Abstract
Emotion Theory and Empiricism: Prinz on Hume and James
Empiricism, with its incorporation of the emotions into the larger category of sensation, has
been of great importance emotion research. David Hume’s writings on “the passions” remain
influential; William James defined the contours of the current field of emotion research; Jesse
Prinz is one of the most original and influential authors to address the topic of emotions today.
The tradition pleasingly comes full-circle, because Prinz claims to unify the insights of Hume and
James. James is particularly attractive to Prinz, firstly because of the importance both assign to
embodiment in general and brain processes in particular, and secondly because James’
pragmatism is comes close to Prinz’s evolutionary approach.
In my view, Prinz’s project both fails to provide an adequate interpretation of James and does
not do what it sets out to do, namely provide a philosophy of emotion that goes beyond the
opposing traditions of cognitivism and feeling-based theory. I think these two observations are
related. Prinz is not able to give a full account of what an emotion is precisely because he has
misrepresented James. Like Hume before him, Prinz operates within the framework of classical
empiricism. His theory of emotion assumes that there is an objective reality which is passively
perceived by the subject, as a smoke alarm processes a reality that is ‘out there’ and goes off
when certain conditions are met. I believe that such an approach does not do justice to emotions.
We require a different concept of intentionality. James offers us such a concept.
James describes himself as a radical empiricist. His starting point is different from that of Hume
and Prinz: according to him, the distinction between subject and object is not given in
experience in an absolute way, but is rather the result of abstraction. Moreover, the nature of
both subject and object depends on context and function. In an early work, James states that
“affections” corroborate his theory of experience. Let us briefly consider why this might be so.
On Prinz’s account, we are to think of emotions in terms of detection: they are like searchlights
that are cast onto the world, revealing things that are important to well-being. We have evolved
them because they help us to identify certain facts about the world. However, if we follow James,
our world is always already an emotionally charged Umwelt. This follows from the very fact that
consciousness is a product of evolution, and thus aimed at action: there is no world of ‘neutral
stuff’ that we can detect via our emotions.
This establishes the conclusion that Prinz’s use of James is not warranted. James can actually do
a better job than Prinz in terms of incorporating neurological findings about moral psychology
related to emotion. Speaking more philosophically, the phenomenology of emotions is better
served by James’ account than by Prinz’s. Both of these difficulties are rooted in the fact that
Prinz embraces a form of classical empiricism: he is closer to Hume than he would like us to
believe.
Biography:
Julien Kloeg (1990) studies philosophy at the faculty of philosophy at the Erasmus
University Rotterdam. He is currently writing his MA-thesis on the challenge
China presents to traditional conceptions of human rights, pursuing themes in both
hermeneutics (intercultural dialogue) and political philosophy. His main research
interests are political philosophy, philosophical anthropology and education.