Does the Perceptual Model offer a successful account of recalcitrant emotion?

 Intro

Emotion is complicated and no one approach has captured all the aspects of it. Emotional recalcitrance allows us to evaluate possible issues with emotional models and see which are more successful than others. Through a personal introspection, this paper looks at how successfully the perceptual model handles key aspects of multiple instances of a specific recalcitrant emotional episode over time.

Emotion

Emotion has a length history from Kant and Hume to Darwin the subject has been tackled by philosophers and scientists alike (Blackburn, 2016). Their exact nature and a model that truthfully and entirely encapsulates them is an active area for disagreement.

Colloquially the Cambridge English dictionary defines emotions as “a strong feeling such as love or anger, or strong feelings in general” which at best is vague and although has describes elements of our experiences it does not seem to entirely capture what emotions are (Cambridge University Press, n.d.). Philosophers trying to develop models that give us a more explicit means of understanding emotions are split over a number of approaches, the feeling, cognitive, conative, judgemental and perceptual.

Emotions as bodily feelings, as proposed by William James, have emotions as involuntary reactions to our environment that come about as we become aware of sensory events (Price, 2015).

Cognitive models or evaluative theories work on the opposite assumption that, emotions, rather than being bodily feelings are entirely mental, either as particular kinds of mental states or caused by mental states (Scarantino & Sousa, 2018).

Cognitive models break into different types with some looking at emotions as having intentions, known as conative models and others seeing emotions as having epistemic value, being some sort of judgement. (Goldie, 2004)

What is generally accepted is they can take place over varying periods. With short term reactions, medium-term episodes, and longer-term attitudes being an acceptable means of grouping the possibilities (Price, 2015).

Research into emotions across cultures performed by Paul Ekman has shown that there are a core set of universal emotions (Ekman, 2003). Within this research Ekman also proposes that emotions can form a kind of affect programme that trigger reliable reactions to particular events. This aligns with a lot of thought that claims emotions necessarily are directed towards an object or a set of propositional conditions.

These universal emotions are seen by some as the basic building blocks that form more complex emotions, a product of both nature and nurture. These affect programs, although initially given to us by nature, can be moulded by culture (Scarantino & Sousa, 2018).

The final kind of model mentioned, the perceptual model, looks to answer questions posed by feeling, conative and judgemental models of emotion and build upon the successes of each of them (Tappolet, 2016).

Perceptual Model

The perceptual model describes Emotions as perceptual experiences of evaluative properties (Tappolet, 2016). In detail an experience that has phenomenological character, there is something it is like to have them (Siegel, 2016), one that has information that allows a consciousness to experience them and perform further analysis that may inform further action or insight. The model is primarily aimed at explaining emotional episodes as opposed to shorter reactions or longer attitudes (Brady, 2013).

The diagrams below aim to pull together the properties and flows described by proponents of the perceptual model using the modelling language ArchiMate (TOGAF, 2019) but using the more limited interpretation outlined in the following (McCumiskey, 2020).

Figure 1: Information Objects based on the perceptual model linking the response, its links to response programs, concepts, metal and sensory information and emotions non-conceptual type.

The mental information that we experience has representational content that can be both from our bodily feelings as sensory information or internal or mental feelings. These are related to objects and events in the world. Although they can be related to conceptual information they are actually a type of non-conceptual information (Tappolet, 2016).

The perceptual model takes an emotion to only be an emotion if the experiences of evaluative properties are not misfiring and a prima facie justified. Where prima facie indicates sufficient information to establish a fact.

Figure 2: Information flows based on the perceptual model. Showing the world, time and an animal's relevant conceptual workings for emotion and how they relate to the world and time. (BCcampus, n.d.)

The model places the perceiver as a part of the world with the perceiver being any animal with an element of conscious (Tappolet, 2016). This is supported by the non-conceptual nature the model places on emotions due to the fact that other animals and human babies appear to experience emotion despite not having a grasp of a natural language.

The perceptual model by having emotional information be sourced by both sensory and mental processes combines the views of feeling and cognitive models but with both still being beyond the conscious control of the perceiver (Brady, 2013), although a behavioural response can be triggered by the perceiver in the manner of the affect program outlined by Ekman (Ekman, 2003).

