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287HEIDEGGERSATTUNEMENTANDTHENEUROPSYCHOLOGYOFEMOTION
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 1: 287312, 2002. 2002Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
Heideggers attunement and the neuropsychology of emotion
MATTHEW RATCLIFFEDepartment of Philosophy, University of Durham, Durham, UK
(E-mail: mratcliffe@philosophy.ucc.ie)
Received 29 May 2001; received in revised version 13 January 2002
Abstract. I outline the early Heideggers views on mood and emotion, and then relate his
central claims to some recent finding in neuropsychology. These findings complement
Heidegger in a number of important ways. More specifically, I suggest that, in order to make
sense of certain neurological conditions that traditional assumptions concerning the mind are
constitutionally incapable of accommodating, something very like Heideggers account of
mood and emotion needs to be adopted as an interpretive framework. I conclude by support-
ing Heideggers insistence that the sciences constitute a derivative means of disclosing the
world and our place within it, as opposed to an ontologically and epistemologically privi-
leged domain of inquiry.
Heidegger and attunement
InBeing and Time, Heidegger is highly critical of the traditional philosophi-
cal neglect of emotion. He remarks how, according to the traditional view,
affects and feelings come under the theme of psychical phenomena, func-
tioning as a third class of these, usually along with ideation [Vorstellen] and
volition. They sink to the level of accompanying phenomena (1962, p. 178).1
In other words, emotions and moods are construed as a superficial subjective
gloss that taints our cognition of the objective world and are considered pe-
ripheral to an understanding of how we represent and engage with the world.
Heideggers account is, to put it simply, a complete reversal of this sort of
view.2 Emotions, and more specifically moods, are philosophically central for
Heidegger.
3
They are not merely subjective or psychic phenomena but anirreducible pre-theoretical background, relative to which the world and the
manner in which we are situated within it is disclosedor rendered intelligible.
To appreciate Heideggers account of mood and the manner of its depar-
ture from traditional accounts, it is important to grasp the way in which it is
situated in the context of Heideggers broader project in Being and Time.
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Heideggers primary concern inBeing and Time is the question of the mean-ing of Being. The Being of beings is not itself a being (1962, pp. 2526)
but a meaning-giving background, an understanding of which is presupposed
by the intelligibility of worldly beings. Heidegger claims that our understand-
ing of Being has historically been hidden and obfuscated by our explicit con-
cerns with specific beings, and proposes to uncover this implicit understanding.
To do so, he selects a specific being as his theme, as a clue from which to
start an inquiry into Being. Heidegger chooses ourselves as his focus; we are
the beings that have an implicit understanding of Being, an understanding that
philosophy can attempt to make explicit. He christens the subject of his in-
vestigation Dasein, in order to distance himself from traditional philosophi-
cal construals of the self as a theoretical, internal subjectivity that relates
intentionally to entities in an objective, external world. Heidegger contends
that, in construing the self as such, philosophers have obscured the way in
which we relate to the world and have thus also obscured the nature of our
understanding of Being:
In this characterization of intentionality as an extant relation between two things extant,
a psychical subject and a physical object, the nature as well as the mode of being of inten-
tionality is completely missed. (1982, p. 60)
Heidegger claims that this mischaracterization is evident in the emphasis that
philosophers have placed on detached, theoretical cognition of an object by a
subject (as epitomised by the positive sciences) over active involvement with
a world of tools and equipment. He argues, contrary to such emphasis on
theoretical intentionalities, that we do not generally encounter beings as de-
tached, theoretical entities [Vorhanden] but as available or ready-to-hand
[Zuhanden] and entwined in a tacit, holistic contexture of equipment.4 In
emphasising Zuhandenheit, Heidegger does not want to reduce all theory to
practice,5 but to draw attention to the way that philosophical thinking has been
restricted by its emphasis on Vorhandenheit, by its exclusive attention to what
Heidegger thinks is just one way in which we encounter beings.6 However,
he does claim that our practical engagements with the world constitute a bet-
terclue to the nature of our understanding of Being than the traditional em-
phasis on theoretical intentionalities.
Employing his account of practical activity as a guide, Heidegger goes onto claim that there is a kind of holistic, meaning-giving background that is pre-
supposed by the sense of both theoretical and practical encounters with the
world. This background, which Heidegger terms care [Sorge], constitutes
his initial characterisation of the Daseins understanding of Being. Care is that
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for granted background relative to which any conceivable beings and engage-ments with beings are disclosed as intelligible; a mood assails us. It come
neither from outside nor from inside, but arises out of Being-in-the-world,
as a way of such Being. (1962, p. 176). As moods are constitutive of our
understanding of Being (that whereby beings are rendered intelligible), we
cannot escape moods or accommodate them fully into theoretical perspectives.9
Mood is not a property of the theoretically characterised subject, but a more
primordialgroundwhereby things can show up for us as this or that, an
all-enveloping cradle which discloses or gives meaning to all our conceptions
of theoretical beings and all our engagements with practical beings.
Thus we can see how mood takes on a new importance for Heidegger and
how this philosophical elevation of mood is a consequence of the reorientation
of philosophical perspective that is central to his overall project inBeing and
Time. Heidegger takes the emphasis away from theoretical cognition and
claims that all such cognition presupposes a more primordial, disclosive un-
derstanding, of which moods are an essential constituent. As a consequence,
moods are no longer a subjective window-dressing on privileged theoretical
perspectives but a background that constitutes the sense of all intentionalities,
whether theoretical or practical. As I will argue in the following sections this
centrality is not restricted to those emotional states that we commonly term
moods but can also be adapted so as to encompass emotions more gener-
ally.
Heidegger on science and mood
Heideggers dramatic revision of traditional assumptions concerning mood
points to major philosophical implications for the status of scientific views
of the world and scientific theories of emotion more specifically. Heidegger
proposes that the theoretical, cognitive, detached perspective which the sci-
ences adopt and take to be a privileged epistemic conduit to fundamental
ontology is in fact just one way ofdisclosing beings, which by no means dis-
closes the way things are in a way more fundamental than practical attitudes.
Hence philosophy and the theoretical sciences have obscured the nature of our
understanding of Being by putting one form of understanding (detached cog-
nition) on a pedestal and mistakenly construing it as a privileged perspective.
Heidegger claims that, contrary to philosophys historical preference for all
things theoretical, attunement, as a constituent of care, is more basic to our
grasp of the world and our place in it than detached, scientific cognition.
Both theoretical and practical activity presuppose a sense of world or envi-
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ronment [Umwelt] that our attunement discloses. This environment, asHeidegger explains, is a structure which even biology as a positive science
can never find and can never define, but must presuppose and constantly
employ (1962, p. 84). It is a pre-given cradle of intelligibility, a realm of
disclosedness which is constituted by our attunement: any cognitive de-
termining has its existential-ontological Constitution [Konstitution] in the
attunement of Being-in-the-world; but pointing this out is not to be confused
with attempting to surrender science ontically to feeling. (1962, p. 177).
