Craig DeLancey

An enriched version of naturalism is defended. Naturalism is too often construed foremost as something that eliminates phenomena (eliminativism), and reduces our number of explanatory tools (reductionism). In fact, the sciences almost always increase the number of entities that we need to explain the phenomena. Philosophy, in comparison, has had vastly more reductive views (such as that mind and action can be explained in terms of two kinds of mental states, belief and desire). A richer naturalism also requires recognition of the role of biology in the understanding of the mind. The view that humans are radically distinct from other kinds of animals is an error characterizing failure to appreciate the biological nature of mind.

The notion of affective engineering – the attempt to engineer affective systems – is introduced. Shallow affective engineering is defined as the recreation of outward signs or single features of affects; deep affective engineering is the attempt to create affects in artificial systems. The important role of affects in autonomous biological systems shows that AI should pursue deep affective engineering as a strategy to understand and recreate such systems. Our best understanding of emotion suggests other insights into AI, including a special focus on action, parallel processing, and diverse valuations.

A strong form of the computational theory of mind is shown to be incompatible with our best understanding of emotions. Basic emotions – because they are bodily states that influence perception, the formation and recall of memories, and motivate action – act across levels of description and function that are essentially distinct in a strong form of the computational theory of mind. Some features of emotions are shown not to be well modeled as a symbolic computational process, but each must be accounted for on a computational theory of mind since they can affect the kinds of mental processes meant to be explained by that theory.

A theory of the relation between phenomenal experience and body states is introduced that solves the puzzles discussed in Ch. 9. Using a systems‐based theory of teleofunctions (or biological functions), phenomenal consciousness is found to supervene on those teleofunctions of which we are aware. The homeostatic intensity hypothesis is introduced to explain differences in the nature and intensity of experiences. These differences are explained by the different teleofunctions that are altered by, and the degree that they are altered by, some body event such as an emotion.

After a basic review of the contemporary debate about phenomenal consciousness, four puzzles about emotional experience are discussed. First, emotions appear to be essentially motivational states, making them poor candidates for arguments, akin to inverted spectra or zombie worlds. Second, emotions differ significantly in their character, whereas some phenomenal experiences do not. Third, emotions vary significantly in their intensity, another feature lacking in some phenomenal experiences. Fourth, representations do not appear to be the best explanation for the features of emotional experience.

Internalism in moral psychology is the view that belief in a moral or practical claim must also motivate one to act on that claim. Important scientific evidence shows that a simple version of internalism must be false. However, the view of rationality and emotion developed in Ch. 7 provides a framework in which a robust version of internalism may be true of some practical and ethical judgments as a result of their emotional component. Also, attempts to do _a priori_ moral psychology, or otherwise reject empirical psychological findings, is criticized.

This chapter defends an account of rationality that allows that instances of emotions, which are not propositional attitudes can be rational. A set of criteria that are broader than traditional criteria for rationality are introduced and defended. Some instances of emotions are shown to satisfy these criteria but not the traditional ones. An important and related point is a strong rejection of the standard belief–desire psychology that dominates both the philosophy of mind and of action, and disciplines such as decision theory and economics.

The view that some emotions have a heterogeneous intentionality is defended. This is the view that different instances of these emotions, and perhaps some single instances, can have different complexities of contents. The most fundamental intentional aspect of basic emotions is found to be a minimal content necessary to direct actions, which is an invariant and persisting representation of a concrete object. More complex states include being a propositional attitude and having as an object, states of affairs. This has important implications for some views of intentionality, including being incompatible with views that deny the existence of nonpropositional representations.

Scientific evidence against cognitivism about emotions is conclusive, but is only convincing if one accepts a naturalist view of mind. Interpretationism is a leading kind of theory of mind, primarily associated with Donald Davidson and Daniel Dennett, which entails cognitivism about emotions but which is resistant to scientific evidence because it posits that mental states are not scientific entities. Using commonsense examples, I show that interpretationism cannot account for some emotional actions and therefore fails to account for basic emotions.

The chapter develops a taxonomy of emotions and other affects and introduces and defends a version of the affect program theory. A general and primitive notion of affect as a motivational state is introduced. Affects are defined as real, occurrent states, functionally identified, and not well characterized by such bivalent features as positive/negative. Some of the states typically called “emotions,” such as fear and anger, are found to be special kinds of affects, characterized primarily by the actions they cause or are associated with. These basic emotions are explained by a version of the affect program theory that takes many emotions to be evolved from action programs.

Many share the conviction that wilderness should play a special role in any environmental ethic, even though the concept of wilderness remains contentious. Ever since it has been recognized that the traditional concept of a wilderness as a region “untrammeled” by human beings has a number of intractable difficulties, there has been no consensus on how we should understand wilderness, and most definitions or descriptions of wilderness remain negative (defining wilderness in terms of what it is not). I propose a new ecological concept of wilderness, and show that this concept escapes the difficulties of the traditional concept and its recent alternatives, while being a useful ancillary to some of the leading contemporary theories in environmental ethics.

There are striking differences between Camus’s early and late philosophical essays, but Camus often claimed that his works were part of one consistent project. This paper argues that, although Camus had a significant change in his views on the consequences of the absurd, throughout his life he also had a common concern with the relation of the absurd to morality. Showing this requires us to clarify what Camus meant by the “absurd,” and identify at least three different uses of the term by Camus: lacking a purpose; lacking an explanation; and a tension between purpose and purposelessness. Clarifying the meaning of “absurd” allows one to show that Camus’s late argument against suicide, often dismissed as inadequate, is valid. This also illustrates the consistency of his concerns over time.

