IIMITCHELL GREEN

PERCEIVING EMOTIONS
I argue that it is possible literally to perceive the emotions of others. This account depends upon the possibility of perceiving a whole by perceiving one or more of its parts, and upon the view that emotions are complexes. After developing this account, I expound and reply to Rowland Stouts challenge to it. Stout is nevertheless sympathetic with the perceivabilityof-emotions view. I thus scrutinize Stouts suggestion for a better defence of that view than I have provided, and offer a refinement of my own proposal that incorporates some of his insights.

I
Introduction. Ivan Turgenevs Fathers and Sons contains a passage in which a mother gazes at her imposing but nihilistic son:
She was afraid to caress Bazarov, and he gave her no encouragement, for he did nothing to invite her caresses; and besides, Vassily Ivanovich had advised her not to disturb him too much But Arina Vlasyevnas eyes, looking steadfastly at Bazarov, expressed not devotion and tenderness alone, for sorrow was visible in them also, mingled with curiosity and fear, with a trace of humble reproachfulness. (Turgenev 1948, p. 152)

Leaving aside the question whether Arina Vlasyevna could show so many emotions at once, it is clear that Turgenev intends his readers not to be surprised by the suggestion that an emotion like sorrow could be visible in a persons eyes. More generally, we often say such things as that we could see the anxiety on someones face, feel the trepidation in her handshake, and hear the exuberance in her voice. In Self-Expression, I mention this aspect of common sense, as well as cite novelists as diverse as Turgenev and Amy Tan, the painter Alberti, and Charles Darwin as all describing emotions as being perceptible. Yet even if common sense carries a presumption in its favour, it is notoriously fallible, and neither Turgenev, Tan, Alberti
2010 The Aristotelian Society Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume lxxxiv doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8349.2010.00185.x

46

II MITCHELL GREEN

nor Darwin argues for their characterization of emotions as falling within the ambit of perception. This raises the question whether common sense, and the opinion of these thinkers, can be justified.1 In what follows I will offer a line of reasoning supporting this perceivability-of-emotions intuition (ii), and further refine it in iii. I then (iv) expound and reply to Rowland Stouts challenges to this line of reasoning. Stout is nevertheless sympathetic to the perceivability-of-emotions intuition. I will thus (v) scrutinize Stouts suggestion for a better defence of that view than I have provided, and close (vi) with a refinement of my own proposal that incorporates some of his insights.

II
Perception and Experience. We can show something in any of three ways, which I call showing-that, showing-a, and showing how (something appears or feels). When we show that something is so, we provide strong evidence for the truth of a proposition. The fibres on the floor of the burned house show that someone with a certain type of shoe walked down the hall at about the time of the fire; the pattern of erosion on the fossilized teeth found near an ancient hearth show that the hominid to whom they belonged ate maize; and so on. I am taking these forensic and archaeological judgements at face value, and as at least occasionally correct. That is, I am leaving as irrelevant sceptical doubts such as would be ignored by jurors or archaeologists. Accordingly, the possibility of those fibres or teeth being placed there by an Evil Genius is not relevant to the claims that these sorts of conclusions make. Another point about showing-that, and which applies equally to the other forms of showing I am about to discuss, is that it does not require an audience, to say nothing of an audience who appreciates what has been shown. As a result, the lesion in my skin might show a melanoma without anyone noticing, and even those who do notice that lesion might not appreciate its significance. Similarly, showing does not require an intention to show anything: my lesion shows my
Stout (2010) notes that McDowell (1978) also espouses this view, but so far as I can see, McDowell does not offer reasons in support of it. Bar-On (2004, pp. 27380) provides such reasons, which in part draw upon work of mine that was then in progress, and which appeared in Green (2007). Bar-On also offers considerations of her own. 2010 The Aristotelian Society Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume lxxxiv doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8349.2010.00185.x
1

