Louis C. Charland

Cynthia's Dilemma: Consenting to Heroin Prescription

Heroin prescription involves the medical provision of heroin in the treatment of heroin addiction. Rudimentary clinical trials on that treatment modality have been carried out and others are currently underway or in development. However, it is questionable whether subjects considered for such trials are mentally competent to consent to them. The problem has not been sufficiently appreciated in ethical and clinical discussions of the topic. The challenges involved throw new light on the role of value and accountability in contemporary discussions of mental competence.

STRONG FEELINGS: EMOTION, ADDICTION AND HUMAN BEHAVIOR

Emotion and addiction lie on a continuum between simple visceral drives such as hunger, thirst, and sexual desire at one end and calm, rational decision making at the other. Although emotion and addiction involve visceral motivation, they are also closely linked to cognition and culture. They thus provide the ideal vehicle for Jon Elsters study of the interrelation between three explanatory approaches to behavior: neurobiology, culture, and choice. The book is organized around parallel analyses of emotion and addiction in order to bring out similarities as well as differences. Elsters study sheds fresh light on the generation of human behavior, ultimately revealing how cognition, choice, and rationality are undermined by the physical processes that underlie strong emotions and cravings. This book will be of particular interest to those studying the variety of human motivations who are dissatisfied with the prevailing reductionisms. *Not for sale in Belgium, France, or Switzerland.

The Natural Kind Status of Emotion

It has been argued recently that some basic emotions should be considered natural kinds. This is different from the question whether as a class emotions form a natural kind; that is, whether emotion is a natural kind. The consensus on that issue appears to be negative. I argue that this pessimism is unwarranted and that there are in fact good reasons for entertaining the hypothesis that emotion is a natural kind. I interpret this to mean that there exists a distinct natural class of organisms whose behavior and development are governed by emotion. These are emoters. Two arguments for the natural kind status of emotion are considered. Both converge on the existence of emotion as a distinct natural domain governed by its own laws and regularities. There are then some reasons for being optimistic about the prospects for consilience in emotion theory. 1 The mantra 2 Griffiths on emotions as natural kinds 3 Panksepp on emotions as natural kinds 4 Emotion as a neurobiological kind 5 Emotion as a psychological kind 6 Response to the mantra 7 Unification or fragmentation? 8 Concluding remarks

Reconciling Cognitive and Perceptual Theories of Emotion: A Representational Proposal

The distinction between cognitive and perceptual theories of emotion is entrenched in the literature on emotion and is openly used by individual emotion theorists when classifying their own theories and those of others. In this paper, I argue that the distinction between cognitive and perceptual theories of emotion is more pernicious than it is helpful, while at the same time insisting that there are nonetheless important perceptual and cognitive factors in emotion that need to be distinguished. A general representational metatheoretical framework for reconciling cognitive and perceptual theories is proposed. This is the Representational Theory of Emotion (RTE). A detailed case study of Antonio Damasios important new contribution to emotion theory is presented in defense of the RTE. The paper is intended for readers interested in the foundations of emotion theory and cognitive science.

FEELING AND REPRESENTING: COMPUTATIONAL THEORY AND THE MODULARITY OF AFFECT

In this paper I review some leading developments in the empirical theory of affect. I argue that (1) affect is a distinct perceptual representation governed system, and (2) that there are significant modular factors in affect. The paper concludes with the observation thatfeeler (affective perceptual system) may be a natural kind within cognitive science. The main purpose of the paper is to explore some hitherto unappreciated connections between the theory of affect and the computational theory of mind.

A Madness for Identity: Psychiatric Labels, Consumer Autonomy, and the Perils of the Internet

Psychiatric labeling has been the subject of considerable ethical debate. Much of it has centered on issues associated with the application of psychiatric labels. In comparison, far less attention has been paid to issues associated with the removal of psychiatric labels. Ethical problems of this last sort tend to revolve around identity. Many sufferers are reticent to relinquish their iatrogenic identity in the face of official label change; some actively resist it. New forms of this resistance are taking place in the private chat rooms and virtual communities of the Internet, a domain where consumer autonomy reigns supreme. Medical sociology, psychiatry, and bioethics have paid little attention to these developments. Yet these new consumer-driven initiatives actually pose considerable risks to consumers. They also present complex ethical challenges for researchers. Clinically, there is even sufficient evidence to wonder whether the Internet may be the nesting ground for a new kind of identity disturbance. The purpose of the present discussion is to survey these developments and identify potential issues and problems for future research. Taken as a whole, the entire episode suggests that we may have reached a turning point in the history of psychiatry where consumer autonomy and the Internet are now powerful new forces in the manufacture of madness

Emotion as a natural kind: Towards a computational foundation for emotion theory

Abstract In this paper I link two hitherto disconnected sets of results in the philosophy of emotions and explore their implications for the computational theory of mind. The argument of the paper is that, for just the same reasons that some computationalists have thought that cognition may be a natural kind, so the same can plausibly be argued of emotion. The core of the argument is that emotions are a representation‐governed phenomenon and that the explanation of how they figure in behaviour must as such be undertaken in those terms. I conclude with some interdisciplinary reflections in defence of the hypothesis that emotions might be more fundamental in the organization of behaviour than cognition; that, in effect, we may be emoters before we are cognizers. The aim of the paper is: (1) to introduce a number of promising results in philosophical and empirical emotion theory to a wider audience; and (2) to begin the task of organizing those results into a computational theoretical framework.

In Defence of “Emotion”