Heidegger is claiming that mood is a condition of sense for theoretical in-
tentionalities and the disclosure of theoretical entities but he is not main-
taining thatfeelings replace such intentionalities. Rather, mood isprior to
theoretical intentionalities and its fundamentality is passed over by the sci-
ences, which restrict their deliberations to beings that have already been dis-
closed in a particular manner. Thus the sciences, according to Heidegger,
cannot legitimately lay claim to a privileged perspective on moods and emo-
tions. This is because attunement, construed as a precondition for the intelligi-
bility of theoretical detachment, serves to undermine the very epistemological
and ontological assumptions that privilege theoretical attitudes in a philosophi-
cal account of mood and emotion. The theoretical attitude cannot be taken as
basic if its sense rests on a constitutive background of mood, and the entities
it discloses should not be taken as basic to what is if the attitude that renders
them intelligible is itself derivative.
Given that the theoretical, scientific perspective is, for Heidegger, an inad-
equate means of grasping the sense ofBefindlichkeit, one might wonder howan appreciation of the way in which he maintains that moods disclose the
world and our place in it might be reached. Heideggers answer is, in brief,
that a certain kind of emotional state is able to disclose the more general way
in which moods disclose; it discloses disclosure, by punctuating the way in
which tacit moods constitute the way in which we find ourselves enveloped
in a world of projects, purposes and significance. This brings us to Heideggers
discussion ofAngstin Being and Time and What is Metaphysics?.
Angstand the punctuation of attunement
In What is Metaphysics?,10 Heidegger is concerned with the way in which
emotion can disclose disclosure. He focuses on a specific emotion, anxiety
[Angst], which he regards as especially salient in respect of its potential to
reveal the underlying structure of the way in which Dasein ordinarily finds
itself in a world. Despite the fact that Heidegger characterisesAngstas a
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ground-mood [Grundstimmung], I will refer to it as an emotion here. Itmanifests itself as a specific, occurrent episode rather than a prolonged,
dispositionalstate and, as such, seems closer to commonsense use of the term
emotion than mood. However, HeideggersAngstdoes seem distinct from
emotions such as fear, in that it has no specific intentional object but is in-
stead a general comportment towards beings as a whole; that in the face of
which one has anxiety is not an entity within-the-world (1962, p. 231). De-
spite this, I will argue in Section 6 that the role that Heidegger ascribes toAngst
can also be ascribed, in varying degrees, to many other states that we ordinar-
ily term emotions. Thus regardingAngstas an emotion allows one to extend
the scope of Heideggers account and apply it to the understanding of emo-
tional states in general, rather than restricting it to the specific sub-class that
we ordinarily term moods.
For Heidegger, anxiety is a suspension of the everyday significance that
beings have for us, a retreat from the familiar context of things that is disclosed
through attunement. In anxiety, things lose their familiarity, their significance;
we are pulled away from the world of familiar objects and concerns, as the
everyday attunement that ordinarily ties us to the world breaks down to re-
veal a kind of primordial unfamiliarity; the nothing:
The receding of beings as a whole that closes in on us in anxiety oppresses us. We can get
no hold on things. In the slipping away of beings only this no holds on things comes
over us and remains. Anxiety reveals the nothing. (1978, p. 101)
This nothing, Heidegger explains, is not itself a being (1978, p. 102) but a
kind of relationship between Dasein and the totality of beings, which severs
our everyday ties to beings and thus discloses the way in which attunement
ordinarily anchors us to a world.
In the experience ofAngst, our relationship with the world disintegrates
completely, revealing in the process the dependence of all intentionalities,
whether theoretical or practical, on everyday attunement. Heidegger claims
that even propositional logic depends for its sense on a meaning-giving cra-
dle of attunement. The nothing of anxiety constitutes a profound disturbance
of our primordial, attuned familiarity with the world and, when that breaks
down, so does logic. As Heidegger puts it, the idea of logic itself disinte-
grates in the turbulence of a more original questioning (1978, p. 105).So Heidegger is again turning traditional philosophical views on their head
by making the claim that the intelligibility of propositional logic is itself para-
sitic on a more original world-disclosing background of mood and that, when
this attunement is punctuated by a certain kind of emotional episode, even
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logic breaks down. His play on the nothing being prior to logical negationis intended to convey this. Hence Heidegger is advocating a radical transfor-
mation of traditional epistemologies and ontologies, which emphasise theo-
retical detachment and propositional logic as primary elements in the project
of self-understanding, whilst playing down emotions. For Heidegger, moods
and their primordial disruption constitute a more originalway of understand-
ing ourselves and our world than any form of theoretical cognition.
Heideggers account ofAngstproved to be such a departure from accepted
views that Rudolph Carnap (1959) famously claimed it to be not only mis-
guided but utterly meaningless. According to Carnap, Heidegger departs so
radically from established conditions of use for emotion terms that his account
is bereft of any clear relationship to accepted criteria of application for words
and sentences, criteria which constitute linguistic meaning. Whats more, when
logic breaks down, we do not find a more original form of questioning but in-
anity. Carnap goes on to claim that, when we read philosophers like Heidegger,
our past associations with previous word usage serve to sustain a superficial
illusion of meaning. However, all that is really at play is a feeling of mean-
ing. Hence absence of semantic content is obscured by the subjective feel-
ings that meaningless linguistic constructions continue to generate. Carnap
concludes that, as the work of philosophers such as Heidegger is mere feel-
ing bereft of all sense, they are in the wrong job:
Perhaps music is the purest means of expression of the basic attitude because it is entirely
free from any reference to objects. The harmonious feeling or attitude, which the meta-physician tries to express in a monistic system, is more clearly expressed in the music of
Mozart. [. . . .] Metaphysicians are musicians without musical ability. (1959, p. 80)
Carnaps own extreme brand of meaning-verificationism has since died a slow
but fairly decisive death, thus allowing for the possibility that Heidegger is
talking about what we ordinarily term emotions and moods, whilst say-
ing something completely novel at the same time. However, Carnaps charges
against Heidegger have remained influential in certain philosophical circles.
Indeed they have done much to precipitate Heideggers near exclusion from
Anglo-American philosophy throughout the twentieth century and exacerbate
the so-called analytic/continental schism in philosophy more generally. As
Polt puts it:
What is Metaphysics? led indirectly [via Carnap] to Heideggers banishment from the
world of Anglo-American philosophy, and for decades this banishment prevented most
English-speaking philosophers from using Heidegger as food for thought. (Polt, 1999, p.
122)
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This is perhaps because Carnaps critique can be expressed independently ofhis more general commitment to verificationism and in a manner that still
strikes many philosophers as plausible:
1. Logic and emotion are utterly distinct and logic is impervious to emotion.
Any claim to the contrary is either senseless or plain wrong.
2. The contention that logic disintegrates is intolerable, and can only result in
irrationalism and obscurantism, the antithesis of any respectable intellec-
tual activity.