The interactions described above rely on the view of emotion as an encapsulated system where internal information of each module is not directly guided or interacted with by conscious functions but some signals are passed between the interfacing modules that may be in error or interpreted incorrectly. (Brady, 2007)

Recalcitrance

Recalcitrant emotion: A recalcitrant emotional response is one that conflicts with the subjects judgements about the situation, in the sense that, if the subject’s judgements are true their emotional response must be misplaced (Price, 2015).

Recalcitrance has formed the core means to both support and critique many models of emotion, the perceptual model among them. Where the core concern is the disturbing possibility of a conflict between our emotions and our beliefs leaving us to regard emotions as irrational (Brady, 2007).

Introspection on the recalcitrance of depression

A means of evaluating if the perceptual model and its view of emotion as perceptual experiences of evaluative properties can successfully explain recalcitrance is an introspection on a reliable emotional episode that is recalcitrant in its nature, that has been observed across many people.

My brain has been diagnosed as suffering from chronic depression, formerly labelled dysthymia. Defined as a depressed mood more days than not for more than 2 years with the presence of:

1. Poor Appetite

2. Insomnia or Hypersomnia

3. Low energy or fatigue

4. Low Self Esteem

5. Poor concentration or difficulty making decisions

6. Feelings of hopelessness

Further details and caveats can be found in DSM V. (American Psychiatric Association, 2013)

A regular episode, waking up involves apathy, a combination of feeling nothing and immense physical fatigue whose response program is aimed at doing nothing. The general sense that work, meeting a friend, watching a film, in fact any task is not worth doing, that there would be no value in it.

The second component of the episode is my evaluative judgements on the social, psychological or economic worth of getting up and my memories which indicate that all of the things I’m up to have been of value and emotionally enriching. These clearly indicate the conclusion of my apathy is not in fact what I think. My current emotional episode is not an appropriate response in this sense.

The final part of the episode prior to it ending is, having been unable to defeat feelings with my reasons both intentional and judgemental. This combines both my frustration of the moment with my memories, that this has happened nearly every day, for several hours for over a decade, leading a sense of hopelessness where my emotions and reasons do in fact align in worse moments. The only way to describe this might be akin to screaming silently in the dark.

Finally, I had no well-reasoned idea or concept for what I was going through until my mid-20s when I sought medical help which provided knowledge on these episodes.

The emotional episodes can be affected by mental training such as Mindfulness Meditation (Williams & Penman, 2011) or Cognitive behavioural therapy (Satterfield, 2015). It can also be affected by drugs as mild as caffeine and as strong as prescription anti-depressants. Both cognitive and chemical methods have been observed as having similar levels of effectiveness (DeRubeis, et al., 2008). Demonstrating emotions involve physical and mental causes or at least have causal origins in both.

Perceptual Model’s account of recalcitrant emotion

The perceptual model successful identifies the sensory or feeling as well as cognitive elements of emotion and that both can play a part within an emotional episode based on my experiences. They also seem to support the non-conceptual nature of emotion, as until finding a reasoned explanation I was unable to understand why or what I was going through but experienced it all the same, similar to the position of both babies and animals.

Figure 3: Modified perceptual model information objects replacing Conceptual and Non Conceptual with just an association with natural language

The Conceptual vs Non Conceptual point is one where there may be an argument that this is unclearly labelled. It gives the impression of a false dichotomy between conceptual vs non-conceptual. Just because currently there is no language to explain something does not mean the information itself is inexplicable or that the conscious involved has no ability to understand it. Language within linguistics has been observed as being generated as well as changing over time (Trask, 1994). Our inability to communicate in natural language with animals and babies does not mean they cannot have some internal understanding of what they are or how to act upon them. The fact remains we do communicate with both but not one that neatly lends itself to natural language.

Perceptual Model’s account of recalcitrant emotion

The core arguments against the perceptual model involve if it can explain the irrationality of recalcitrant emotions. Firstly we must accept that recalcitrant emotions are irrational as argued by Helm, as recalcitrant emotions because they run counter to evaluative judgements (Helm, 2015). The other angle is that emotions, like our senses, can when they misfire be considered illusions (Brady, 2007).

