Early Career Research Spotlight: Trip Glazer

This edition of the Early Career Research Spotlight is about Trip Glazer. He is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Dayton, having completed his PhD at Georgetown University and worked for two years as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Arkansas.  He is interested primarily in the social functions of emotions and emotional expressions.  

In one essay, you apply an internalist/externalist distinction to the “clever argument” for the Direct Social Perception Theory of emotion. Explain these terms and how you use them to reach your paper’s conclusion.

Here’s the basic question: how do we know what other people are feeling? This question is as important for everyday life as it is for philosophy. A commonsense answer to this question is that we infer emotions from behavior. We see a woman burst into laughter, and we conclude that she is amused. We see a man burst into tears, and we conclude that he is upset. The expression is evidence of the emotion, and we infer the emotion from the expression.

This idea seems pretty obvious, right? If there’s anything philosophers love to challenge, it’s the obvious. So a number of philosophers have explored the idea that we don’t infer emotions from expressions, rather we perceive emotions directly in their expressions. In seeing a pout, we see sadness. In hearing a laugh, we hear amusement. On this view, our access to other people’s emotions is non-inferential. It is direct. Perception provides direct, non-inferential access to emotions.

This idea is cool, right? But it’s not at all obvious. There’s a neat little argument that philosophers offer in defense of this idea. I call it the “clever argument”:

1. Some emotional expressions are parts of the emotions they express.
2. In perceiving a part of something, one can perceive that of which it is a part.
3. Therefore, in perceiving some emotional expressions, one can perceive the emotions they express.

I’ve been slowly tracing the history of this argument.  Mitch Green offers it in his fantastic book, Self-Expression (2007).  Before that, Alan Tormey articulated it in The Concept of Expression (1971).   And before that, Stuart Hampshire voiced it in “Feeling and Expression” (1961, republished in 1976).  The argument may go back even further.  There are certainly hints of it in Wittgenstein.  Anyway, here’s Hampshire’s version:

In order to recognize some residual behavior as a sign of anger, it is not necessary that one should have learnt a general rule of significance… The residue is taken as a sign, because it is immediately recognizable as a part subtracted from a whole… Suppose that I see half the surface of a familiar kind of physical object: no learnt general rule of correlation is require to explain the sense in which I immediately take this visible half-surface as the sign of the presence of the whole. (1976, 74-75)

The idea is something like this: if you look at the coffee mug on your desk, you’re not seeing the whole mug, you’re seeing just part of it—the part that’s facing you. But in seeing part of the mug, you’ve thereby seen the mug, period!

So far so good. But to apply this reasoning to emotions and expressions, we have to say that expressions are parts of emotions. But that’s weird. Commonsensically, we think of emotions as subjective feelings, and we think of expressions as the behavioral effects of emotions. You feel amused, so you laugh. The laughter isn’t part of the amusement; it’s a downstream effect of the amusement. (Famously, William James reversed the order. He argued that the emotion is the feeling of the expression! You laugh, so you feel amused.)

Expressions aren’t parts of emotions, then.  But if you look at how scientists approach emotions, you find that they conceive emotions as complex, coordinated responses to life’s basic challenges.  Each of the basic emotions corresponds to a basic life task.  Surprise is related to exploration, fear to predation, anger to interspecies conflict, joy to reproduction, disgust to eating and nutrition, and so on.  And each emotion involves simultaneous changes to multiple organ systems.  Muscles contract, breathing slows, heartrate rises, tear ducts secrete, and so on.  An emotion, on this way of thinking, is a coordinated psychological, physiological, and behavior response that enables an organism to cope quickly and efficiently with sudden impacts on wellbeing.  And on this way of thinking, subjective feelings are just parts of these complex reactions, as are expressions.  Laughter is a part of amusement after all.

At this point we have a choice. What do we want emotion words to mean? Should the word “anger” denote a feeling or should the word “anger” denote a complex biological response, of which a feeling is but a part? I know that was a lot of setup, but now we can address your question. The problem is now: what should fix the meanings of emotion words like “anger” and “joy”? One view is that folk or philosophical intuitions should fix these meanings. “Anger” means whatever English speakers or analytic philosophers use the word to mean. Meanings, on this view, are introspectable. You can figure out what a word means by thinking about how you use that word. If you wouldn’t say that a scowl is a part of “anger,” then “anger” does not denote something of which a scowl is a part. Another view is that nature fixes the meanings of emotion words, which is to say that emotion words are natural kind terms. Pre-scientifically we thought of anger simply as a feeling, but now we know better. Now we know that this feeling is part of a complex, coordinated biological response. The feeling is just the part we are most intimately acquainted with.

So by “internalism” I mean roughly the view that our introspectable intuitions fix the meanings of emotion words and by “externalism” I mean roughly the view that nature (understood through scientific inquiry) fixes the meanings of emotion words. I’m a science nerd so you can guess where I come down.

In several papers, you take up the question of how words relate to emotion (either by expressing them or by describing them). What relationship do you believe exists between emotions and language, and why?

There’s a great old quote in Ogden and Richards’ The Meaning of Meaning (1923):

There are certain terms in scientific discussion which seem to make any advance impossible. They stupefy and bewilder, yet in a way satisfy, the inquiring mind, and though the despair of those who like to know what they have said, are the delight of all whose main concern with words is the avoidance of trouble. “Expression” is such an one. (231)

If a behavior stands in some relation to an emotion, but we can’t quite articulate what that relation is, we can always say that the behavior “expresses” the emotion and feel like we have adequately captured the link. How do smiles relate to joy? Smiles “express” joy. How do apologies relate to regret? Apologies “express” regret. How do moral terms relate to approbation and disapprobation? Moral terms “express” approbation and disapprobation. How do works of art relate to artists’ or audience’s emotions? Works of art “express” those emotions. In each of these cases, there is a distinct relation between the behavior (or artifact) and the emotion, yet the word “express” always seems to do the relation justice.

In light of these observations, I think that the words “express” and “expression” often serve as place holders. We use them to signify that there is an important link between a behavior and an emotion, but we may not know exactly what that link is. “Expression” often means “analysis forthcoming.” As a result, I don’t think that we should analyze the concept of expression by looking for what all these diverse relations share in common, as if each of them is participating in the same essence of expression. Instead, I think that we should narrow in on one these specific relations, analyze it, and then see how it compares to the other relations.

Philip J. Koch does something like this in his classic paper, “Expressing Emotion” (1983). He distinguishes three different types of behaviors that we tend to call “expressions”: nonverbal behaviors like smiles and frowns, speech acts like “I am sorry” and “I am mad,” and intentional actions like punching pillows and tearing up photographs. Koch then argues that for the sake of clarity we should reserve the word “expression” for one of these and assign new names to the others. He suggests that nonverbal behaviors like smiles and frowns “evince” emotions, that speech acts like “I am sorry” and “I am mad” properly “express” emotions, and that intentional actions like punching pillows and tearing up photographs “cope with” emotions. I think that this is the right approach. Splitting as opposed to lumping.

Because I am a science nerd, and because the science of expression is focused primarily on facial expressions, I think that the terms “express” and “expression” should pick out, in the first instance, the specific way in which facial expressions relate to emotions. So, before thinking about how words or artworks “express” emotions, we should get clear on how smiles and frowns “express” joy and anger. Facial expressions are the paradigm of expression, and every other type of expression ought to be understood in relation to facial expressions.

So what makes a smile an “expression” of joy? I’ve argued in a number of places (here, here, and here) that facial expressions express emotions by enabling the perception of those emotions. A smile expresses joy insofar as observers who see the smile can see joy. (My answer to this question connects up with my answer to your first question.) I think that facial expressions communicate emotions in a particular way, and that this analysis best captures what is unique about expression. The analysis applies to other types of nonverbal expressions as well, including vocalizations, tones of voice, and body language. In hearing a scoff, you can hear contempt. In hearing a person’s voice crack, you can hear grief. In seeing a puffed out chest, you can see pride.

Let’s turn now to speech acts like “I am sorry” and “I am mad.” These speech acts don’t express regret and anger in the same way that sighs and scowls express regret and anger. But we are still tempted to describe them as “expressing” emotions. So what’s going on here? My favorite philosophers of expression, Dorit Bar-On and Mitch Green, broaden their analyses of expression so that they can include both nonverbal behaviors and speech acts. I take a different approach. Rather than broadening my analysis of expression, I show that we can reduce the expressiveness of speech acts to the expressiveness of nonverbal behaviors.

Take an utterance of “I am sorry.” Imagine that someone mutters “I am sorry” in a cold, perfunctory manner. Does that speech act express regret? No way! Imagine now that this person drops to their knees, clasps their hands together, and howls “I am sorry!” Does that speech act express regret? Clearly it does! The words are the same, but the surrounding behavior is different. One utterance is accompanied by nonverbal behaviors that express regret; the other is not. William P. Alston writes that “we do not say that someone is expressing a feeling unless his…verbal utterance issues directly from the feeling and takes on a coloration therefrom” (1965, 29), which is to say that “the feeling is exhibited in the way one’s words are uttered” (1965, 33). I think Alston is right—speech acts “express” emotions when they are accompanied by nonverbal behaviors that express those emotions. I take this view to the extreme (here and here): language is not a medium of emotional expression at all. Only nonlinguistic behaviors can express emotions. However, language can accompany the nonverbal expression of emotion and serve related communicative functions.

My view may sound austere. However, the goal is to expand our vocabulary for talking about how words relate to emotion. If we can’t fall back on the language of “expression,” then we have to find new words and articulate new relations. I think that we end up with a much richer view of language this way. What are the words “I am sorry” doing, if not expressing regret? These words call attention to the speaker’s accompanying behavior and influence the interpretation of it. The words are interpreted in light of the behavior, and the behavior is interpreted in light of the words. The audience learns not only that the speaker is regretful, but also that the speaker is regretful about something that they did to the audience. The words don’t express regret—the behaviors do—but the words facilitate the expression of regret in a number of interesting ways.

What about written language? Can’t we express our emotions in writing, even when expressive nonverbal behaviors do not accompany the words? If you’d like to read my answer to this question, check out my essay in theForum, or the paper on which it is based.

What directions would you like to take your project in the future?

In thinking about emotional expressions, I’ve thought a lot about how we manage our expressions in light of social norms. Arlie Hochschild’s analysis of “emotional labor,” or the effort that employees in the service industry go to in order to appear cheerful and friendly, has been a major influence on my thinking. And as I’ve thought more about how we manage our expressions, I’ve thought too about how we manage our emotions. If you start to feel angry, you can close your eyes and count to ten, and by the time you get to ten your anger may have completely dissipated. Psychologists call the management of emotion “emotion regulation,” and the literature on emotion regulation is a philosophical goldmine.

Much of my current work builds on this idea of emotion regulation. I’m working on several papers right now that analyze emotion regulation as a key social competence. A big part of conforming to social norms, cooperating with others, and fulfilling social roles is managing one’s emotions and expressions in real time—cultivating prosocial emotions and suppressing antisocial emotions. We do this all the time. It’s become so routine for most of us that we don’t think about what we are doing, and we don’t realize how important emotion regulation is to our everyday social interactions.

Nabina Liebow and I have been writing about emotion regulation in the context of critical whiteness studies.  Our first collaborate paper, “White Tears: Emotion Regulation and White Fragility,” analyzed white fragility as a breakdown in emotion regulation.  (White fragility is “a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves” [DiAngelo 2011, 54].) Feelings of discomfort that should be held in check are given free reign. This failure in emotion regulation serves a strategic function, however. By undermining productive conversations about race and racism, white people get out of critically examining their own unearned advantages and complicity in systems of white supremacy. Emotion regulation is a key social competence, yet this is a case in which social incompetence is strategic and self-serving. Nabina and I have more work in the pipeline, so keep an eye out for it.

Finally, I’m guest editing an issue of Philosophical Topics on emotion regulation, which will showcase the importance of emotion regulation to many different philosophical projects and hopefully inspire others to think more about it. The issue will come out next year. Can you contain your excitement? Har har.

How do you recommend teaching classes on emotion such that the students are more likely to develop an interest in learning about them?

For decades, the philosophy of emotion has been dominated by one research program: answering the question “what is an emotion?” When I meet philosophers at conferences and tell them that I work on emotion, their first question is always, “So are you a cognitivist or a non-cognitivist?” (These terms are slippery, but very roughly “cognitivists” think that emotions involve thoughts while “non-cognitivists” deny this.)

Don’t get me wrong—I am very interested in this research program and I think that it’s an important project for philosophers, in particular, to work on. But there is so much more to the philosophy of emotion than the metaphysics of emotion. There’s the philosophy of emotional expression! And the philosophy of emotion regulation! There is fascinating work on specific emotions, like love, hope, anger, envy, and mirth. Scientific work on emotion is proof that you can learn a great deal about emotions without having a settled definition of emotion, and so I am very resistant to the idea that we need an analysis of emotion before we can do any other interesting philosophical work on emotion.

My advice for teaching the philosophy of emotion is to spend a few days on the question, “what is an emotion?” but don’t feel like you need to start with this topic or spend most of the semester on it. It is one of many interesting topics in the philosophy of emotion. Spend time on the facial feedback hypothesis (can voluntarily smiling actually make you feel happy?). Talk about the gendered politics of emotion (why are women, more so than men, expected to smile at strangers in public)? Discuss the link between blame and resentment. Consider animal emotions. Consider robot emotions. Have students read selections from Darwin’s delightful book on emotional expression, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872). Discuss Du Bois’ claim in the first chapter of The Souls of Black Folk that he had to learn to manage his frustration when talking to white people about race. Talk about humor and horror. Talk about music and dance. Students love these topics. Challenge them to suss out the inconsistencies in commonsense ideas about emotion. The philosophy of emotion should be about the big picture—how do all our ideas about emotion hang together?

You can ask Trip Glazer questions about his work in the comments section below.

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