Hence the conviction remains that moods and emotions can have no bearing
on the integrity of propositional logic. Much of philosophy also retains Carnaps
assumption that scientific objectivity constitutes a privileged epistemic stand-point best suited to revealing the way things most fundamentally are. So
the continuing neglect of Heideggers account11 is, I suggest, essentially
a symptom of radically divergent philosophical starting points. In a nut-
shell, Heideggers account is antithetical to generally accepted assumptions
of both philosophical and scientific inquiry. These assumptions constitute a
deeply sedimented framework of ontological and epistemological presuppo-
sitions concerning the human mind and its place in the world. Detached con-
templation is seen as the primary perspective from which philosophy should
be done and the structure of thought is predominantly characterised in terms
of theoretical, propositional intentionalities which reflect that primacy.12
Heidegger claims that philosophers working within this framework haveneglected emotion, preferring to focus on theoretical cognition, whilst regard-
ing emotion as a kind of superficial subjective film that clouds objective judge-
ment. Things have changed however; philosophical interest in emotion has
increased in recent years, as has resistance to the view that emotions are wholly
separate from intentional states. For example, Solomon (1977) argues that
emotions are themselves essentially cognitive/intentional and cannot thus be
adequately characterised as noncognitive feelings or affects. There is now a
complex debate between those who regard emotions as primarily cognitive,
intentional, evaluative and voluntary, and those who regard them as non-
cognitive, involuntary passions or feelings. There are also many hybrid ac-
counts (e.g., Lyons, 1980),13 which claim that emotions involve a combination
of cognitive evaluation and physiological disturbance or feeling. Indeed, a
plethora of sophisticated views have emerged in recent years, incorporating
different elements from the two contrasting pictures.14
However, despite this increased interest in emotion, the structure of the
debate still presupposes that theoretical, detached cognition epitomises the
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nature of our most basic relationship with the world. Emotions are either evalu-ative constituents of propositional attitudes or they are distinct from such at-
titudes and thus peripheral to the way we relate to the world. The terms of
current philosophical debates continue to privilege theoretical perspectives and
propositional attitudes, and hence preclude any engagement with Heideggers
view, insofar as they are conducted within a set of shared presuppositions
concerning the nature of human understanding which are utterly at odds with
Heideggers philosophical starting point.
My focus here will not be on the recent philosophical discussion but on some
scientific findings which, I will suggest, go against the ingrained assumptions
underlying contemporary philosophical debates and point to some interest-
ing and informative comparisons with Heideggers account. In the following
sections I shall argue that, contrary to pervasive assumptions concerning the
epistemological fundamentality of the detached, theoretical perspective and
the ontological fundamentality of the view of the world that it discloses, some
of the science actually seems to be coming out on Heideggers side. I will in-
troduce some findings in neuropsychology that appear to support Heideggers
general account of mood and emotion over accepted views, even endorsing
his claims that certain emotions can punctuate world-disclosing backgrounds
of attunement in a way that is more basic orprimordialthan propositional
reasoning. I will suggest that Heideggers account is both meaningful and
plausible, serving as an illuminatingperspectival frameworkfrom which to
interpret certain neuropsychological case studies that traditional views seem
constitutionally incapable of accommodating. Thus Heideggers radical de-parture from deeply sedimented philosophical presuppositions is neither
wholly antithetical to science nor meaningless but rather an informative
perspectival reorientation. My discussion will point to some wide-ranging
repercussions for science and philosophy more generally . . . and serve to
muddy the waters that separate scientifically minded philosophers from bad
musicians.
The neurology of emotion: Damasios theory
Antonio Damasio, in his discussions of the neurology of emotion, outlines what
he takes to be the traditional biological view of emotion:
The old brain core handles basic biological regulation down in the basement, while up
above the neo-cortex deliberates with wisdom and subtlety. Upstairs in the cortex there is
reason and willpower, while downstairs in the sub-cortex there is emotion and all that weak,
fleshy stuff. (1995, p. 128)
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Damasio claims that science, like philosophy, has historically paid too littleattention to emotion, regarding it as something distinct from and additional
to the structures and processes that comprise human cognition.15 In contrast
to this picture, Damasio argues that the machinery of intelligence and reason-
ing is not only built upon the machinery of emotion but also from within it.
The psychological correlate of this neurological organisation is that emotions
constitute a kind of cradle within which cognition rests. Any neurological
damage to the working of emotions therefore has a profound effect on human
reasoning, which essentially takes place relative to a background of moods
and emotions.
Damasio (1995) surveys a number of case studies of emotional impairments
resulting from specific neurological damage. He begins with the well-known
case of Phineas Gage. A mining accident occurred in 1848, involving an ex-
plosion, which injured Gage in a rather gruesome way; the iron enters Gages
left cheek, pierces the base of the skull, traverses the front of his brain, and
exits at high speed through the top of the head (1995, p. 4). Gage slowly
recovered from his injuries and seemed superficially normal but, as time went
on, it became apparent that his personality had altered radically; Gage was
no longer Gage (1995, p. 8). Gage was unable to keep a goal in mind, struc-
ture his action, sustain a chain of thought or hold down a job. He appeared to
lose all sense of his social responsibilities and commitments to his family. It
was as though his life had lost context and structure. In conjunction with this,
he displayed a near absence of emotion. Damasio observes how contempo-
rary neurological patients with similar injuries also suffer from both an ab-sence or comparative lack of overt emotion and an inability to perform in
practical and social situations, to sustain a chain of reasoning, finish a task,
focus on a problem or commit themselves to a course of action. In the case of
one neurological patient, Damasio remarks that the machinery for his deci-
sion making was so flawed that he could no longer be an effective social be-
ing. (1995, p. 38)
Hence there are cases where emotional impairment is reliably coupled with
a catastrophic failure of practical reasoning. Neurological studies of the dam-
age suggest that this coupling is no coincidence. A complex of intimately
connected structures are involved, as opposed to distinct brain systems in-
volved in distinct tasks that are coincidentally damaged together. On the ba-sis of such studies, Damasio proposes that emotions play a central role in the
cognitive processes that guide choices and ensure that we choose effectively:
. . . there appears to be a collection of systems in the human brain consistently dedicated
to the goal-oriented thinking process we call reasoning, and to the response selection we
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call decision making, with a special emphasis on the personal and social domain. This samecollection of systems is also involved in emotion and feeling, and is partly dedicated to
processing body signals. (1995, p. 70)
In any situation, we are faced with a combinatorial explosion of possibilities
for deliberation and action. However, if we are to deliberate and act effectively,
we can only consider a few of these options explicitly and the ones that we
consider had better be relevant to our predicament at the time. Damasio ar-
gues that emotions play a role in constraining and structuring the realm of
explicit deliberation, restricting deliberation to a small number of options and
structuring patterns of reasoning, so that we remain focussed and relevant in
our activities, able to act towards goals without becoming distracted by trivia.16
Thus emotions and feelings serve to constrain and focus our attention, so thatwe only consider from a pre-structured set of options.
Damasios (1995, 1996) more specific hypothesis is that emotions are
cognitively mediated body states. He christens this theory the somatic marker
hypothesis. The idea is that somatic (body) signals are associated with per-
ceptual stimuli, either as a result of innate or learned neural connections, and
thus mark those stimuli. Different perceptions can be associated with vari-
ous kinds of body states, which may serve as alarm signals or, alternatively,
as enticing invitations. According to Damasio, a complex of such signals fo-
cuses and structures our cognitive interactions with the world. Once we in-
corporate complex learned associations between perceptions and body states,
a vast web of somatic markers can develop. These signals serve to eliminate
certain possibilities, whichfeel bad, from a choice set and focus deliberation
upon otherfeel goodsignals. Thus cognition is constrained, enabled and struc-
tured by a background of emotion-perception correlations, that manifest them-
selves as a changing background of implicit representations of body states
(which may or may not involve actual changes in body state):17
Preorganized mechanisms are important not just for basic biological regulation. They also
help the organism classify things and events as good or bad because of their possible
impact on survival. In other words, the organism has a basic set of preferences - or crite-
ria, biases or values. Under their influence and the agency of experience, the repertoire of
things categorized as good or bad grows rapidly, and the ability to detect new good and
bad things grows exponentially. (1995, p. 117)
Hence, according to Damasio, emotions are not themselves intentional or
cognitive but neither are they separate from cognitive processes. Instead, they
constitute a kind of cradle which structures explicit deliberation and ones
practical comportment toward specific intentional objects. So emotions dont
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just cloud reason (although they can do); they are also a prerequisite for suc-cessful reasoning, in that they tune us to the world, making it relevant to us
by opening up certain possibilities for explicit deliberation and closing off
others.
Damasio proceeds to distinguish between different kinds of emotion. There
are primary emotions, which are innate, hard-wired connections between body
states and types of perceptual objects/situations, such as snakes or small, dark
spaces. However, in the case of creatures such as ourselves, equipped with
the ability to learn a vast myriad of new things, secondary emotions are in the
majority. These are learned associations between types of environment or
perceptual object and bodily states. For example, one is not born with a fear
of the dentist but one often learns it. At the neurological level, primary emo-
tions depend solely on the limbic system whereas secondary also incorporate
the prefrontal and somatosensory cortices (1995, pp. 133134).
Both primary and secondary emotions involve discrete responses to envi-
ronmental conditions, which serve to structure ones interactions with the
environment. Sometimes these responses are implicit and hidden from delib-
eration but they can also manifest themselves as consciousfeelings. In addi-
tion to primary and secondary emotions and feelings, Damasio also emphasises
background feeling, which is, he claims, the most neurologically and psy-
chologically fundamental of the three emotion categories. Though Damasio
emphasises that his concept of background feeling departs in some ways
from commonsense conceptions of mood,18 it has much in common with
Heideggers description of primordial mood. (Hence I will use the termsmood and background feeling interchangeably.) According to Damasio,
background feelings are ever-present, although ordinarily tacit. They serve to
structure the everyday ways in which we encounter the world, the basic ways
in which we find ourselves in the world:
. . . I am postulating another variety of feeling which I suspect preceded the others in
evolution. I call it background feelingbecause it originates in background body states
rather than in emotional states. It is not the Verdi of grand emotion, nor the Stravinsky of
intellectualized emotion but rather a minimalist in tone and beat, the feeling of life itself,
the sense of being. (1995, p. 150)
Background feelings are instantiated by tacit, dispositional representations ofbody states and constitute a kind of anchor that ties us to the world and opens
it up as a meaningful realm of deliberation and action. They are, if you like,
the rhythm of life, a quiet metronome, whose beat structures, or attunes, all
our interaction with the world and underlies explicit cognitive deliberation.
Damasio appeals to a number of neuropsychological studies and also to liter-
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ary descriptions of profound distortions of mood. For example, he quotesStyrons lucid description of the experience of depression:
Rational thought was usually absent from my mind at such times, hence trance. I can think
of no more apposite word for this state of being, a condition of helpless stupor in which
cognition was replaced by that positive and active anguish.19
Such descriptions, in conjunction with Damasios accounts of neurological
patients, suggest that mood is not merely something that clouds explicit judge-
ment but something that determines the way in which the world is opened up
for explicit deliberation. Moods and emotions are neither cognitive in the tra-
ditional sense nor mere affects, but, as for Heidegger, a background that
binds us to the world, anchoring us in a context of goals, projects and relevant
environmental patterns. Moods and emotions constitute a sense of belong-
ing or attunement, a basic feeling of orientation, of being, without which
explicit cognition could not occur. Mood, in particular, serves as a background
that constitutes ones sense of self, world and ones place in the world. It is,
quite simply, the rhythm of life.
The neurological correlate of this psychological dependence of explicit de-
liberation and cognition on background feeling is a causal dependence of
cortical function upon the function of mid-brain and limbic system structures,
which sustain an implicit map of emotional and more general bodily activ-
ity, a map that serves to modulate and structure what are traditionally thought
of as higher cognitive processes. So Damasios work points to a revision of
the traditional picture of emotion on two fronts. First of all, emotions andmoods are not explicitly cognitive but neither are they independent of cogni-
tion. Instead they constitute a pre-propositional background that enables cog-
nition; the world is encountered in the context of background feelings and
moods that structure deliberation and action. Discrete emotions rise up from
that background to focus cognition more specifically. Second, as a neurological
correlate of this psychological picture, traditionally lower brain functions
are not properly regarded as separate from higher functions but are instead
a necessary causal prerequisite for the operation of cortical processes. Phyl-
ogenetically newer brain areas rest within the cradle of old, the centrality of
brain-body feedback constituting a neurological correlate of the psychologi-
cal centrality of emotion. Mind and body are essentially welded, with emotionand embodiment incorporated as essential components in cognitive processes,
from which they cannot be separated.20
Damasios account is comprised of a collection of inter-linked hypotheses
that incorporate a number of speculative and contentious components. How-
ever, early experimental tests lend some support to both his interpretations of
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the psychological predicament of neurological patients and the nature of theirunderlying neurological damage. For example, a number of experiments have
correlated unusual emotional reactions with impaired decision-making, us-
ing skin conductance response to measure level of emotional arousal during
the performance of various tasks (1995, Ch. 9, 1996, 1997). Whilst the spe-
cifics of Damasios psychological interpretations and neurological diagnoses
are open to doubt, the general claim that emotions play a central role in struc-
turing deliberation appears highly plausible.
