An emotion in need of further study

This post by Helen De Cruz at NewAPPS rubs me the wrong way, but I'm not quite sure why (or whether) it should. I've been asked to give a lecture next year on Peter Winch and the idea of a social science, so I'm starting to think more about psychology's status as a science, and this seems like a good opportunity to get some practice.

De Cruz asks:  "Why do we sometimes delight in natural disasters? And is it morally appropriate to do so?"

My initial response is something like the following: We don't, and of course not. But that on its own won't really do. