Topics Emotion

Question I recently read Louis Menand's article in "The New Yorker" entitled "Head Case." In it, he asks this question: "[W]hat if there were a pill that relieved you of the physical pain of bereavement--sleeplessness, weeping, loss of appetite--without diluting your love for or memory of the dead? Assuming that bereavement 'naturally' remits after six months, would you take a pill today that will allow you to feel the way you will be feeling six months from now anyway?" Is this a philosophical question? If so, how would you respond to it?

Accepted:
September 10, 2010

Comments

You raise a fascinating issue: Menand's thought experiment grabbed my attention when the article was published, and I've since discussed it with friends and family. For what it's worth, while I myself would have no hesitation in taking the pill, when I've discussed this case, I've found that most people are, disinclined to take the pill, and even find something troubling about the very idea of doing so. Sometimes they claim that feeling the pain of grief is essential to being human. To which I've responded that it's not clear to me that feelings are essential to emotions, and so while the capacity to experience grief may be part and parcel of the human condition, it's not clear that it is the pain of grief that is important; moreover, I've asked those who resist taking the pill how the pain of grief is different from the pain of a headache (which is natural for us in certain states). If one takes aspirin in the latter case, then it would seem that one should be willing to take Menand's pill. In what follows, I'll try to explain the basis for my response to Menand's thought experiment, why one might be inclined to resist it, and, finally, assess that resistance.

Menand's thought experiment, is, to my mind, is, clearly a philosophical question, one which actually raises three distinct but interrelated issues: first, it raises the issue, which has long interested in philosophers, of what is an emotion; second, it raises the issue of just what it is about emotions that make them important to us; finally, it raises an issue of just when one would be willing to take medication to change one's mental states. What makes the thought experiment as interesting as it is, I think, is that it connects all three issues.

If one takes an emotion essentially to consist in a feeling or a collection of feelings, then, in Menand's case, the emotion of grief would be identical to the 'pangs' of grief, feelings, and if one thinks that it is important that one experience these feelings, then one wouldn't be inclined to take the pill. However, it seems to me that there's a problem here. Suppose that one takes emotions to be feelings, so grief, for example, is a kind of emotional pain. How is this emotional pain different from physical pain? When hits one's finger with a hammer, one feels pain, and that feeling of pain is, of course, biologically significant for human beings, since it indicates damage to our bodies; nevertheless, I think that most people--with the exception of Christian Scientists, of course--would be willing to take some sort of medication, such as an aspirin or something stronger, to reduce the pain. If so, however, then it would seem to me that by parity of reasoning, one should be willing to take Menand's pill to reduce or eliminat the pain of grief. Now I'm inclined to think that most people would resist this analogy: but this, I think, points to the fact that most people--even if only implicitly, think that there is more to an emotion than a feeling. The simplest alternative to a feeling-based theory of emotions is a cognitive theory of emotions, that takes emotions to consist, essentially, in certain thoughts, or, to put it a little more precisely, takes emotions logically to depend on having certain thoughts. Thus, for example, one's fear of a lion depends on thinking (consciously or unconsciously), that the lion is dangerous. Now it certainly seems to be the case that these thoughts manifest themselves in human beings in conjunction with feelings (both bodily and psychic feelings). But how significant is it that we have such feelings? One might argue that it is essential to our emotions that that they are, as it were, felt thoughts (this position would be a halfway house between a pure feeling based theory and a pure cognitive theory of emotions.) But how important are these feelings, even if we do tend to experience them? Consider the following. We often want people to experience certain emotions: for example, when we tell a friend about an injustice that has been perpetrated on us, we want the friend to feel angry. But what do we want? Do we want the friend to feel certain feelings? If so, the would it be enough if the friend just happened to have the feeling? No, it seems to me that we want the friend to have certain thoughts about the injustice. This suggests to me that it is only a contingent fact about human beings that they tend to have bodily and psychic feelings when they experience emotions, but that those feelings are not essential to the emotion, nor are they what we value about emotions. But if the foregoing is correct, then, if there were a pill that would eliminate the feelings associated with grief, but not the thoughts of the loss of the loved one that are constitutive of grief, then--unless for some reason one enjoys pain, or has some objection to taking medication--if one takes aspirin, for example, to relieve headaches, one should treat the feelings associated with grief like the pains of a headache and take Menand's pill. In so doing, one wouldn't lose the thoughts of the lost one constitutive of bereavement, and become, as it were impassive, one would simply eliminate unnecessary suffering.

I therefore conclude that Menand's pill wouldn't rob us of some essential part of human experience, it would simply reduce our pain, and that, surely, isn't a bad thing. (Too bad that this is only a thought experiment--I doubt, however, that such a pill is likely ever to be produced. But maybe it's a mistake to make an a priori bet on science.)

Menand asks whether we would/should choose to be relieved of the physical feelings of bereavement if we could do so without diluting our love for or memory of the dead. Greenberg claims that (a) thoughts, not feelings, are what is essential to emotions (the feelings being merely contingent accompaniments to those thoughts in humans), and (b) thoughts, not feelings, are what matters to us about emotions; thus, he would take such a pill on the assumption that it would not affect the thought component of bereavement.

Even if we were to agree with Greenberg's first claim, about what is essential to emotion, we could still disagree with his second claim, about what matters about emotion. We could value the painful feelings that happen to accompany our thoughts because they serve to remind us of our humanness, because they force us to spend more time with thoughts that are important, or because they increase our capacity for handling other types of pain, for example.

I disagree with Greenberg's first claim, however, and I think that he oversimplifies the options. Instead of regarding emotions as just feelings, or just thoughts, or some "halfway house" between the two, I view emotions as internalized actions -- as ways to retain and work through impulses that cannot (or should not) be immediately discharged. In the case of bereavement, for example, grief keeps our longing (and not just our fond thoughts of a loved one) alive; in the case of anger, destructive impulses can be developed and worked through (not just intellectually, but viscerally) in ways that integrated our outward actions more deeply into our lives as a whole. If we lose the feeling part of emotions, we do not just lose our human sensations; we lose a crucial bond between our thoughts and our actions.