The psychological phenomena and their neurological correlates that Damasio
describes cannot be accommodated within a traditional view that allocates
cognitive primacy to detached, theoretical intentionalities. Indeed, they ac-
cord far better with a Heideggerian conception of moods and emotions, as
states that bind us to the world in a fundamental way that is presupposed by
the possibility of theoretical cognition. However, one could argue that, though
these results point to such a role for mood and emotion in human reasoning
processes, that role is restricted to the kinds of performance that we would
ordinarily term practical or social. Hence the traditional view is still
vindicated insofar as paradigmatically theoretical, cognitive processes are
unaffected by distortions in emotion. Some of Damasios findings seem to
bear this out. A common characteristic of his neurological patients was that,
despite their inability to accomplish practical and social tasks, their results
in all traditional intelligence tests came out as normal. Their logical and more
generally theoretical skills were unimpaired (1995, pp. 4143, 1996, p.
1413).However, I will now argue that the psychological effects arising from dif-
ferent kinds of neurological damage suggest that emotions and moods do not
merely constitute a necessary background for practical and social delibera-
tion but also for theoretical activity and, more specifically, the ability to iden-
tify and categorise objects that is surely central to any such activity.
Emotion, identification and categorisation
There is a rare neurological condition, christened Capgras Syndrome after
its discoverer, which inflicts sufferers with the powerful delusion that close
friends or relatives have been replaced by imposters. Careful observation and
interrogation suggest that this delusion is absolutely genuine; subjects really
do firmly believe that close relatives or loved ones have been replaced.21
Curiously, the syndrome only presents itself when the object of the delusion
is visibly present. During telephone conversations, the delusion vanishes. This
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suggests that any viable explanation will involve reference to specificallyvisual processes.
A neurological explanation has been ventured, which attributes the Capgras
delusion to an impairment of normal neural connectivity between the tempo-
ral lobes and limbic system (Ramachandran 1998, Ch. 8).22 The temporal lobes
are associated with visual object and especially face recognition, and are
ordinarily complexly connected to various parts of the limbic system, such as
the amygdala, involved in the generation of emotional responses to stimuli.
Thus it has been suggested that Capgras delusion has its source in a failure to
generate normal emotional responses to familiar faces. This would explain why
the delusion is generally restricted to friends, family and loved ones, those
people who ordinarily elicit strong emotional responses. A Capgras sufferer
might recognise her brother but then construe the absence of familiar emo-
tional response as evidence that the person present is not her brother after all
but a duplicate. This explanation has been tested experimentally by measur-
ing the galvanic skin response (GSR) of Capgras sufferers and normal sub-
jects when presented with a selection of photographs of familiar and unfamiliar
faces. If normal subjects are shown a sequence of photographs of unfamiliar
people and close relatives, GSR reliably increases in the case of familiar faces.
In Capgras sufferers, GSR is uniformly low, suggesting that normal emotional
responses are not generated, even though a face may be acknowledged as
appearing just like my mother. Similar experiments demonstrate that suf-
ferers are not simply altogether bereft of emotional responses, as their emo-
tional responses to photographs of disturbing and emotive scenes are normal(Ramachandran 1998, Ch. 8). Hence Capgras delusion can be plausibly ac-
counted for in terms of a failure to connect familiar faces with emotions they
previously elicited, due to damaged neural pathways between the temporal
lobes and limbic system. The delusion is especially apparent in relation to
familiar faces because, as Ramachandran puts it, only they ordinarily elicit
that special emotional glow (1998, p. 166). However, it should be noted that
Capgras delusion is not invariably associated with faces or indeed with hu-
man beings. As Ramachandran (1998) reports, one patient suffered the delu-
sion in relation to his pet dog.
The delusion is not restricted to recognition and identification but, as fur-
ther experimental paradigms have shown, also manifests itself in a more gen-eral failure to make mental taxonomies or groupings of events and objects
(Ramachandran 1998, pp. 170171). Ramachandran suggests, following ob-
servations of one patient who experienced confusion in respect of categorisa-
tion that was not restricted to faces or people, that an emotional feeling of
familiarity is constitutive of the ability to classify an experienced object as
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identicalto the object of a previous experience or as being of the same typeas a previously encountered object. Ramachandran (1998, p. 170) hypothesises
that, in the absence of an emotional glow, the brain simply sets up a com-
pletely new category and doesnt integrate an object or person into pre-exist-
ent categories:
It may be that to link successive episodes the brain relies on signals from the limbic sys-
tem the glow or sense of familiarity associated with a known face and set of memo-
ries and if this activation is missing, the brain cannot form an enduring category through
time. (Ramachandran 1998, p. 170)
Insofar as diachronic object recognition and categorisation are essential to the
performance of any cognitive task, whether practical or theoretical in nature,it seems that, if Capgras syndrome does indeed have its source in a failure to
associate visual percepts with emotional response, then emotion plays an in-
dispensable role in such tasks. Processes that we commonly term emotional
constitute a kind of background, relative to which recognition and categori-
sation take place. In recognising a familiar face on a day to day basis, we are
seldom explicitly aware of our emotional response and yet it seems that emo-
tions serve to quietly enable cognitive processes involved in recognition and
categorisation. Whats more, when there is conflict between traditionally cog-
nitive recognition processes and emotional responses, emotions can actually
override those processes in judgements of sameness. Thus again it seems that
emotions are a necessary backdrop to explicit cognition, and that this role is
not restricted to the practical and social spheres but cuts to the heart of in-tentionality, to our ability to identify, recognise and categorise. We encoun-
ter objects as what they are in the context of a background of emotional
attunement, which anchors our cognition of worldly objects and structures our
relationships with them. It is not that emotions and moods are themselves
invariably intentional in nature but rather that they serve as a necessary back-
drop for intentionalities, for an understanding of the world as stable, endur-
ing and familiar. Again the terms of the traditional philosophical debate fail
to accommodate these findings. Emotions are neither constituents of explicit
intentionalities nor wholly distinct from intentional states. They are a back-
ground that serves to structure explicit intentionalities and determine the pos-
sible scope of intentional acts and objects, the way in which the world isdisclosed. Hence these studies go against traditional philosophical assump-
tions concerning the cognitive primacy of theoretical intentionalities and
propositional attitudes, and have a far closer resonance with Heideggers
notion of world-constituting attunement.
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Emotion and narrative coherence
In this section, I will address a neuropsychological correlate of Heideggers
claims that (a) emotions punctuate world-disclosing backgrounds of attunement,
and (b) there is a sense in which the interplay between emotion and mood is
prior to logic. I will not discuss Heideggers specific example ofAngsthere
but will argue instead that the sort of role Heidegger attributes toAngst is
applicable to emotions more generally. That is, emotions can, to varying de-
grees, punctuate world-constituting background moods.
Anosognosia23 is a well documented but puzzling condition that arises from
specific brain injury.24 Sufferers are completely paralysed on the left sides of
their bodies but are unable to acknowledge their paralysis. In response to re-
peated questioning, they resolutely deny that they are paralysed and concoct
all manner of narratives to excuse the fact that their left limb fails to move in
response to a request. Ramachandran (1998, Ch. 7) relates how one patient,
when presented with a tray with glasses on it was asked to pick it up with both
hands, grasped one side of the tray with the right hand, with the result that the
tray fell and the glasses smashed. Such behaviour suggests that the delusion
is utterly genuine. The precise nature of the confabulation varies but the fea-
ture common to all instances is a constitutional failure to comprehend left-
side paralysis.
