Joel Garver - Responsible Believing - Chapter Seven: Section Three

RESPONSIBLE BELIEVING

S. Joel Garver

CHAPTER SEVEN

On What the Little Prince Learned:
Emotions and Belief

Section III

Clearly, sometimes we are unable to control our emotions in any sort of direct fashion. Of course, being such and such a person, giving one's life and character a certain shape, disposes a subject to certain emotions. Thus, Hitler's program for Germany might have little effect on Mussolini, but causes Dietrich Bonhoeffer to tremble in anger. Bonhoeffer, however, was a very different sort of person than Mussolini, with different values, beliefs, commitments, desires, and so on. We recognize, I think, that we have extensive indirect influence over our emotional lives, particularly as a result of what kind of persons we strive to be. In this respect, emotions resemble beliefs.

We also, however, encounter many situations in which have immediate (though indirect or nonbasic) control over our emotions. Since emotions are construals "all emotional change is change in the terms in which the subject 'sees' the world, including changes in the subject's desires and concerns" (1988:193). Since emotions are not judgments, a change in emotions need not involve a change in judgment, though a change in judgment can cause a shift in emotions (and vice versa). One can shift between various construals of oneself, one's situation, or another person. For instance, the object of a subject's anger may be regarded in various ways:

As the scoundrel who did such-and-such to me, as the son of my dear friend so-and-so, as a person who, after all, has had a pretty rough time of it in life, and so forth. If these construals are all in my repertoire, and in addition are not too implausible with respect to the present object, then the emotions which correspond to them, of anger, benevolence, and pity towards the boy, are also more or less subject to my will. (1988:193)

Thus our ability to control our emotions is bound by our ability to construe an object or "see it" as such and such.

We must not oversimplify the matter, however. Though often equally immediate in terms of effect, controlling the emotions is not so simple or unstructured as moving from the duck to the rabbit in that famous illusion. As Roberts writes:

Whether an emotion is in our repertoire with respect to a given situation is a function of the character of the situation in its relation to our system of beliefs, our emotional history, our system of cares and desires, our habits of attention, our skills at conceptualization and visualizations, and who knows what else. (1988:193).

Friends, confidants, therapists, literature, and so on can help us in controlling our emotions by suggesting and fostering various ways of construing the world.

There are also less direct, though relatively immediate forms of control over the emotions. So, for instance, consider fear of an interview:

When facing that fearsome interviewer, try sitting up straight, leaning forward in a slightly assertive manner, looking her in the eye, and talking in an even voice. Doing so will make you appear (to the interviewer, but more importantly to yourself) to be in control of the situation. (1988:194)

Thus one's fear is ameliorated indirectly by means of shifting one's bodily demeanor. Roberts provides us with another example in an earlier article:

Let us say that I have explained to a student, five times in class and three times in private, the distinction between Modus Ponens and Affirming the Consequent. And now once more he asks a question which betrays that he does not understand the distinction. I find anger beginning to well up within me, and want to control it...Instead of raising my voice or pounding the desk or becoming sarcastic, I put my hand gently on his shoulder and say, "you go home and study chapter three, and come back tomorrow." And my treating him affectionately, rather than punitively, has the effect that my anger subsides. (1984:400)

This sort of thing works since emotions essentially involve construals and one's behavior can alter the construal of a situation.

Emotions it seems, then, are largely under our control. Certainly we have indirect influence over most of our emotions similar to the way in which we have influence over our beliefs. But we have much more than that. We also have more or less direct control over many of our emotions, with fairly immediate effects. If emotions play the large role in belief-formation that Stocker suggests, then one of the ways in which we are responsible for our beliefs is by our control over and responsibility for the emotions that are typically and systematically connected to certain patterns of belief-formation or doxastic practices. These connections, together with sets of desires, patterns of identification, choices of activity, adoption of concepts, practice of virtues, and so on, all come together to form who we are as individual subjects and shape our responsibility for what we believe.