PERCEIVING EMOTIONS

47

melanoma without, of course, my intending it to do so.2 Third, showing is a success notion: If A shows that P, and A obtains, then P is true. Thus if the fibres on the carpet are genuine, and they show that someone with a certain type of shoe was present at a certain time, then someone of that type was present at that time. Distinct from showing-that is what I term showing-a, in which something is made available to perception. When I show you the lesion on my skin, I make it possible for you to see it so long as your visual system is working properly, lighting is good, and so on. So too, I can do things (whether intentionally or not) that show you my voicethis enables you to hear my voiceand likewise for showing you a texture, a taste, and so forth. Although showing is most naturally associated with vision, showing-a is possible for all sensory modalities, including those not possessed by our own species. Showinga is thus also possible for electroreception, echolocation, and other forms of perceptionif such there becurrently unknown to us. Finally, one can show how an emotion, mood or experience feels. Sometimes doing so depends on the process of emotional contagion; in other cases it calls upon our capacity for imagination. Accordingly, a first-person description of what a rape victim experienced might give us some inkling of what that experience was like; the same might go for an account of what starvation feels like by someone who has been through it. That account may but need not be given in words; images, sounds, smells, even tastes might all be used to convey how this experience felt.3 Subtly but importantly, showing-a does not require showing how something appears. Suppose that blindsight is a genuine phenomenon, and that it is described at least roughly accurately in such places as Weiskrantz (2009). Then a patient with Type i blindsight in particular sees something without any conscious experience of doing so.4
This usage is to be distinguished from that of Miklsi et al. (2000), who define showing as a communicative action comprising both a directional component related to an external target and an attention-getting component directing the attention of the perceiver to the informer or sender. Although I make no use of this notion here, we might call it overt showing to distinguish it from that used in the text. 3 Showing how an emotion, mood or experience feels enables empathy in an appropriate audience. Yet contrary to a suggestion of Stouts, who speaks of empathetic adoption of other peoples feelings (Stout 2010, p. 41), I deny that empathizing with someone requires feeling what they do. I discuss the issue further in Green (2008). 4 A Type i blindsight patient has no awareness of any stimuli. By contrast, a Type ii blindsight patient might have some awareness of, for instance, movement within the affected visual area, but will still not have a visual image of a moving object. See Leh et al. (2006). 2010 The Aristotelian Society Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume lxxxiv doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8349.2010.00185.x
2

48

II MITCHELL GREEN

The patient can locate that object in egocentric space, manoeuvre around it if need be, tell whether it is an X or an O, say, but not be conscious of seeing it. If these characterizations are correct, then a patient with blindsight can be shown-a an object without coming to learn what it looks like in the sense of experiencing its sensory qualities. In this respect, such a patient is like someone who knows that a certain object is yellow because of being told that it is. However, Type i blindsight is not reducible to knowledge-that: after all, Type i blindsight patients can predict, at levels well above chance, such aspects of a visual stimulus as its location or direction of movement; they are also capable of target detection and localization by saccadic eye movements (Pppel et al. 1973) or manual pointing (Weiskrantz et al. 1974), and relative velocity discrimination (Barbur et al. 1980; Weiskrantz et al. 1995).5 In principle, similar cleavages between perception and experience are possible for other sensory modalities. So, for instance, were there an olfactory analogue of blindsight, olfaction might make me perceptually aware of a sulphurous smell without my consciously experiencing a rotten egg aroma. Similarly, a hammerhead shark might in principle be able to perceive a fish hiding under the sand by electroreception but not have an experience of that fish mediated by this sensory modality. Normally when we see such an everyday object as an apple we are only physically affected by its facing surface: it is only this that light bounces off of to affect our retina. At the same time, it is natural to say that we see the apple, not (or not just) that we see its facing surface. If this way of speaking can be vindicated, I take that vindication to be along such lines as the following. In our normal ecological situation (in which facing surfaces tend to be attached to whole apples, etc.), perception of a facing surface makes appropriate an inference to the presence of an entire apple. That inference issues in a positioning of the object in egocentric space, an attribution of a trajectory if it is in motion, judgement of relative velocities if applicable, and so forth. Yet outside of a normal ecological situation (replete with apple-facades, etc.), perception of the facing surface of
5