Damasio (1995, p. 64) remarks that anosognosia is invariably associated
with a comparative lack of emotion and concern; anosognosics [. . . .] have
more than just a left-side paralysis of which they are not aware. They also havea defect in reasoning and decision making, and a defect in emotion and feel-
ing. (p. 68). Damasio (1995, Ch. 4, 2000, Ch. 7) also claims that the brain
areas damaged in anosognosia are not only concerned with emotion but with
producing the most comprehensive and integrated map of current body states
available to the brain (1995, p. 66), thus corroborating his hypotheses con-
cerning the inextricability of emotion, reason and tacit representation of body
state. Anderson and Tranel (1989) similarly note a correlation between una-
wareness of disease states or unrealistic assessments of ones health and im-
pairments of emotion:
. . . unawareness of disease states is often associated with disturbances of affect [. . . .]
and impaired affective responses may play a critical role in the genesis of unawareness.
Presupposing that affective experience is dependent upon the co-activation of neural rep-
resentations of somatic states [. . . .], disruption of the representations of integrated so-
matic states would not only damage the very structures necessary to detect a change in
motor function, but would also interfere with the normal experience of concern or anxi-
ety regarding any acquired difficulties. (1989, p. 336).25
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Given this correlation between anosognosia and lack of overt emotion,Ramachandran (1998, Ch. 7) puts forward an intriguing explanation of the
phenomenon. He suggests that the left side of the brain is generally involved
in constructing coherent narratives, which make sense of worldly situations
and sustain a coherent sense of our relationship with them. Without additional
input from the right brain, the left brain will strive for coherence at any cost.26
Any new event, however anomalous, will somehow be incorporated into the
narrative, thus retaining consistency. Hence a narrative anomaly like sudden
paralysis is not recognised but rather distorted so as not to puncture a consist-
ent narrative which structures ones sense of self, world and their relationship.
Ramachandran observes that anosognosia patients suffer from a comparative
lack of general emotional concern. He ventures the hypothesis that anosognosia
has its source in damage to normal emotional processes and argues that spe-
cific emotions constitute a mechanism whereby coherent narratives are punc-
tuated, shocking people out of stable interpretations of events. Without the
emotional response, a patient will strive for narrative coherence but will be
oblivious to the feelings of doubtthat ordinarily interrupt such narratives and
break down entrenched coherence. Without specific emotional interruptions,
there is nothing to break down coherence, nothing to disturb an ongoing in-
terpretation of events27. Hence without this background of everyday emotional
reactions, anosognosia sufferers are oblivious to their plight.28 I suggest that
Ramachandrans account of anosognosia29 supports Heideggers account of
emotional punctuation of constitutive mood. It is as though we are ordinarily
tied to a familiar context, a background of significance in which things runsmoothly. It is specific emotional responses to aspects of this situation that
disturb the sense of familiarity and consistency which ordinarily surrounds
us, which unsettle us, to varying degrees, from our attunement to the world.
Furthermore, Ramachandran remarks that syndromes such as anosognosia
are simply incompatible with a construal of the mind as primarily propositional
in nature:
. . . the reason anosognosia is so puzzling is that we have come to regard the intellect as
primarily propositional in character that is, certain conditions follow incontrovertibly
from certain premises and one ordinarily expects propositional logic to be internally
consistent. (1998, p. 132)
What anosognosia seems to show is that, in certain cases of neurological dam-
age to brain areas correlated with emotional response, the accepted norms of
rationality drop out. No amount of appeal to accepted propositions and the
principles of formal logic will convince an anosognosic to permanently re-
nounce their denial of paralysis. It is as though the sense of the proposition I
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am unable to move my arm is dependent upon an affective punctuation ofthe narrative coherence that comes with everyday attunement to the world.
Thus it increasingly appears that the traditional emphasis on detached intelli-
gence and reasoning fails to capture the way in which we find ourselves in
the world. If the mind is construed as primarily propositional in nature and
human cognition as most fundamentally a matter of detached, theoretical
intentionalities, it is simply impossible to accommodate the phenomenon of
anosognosia, the phenomenon of a more generally lucid person sincerely
denying the facts of their paralysis. The reason conditions such as anosognosia
seem bizarre is that they are so utterly removed from traditional assumptions
concerning reason, emotion and embodiment, assumptions that need to be
discarded if we are to devise a coherent framework from which to understand
such phenomena. Heideggers conception of a world-disclosing attunement
that is punctuated by specific emotions (I generalise from his discussion of
Angst) constitutes a far more conducive philosophical framework from which
to interpret such phenomena. This framework renounces the primacy of theo-
retical detachment and propositional logic, maintaining that both are depend-
ent upon a more basic sense-giving background of moods and emotions, which
discloses the world and our place in it. Hence I suggest that, in order to make
sense of anosognosia, we need to accommodate something like Heideggers
contention that certain kinds of emotions can disturb pre-propositional frame-
works of familiarity in which we are ordinarily anchored by background mood.
Heideggers account is not only meaningful but something like it is actually
required as an interpretive backdrop for neuropsychological cases that quiteliterally fly in the face of reason.
Whats more, it is arguable that this world-constituting interplay between
emotion and mood, which is especially salient in the case of anosognosia, is
also apparent in our ordinary, everyday phenomenology. Consider watching
a film or reading a book that involves a plot twist. As the twist is revealed,
there is a sudden surge of emotion, which accompanies a dramatic revision
of ones interpretation of events. It is not simply that the emotion coincides
with the revision of ones prior assumptions concerning a chain of events.
Rather, the shock is constitutive of ones reorientation towards the story.
