I’m in agreement with the spirit of your piece written here, but I think the claim that emotions make true/false claims is not true. I think it’s more reasonably to talk in terms of intentionality and sticking to the term ‘information’. That is, emotion is ‘about’ something. I am not merely angry, but my anger is directed at a particular things. We also express information about our psychological states. We then construct propositions in relation to our emotions. When one says ‘emotions are telling us something’, I think this is best understood metaphorically.
Note the distinction between these three utterances
1. “Arghhhh” 2. “I am angry at Y.” 3. “The cause of my anger is X”
The first expresses an emotion, the emotion generally being clear in the context. The second is a description of our mental state and intentionality, that is to say what our anger is directed towards. The third is a claim about the cause of the anger.
Now, when you say that our emotions may make ‘false claims’ or have ‘false information’. I think you’re really talking about utterance 2. The ‘hangry’ is in relation to utterance 3. The emotion expressed in utterance 1 is not truth-apt. It is a mere expression.
This may seem pedantic; perhaps it is pendantic. I suppose it depends on how strictly I’m supposed to take the idea that emotions can be ‘wrong’ or ‘right’ in the sense of being false/true.
I’m in agreement with the spirit of your piece written here, but I think the claim that emotions make true/false claims is not true. I think it’s more reasonably to talk in terms of intentionality and sticking to the term ‘information’. That is, emotion is ‘about’ something. I am not merely angry, but my anger is directed at a particular things. We also express information about our psychological states. We then construct propositions in relation to our emotions. When one says ‘emotions are telling us something’, I think this is best understood metaphorically.
Note the distinction between these three utterances
1. “Arghhhh”
2. “I am angry at Y.”
3. “The cause of my anger is X”
The first expresses an emotion, the emotion generally being clear in the context. The second is a description of our mental state and intentionality, that is to say what our anger is directed towards. The third is a claim about the cause of the anger.
Now, when you say that our emotions may make ‘false claims’ or have ‘false information’. I think you’re really talking about utterance 2. The ‘hangry’ is in relation to utterance 3. The emotion expressed in utterance 1 is not truth-apt. It is a mere expression.
This may seem pedantic; perhaps it is pendantic. I suppose it depends on how strictly I’m supposed to take the idea that emotions can be ‘wrong’ or ‘right’ in the sense of being false/true.