Those who hold that all knowledge-how is reducible to knowledge-that, might also suggest that all showing is reducible to showing-that. I respond to the claim that knowing-how is reducible to knowing-that in Green (2010). A fuller discussion of the tripartition among three types of showing, and its relevance to the evolutionary biology of communication, is given in Green (2009). 2010 The Aristotelian Society Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume lxxxiv doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8349.2010.00185.x

PERCEIVING EMOTIONS

49

an apple may not suffice to make appropriate an inference to the presence of an apple. At most it will create the illusion of the perception of an apple rather than a perception thereof. This will be so even if the entire apple is there to be perceived. The inferences I speak of here will not in general consist in the derivation of one proposition from a set of others. Rather, as we have seen, they will more commonly take the form of a positioning of an object in egocentric space, an attribution of absolute and relative trajectories, and so forth. In this respect the inference at issue is analogous to the filling in phenomenon that drives optical illusions such as the Kanisza Triangle (figure 1). Here the visual system infers the presence of a triangle from the cues available, yet there is little plausibility in the idea that such an inference depends on the manipulation of propositions or proposition-like entities in the language of thought (if such there be) or elsewhere.

Figure 1 The Kanisza Triangle, from the Italian psychologist Gaetano Kanisza (1955).

In what sense, then, might it be said that such a non-propositional inference is appropriate? I suspect this is most clearly intelligible relative to a biological niche. Accordingly, relative to niche N, a bird properly infers (in the current sense of infer) the presence of a seed from its facing surface if whole seeds tend with sufficient regularity to be connected to their facing surfaces in N. In another niche N!, where seeds and their surfaces tend all too often to be prised apart,
2010 The Aristotelian Society Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume lxxxiv doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8349.2010.00185.x

50

II MITCHELL GREEN

that inference is not appropriate. Propriety in the present sense will be tethered to the fulfilment of the organisms interests rather than to the maximization of truth or knowledge. I return in the next section to the question whether this notion of niche and the associated issue of proper inference generalize to our own species. For now it should be stressed that the inferential process underlying perception of an apple beyond its facing surface need not be conscious, and need not be reflected in conscious experience. So just as the blindsight patient can perceive something without having conscious experience of doing so, one who sees the apple perceives its facing surface as well as the apple itself, without the latter perceptual event being reflected in a distinct episode of conscious experience.

III
Emotions and Their Experts. Building on the work of Griffiths (1998; 2004), I argue in Self-Expression that the so-called basic emotions (usually thought to include anger, sadness, happiness, fear, surprise and disgust) are natural kinds. That is, anger, for instance, has an internal nature that folk psychology or a priori ratiocination cannot be depended upon to reveal. Instead, neuroscience and experimental psychology point to a view of anger on which it comprises an interrelated set of phenomena: physiological response, behavioural disposition including disposition to facial-expressive behaviour, as well as a cognitive disposition to make judgements of a certain sort. It may also be part of angers essence that it has a subjective characterwhat we think of as the boiling up aspect of how anger feels. How these dimensions are themselves united by and explicable in terms of a single underlying cause is currently unknown. Be that as it may, however, we may see anger as a systematically related set of components, and similar remarks may be made of the other basic emotions. As Stout remarks (2010, p. 34), a strong consensus has also emerged in recent experimental psychology and neuroscience that the basic emotions are pan-cultural: each of these emotions can be found with its characteristic components relatively intact in all modern humans. Anger will thus affect me in more or less the same way it will affect a Papua New Guinean, in spite of the fact that he may
2010 The Aristotelian Society Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume lxxxiv doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8349.2010.00185.x

