Professional Documents
Culture Documents
I. Introduction
In this paper, I will show that York Gunther's (2003, forthcoming (a) forthcoming (b)) argument
for the uniqueness of emotional content is not persuasive. Subsequently, I will show that Gunther's
claim that different emotional phenomenologies entail different emotional contents is not justified.
When I refer to an emotion's “content,” or “intentionality” I mean to indicate that which the emotion is
about. This could be understood in at least two ways, both of which are compatible with my analysis.
First, the emotion could be understood as directed towards an object or state of affairs. I may be in
love with my partner, or upset by the movie. Intentionality could also refer to correctness conditions
that determine whether an emotion is appropriate. If I am angry that my car has no gas, my anger can
only be appropriate if the proposition “my car has no gas” is true. 1 In order for such a proposition to be
true, some state of affairs in the world must be a certain way. In this way, the emotion is about the
world. If an emotion is intentional, it contains, in some sense, a representation of that which is it about,
or those correctness conditions to which the emoter commits. For this reason, I will treat emotional
York Gunther (2003, forthcoming (a), forthcoming (b)) has argued that the intentionality (or
content) of an emotion covaries with phenomenology (or feeling) of an emotion. In other words, if two
emotions have different phenomenologies, they necessarily have different contents.2 I will refer to this
1 This may be only a necessary condition for anger to be appropriate; an additional fact about the world, that my car's lack
of gas somehow contains a proper formal object of anger (such as a slight) may also be neccessary.
2 Gunther's claim goes the other direction as well. He argues that different emotional contents also necessitate different
phenomenologies. I think that this point stands up to scrutiny, even if Gunther's treatment is unsatisfactory. I will not,
however, address this claim.
subjective feeling, which is felt as irreducible.3 The phenomenology of seeing a particular yellow
shade is what it feels like to see that yellow shade, and the phenomenology of a particular anger
episode is what it feels like to be angry in that way. Gunther claims, in CP, that emotional content
varies as emotional phenomenology varies, or that if two emotions feel differently to two respective
emoters, those emotions necessarily have distinct contents. Gunther's argument for CP depends on his
Gunther argues (forthcoming (a)) that emotional content is distinct in kind from propositional
constitutes, in part, the content of an emotion. If Gunther's definition of emotional content is accepted,
phenomenology of an emotion constitutes, in part, the content of an emotion, then two emotions with
different phenomenologies have different contents. Thus, evaluating Gunther's argument for CP
requires investigating his grounds for positing a unique category of emotional content.
Gunther's strategy for showing the uniqueness of emotional content is, first, to argue that
emotional contents are not capable of full logical complexity. By this, Gunther means that the content
of an emotion cannot properly be anything but a truth-functionally simple statement. That is, the
content of an emotion cannot be a disjunctive (I will give away my country's secrets, or I will be killed)
a conjunction (You got home late, and you didn't call) a conditional (if I turn in a bad paper, then I will
be heavily criticized) or a negation (I did not get the promotion.) Gunther claims that emotions fail to
individuate between force and content, because individuating between force and content in mental acts
requires logical complexity. The distinction between force and content is essential to beliefs, desires,
and other prototypical mental acts, and if emotions fail to make this distinction, Gunther would be
3 Whether it is irreducible or not is an open question, and outside of the scope of this paper. I hope it is safe to say,
however, that it is felt as irreducible. The phenomenology of phenomenology is that phenomenology is irreducible.
However, if it is not, my thesis should not suffer; my conclusion will rest very little on a particular understanding of
phenomenology.
