought is necessary for an emotion. Interestingly, as we have seen, James also argues that belief is intrinsic to emotion. However, his conception of belief is very different than the one employed by cognitive and hybrid theorists. Beliefs do not provide knowledge about our emotions as cognitive and hybrid theorists stipulate, but rather attribute a sense of reality to the world. On this basis, he would reject the notion of unconscious

emotions.

James does not deny the kind of cases that Freud, Jaggar and other cognitive and hybrid theorists of emotion highlight. In the following passage, he considers the argument that a cognitive or hybrid theorist of emotion might offer in support of unconscious emotions.

There is a great class of experiences in our mental life which may be described as discoveries that a subjective condition which we have been having is really something different from what we had supposed…[For example], we deliberately analyze our motives, and find that at bottom they contain jealousies and cupidities which we little suspected to be there. Our feelings towards people are perfect wells of motivation, unconscious of itself, which introspection brings to light ([1890], 1: 170).

James here provides a standard example of a purported unconscious emotion in the dynamic sense. Through introspection, a jealousy that was previously unconscious is brought into conscious awareness. While this may seem to accurately reflect our experience, James finds such arguments to be based on a conceptual confusion.

These reasonings are one tissue of confusion. Two states of mind which refer to the same external reality, or two states of mind the later one of which refers to the earlier, are described as the same state of mind, or ‘idea,’ published as it were in two editions; and then whatever qualities of the second edition are found openly lacking in the first are explained as having really been there, only in an

‘unconscious’ way. It would be difficult to believe that intelligent men could be guilty of so patent a fallacy, were not the history of psychology there to give the proof… But once make the distinction between simply having an idea at the moment of its presence and subsequently knowing all sorts of things about it…and one has no difficulty in escaping from the labyrinth ([1890], 1: 172). The mistake such theorists make is that they treat the subsequent knowing state and the original unconscious state as the same mental state. Central to James’ response is that these are in fact two different states of mind – the first is a simple having of the

experience, while the second is a knowing about this experience. The latter is a different kind of experience altogether. James will later articulate this as a distinction between the two kinds of knowing that we have already looked at: knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge about.

As we have seen, when we acquire knowledge about our emotions, such as what our jealousy is in fact about, we are acquiring knowledge about a fact. But this knowledge about the emotion is not part of what the emotion is. While the emotional experience may provide the foundation for such conceptual knowledge, the emotion itself is simply the having of the experience, namely the feeling of bodily changes. In order to acquire knowledge about this emotional experience, it requires “rallying our wits” by attending closely to our experience ([1890], 1: 222). These two states of mind are clearly related, insofar as one is about the other, but they are nevertheless two distinct states.

…the difference between those that are mere ‘acquaintance,’ and those that are ‘knowledges-about’ is reducible almost entirely to the absence or presence of psychic fringes or overtones. Knowledge about a thing is knowledge of its relations. Acquaintance with it is limitation to the bare impression which it makes. Of most of its relations we are only aware in the penumbral nascent way of a ‘fringe’ of unarticulated affinities about it ([1890], 1: 259).

According to James, when we subsequently realize that a particular emotion was in fact about something else, we are not bringing to light something that was previously unconscious. What we are bringing to light are the fringe elements within a previous state of consciousness. These fringes were originally experienced in an acquaintance mode, and through introspection we are able to bring these relations of the prior

experience out of the background and into the foreground of consciousness. In so doing, we can acquire knowledge about them. For James, these facts that we come to know about were originally experienced in a substantive state as opposed to a transitive state – as we have seen, the latter cannot be introspected upon. When we acquire knowledge about our emotions then, we are bringing to light relations within previously experienced substantive states of consciousness.

Cognitive and hybrid theorists who posit unconscious emotions are thus confused on two fronts according to James. First, the unconscious thought or judgment that is purportedly intrinsic to emotion is not unconscious at all. It was experienced within an acquaintance mode of cognition. Second, such judgments are not even part of what an emotion is. There is a difference between having an emotion and knowing about the emotion. The latter is a thought about the emotion, but it is not part of what an emotion is.