Perceiving Expressions of Emotion: A Challenge

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Perceiving Expressions of Emotion: A Challenge

How do you know about it? ・ it = this pen ・ it = this joy

perceive indicator, infer its presence

- vs -

perceive it

Here are three ways of knowing: inference, testimony and perception.

Where ‘it’ is an ordinary physical object like my favourite pen, each of these three identifies a process by which knowledge could be acquired.

(This is not to say that talk about reasoning invariably picks out a process (cf Alvarez), just that there is a process.)

There seems to be a clear contrast the first and last ways of coming to know about it. (Philosophers debate about whether the first and second are genuinely different routes to knowledge.)

Even if, as do I, you think perception involves inference-like processes, there is still a contrast between inferring and perceiving.

For instance, suppose you know that I am all but inseparable from my favourite pen. Then when you see me arrive you can infer that my pen is here too. Contrast this with simply seeing my pen on the table. In one case we see something other than the pen, namely me, and inferring that the pen is here; in the other case you are seeing the pen itself.

This is the contrast I need in what follows.

Are mental states the kinds of thing we can come to know about through perceiving them? I will focus on emotions like joy.

Aviezer et al (2012, figure 2A3)

[not relevant yet:] ‘(3) a losing face on a winning body’

Emotions are sometimes expressed bodily and vocally. Here is someone who has just won or lost a tennis match, so is feeling joy or anger. Maybe you can tell which?

Here is a natural thought: Bodily and vocal expressions of emotion enable us to perceptually experience the expressed emotions.

This natural thought fits with ordinary talk about mental states. Imagine yourself at a tennis match. Reporting the event afterwards, you might say that you saw his ecstacy at winning. It might seem that his ecstacy is as plainly visible as the hair on his head.

‘We sometimes see aspects of each others’ mental lives, and thereby come to have non-inferential knowledge of them.’

McNeill (2012, p. 573)

‘We sometimes see aspects of each others’ mental lives, and thereby come to have non-inferential knowledge of them.’

McNeill (2012, p. 573)

\citet[p.\ 573]{mcneill:2012_embodiment}: ‘We sometimes {see} aspects of each others’ mental lives, and thereby come to have non-inferential knowledge of them.’

challenge

Evidence?

verbal reports and ratings? No!

(Scholl & Tremoulet 2000; Schlottman 2006)

There are scientists and philosophers who have placed a lot of weight on verbal reports. They are satisfied that if people use mental state terms to describe what they perceive, then they perceive those mental states. But I think this can’t be right.

Go back to the tennis match. Reporting the event afterwards you might say not only that you saw his ecstacy but also that you saw him win. I take it you can't literally perceptually experience winning or losing in the sense that, arguably, you can perceptually experience movement or changes in colour. After all, winning or loosing is a matter of rules and conventions.

So we can’t straightforwardly take what people say as a guide to what they perceive.

Here you might object that we can perceptually experience things like winning or losing, so there is no reason to question verbal reports.

But note that taking this line amounts to rejecting the claim I started with.

contrast:

perceive indicator, infer its presence

- vs -

perceive it

I claimed that there is a contrast between seeing an indicator and inferring the presence of an object

If there is a contrast here, what we colloquially call seeing someone win must be a case of perceiving indicators and inferring winning. So to say that we can straightforwardly infer that people perceive emotions from their verbal reports is to reject the existence of the very contrast that allows us to make sense of the question.

‘We sometimes see aspects of each others’ mental lives, and thereby come to have non-inferential knowledge of them.’

McNeill (2012, p. 573)

challenge

Evidence?

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Perceiving Expressions of Emotion: A Challenge

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