Investigating Emotions as Functional States Distinct From Feelings

Abstract

We defend a functionalist approach to emotion that begins by focusing on emotions as central states with causal connections to behavior and to other cognitive states. The approach brackets the conscious experience of emotion, lists plausible features that emotions exhibit, and argues that alternative schemes (e.g., focusing on feelings or on neurobiology as the starting point) are unpromising candidates. We conclude with the benefits of our approach: one can study emotions in animals; one can look in the brain for the implementation of specific features; and one ends up with an architecture of the mind in which emotions are fully accommodated through their relations to the rest of cognition. Our article focuses on arguing for this general approach; as such, it is an essay in the philosophy of emotion rather than in the psychology or neuroscience of emotion.

Keywords: animal emotions; emotion; feelings; functionalism.

Figure 1.

Skeleton schematic for a functional role of emotion states. The figure underemphasizes the full functional role of emotions, which would include causal connections (both as inputs and outputs) not only to many other cognitive states, but also to other emotion states. Note. Modified from (Adolphs & Anderson, 2018).

Figure 2.

Levels of abstraction in a functional account of emotion. Note. Note that it is possible to view all of these as functional through and through. Even the implementation level could be construed as functional: it is solely through their causal properties that any neurobiological events implement algorithms. Modified from Adolphs and Anderson (2018).

Figure 3.

Table of preliminary list of the features of emotions.