Irrationality as a view that gives authority to some other faculty than reason (Blackburn, 2016) does not seem to hold in the introspection outlined. Although the emotion experienced does not in a particular episode bend to my or anyone else’s will, it is also not in authority over my mind merely my behaviour. Over time reason, either internally through cognitive therapies or externally through chemical therapies prevails and maintains authority over the rate at which emotions misfire.

This change over time beyond a particular episode does not however fully support the perceptual models' ability to explain recalcitrant emotion. Its focus on an episode, as opposed to a series of like episodes that can be influenced or a longer term attitude, sees it miss a key way in which emotions change over time. Goldie’s thoughts on how we can be systematically misleading and emotions are a more complex process that the perceptual model lays out but it misses the involvement of memory in emotions and time as key parts of how we must consider the concept (Goldie, 2004).

The gap is not in whether emotions are illusions or irrational but rather the means by which the rate at which they mislead and how reason could use their evaluative properties to reduce that rate. What seems to be missing is that rather than focussing on emotion as a system we focus on an episode and whether it is appropriate or not. Our model of emotion must expand to include a means of handling error and change.

Figure 4: Perceptual model information flows with memory added as an encapsulated system

With this expanded perceptual model that is part of a complex process but one we are not aware of (Goldie, 2004) but can influence through reason or chemicals must still be able to explain illusions. Recalcitrant emotions as illusions would hold that they are mistaken or inaccurate (Brady, 2007). This also does not seem entirely true of the introspection. Although my emotions and judgements are in conflict it is not entirely true that my emotions are mistaken. The perceptual model, correctly I think, characterises these phenomena with evaluative properties. A depressed episode may be recalcitrant but it is not illusionary, it is a useful piece of information on what unconscious parts of our minds may be suffering from.

It is perhaps better to think of recalcitrant emotion as a guiding force in how we make decisions about how we think and act. That a conflict between our emotions and evaluative judgements or intentions is not irrational or illusionary but similar to when we find a contradiction in our reasoning or see we have a medical problem that we might not have felt. These instances rather than being disturbing are a call to action, for us to perform more reasoning and to understand why this conflict occurs and to take practical action to resolve it (Doring, 2014).

Unlike some proponents of the perceptual model, information from sensory or mental systems cannot be prima facie justified (Tappolet, 2016). There is no model or indeed system that could exist without error (Hofstadter, 1979). Although the perceptual model does have the component parts to describe a recalcitrant episode it does not have a well-articulated and accepted mechanism for handling different kinds of error that could take place in each of the encapsulated systems and is therefore incomplete. A complete emotional model should consider each of the possible errors, the ones that we might be able to perceive and then the actions that should prompt, including but not limited to the irrational, the illusionary and the truthful but contradictory shown by recalcitrance.

Conclusion

The perceptual model is viewed as being more successful than feeling, conative and judgemental models for accounting for emotional recalcitrance. However through introspection on multiple instances of a specific emotional episode over time a few concerns and issues remain. There could be a false dichotomy within the perceptual model based on its view of conceptual rather than non-conceptual information, which could be better articulated as described vs non described emotions. The perceptual model is successful in its definition of emotion but the model is incomplete as its focus on specific emotional episodes does not allow it to successfully capture the relationship between reason and emotion allowing for arguments of the irrationality of recalcitrant emotion to be made. This is because it does not  yet have a well-articulated view of how the complete set of errors that may occur between the various encapsulated modules of our brain and body manifest themselves in the form of perceptual experiences with evaluative properties, and the relationship reason has with these over time.

Figures

Figure 1: Information Objects based on the perceptual model linking the response, its links to response programs, concepts, metal and sensory information and emotions non-conceptual type. 2

Figure 2: Information flows based on the perceptual model. Showing the world, time and an animal's relevant conceptual workings for emotion and how they relate to the world and time. (BCcampus, n.d.). 3

Figure 3: Modified perceptual model information objects replacing Conceptual and Nonconceptual with just an association with natural language. 4

Figure 4: Perceptual model information flows with memory added as an encapsulated system.. 5

 

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