justified in arguing that emotional content is different in kind from propositional content. Gunther
concludes, because emotions do not individuate between force and content, that the content of an
emotion is inseparable from the force of an emotion, and consequently the phenomenology of an
In section two, I will say a great deal more about the force/content distinction. I will discuss
what this distinction is, and why it is important to Gunther's position. In section three, I will outline
Gunther's argument that emotions are not capable of full logical complexity, and I will refute this
emotional content which do have full logical complexity. I will argue that these counterexamples
demonstrate that Gunther does not give us a satisfactory reason to believe that emotions violate the
distinction between force and content. In section four, I will show that Gunther's argument for CP
hinges on his claim that emotions violate the force content distinction. I will argue that Gunther's
failure to demonstrate that emotions violate the force content distinction undermines his argument for
CP. I will conclude that Gunther is not justified in claiming that emotions with distinct
In this section I will clarify the force/content distinction, particularly with respect to
prototypical intentional states, such as beliefs. I will also clarify the importance of logical complexity
to the force/content distinction, showing that a belief's capacity for logical complexity entails its
It is widely accepted that many prototypical intentional mental states, such as beliefs and
desires, individuate between force and content. “Force” is similar to Searle's (1983) notion of
psychological mode. If I believe “that all dogs are mammals,” the content of my thought is “that all
dogs are mammals” and the mode of my thought is “belief.” According to Searle, different
psychological modes are best distinguished by correctness conditions. I cannot believe that “all dogs
are mammals” without committing myself to believing that the content of my belief “that all dogs are
mammals” is true. That is, my belief is only “correct” if the content of my belief is true. By contrast, it
is possible to desire “that all dogs are friendly” without being committed to the truth of the proposition
“that all dogs are friendly.” Though “correctness” seems less appropriate with respect to desires (the
conditions in which one's desires can be “correct” are not as clear) we can understand a desire to be
appropriate, even if its content (that all dogs are friendly) is false. In this way, we are able to separate
the content of a belief from the force of the belief. The force of the belief is “belief,” and the nature of
that force can be understood independently of whatever content a particular belief has. This distinction
has been developed in Frege's Begriffschrift (1879, p 53, quoted in Gunther (2003))):
An interrogative sentence and an assertoric one contain the same thought, but the assertoric
sentence contains something else as well, namely assertion. The interrogative sentence contains
something more too, namely a request. Therefore two things must be distinguished in an
assertoric sentence: the content, which it has in common with the corresponding propositional
question; and assertion.
In this passage, Frege refers to “thought” and “content” interchangeably, while I refer to only
“content.” This ambiguity is present because Frege is referring to sentences as containing thoughts
(that is, the content of the sentence is a thought), while I am referring to thoughts as containing
contents. The risk of confusion grows as Frege refers to a sentence containing two things, a content,
and mode (assertion, or request).When I refer to content, however, I'm referring to precisely what a
thought contains, so it would not be plausible for a thought to contain a content and some other thing.
In spite of these differences in vocabulary, we can take from this passage a distinction that makes clear
the distinction between force and content. In a prototypical intentional mental state (e.g., a belief or a
desire) there are “two things [which] must be distinguished,” the content (e.g. That dogs are mammals)
and the psychological mode, or force, of that thought (e.g. Belief). Two different thoughts can share in
common a content, while differing in their psychological mode, or force. You may believe that all
dogs are friendly, while I may doubt that all dogs are friendly. Gunther accepts this characterization of
Just as two sentences with identical contents can be, respectively, an assertion and a request,
two thoughts with the same contents can be, respectively, a belief, and a desire.
In order to make Gunther's position more clear, I will develop one more feature of the
force/content distinction before moving on. One way of seeing that beliefs individuate between force
and content is to see that the contents of beliefs can exhibit full logical complexity. Not only can I
believe that all dogs are friendly, but I can believe that “if all dogs are friendly, then I have nothing to
fear from the neighbor's great dane.” (conditional) I can also believe that “either all dogs are friendly,
or all dogs are vicious,”(disjunction) that “all dogs are friendly, and all dogs are
mammals,”(conjunction) and “it is not the case that all dogs are friendly.”(negation) This potential
complexity of belief states allows us to formalize the inferential roles that beliefs can play in our
reasoning. For instance, I know that if Peter believes that “all dogs are friendly, and all dogs are
mammals,” then I know that Peters believe that “all dogs are friendly.” I know this because the
correctness conditions of this conjunction are such that it is only true if both “all dogs are friendly” and
“all dogs are mammals” are true. We can recognize this formal structeure of belief contents by
abstracting them, and showing that, in all cases, if I belive P and Q, then I believe P. Thus, I separate
the content (all dogs are friendly) or potential content (P) from the mode, or force, of belief, and
analyze those contents for their inferential potential, independently of the mode in which they are
presented. The capacity of beliefs to be logically complex allows for beliefs to be such that a single
logical operator can range over a complex belief content. Believing “either I will study or I will fail”
does not entail believing either disjunct. In this case, the content of the belief is the disjunction of two
statements, not in either disjunct particularly. This notion of range will be important when evaluating
distinction because they are not capable of logical complexity. I will then outline Gunther's argument
for the claim that an emotions content can not have a conditional structure. I will introduce and defend
several counterexamples, which will illustrate that emotions can have a conditional structure. I will
then conclude that Gunther's argument that emotions are not capable of full logical complexity is
unsuccessful, and due to its failure, Gunther is not justified in claiming that emotions violate the
force/content distinctin.
