Emotions

This bookupdates Aristotle’s discoveries about psychology and ethics to solve two age-old philosophic problems. (1) Empirically, how do we know what is valuable? I.e., how do we get an « ought » from an « is »? (2) How can human consciousness, with such unique aspects as free will, reason and love, be understood as natural, neither supernatural nor merely physical? A new theory of emotion, rooted in biology yet rising to the elevated level of human consciousness, is the path to these solutions.

First, human consciousness is a real, biological phenomenon, known primarily by introspection. Recognizing this provides a non-materialist yet naturalist and empirical approach to the mind. Second, emotions are a species of (Aristotelian) pleasure and pain. What makes emotions different from physical pleasure or pain is that human emotions are largely caused by past, chosen thinking about one’s experiences. Just as physical pleasure and pain signal that one’s body is functioning well or ill in some respect, so emotions signal that one’s consciousness is functioning well or ill in some respect. The biological role of the conscious mind is to manage one’s pursuit of goals. Emotions signal the well- or ill-functioning of this managing activity.

Thus, emotions provide indispensable-though fallible-data for rationally determining what is good or bad for one’s life. Competing emotions are processed by thinking, with reason’s role being to decide their overall appropriateness for action. And this appropriateness is not at the level of mere material survival, but of the flourishing and virtue of a living being with an expansive, reasoning mind.

Equally crucial, emotions (and physical pleasure and pain) are urges to act. This dual nature of emotion-as both data and action-tendency-provides the link between « is » and « ought. » The implicit basic meaning of the « ought »judgment is: « this action-tendency that I perceive in myself is either consistent with or more causally fundamental in my life processes than my other action-tendencies. » Values are explained as both uniquely personal and either consistent with or contradictory to facts, and thus, in different respects, both subjective and objective.