PERCEIVING EMOTIONS

51

have had little exposure to Western technology, conventions or culture. As a result, we may say that among members of our species, anger has a certain appearance: on the face, in bodily movement, in vocal behaviour, and so on. If there are interpersonal differences in the manifestation of anger, they are due in large part either to display rules or to individual idiosyncrasy. Display rules: Ekman and colleagues have argued that cultures are often characterized by the norms they impose on the manifestation of emotion. Thus for instance, at least in the presence of authority figures, Japanese culture allows less room for spontaneous emotional display than do most North American and Western European cultures. Thus while two peopleone Japanese and the other Italianmight both experience anger, they will likely display it differently in the presence of authority figures in spite of tending to manifest it in largely the same ways when they take themselves to be unobserved.6 Idiosyncrasy: Two people might differ in the way emotions flow through them. Susan might show anger by means of a twitching above her right eye, whereas Arthur does not. As a result, those who know Susan well will understand the significance of that twitching. They know that this is one of the ways that she shows her anger, whether or not she means to do so, and whether or not anyone else in the world shows their anger in that way.7 Pan-cultural phenomena, display rules and individual peculiarity in the expression of emotion may all be taken into account when understanding someones expressive behaviour. Most commonly our ability to do so will be second nature rather than driven by conscious deliberation. Nevertheless, employment of all three sources of information tends to make us experts on those with whom we are close. Observing my long-time friend Gayle, I call upon not only my implicit understanding of pan-cultural expressive facts and display rules local to our shared culture; I also draw upon my knowledge of Gayles distinctive way of biting her lip when angry or playing with her hair when self-conscious. That lip-biting is a characteristic component of her anger even if it is not such a component of anyone elses. As such it enables me to perceive her anger even when others
6 7

Ekman et al. (1987); Ekman (1993); Matsumoto (1992). Elfenbeim and Ambady (2003a; 2003b). Kring, Smith and Neale (1994) develop a 17-item Emotional Expressiveness Scale to measure the main factors constituting a persons expressive profile.

2010 The Aristotelian Society Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume lxxxiv doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8349.2010.00185.x

52

II MITCHELL GREEN

with equally acute senses but less Gayle-expertise cannot do so. We are, that is, experts on those to whom we are close, with the result that in face-to-face, temporally extended interaction, we come to be in an excellent position not only to know what they are feeling, but in some cases to perceive those feelings as well. Consequently, even if very few of us can learn much from the expressive behaviour of an arbitrarily chosen person, many of us can learn a great deal from the expressive behaviour of our handful of intimates.8

IV
Stouts Dilemma. Stout raises an objection to my way of understanding what Ive elsewhere termed part-whole perception. The facing surface of an apple can exist independently thereof. But then, Stout observes, if the facing surface along with its observable properties can exist independently of the apple then seeing the facing surface by itself does not amount to seeing the apple (Stout 2010, p. 32). I trust it will be uncontroversial that I can touch a building by touching one part of an exterior wall. (This next photo is of Green touching Dublin Castle.) This is in spite of the fact that part of the wall can exist independently of the entire building. That is, Stout is evidently not espousing the strong principle that if A bears relation R to B, and B can exist independent of C, then As bearing R to B can never be sufficient, under appropriate circumstances, for As bearing R to C. More likely, Stout has in mind a restriction specific to intentional states. Further, in speaking of one perceptual event amounting to another, Stout might have either of two ideas in view. One idea would be that the event of perceiving the facing surface of the apple guarantees, as a matter of either logical or metaphysical necessity, perception of the apple. The other idea would be that one perceptual event makes the other perceptual event possible. The former of these ideas is untenable; indeed it would not be tenable even if the facing sur8

Drawing on the biologists notion of a niche, I suggest that each of us who lives a normal social life inhabits a niche that comprises that small number of people with whom we are intimate. A feasible limit is the Dunbar number of 150 (sensu Dunbar 1998), and it is probably a good deal lower than that for the majority of us. This notion of niche will in turn determine what inferences concerning emotions it is proper to draw on the basis of expressive behaviour. 2010 The Aristotelian Society Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume lxxxiv doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8349.2010.00185.x