level. So LeDoux has failed to show emotion is not a natural kind, even though he may have shown that fear might be. In fact, his book should probably not be titled the emotional brain but rather the fear brain, since this primarily is what his research is about. None of the above arguments succeeds in establishing its conclusion. That is, none of them shows that emotion is not a natural kind. However, there is in fact promising evidence that suggests we should take the hypothesis emotion is a natural kind seriously. Here we encounter some serious problems with Griffiths interpretation of the empirical literature he cites. Griffiths does not explicitly discuss the question whether emotions form a natural kind, although the neurobiological literature he cites actually provides compelling evidence in favor of that hypothesis. Looked at quite generally, what the theorists he cites are doing is this: they are supposing that there are creatures moved by emotion -emoteis -and then, in painstaking detail, attempting to decide how many basic affective systems those emoters are moved by. Philosophically, the hypothesis at the root of this project is that there is a class of systems moved by emotion. The underlying insight is that there are certain sorts of regularities in human and some animal behavior that can only properly be captured if we suppose there are organisms that are capable of affective states and processes that impact on behavior and action in specific kinds of ways. The current emphasis on which particular affective states and processes are involved makes it easy to overlook the wider hypothesis that motivates this domain of inquiry. What is emerging is a new field of neurobiological inquiry called affective neuroscience (Panksepp). Philosophically, the guiding hypothesis of this domain of inquiry is the supposition that there are affective systems; a distinct class of biological systems whose behavior is largely governed by emotion 35 LeDoux argues that fear is mediated by a distinct neurophysiological system. But the situation may be more complicated than that. For example, Jerome Kagan argues that there may in fact be three distinct kinds of fear states, each subsumed by different brain systems (Galens Prophecy: Temperament and Humlln Nature [Boulder, CO: Westview Press 1998], 96-112). 36 Damasio, Descartes Error (New York: Putnam 1994); D. Maclean, The Triune Brain in Evolution: Role in Paleocerebral Functions (New York: Plenum 1990); Panksepp, Affective Neuroscience D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs ity o f W es te rn O nt ar io ] at 0 4: 56 1 9 Se pt em be r 20 14 152 Louis c. CluJTlllnd and only explainable in those terms. This is the neurobiological version of the hypothesis that emotion is a natural kind. Jon Elster has recently proposed an argument that may also lend support to the hypothesis emotion is a natural kind. According to him, the natural kind status of emotion revolves around the question whether they are unified by a common causal mechanism or whether they are simply lumped together on the basis of phenomenological similarities (Alchemies of Mind, 239 n.2). He claims this is an unresolved issue (Strong Feelings, 12). But he also states that many forms of human behavior woUld be unintelligible if we did not see them through the prism of emotion (Alchemies of Mind, 404). This sounds very much like a special sciences style argument for the natural kind status of emotion of the sort proposed by Charland (Emotion as a Natural Kind). In both cases, the general idea is that there are regularities inhuman behavior that can only properly be explained by positing a specialized class of affective representational states that causally impact on behavior and other mental states in specific sorts of ways. The above hypothesis can be extended in a variety of interesting ways. Elster, for example, believes that there are second-order specialized causal mechanisms that operate over and above the neurobiological causal level of affect programs (Alchemies of Mind, Ch.l). Like Griffiths, he is impressed with the value of the biological notion of homology for emotion theory (ibid., 239-42). But he is apparently more optimistic than Griffiths about the existence of causal mechanisms in emotion of other sorts. Specifically, he argues that there are specialized causal mechanisms that govern the many transmutations and misrepresentations we find in social emotions such as shame, love, pride, guilt, and hubris. Even though he remains agnostic on the question whether emotions form a natural kind, he still maintains that they may have common phenomenological properties that have convergent causal effects (Strong Feelings, 45). This conforms well with the idea that emotions can exhibit a variety of cognitive structures, which we have seen has interesting applications in psychology and psychotherapy, and even the computational theory of mind. One last area of inquiry where there are debates that bear on the natural kind status of emotion is anthropology. New research there suggests that there may be shared semantic structures associated with emotion terms across culture. This has led some researchers to suppose 37 C.C. Moore, K.A. Romney, and C.D. Rusch, The Universality of the Semantic Structure of Emotion Terms: Methods for the Study of Inter and Intra Cultural Variability, American Anthropologist 101.3 (1999) 529-46 D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs ity o f W es te rn O nt ar io ] at 0 4: 56 1 9 Se pt em be r 20 14 In Defence of Emotion 153 that emotions themselvesas opposed to emotion words-may share certain common features across cultures, despite obvious cultural variations in their manner of expression and other learned aspects. The authors of this particular study argue that based on the evidence they have uncovered, the possibility that emotion is a natural kind is far from closed. In fact, they believe their evidence suggests precisely the contrary; namely, that emotion may be a natural kind. In this section it has been argued that despite his attention to the question whether emotions are natural kinds, Griffiths ignores the wider question whether emotion is a natural kind. This is another serious exegetical problem with his book. It also impacts directly on the elimination thesis. For if the hypothesis that emotion is a natural kind is a legitimate hypothesis for which there exists plausible evidence, then to speak of the elimination of emotion at this point is empirically and philosophically premature. It is ironic that a book that is doing so much to introduce philosophical audiences to scientific emotion theory should do such a poor job of explaining why there may really be a scientific domain of inquiry of that sort in the first place.

Are There Answers

The Question In an innovative discussion Jason Scott Robert and Francoise Baylis (2003) argue that “the creation of novel beings that are part human and part nonhuman animal is sufx8eciently threatening to the social order that for many this is a sufx8ecient reason to prohibit any crossing of species boundaries involving human beings.” The “hypothesis” they propose is that “the issue at the heart of the matter is the threat of moral confusion.” They also argue that we cannot resolve this moral confusion by turning to science and appealing to the notion of species identity. This is because “there is no one authoritative dex8enition of species.” Consequently, there is “no consensus on what exactly is being breached with the creation of interspecies beings.” So how are we supposed to go about answering this question about cross-species transgression? Curiously, this intriguing interdisciplinary discussion might say more about the intractable scale and complexity of bioethical inquiry in this domain than it does about the specix8ec question it sets out to address. It boldly raises all the right issues in all their interdisciplinary splendor. But at the same time it invites the question how this multiplicity of interdisciplinary premises and arguments is supposed to lead to an answer. Bioethical discussions of this sort seem to promise answers, even if they do not provide them; they raise questions that are presumed to have answers. Yet this particular discussion left me wondering whether there really are answers of the expected sort to be had. In this commentary I explore this methodological worry by discussing two of the article’s central themes: species identity and moral confusion.