According to Gunther, emotions do not individuate between force and content. Gunther argues
that this can can be demonstrated by the failure of emotions to exhibit full logical complexity. My
strategy to refute Gunther's argument will be to show that the content of an emotion can take the form
of a conditional. I choose to focus on the conditional for two reasons. First, Gunther argues that
emotions cannot have any sort of logical complexity. If the content of an emotion can have the form of
any sort of logically complex statement, then the force of that emotion can be separated from its
content. Therefore, demonstrating that an emotion's content can have the form of a conditional will be
sufficient to refute Gunther's categorical claim that no emotional content can have full logical
complexity. Second, Gunther's claim that emotional content cannot have full logical complexity may be
read as claiming that emotional content cannot take the form of all logically complex statements
Though I think that this is an inaccurate reading of Gunther, my analysis of the conditional will guard
against it. If the content of my emotion can have the logical form “ if I turn in a bad paper, then I will
be heavily criticized” then it could4 also have the form of “either I will not turn in a bad paper, or I will
4 It may very well not, since emotions (like beliefs) are intensional. That is, I could be angry that “if p then q” but not be
angry that “if not q, then not p” if I do not realize that “if p then q” entails “if not p, then not q.” However, if an emotion
can have the content “if p then q” there is no reason to say that it could not have the the content “if not q then not p,”
because they are logically equivalent.
be heavily criticized” (disjunction) and “it is not the case that both I will turn in a bad paper, and I will
not be heavily criticized” (negation and conjunction). If the content of an emotion can be a conditional
statement, there is no non-arbitrary way to rule out my emotion's content being disjunction, a
conjunction, or a negation.
To support the claim that the content emotion content cannot be a conditional, Gunther's
strategy is to introduce potential counterexamples (that is, emotional expressives that appear to have a
conditional as their content) and to illustrate that they do not contradict his claim. First he considers a
straight forward expression of gratitude: “Thank you for lending me the book.” He argues that trying
(1) “Thank you for if you lend me the book, I will read it.”
He argues that these are grammatically unsound, and are thus not proper counterexamples. This
is a poor argument against emotions having content of this sort. The beginning and the end of his
Such cases are ungrammatical and reflect one way that counterexamples can be misbegotten.
(2003, forthcoming (a))
First, it is not clear to me that their “unsoundness” is any more than a grammatical
awkwardness, and Gunther's implicit belief that a grammatically awkward statement could not
accurately characterize the content of an intentional mental state is far from obvious. He presents no
argument to defend this assumption, and it is plausible that our grammar could, on occasion,
Gunther moves on to consider ways in which emotional sentences can be transformed into
Such a sentence is obviously not a counterexample to Gunther's position. The speaker of such a
sentence is not necessarily experiencing any emotion at all, so it is not plausible that such a sentence
identifies the content of her emotion. I will move on to the third counterexample. Gunther entertains
the possibility that emotional ascriptions could indicate emotions whose contents are conditionals.
(4) “Gertrude is happy that if she is dilligent, she will impress William.”
This strikes me as the most plausible, least straw-man, counterexample that Gunther considers.
Gunther argues that, in this case, the content of Gertrude's emotion does not have a genuine conditional
“Unlike expressive utterances, emotional ascriptions don’t have the same content as emotional
states; they are, after all, about emotions. As such, they aren’t reliable indicators of the logical
structure of emotion. This is apparent since neither ascription presupposes that the individual in
question is experiencing the relevant emotion. Rather than experience happiness at the time of
the first ascription, the interpreter is supposing that if Gertrude is diligent, she will be happy that
she impressed William,” (forthcoming (a))
Here, Gunther is arguing that emotional ascriptions do not express emotions, because they are
about emotions. If I say “I am angry that I did not get the promotion”, my expression is about my
anger; it is not about my not getting the promotion. When we ascribe happiness to Gertrude, as in (4),
we are making a claim about Gertrude's emotion, not about the state of affairs that Gertrude is happy
about or the content of Gertrude's happiness. This is problematic for two reasons. First, Gunther fails
to consider that we might imagine Gertrude ascribing the emotion to herself, such that Gertrude might
say “I am happy that if I am diligent, I will impress my professor.” This is not different in any
important way from a more obviously expressive statement, such as “Woo hoo! If I am diligent, I will
impress my professor!” This self-ascribing expressive statement is similar to (1) and (2), which
Gunther disregards on the ground that they are “grammatically unsound.” But “I am happy that if I am
diligent, I will impress my professor,” is not grammatically unsound. It is, in fact, quite natural.