PERCEIVING EMOTIONS

53

face could not exist independently of the apple. The reason is that the two perceptual events in question are distinct existences, whence neither ones existence can guarantee (either as a matter of logical or metaphysical necessity) that of the other. It is less clear what is unacceptable about the other scenario, which may be read thus: if the facing surface along with its observable properties can exist independently of the apple, then seeing the facing surface does not enable perception of the apple. Why, however, couldnt perception of that surface, together with some other environmental situation, enable such perception? Stout addresses this question with a dilemma. Let the said environmental situation be E. Then the perceiving subject is either aware of E or she is not. If she is aware of E, and that awareness is a part of what enables perception of the apple, then it no longer appears that she perceives the apple just by perceiving its facing surface. On the other hand, if she does not need to be aware of E, then it follows that in being conscious of the apple, the perceiver need only be aware of its facing surface: yet consciousness of the facing surface would somehow have to constitute consciousness of the apple:
For Green, in certain favourable circumstances being aware of someones facial expression gives you awareness of their state of anger even though that facial expression could exist without being part of a state of anger. But if that is right then these favourable conditions, which one may not be conscious of, mean that consciousness of one thing is consciousness of something different. And that is what I cannot make sense of. (Stout 2010, pp. 323)

The points made here do not rely on issues specifically concerned with perception (or at least awareness) of other minds; they could apply as well to perception of everyday objects like apples. Thus transposed, the objection is that what I have said about perceiving an apple by perceiving its facing surface implies that consciousness of that surface is also consciousness of something differentpresumably the apple itself. The concern is evidently not that one thing couldnt possibly constitute something elsekicking a ball into a net under certain conditions can constitute a goal. Likewise, the objection evidently depends on features specific to consciousness rather than to mental states generally. Where, for instance, P entails Q, we canperhaps on the strength of some doxastic logic make sense of the claim that belief that P is constitutive of belief that Q,
2010 The Aristotelian Society Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume lxxxiv doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8349.2010.00185.x

54

II MITCHELL GREEN

even if we find the claim implausible. Accordingly, Stouts remarks appeal to consciousness per se, and they amount to this: since the two conscious experiences (of the facing surface and of the apple) would be phenomenally different, it is not plausible that one could literally constitute the other. After all, were this the case we would apparently be in a position to notice this fact by consulting our own experiences of apples. It should be clear by now that I need not agree that perception of the apple must correspond to an event in consciousness distinct from that corresponding to the perception of its facing surface. The phenomenon of Type i blindsight shows that perception of an object does not require conscious experience thereof, and this point can help us to understand perception even in non-pathological cases. Accordingly, I would recast Stouts point by suggesting that on my way of understanding perception, conscious perception of one thing can enable perception of something different even when the latter perceptual act is not a component of conscious experience.9 Stout may retort that blindsight is an exotic phenomenon, and thus that my position is ad hoc, in so far as I need to appeal to it. I would reply that exotic phenomena can often illuminate everyday phenomenajust recall the influence that autism research has had in work in the philosophy of mind over the last three decades. Autism shows the possibility of cognitive sophistication coupled with mindblindness; so too, I contend, blindsight establishes the possibility of perception in the absence of perceptual experience. As such it offers the possibility of a refinement of our notion of perception, and that refinement in turn sheds light on our capacity to know one anothers emotions in non-pathological cases. Even were he to concede these points, Stout may dispute my contention that perception of a facing surface of an apple could ever be sufficient to justify an inference to the presence of, and enable the perception of, an apple; likewise for expressions and the emotions they express. I will return to this issue in vi.

In the parlance of Block (1995), the blindsight patient has access-consciousness to items in his visual field but they are not represented in phenomenal consciousness. 2010 The Aristotelian Society Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume lxxxiv doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8349.2010.00185.x

PERCEIVING EMOTIONS

55

V
Emotings Observed. I urged in the introduction that it is part of common sense that we can feel the trepidation in someones handshake. Stout agrees with this intuition, but wishes to support it in terms other than the part-whole perception model that I have advocated. One premiss of his reasoning is that we can perceive dispositions in action. For instance, we can perceive, he holds, the fragility of the glass or the strength in someones handshake. In a similar way, Stout contends, we can perceive the realization of a disposition to behaviour that is a feature of the expression of anger. On the assumption that a process of expressing ones anger involves that anger (so that one cannot express ones anger without being angry), Stout now concludes that one can see someones anger as it plays out on their face:
I can see the anger in someones facial expression because I see the realization of the disposition of their anger as it manifests itself in their facial expressions. And in being aware of the realization of this disposition I am aware of something that continuesone and the same thingacross the duration of the expression of the emotion. (Stout 2010, p. 39)

