On the Conscious Regulation of Emotions

Collingwood on Emotions

R. G. Collingwood's phenomenology of human emotions begins with expression. The often involuntary gestures that I might make make when I experience strong emotions are expressions of my emotions to other people. If I express fear, for example, I may cause onlookers to become frightened simply because they see the fear in me. Though this expression is not necessarily intentional, it is still said to express the emotion because other people not only recognize the emotions I am expressing, they sympathize by expressing their own emotions. Collingwood calls this an emotional contagion: we experience emotions and spread them through the vehicle of expression. The contagion itself, Collingwood refers to as "sympathy," which seems to me an appropriate name. This simple psychical emotional contagion or sympathy can be seen most clearly in the actions of unorganized mobs: terror and riot.

Collingwood comments that animals seem to experience these same psychical emotions and that we sympathize with them because of it. Dogs, for example, chase cats because cats run. Dogs experience aggression in the face of fear, just as cats experience fear in the presence of a perceived strong force (such as a dog). In at least this way, we are akin to animals.

For Collingwood, psychical emotional expression - sympathy- is the ground upon which communication and language are built. But it does not stop there, at least for human beings. Collingwood observes that love, hatred, anger and shame are "conscious" emotions. Consciousness is a prerequisite for these emotions:

"Hatred is a feeling of antagonism; it is an attitude towards something which we regard as thwarting our own desires, or inflicting pain upon us, and this presupposes awareness of ourselves. Love is a feeling toward something with which we feel our own existence to be bound up, so that a benefit or injury to it is a benefit or injury to ourselves. Anger, though unlike hate it does not involve the idea of any particular thing or person that angers us, is like it in being a consciousness of ourselves as baulked or opposed. Shame is the consciousness of our own weakness or ineffectiveness" (The Principles of Art, 232).

Conscious Emotions and Animals

Though these forms of self-awareness are easily seen in human beings, I want to point out that my experience with domestic animals has demonstrated to me the presence of conscious emotions in animals. And I expect that other pet-owners have experienced the same conscious sympathy with animals. I would even be willing to conjecture that anyone who denies these conscious emotions of at least certain animals has probably had very limited experience with animal emotions.

1. Hatred
Dogs, for example, can tell when human beings do not like them or wish harm upon them. This makes the human a source of pain for the dog, and so the dog reacts with hatred. It is also how fighting dogs are trained.

2. Love
When either Sarah or I are sick, our cats will make sure to lay down next to us to comfort us. They want us to feel well because our well-being is bound up with their well-being: they love us.

3. Anger
There was a time when one of our cats, Alex, got into a fight with another cat. Alex had a rather nasty bite on his back and Sarah didn't want to let him outside because he would be likely to reopen the wound and infect it. Alex loves the outdoors, though he sleeps inside, so to have to go for days without going outside changed his mood entirely. He did not respond to any affection and would growl at us for trying to show it, though he never tried to hurt us. He meant no harm, but he did want us to know that things were not as they should be: he was angry at us.

4. Shame
Sarah and I often notice shame in older kittens who love to be daring about jumping, but do not yet have good balance. When they fall, they hide from us, because they know we saw them screw up.

5. Depression
Collingwood does not himself name this conscious emotion. Nevertheless, when we become conscious of a permanent loss in our lives or the absence of something loved, we become depressed. Because depression is parasitic upon love, it is necessarily a conscious emotion, and depression is often noticed in animals whose favorite human has died.

Therefore, in these ways, we are also akin to animals. It is particularly interesting to note that this means that there is at least a relevant sense in which animals are conscious of themselves. The really interesting question is this: How does our consciousness differ from theirs'?

This is a difficult question to address. We can all think of examples of the unmanageability of a frightened wild cat. These generators of superficial skin scratches cannot be calmed or contained; rather, they are to be allowed to escape. While one might say that these cats act on instinct, cats seem to be more rational about their fear when they are tamed: when they are familiar with the beneficence of a human being, they allow themselves to be approached without fear. However, this distinction between a tamed cat and a wild cat is not an entirely faithful one. They are all of the same species: they are all domesticated cats. The difference between the tame cats and the wild cats is that the natural ecosystem of domesticated cats is in human care. The natural habitat of a domestic cat is a human community. Thus, the wild cats are cats that are in permanent survival mode because their habitat is not conducive to their capabilities. One might notice a similarity between such wild cats and human beings driven insane from extreme isolational circumstances. In fact, every animal seems to know how to respond to every other relevant lifeform which occurs in the natural habitat of the animal in question. A whale knows how to respond to the presence of fish, sharks, etc. An ant knows how to respond to the presence of foliage and other small insects. It is when an animal is forced into an environment in which they do not have a place they they become insane and desperate from terror, like the wild cat. They respond to the environment in the ways that they know how to respond, but if there are not enough small birds and rodents for the cats to hunt, then they will soon face the consequences of a misplaced cat population: starvation. It is familiarity with the beneficence of a human being that tames a cat and keeps cat populations healthy.

Animals and Men

This difference between tame and wild domestic cats is an example of the ways in which animals have limited adaptability. All animals have a specified set of tools and skills which apply to certain atmospheres. When fish is dropped on dry land, it is entirely helpless. We often hear that dolphins are the most intelligent animals apart from humans, but their inability to build the structures humans build prevents them from adapting to any atmosphere but an underwater one.