Consciousness and experience, William G. Lycan. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996. ISBN 0–262–12197–2 (hc)Mind as motion: explorations in the dynamics of cognition, Robert Port & Timothy Van Gelder (Eds). Cambridge, MA: MIT/Bradford, 1995. ISBN 0–262–16150–8Perception, Kathleen Akins (Ed.). New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. ISBN 0–19–508461 (hbk); 0–19–508462–4 (pbk)Context and consciousness, B. Nardi (Ed.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996. ISBN: 0–262–14058–6Catching ourselves in the act, Horst Hendriks‐Jansen. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996. ISBN 0–262–08246–2The search for mind. A new foundation for cognitive science, Sean O'Nuallain. Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1995Mindblindness: an essay on autism and theory of mind, Simon Baron‐Cohen. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995. ISBN 0–262–02384–9.

I defend and revise the systematic account of normative functions (teleofunctions), as recently developed by Gerhard Schlosser and by W. D. Christensen and M. H. Bickhard. This account proposes that teleofunctions are had by structures that play certain kinds of roles in complex systems. This theory is an alternative to the historical etiological account of teleofunctions, developed by Ruth Millikan and others. The historical etiological account is susceptible to a general ontological problem that has been under-appreciated, and that offers important reasons to adopt the systematic account. However, the systematic account must be revised to allow for two distinct kinds of teleofunctions in order to avoid another ontological problem.

The thesis defends the view that there are basic emotions---pancultural emotions that can be, but are not necessarily, propositional attitudes---and endorses a version of the affect program theory of emotions, augmented with a special stress upon the relation of emotions to motor capabilities and strategies. After developing a taxonomy of affects, I argue against the reduction of emotions to other mental states like belief, desire, or judgment. I then discuss how affects relate to belief. First, I consider the claims of social constructionists about emotion, and argue that only a weakened version of this view is tenable. Second, I consider the issue of emoting for fictions, and argue this common occurrence is incompatible with a number of cognitivist theories of emotion. Both of these discussions suggest that a better theory of the relation of emotion to propositional contents is weak content cognitivism, the view that basic emotions can have propositional contents which need not be believed. In conclusion, I consider the relation between basic emotions and intentionality. I argue that basic emotions are object-directed, and that this kind of intentionality can be explained by way of considering basic emotions as actions. This allows me to describe how basic emotions relate to rationality, and offer a special consideration of the kind of ethical internalism that a naturalist theory of basic emotions supports.

The hypothesis that some moods are emotions has been rejected in philosophy, and is an unpopular alternative in psychology. This is because there is wide agreement that moods have a number of features distinguishing them from emotions. These include: lack of an intentional object and the related notion of lack of a goal; being of long duration; having pervasive or widespread effects; and having causes rather than reasons. Leading theories of mood have tried to explain these purported features by describing moods as global changes in the mind affecting such things as predispositions to holding certain beliefs or the thresholds for triggering a range of relevant behaviors. I show instead that our best understanding of emotions can show that basic emotions either have or can appear to have each of these features. Thus, a plausible hypothesis is that certain moods are emotions. This theory is more parsimonious than the global change theories, and for this reason is to be preferred as an explanation of some moods.

I defend the hypothesis that organisms that produce and recognize meaningful utterances tend to use simpler procedures, and should use the simplest procedures, to produce and recognize those utterances. This should be a basic principle of any naturalist theory of meaning, which must begin with the recognition that the production and understanding of meanings is work. One measure of such work is the minimal amount of space resources that must go into storing a procedure to produce or recognize a meaningful utterance. This cost has an objective measure, called Kolmogorov Complexity. I illustrate the use of this measure for a naturalist theory of meaning by showing how it offers a straight solution to one of the most influential arguments for meaning irrealism: the skeptical challenge posed by Kripke.

This paper explores consequences of the claim that phenomenal experiences are physical events of great descriptive complexity. This claim is attractive both because it can explain our most perplexing intuitions about the quality of consciousness and also because it is suggestive of very productive research opportunities. I illustrate the former by showing that two of the most compelling anti-physicalist arguments about phenomenal experience – the modal argument of Kripke and the conceivability argument of Chalmers – are not sound if this claim is true. I illustrate the latter by showing that significant empirical predictions are a consequence of this claim.

The view that organisms deserve moral respect because they have their own purposes is often grounded in a specification of the biological functions that the organism has. One way to identify such functions, adopted by Gary Varner, is to determine the etiology of some behavior based on the evolution of the structures enabling it. This view suffers from some unacceptable problems, including that some organisms with profound defects will by definition have a welfare interest in their defects. For example, this view entails that the patented oncomice, intentionally engineered and bred for a genetic defect that leads to extremely high incidence of cancer, would have a welfare interest in the development of tumors. The systems-based theory of biological functions, which refers not to the evolution of structures but rather to their role in the organism, escapes these problems, and shows how a theory of an organism’s welfare interest in its purposes can be grounded in a sound naturalistic approach. This approach also has some fruitful corollaries, including an elegant theory of why species may require special moral regard.