Stout may here be moving from the claim that one can perceive the realization of a disposition to behave in a certain way to the conclusion that one can perceive an emotion-in-action, and therefore an emotion. So construed, though, this reasoning is problematic by Stouts own lights. A realized disposition to behave in a certain way is only one aspect of anger. As weve seen, anger is a complex containing other components such as a physiological response. Accordingly, a realized disposition to behave in a certain way is compatible with the absence of anger. By Stouts own lights, then, even if we could perceive such a disposition to anger, that would not enable us to perceive anger. On the other hand, Stout might have in mind a richer conception of what is given in our perception of someones emoting. On this conception, when we see someone expressing anger, we see not only a disposition realized, we see something that could not exist unless the agent were in fact angry. As a result, in seeing what we do we see the anger. Stouts enriched conception of what we see would indeed make
2010 The Aristotelian Society Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume lxxxiv doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8349.2010.00185.x

56

II MITCHELL GREEN

sense of how we perceive emotions. However, its unclear why so enriching this conception doesnt simply amount to a case of theft over honest toil. After all, short of physiological tests and interrogation, even careful inspection of an arbitrarily chosen person behaving angrily will not show that they are not bluffing. For this reason, the analogy that Stout draws between what he calls signings (which, under favourable conditions, issue in signatures) and emoting is apt to mislead. Stout distinguishes between signatures and the signings that issue in them. He observes that one cannot, by inspection, determine whether a pattern of ink on paper is a signature: such observation cannot, after all, reveal the patterns aetiology.10 Nevertheless, one can perceive the process of a signing, which when all goes well results in a signature. This is simply because, at least if we assume that one can be sure that the signing is not being carried out by an impostor, there is nothing else to a processs being a signing than its following this causal path. By contrast, however, in the case of emoting there is all too often too much room for mendacity and other sources of error that cannot be ruled out even by observing the process and not just its product. At least with someone I do not know intimately, I can watch that person swearing like a sailor, breaking furniture and threatening those around him without being able to rule out the possibility that he is feigning anger: perhaps he is rehearsing for a role in an upcoming Tennessee Williams play. If this is right, then the analogy between the observing of a signing and the observing of an emoting is problematic. That analogy would be less problematic for the emotings of those with whom we are intimate; yet Stout gives no indication of wishing to restrict his claims to such cases. None of this criticism of Stout is meant to disagree with his claim that we can perceive someones emoting in his favoured sense of that phrase. Rather, I would suggest that we can do so, but to see how this is possible, I shall need to answer a question I left unsettled at the end of iv.

10

Forgeries, Stout observes, are not signatures at all. For present purposes Ill accept Stouts contention that one cannot tell by inspection whether a configuration of ink on paper is a signature. (Whether this is true depends on the reliability of handwriting experts.)

2010 The Aristotelian Society Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume lxxxiv doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8349.2010.00185.x

PERCEIVING EMOTIONS

57

VI
For All I Know. Stout cites McDowell as remarking that if we take what is available to our experience of anothers mind as being compatible with that persons not being in the mental state we impute to her, then we cannot know that she is in that state. Thus, if all that is available to my experience of someones anger is her grimace, and her so grimacing is compatible with her not being angry, then we cannot know that she is angry. This point may be crystallized by an epistemological constraint concerning knowledge of other minds: McDowells Constraint: It is incoherent to accept the following two propositions: (i) A knows that B is in psychological state S, and (ii) As knowledge is constituted by being in a position in which, for all he knows, B might not be in S (McDowell 1982, p. 371). It is not immediately clear what this constraint has to do with the possibility of perceiving the emotions of others. For we have not made explicit any relation between knowledge and perception. I doubt it is the case that if I perceive an apple, then I know that I am doing so, or know that there is an apple in front of me, etc. For the other direction, clearly I could know that there is an apple in front of me without perceiving it. On the other hand, I have contended that in perceiving a characteristic component of an emotion, I am justified in some instances in inferring the existence of that emotion, and that justification is part of what puts me in a position to perceive that emotion rather than just seem to do so. Whether that justification must be of a sort adequate for knowledge is a question for which I lack space to consider here. However, in so far as McDowells Constraint might be thought to block any transition from one item of experience to another not logically entailed by it, I wish to address it nonetheless. Consider the case of observing the behaviour of someone you know wella family member, a close friend, a lover of many years. We saw in iii that over and above the pan-cultural way that emotions have of manifesting themselves, emotions also have characteristic ways of manifesting themselves in individuals: Gayle has a certain way of showing her anger that is not shared by others, and those who know Gayle intimately, and who are reasonably acute observers of her behaviour, will be able to discern this. So imagine a
2010 The Aristotelian Society Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume lxxxiv doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8349.2010.00185.x

58

II MITCHELL GREEN

case in which a spouse, child, lover, etc., is emoting and you are watching. Here, I suggest, you may well conclude that they are angry, say, but if you are observing them in a way informed by your expertise of many years as a student of their behaviour, it is simply not true that for all you know, they might not really be angry. This is not to suggest that we are never wrong about the feelings of others to whom we are close. It is also doubtless the case that in many instances we simply are unsure of the feelings of others about whom we have some expertise. Instead, my contention is that in some instances, we can rightly and properly turn back the suggestion that for all we know, this person is not in the emotional state they seem to be in. The characteristic components of emotion that are on my view the touchstones of inferences to whole emotions, and which make affect-perception possible, do not logically entail those emotions. However, for this fact to block knowledge of those emotions, we would need an argument for the conclusion that even in such cases as those just considered, we dont know that the subjects are in the emotional state ascribed to them. As I observe my old friend behave in ways characteristic of anger, it simply isnt true that for all I know, she might not be angry. To a challenge such as For all you know she might be practising for a play!, I would simply reply, She is not (yet) that gifted as an actress. Accordingly, McDowells Constraint simply leaves such cases untouched. In a case such as this last, I perceive characteristic components of Gayles anger, and given my expertise about her behaviour, justifiably infer that she is angry. The justified status of this inference is attested by the fact that it is not the case that for all I know, she might not be angry. I would also suggest that in a situation like this, Stouts analogy between signings and emotings is an apt one: I (although not necessarily others who are less expert than I am concerning her behaviour) can perceive her expressing her anger just as on another occasion I can witness her signing a document. Stouts emphasis on the temporally extended and active dimension of emotion perception is a welcome elaboration of this account. Just as I can probe the apples facing surface by pushing at it, thereby acquiring further evidence about whether its attached to something larger, so too I can probe the facing surface of Gayles anger by, for instance, flashing a smile or offering a sheepish look. Doing so will help me get a better fix on the affordances of her affect: is it
2010 The Aristotelian Society Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume lxxxiv doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8349.2010.00185.x

PERCEIVING EMOTIONS

59

feigned or real, and if the latter, is it irritation or rage? Is it directed at me or at someone else in her line of vision? And so on. Stout and I concur, then, that one can perceive emotions in the behaviour of others, and more specifically, that in favourable circumstances we can perceive emotings. Where we disagree is how to make sense of this fact. My use of part-whole perception in this connection is meant to help explain how we can perceive emotings. We do so in part with the help of our perception of characteristic components of emotion. Accordingly, my account of how we can perceive the emotions of others goes beyond that of Stout, but this is to be expected as it has greater explanatory ambitions. If either of us is correct about our ability to perceive the emotions of others, it is not true that the only ways to know other minds are either theorization (the theory-theory) or imagining oneself into their shoes (simulation). Without needing to deny that these processes occur, Stout and I may point out that a third way to the knowledge of other minds, at least of those about whom we have some expertise, is by looking (or listening, etc.) and probing. On this issue, philosophy can elucidate and vindicate the deliverances of common sense.11 Department of Philosophy 120 Cocke Hall University of Virginia Charlottesville, va 22904-4780

usa
msg6m@virginia.edu

REFERENCES
Barbur, J. L., K. H. Ruddock, and Vicki A. Waterfield 1980: Human visual responses in the absence of the geniculo-calcarine projection. Brain, 103, pp. 90528. Bar-On, Dorit 2004: Speaking My Mind: Expression and Self-Knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Block, Ned 1995: On a confusion about the function of consciousness.
11

Research for this work has been supported by a Sesquicentennial Fellowship from the University of Virginia, and by a Visiting Fellowship from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. My thanks to Dorit Bar-On and Rowland Stout for comments on earlier drafts.