Without the accompanying emotion, a plot twist is simply not grasped; the
nature of a fundamental rupture in coherence is not registered. Similarly, whenone performs a chain of goal-oriented actions, realisation of discrepancies in
the course of events is invariably correlated with some form of emotional
response. When the world fails to accord with ones expectations, emotion is
a constitutive component in the reinterpretation of events. Without emotional
responses, one is not uprooted from a coherent interpretation of events, a set
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of assumptions and expectations; an upheaval is invariably an emotional up-heaval. In everyday life, punctuation of narrative coherence always involves
an emotional response. The emotion is not a feature additional to such punc-
tuation but is rather constitutive of it.30
Heideggers attunement and the limits of science
Given the parallel between Heideggers account and these neuropsychologi-
cal studies, we now need to inquire as to the relative status of Heideggers
philosophy and neuropsychological studies: Is one more fundamental than the
other? Can we explain one in terms of the other? The neuropsychological stud-
ies I have discussed all proceed in two essential steps. First of all, the neuropsy-chologist ventures a psychological account, which incorporates observations
of behaviour and documents psychological impairments and distortions in
respect of various cognitive tasks.31 It is this stage of the inquiry which, I
suggest, results in descriptions which are incompatible with the propositional
mind. Next, there is an attempt to correlate psychological impairments with
specific forms of neurological damage and, in so doing, infer something about
both normal and abnormal brain function and anatomy. As we saw, Damasio
(1995) ties in the psychological priority of emotions in respect of various
cognitive tasks with a neurological account of the activity of the new cogni-
tive brain causally situated within the activity of the old emotional and bod-
ily-orientedbrain.One might argue that the neurological description explains the psychologi-
cal description; subjects suffer certain symptoms because of damage to spe-
cific neural pathways that contribute causally to relevant brain functions. One
could even contend that the objective neurological description underlying the
psychological/phenomenological description can be viewed as a naturalisa-
tion of some central Heideggerian claims.32
First of all, it is important to note that any such view of the primacy of an
objective, scientific account over phenomenological description is, as explained
in Section 3, utterly contrary to Heideggers own philosophy. Heidegger main-
tains that the sciences constitute a restricted means of disclosing beings and
that the objective organisation of beings disclosed by science is by no means
a fundamental or privileged disclosure of the world. And Heideggers own
view is, I suggest, largely vindicated by my discussion of neuropsychology.
Neuropsychological studies of emotion, in prioritising moods and emotions
over theoretical cognition, are pulling apart the basic epistemological assump-
tions on which the privileged status of scientific ontologies rest. Without the
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cognitive fundamentality of detached, theoretical contemplation and of thesystematic, logical manipulation of propositions, scientific ontologies lose their
epistemological warrant. In other words there is no justification for their claim
to ontologically privileged status.
Rather than allocating primacy to the science, I am inclined to suggest that
psychological descriptions of neurological patients constitute what Heidegger
might call a partially disclosive perspective on the role of emotion and mood,
a perspective that has to suspend the ordinarily taken for granted, objective,
scientific view of the mind in order to interpret these patients coherently. The
subsequent neurological picture constitutes one way of disclosing the role of
mood and emotion, a derivative, theoretical construal that, in its assumption
of objectivity, fails to express the role that mood and emotions play in giving
sense to objective perspectives, in opening up and disclosing the world as a
possibility for scientific ontologies. To explain, if mood and emotion play a
sense-giving role in enabling objective conceptions of the world, then any
perspective which takes objectivity as a given will be incapable of charac-
terising that role. The unquestioned givenness of the objective world that is
constitutive of scientific descriptions cannot capture the way in which the given
is disclosed by a meaning-giving background. Thus, if anything, it is the tran-
scendental, meaning-giving account that has ontological priority over an ob-
jective/causal description. Emotions and moods, as described by Heidegger
and hinted at by neuropsychological studies, are not solely characterisable as
part of the objective psyche but also as a disclosive background that renders
objective conceptions of self and world intelligible. Hence I suggest that thereare many ways in which the role of the emotions can be partially disclosed to
us, and that scientific inquiry constitutes one such avenue, which is by no
means privileged.
Once we get past the restrictions of unsustainable objectivism, the reasons
for dismissing Heideggers account outright or regarding it as derivative or
merely poetic are all undermined. Carnaps pronouncement that metaphy-
sicians are failed musicians rests on a mischaracterisation of our epistemic
relationship with the world; the human mind is not the verificationists mind.
Indeed, adopting a Heideggerian characterisation of mood and emotion, it
would seem that an appreciation of music, inextricably entwined as it is with
emotion, has the potential to disclose ways of finding oneself in the world thatcannot be characterised in explicit propositional form. In so far as it touches
us emotionally and thus discloses the way in which we find ourselves in the
world, music is indeed meaningful, in a primordial way that Carnap failed to
recognise. The line between philosophers and failed musicians thus disinte-
grates in the turbulence of a more original form of questioning.
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Andreas Dorschel, Shaun Gallagher, Martin Kusch, Joan
McCarthy, Tony OConnor, Norman Sieroka, an anonymous referee and an
audience at the April 2001 conference of the British Society for Phenomenol-
ogy for some helpful criticisms of an earlier draft of this paper.
Notes
1. I shall be referring primarily to Heideggers Sein und Zeit(Macquarrie and Robinsons
1962 translation). Quotes from Macquarrie and Robinson have been amended, with the
term being in place of entity forSeiende and attunement in place of state of mindforBefindlichkeit.
2. See Olafson (1987, p. 178) for some further remarks on Heidegger and the traditional
view.
3. I treat moods as a specific sub-class of emotions. Heideggers discussion focuses on
moods. However, I will suggest in what follows that his theory can be generalized to
encompass emotions more generally.
4. SeeBeing and Time, Part 1, Division 1, III: The Worldhood of the World.
5. Heidegger seeks neither to reduce all theory to practice nor to reduce practice to theory
(See e.g., 1962, p. 238). See also Kockelmans (1989, p. 166) and Fell (1992). Kockelmans
stresses that Heidegger seeks to accommodate both theory and practice, rather than re-
ducing one to the other. Fell argues that pragmatist interpretations of Heidegger rest upon
a confusion between different senses of primacy in Heidegger.
6. See Ratcliffe (in press) for a more detailed discussion of how Heidegger construes the
relationship between theory and practice.7. Befindlichkeitis not easy to translate. Dreyfus (1991, p. 168) laments the fact that no
English term seems to capture its sense, and settles for affectedness. Similarly Harr
(1992, p. 159) describes Befindlichkeit as primordial affectivity or affectedness.
Macquarrie and Robinson (1962) rather misleadingly refer to it as state of mind. Though
this is might seem the closest approximation to the original German, it is inappropriate
when applied to Heidegger. In introducing the term Dasein precisely to escape the
subject-object distinction and in emphasising practical engagement with equipment over
theoretical subject-object intentionalities, Heidegger is trying to distance himself as much
as possible from theoretical, subjective characterisations such as state of mind, which
he views as derived from a more primordial sense of Being-in-the-world. In what fol-
lows, I will adopt Stambaughs (1996) translation ofBefindlichkeitas attunement, a
term which does not presuppose anything of the theoretical paradigm that Heidegger
is trying to leave behind.8. Hence Heidegger is not guilty of psychologism. See Kusch (1995) for a discussion of
anti-psychologism and the origins of phenomenology in 19th-century Germany.
9. As Harr (1992, p. 162) puts it, all mood is phenomenologically, preconceptually uni-
versal and total. It is the whole of being-in-the-world that reveals itself with such a
coloring or climate of joy or sadness, and never a thing taken in isolation. There is also
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totality inasmuch as the subject and the object are indissociable within it.10. See alsoBeing and Time, Division 1: V, VI and Division 2: IIV.
11. English language philosophical and scientific accounts of emotion are generally bereft
of references to Heidegger. Solomon (1977) is an exception.