Further, as I argued above, even if Gertrude's self-ascription were grammatically awkward, this would
be an inadequate reason to conclude that she was not experiencing an emotion with a conditional as its
content, because our grammar may inaccurately reflect the contents of our mental states. Second, I
think Gunther is wrong to suppose that ascribing to Gertrude that she is happy that “if she is diligent,
she will impress Williams” is to not presuppose that she is experiencing happiness. It is false that
Gertrude's self ascription does not have Gertrude's being (presently) happy as a correctness condition
for the self-ascription to be true. Ben Smith (2007) offers a similar counterexample that illustrates this
point well:
In this circumstance, the speakers distress ranges over the whole conditional statement. Recall that one
of the reasons Gunther believes that beliefs can be logically complex is that a belief can have a
logically complex content, in which the major operator of the content ranges over the truth-functionally
simple components of that content. Here, we observe the conditional ranging similarly over the truth-
functionally simple components of the emotions content: “I fail the seminar” and “I won't finish my
degree.”5 Here, the speaker is distressed that if the first proposition (that I fail the seminar) obtains,
then the second (that I won't finish my degree) will also obtain. Similarly, it can be true that
(6) I am delighted that if I write a bad paper, Dr. Scarantino will criticize it heavily.
In this case, the speaker is not delighted that she will write a bad paper, and she is not delighted
that Dr. Scarantino will criticize her paper heavily. She is delighted by what she takes to be a true
proposition, that if she writes a bad paper, then Dr. Scarantino will criticize it heavily. In this case, the
conditional ranges over both truth-functionally simple compounds, and she is delighted that these two
propositions have a particular logical relationship: that if one occurs, then the other will occur. It
would be false to claim that she is entertaining the possibility that Dr. Scarantino will criticize her
paper heavily, and projecting onto her future self that such a state of affairs would delight her. She is
experiencing delight now because she believes it to be true that if one state of affairs obtains, the other
will obtain.
But Gunther's criticism of such counterexamples is that they do not have a “genuine conditional
Gunther as arguing that (6) somehow introduces a “disingenuous” conditional. If he does, I do not
know how to make sense of his claim, and he provides no explication of what a disingenuous
conditional might be. Rather, we may interpret Gunther as saying something like the following: If the
ascription appears to be expressing an emotion whose content is a conditional, this appearance does not
reflect the content of the emotion accurately. Gunther writes of the apparently-conditional emotional
ascription:
But looks are deceiving. What is conspicuous about the utterance is that its conditional
structure isn’t genuine. If it were, the speaker should be able to entertain rather than experience
the antecedent.
But this does nothing to illustrate that (6) does not express an emotion whose content has a
genuine conditional structure. In fact, the speaker in (6) is entertaining the antecedent; she is
considering the possibility that she might write a bad paper, noting that if she does write a bad paper
then she will be criticized, and taking delight in the fact that this consequent would obtain. She is not,
however, taking delight in the consequent itself (in this case, she would probably be irritated if the
consequent obtained), but is rather taking delight in the knowledge that the antecedent, if true, would
bring about the consequent. In order for the content of an emotion to have a genuine conditional
structure, it would have to be the case that it is by virtue of this state of affairs (that the antecedent
could not be true and the consequent false) that the emoter is delighted. I believe that (6) expresses an
emotion whose content is a conditional in this way, for the reasons I stated above. The speaker in this
self-ascription, if she is being genuine, is taking delight in the fact that two potential state of affairs
exist in a particular logical relationship: that if one obtains, the other will obtain.
In this section I have shown Gunther's argument for the claim that emotions violate the
force/content distinction is unconvincing. Gunther believes that he can demonstrate this violation by
arguing that emotions are not capable of full logical complexity. I have shown that his argument for
the latter claim is poor, and that we have no reason to accept the claim that emotional contents are not
capable of having a conditional structure. I have offered counterexamples that demonstrate that
emotions can have conditionals for contents. If emotions can have logically complex contents, then
their contents can be abstracted from their force, and we can conceptually separate the force and
content of a given emotional experience. Therefore, the claim that emotions violate the force/content
distinction has not been adequately justified, and we have no reason to suppose that the content of an
emotion is fundamentally different in kind from the content of a belief or desire. I conclude that the
Gunther fails to illustrate that the logical complexity (or lack thereof) of emotional content requires us
Thus far I have argued that Gunther does not provide satisfactory reasons for believing that
emotional content is less capable of logical complexity than propositional content. In the remainder of
this paper, I will trace the significance of this argumentative failure through Gunther's other arguments.
I will attempt to show that Gunther errs in concluding (forthcoming (b)) that emotional content is so
“imbued” with phenomenology that two emotions with different contents necessarily have different
phenomenologies.
For Gunther, the failure of emotions to be fully logically complex demonstrates that force and
content do not individuate in emotional experience. Because belief contents can be logically complex,
we can isolate the logical structure of the content from the mode in which the content is presented
(belief). This is how we can distinguish a belief that “I will get well” from the desire that “I will get
well,” while recognizing that these to mental states have the same content. If emotional contents cannot
be logically complex, then we cannot isolate the content of an emotion from it's mode of presentation
in this way. However, my analysis in section three has shown that Gunther fails to demonstrate that
emotional contents are incapable of logical complexity. Consequently, it has yet to be demonstrated
that emotions (that is, all emotions, Qua emotions) violate the force-content distinction.
Because emotions may not violate the force/content distinction, we have no reason to accept
Gunther's claim that the content of an emotion covaries with the phenomenology of an emotion (CP).
Gunther (forthcoming (b)) introduces a variation upon Searle's (1983) discussion of “psychological
mode.” According to Searle, (1983) two mental acts with the same content (desiring that I will get well
and believing that I will get well) differ according to their psychological mode (desire in the one case,
belief in the other). Gunther attempts to develop a parallel idea for emotions: the emotional mode of
presentation. If I am angry that Bush won the election, while you are delighted that Bush won the
election, the emotional mode of presentation is delight for you, and anger for me. However, unlike
Searle's mode of presentation, Gunther claims that the emotional mode cannot be conceptually
separated from the content, because emotions violate the force/content distinction which such
separation would require. If you are delighted that S is P, the content of your emotion is something like
“delight in S being P.” Attempts to divide this content into the mode (delight) and content (that S is P)
fail because the content of an emotion is inseparable from the emotions force.
But the claim that the emotional mode of presentation cannot be separated from the content of
between force and content. I have shown that Gunther's argument for this latter claim is unsuccessful.
If Gunther's claims about the failure of emotional contents to have full logical complexity are not
justified, there is no reason to believe that the emotional mode of presentation, or the force of a
particular emotion, cannot be separated from the content of that emotion. If we have no reason to deny
the distinction between emotional force and emotional content, then we have no reason to follow
emotional content.
Gunther's conclusion is that the phenomenology of an emotion is covariant with its content. To
show this, he posits, first, that emotional modes of presentation have distinct phenomenological types.6
6 His argument for this positing is also questionable. He refutes two arguments for emotions not having distinct
phenomenological types, and then having disposed of the objections, concludes that our intuitions tell us they do have
Thus, when one transitions from one emotion to another (anger subsides and one becomes
embarrassed) one experiences (at least) two distinct phenomenologies that correspond to distinct modes
of presentation. Gunther's claim that emotional content is, in part, made up of emotional mode of
presentation, allows him to claim that a different emotional content entails a different emotional
phenomenology. However, his claim that emotional content is made up, in part, by emotional mode,
depends on the claim that we cannot separate between force and content. This claim is unjustified, so
Gunther's argument for CP is unsuccessful. Gunther does not give a satisfactory reason to believe that
V. Conclusion
I do not conclude that emotional phenomenology does not covary with emotional content. I
actually suspect that a successful argument for this claim could be constructed. 7 Rather, I have
demonstrated that Gunther's argument for the claim that emotional phenomenology covaries with
emotional content relies on his argument that emotions violate the distinction of force and content. If
Gunther has not demonstrated that emotions violate the distinction of force and content, then his claim
that different emotional phenomenologies entail different emotional contents is not justified. Because
it remains to be demonstrated that emotions cannot have full logical complexity, it consequently
remains to be shown that emotions violate the distinction between force and content. Thus, we do not
yet have adequate grounds to accept Gunther's conclusion that two emotions with distinct
distinct phenomenological types. Refuting this argument would not contribute to the purpose of the present paper, so I
will not dedicate any space on it.
7 See for instance, Miller, Raleigh. Epistemic Emotions. Cambridge Press. Forthcoming.
8 I am greatly indebted to Ben Smith, Ben Sheredos, Lucas Keefer, Paul Pfeilschiefter and Andrea Scarantino for
comments on earlier drafts of this work.
Sources