2010 The Aristotelian Society Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume lxxxiv doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8349.2010.00185.x

60

II MITCHELL GREEN

Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 18, pp. 22747. Dunbar, Robin 1998: Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language. Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press. Ekman, Paul 1993: Facial Expression and Emotion. American Psychologist, 48 (4), pp. 38492. Wallace V. Friesen, Maureen OSullivan, Anthony Chan et al. 1987: Universals and Cultural Differences in the Judgments of Facial Expressions of Emotion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53 (4), pp. 7127. Elfenbein, Hillary Anger, and Nalini Ambady 2003a: When Familiarity Breeds Accuracy: Cultural Exposure and Facial Emotion Recognition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85 (2), pp. 27690. 2003b: Universals and Cultural Differences in Recognizing Emotions. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 12 (4), pp. 15964. Green, Mitchell 2007: Self-Expression. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2008: Empathy, Expression, and What Artworks Have to Teach. In Garry L. Hagberg (ed.), Art and Ethical Criticism, pp. 95122. Oxford: Blackwell. 2009: Speech Acts, the Handicap Principle and the Expression of Psychological States. Mind and Language, 24, pp. 13963. 2010: Language understanding and knowledge of meaning. Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication, 4. Griffiths, Paul E. 1998: What Emotions Really Are: The Problem of Psychological Categories. Chicago: Chicago University Press. 2004: Emotions as Natural Kinds and Normative Kinds. Philosophy of Science, 71, pp. 90111. Kanisza, Gaetano 1955: Margini quasi-percettivi in campi con stimolazione omogenea. Rivista di Psicologia, 49 (1), pp. 730. Kring, Ann M., David A. Smith, and John M. Neale 1994: Individual Differences in Dispositional Expressiveness: Development and Validation of the Emotional Expressivity Scale. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66 (5), pp. 93449. Leh, Sandra E., Heidi Johansen-Berg, and Alain Ptito 2006: Unconscious vision: new insights into the neuronal correlate of blindsight using diffusion tractography. Brain, 129, pp. 182232. Matsumoto, David 1992: AmericanJapanese cultural differences in the recognition of universal facial expressions. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 23, pp. 7284. McDowell, John 1978: On the Reality of the Past. In Christopher Hookway and Philip Pettit (eds.), Action and Interpretation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1982: Criteria, Defeasibility, and Knowledge. Proceedings of the British Academy, 68, pp. 45579. Page references are to the reprinted ver2010 The Aristotelian Society Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume lxxxiv doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8349.2010.00185.x

PERCEIVING EMOTIONS

61

sion in Meaning, Knowledge, and Reality, pp. 36994. Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1998. Miklsi A., E. Polgrdi, J. Topl, and V. Csnyi 2000: Intentional behaviour in dog-human communication. Animal Cognition, 3, pp. 15966. Pppel, Ernest, Richard Held, and Douglas Frost 1973: Residual Visual Function after Brain Wounds involving the Central Visual Pathways in Man. Nature, 243, pp. 2956. Stout, Rowland 2010: Seeing the Anger in Someones Face. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 84, pp. 2943. Turgenev, Ivan 1948: Fathers and Sons, trans. R. Hare. New York: Holt, Reinhart and Winston. Weiskrantz, Lawrence 2009: Blindsight: A Case-Study Spanning 35 Years and New Developments. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Elizabeth J. Warrington, M. D. Sanders, and J. Marshall 1974: Visual capacity in the hemianopic field following a restricted occipital ablation. Brain, 97, pp. 70928. John L. Barbur, and Arash Sahraie 1995: Parameters affecting conscious versus unconscious visual discrimination with damage to the visual cortex (V1). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 92 (13), pp. 61226.

2010 The Aristotelian Society Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume lxxxiv doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8349.2010.00185.x