12. An especially vivid example of this is Jerry Fodors (1975) characterisation of thought
as the internal manipulation of symbolic, propositional structures; a language of
thought.
13. According to Lyons, the concept of an emotion as occurrent state involves reference to
an evaluation which causes abnormal physiological changes in the subject of the evalu-
ation (1980, p. 53).
14. See Griffiths (1997) for a comprehensive appraisal of current philosophical and scien-
tific debates concerning emotion.
15. As Damasio puts it, throughout the twentieth century and until quite recently, both
neuroscience and cognitive science gave emotion a very cold shoulder (2000, p. 38).
However, as Damasio acknowledges, there are exceptions to sciences general histori-
cal neglect of emotion. For example, both Charles Darwin (1872) and William James
(1884, 1893) drew attention to the importance of emotions, though Darwin focussed more
specifically on their expression.
16. Johnson-Laird and Oatley (1992) put forward a less detailed but in some ways similar
account. They claim that emotions play a central role in decision making, bridging the
gulf between randomness and rationality; emotions are a result of coarse cognitive
evaluations that elicit internal and external signals and corresponding suites of action
plans (p. 209). DeSousa (1990, pp. 190197) also ventures the possibility that emo-
tions play a nonpropositional role in decision-making, determining patterns of salience.
17. Heidegger does not explicitly state that emotions are embodied. However, his account
of Dasein as essentially entangled in a world of equipment, projects and purposes rather
than surveying the world from a detached, theoretical perspective suggests some sense
of embodiment must be at play. Any account of embodiment applicable to Dasein wouldhave to involve a description of pre-objective, sense-giving capabilities rather than ob-
jective description of a body that is located in the world as one object amongst others.
18. As Damasio explains, the background feeling is our image of the body landscape when
it is not shaken by emotion. The concept of mood, though related to that of background
feeling, does not exactly capture it. When background feelings are persistently the same
type over hours and days, and do not change quietly as thought contents ebb and flow,
the collection of background feelings probably contributes to a mood, good, bad or in-
different. [....] I submit that without them the very core of your representation of self
would be broken. (1995, pp. 150151).
19. William Styron (1991)Darkness Visible (p. 15), quoted by Damasio (1995, p. 147). Styron
borrows the description positive and active anguish from William James.
20. This is why Damasio calls his bookDescartes Error. In contrast to Cartesian views,
Damasio regards the body as an essential frame of reference, which is integral to the
performance of more traditionally cognitive processes. Thus mind and body are inex-
tricable. This also points to some interesting comparisons with Merleau-Pontys (1962)
discussion of the how the body serves as an indispensable, sense-giving reference frame
for all perception, thought and action. Indeed, Damasio (2000) argues that dispositional
representations of ones body comprise the foundation for both selfhood and conscious-
ness. This makes the parallel even more compelling.
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21. Sometimes the delusion is even more extreme. As Ramachandran (1998, p. 166) notes,in a case on record the patient was convinced that his stepfather was a robot, proceeded
to decapitate him and opened his skull to look for microchips. These more violent mani-
festations of the delusion have been correlated with alcoholic intoxication (Thompson and
Swan 1993).
22. See Ramachandra (1998, Ch. 8) and Young et al. (1993). Ramachandran and Young disa-
gree in suggesting different specific neural pathways but agree that these pathways con-
nect visual and emotional areas of the brain. As Young et al. explain, the basis of the
Capgras delusion lies in damage to neuro-anatomical pathways responsible for appro-
priate emotional reactions to visual stimuli. The delusion would then represent the patients
attempt to make sense of the fact that these visual stimuli no longer have appropriate af-
fective significance (1993, p. 695).
23. The term derives from the Greek nosos and gn sis, meaning disease and know-
ledge. Hence it is a lack of awareness of disease.
24. According to Damasio, Patients with anosognosia have damage in the right hemisphere,
in a region which includes the cortices in the insula; the cytoarchitectonic areas 3, 1, 2,
in the parietal region; and area S2, also parietal, located in the depth of the sylvian fis-
sure. The damage affects the white matter under these regions, disrupting their intercon-
nection and their connections with the thalamus, the basal ganglia, and the motor and
prefrontal cortices. Damage to only parts of this multi-component system does not cause
anosognosia (200, p. 211).
25. Anderson and Tramel (1989) broaden their investigations beyond the specific syndrome
of anosognosia in order to investigate correlations between right-side brain damage and
unawareness of disease states more generally.
26. Other areas of neuropsychological research lend credibility to the idea of the left brain
constructing coherent narratives. For example, split-brain research (see e.g., Gazzaniga
1994) suggests that the left brain will resort to autobiographical confabulation in order
to sustain a coherent narrative. (Neuropsychologists are keen to point out that any suchlateralisation is invariably a matter of degrees rather than an absolute division.) Dennett
(1991) takes such observations one step further and argues that the self is essentially a
fictional narrative strung together by the brain. The connection between narrative and
selfhood is also made by certain thinkers in the Continental tradition, such as Ricoeur
(e.g., 1992). The central source of disagreement between the two traditions concerns
whether scientific narratives constitute epistemologically privileged descriptions of self
and world (see McCarthy unpublished). See Gallagher (2000) for a discussion of philo-
sophical and scientific conceptions of the narrative self.
27. Indeed, Ramachandran refers to the mechanism as an anomaly detector. (See p. 280,
footnote 9).
28. Unlike Capgras sufferers, most patients thankfully recover from anosognosia within a
few weeks.
29. Ramachandrans account is not intended to be applicable to allinstances of anosognosia.
30. Gallagher (personal communication) points out that emotions not only punctuate but also
contribute to moods, sustaining or enhancing them. Emotions can support coherence on
occasions, fine-tuning and consolidating the rhythm of life, rather than shattering it to
varying degrees. Thus the emphasis on punctuation perhaps places excessive empha-
sis on traditionally negative emotions. Even though punctuation is not always a nec-
essarily negative occurrence, I freely grant this and accept that philosophy in general
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(and also Heidegger) have placed too much emphasis on the so-called negative emo-tions. See Lyons (1980, Ch. 12) for a discussion of the relationships between good vs.
bad, and helpful vs. disruptive emotions.
31. This is of course a simplification. Several different experimental paradigms are employed
by neuropsychologists to make observations. For example, Anderson and Tramel (1989)
employ a standardized awareness interview to assess the degree of subjective aware-
ness of disease states. See McGlynn and Schachter (1989) for an account and critique of
observational techniques in neuropsychology.
32. Similar attempts have been made in relation to Husserls phenomenology. One can, it is
claimed, extract specific insights from Husserlian phenomenology and apply them in
the service of science. The goal, as Petitot, Varela, Pachoud, and Roy (1999, p. xiii) ex-
plain is to assess the extent to which the sort of phenomenological investigation [Husserl]
initiated can favor the construction of a scientific theory of cognition and, more particu-
larly, contribute to progress, in specific contemporary theories, by complementing some
crucial aspects and calling them into question in others.
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