The difference between human beings and animals is not our ability to adapt to an atmosphere, but our ability to adapt an atmosphere to ourselves. Our bodies provide the perfect tools for us to build further tools to enhance our abilities. Intelligence is not the only reason a cat cannot build tools: it also lacks the proper body mechanics to build tools. So even if a cat were intelligent enough to create tools and gear, the cat could never actually do it because it lacks an opposable thumb. Even our teeth reveal that we operate always with gear in mind: we cannot eat food without first preparing it, because our teeth are not adapted to tearing into either raw animals or most raw foliage. We'd be leaf-eaters if we could not use our hands.

Consciousness and Adaptability

But what does this new form of adaptability amount to? In short, it amounts to a new form of consciousness. Animals are intelligent enough to adapt and react to an environment. They can change their diet if there is a shift in other animal populations, they can find safe areas to nurse their wounds and their young, etc. But they are not intelligent enough to adapt the atmosphere to themselves, because no matter what effect they have on the atmosphere, it will not be an intended organizational change. A dog does not have the presence of mind devise bridges to cross bodies of water. Instead, it will try to either swim or go around the water. We have what Collingwood calls intellection, which is the creation and manipulation of functional formal structures. It is through this awareness of formal structure that we can construct and sustain changes in an environment. This new consciousness is evolutionary self-consciousness. Human beings understand change and progress, and we have the ability to encourage it. Thus, all of history is the evolution of the human race via cultural development. In a metaphorical sense, we are the product of evolution itself becoming self-aware.

The self-awareness of evolution can even be extrapolated from the story of the dinosaurs. In the course of the evolution of life on Earth, it looks as if at one time dinosaurs were head honcho. Presumably, primates and other smaller creatures were dinosaur food if they did not stay hidden. But when catastrophe struck, the dinosaurs could not handle the task of ruling the world. They systematically died, and the animals which were more clever and adaptable remained. Evidently, evolution took this catastrophe as a lesson that an entire living world cannot be adequately ruled with power and strength alone. A good ruler also needs a plan: enter Mankind.

This aggressive adaptability of which human beings are apparently the sole possessors is, as we said, a result of Man's ability to comprehend and create functional formal structures. The tools and skills that animals have (e. g. the claws and agility of a cat) are the functional formal structure imparted to that animal by evolution, but Mankind has been imparted a special tool: manipulation of functional formal structures. This entails that there is no functional form imposed upon Mankind by evolution. The ability to manipulate a functional formal structure grants Mankind access to an unlimited set of tools and skills. And because the limitations of a species' tools and skills are the limitations of its adaptability, given enough time, it appears that Mankind has no particular limitations in adaptability. Nature has not dictated that man acts and any one particular fashion. In plain English, Mankind has no natural habitat, for Mankind's habitat is artificial.

A Few Consequences

But if Mankind's atmosphere is pure artiface, then there are a few profound consequences.

First: whether or not metaphysicians agree, Mankind possesses a certain freedom. Mankind is free to devise its own functional structures, and He does so. Culture is the pure expression of human freedom. Consciously self-imposed functional structures (othewise known as 'disciplines') are freely chosen and practiced by human beings everywhere.

Second: This freedom is logically dependent upon and a necessary consequence of intelligence. It is because we have the ability to understand formal structures that we have the ability to manipulate them. Thus, intellect is distinctly and inextricably bound to freedom.

Third: Because this freedom implies and is implied by intelligence, Whenever human intelligence is at stake in any philosophical question, freedom is also at stake. This principle suggests to us that a human ethics can be arrived at through reason, but that this ethics will be an ethics of freedom and not an ethics of constraint.

Fourth: Because Mankind is a creator of functional formal structures, we should expect Mankind to invent stories about how He, Himself, came to be. We find these stories, these mythologies, littered throughout history. What is particularly strange about them is that human beings do not seem to recognize that these mythologies were invented by other human beings. It is as if we forget that inventing stories to explain the phenomena is just what Mankind does.

How ironic that the one species which has the freedom to invent His own habitat so often insists that this freedom does not exist and there there really is a single natural habitat for Mankind. Our cultures constantly demand that we conform to them, rather than allowing us to conform the culture to ourselves. Have we forgotten what it is that culture does? Or are we being manipulated by our culture? In this latter case, perhaps it is our culture itself that has become conscious.

Emotion and Manipulation

It is through our emotions that we allow our culture to manipulate us, so we ought to take this as a sign that it is time for us to re-examine our emotions as a Species. In point of fact, each of our conscious emotions teaches us a lesson about life.

1. Hatred teaches us that what causes us great pain and harm should be either avoided or neutralized.
2. Love teaches us that we are dependent upon the world, so the world must be treated with care.
3. Anger teaches us that when a system functions improperly, it must be corrected -- by force if necessary.
4. Shame teaches us that there is always more to learn, which is why humility is a necessary condition for growth.
5. Depression teaches us that even the greatest things in life are still ephemeral, so we must find ways both to limit and to deal with loss and absence.

Animals do not learn these lessons except through direct experience of the conscious emotions involved. Human beings, on the other hand, have the capacity to learn these lessons. Therefore, learn them we must, and once we know the wisdom of conscious emotions, we have the power to regulate which emotions we feel and when. We can organize our emotional lives just as we organize our active lives. Such a master of conscious emotions will choose to feel love more often than any other emotion. He will choose to reject shame as a useless emotion once its lesson is fully learned. He will avoid hatred as an impediment to love, but will prize anger as a useful tool in times when immediate and forceful action is necessary.

So let us be masters of conscious emotions. Let us organize our lives with a rich an complex set of beneficial emotions, just as we ought to organize our diet, our work, our daily habits, etc. We are creators of functional formal structures, and emotions are no exception.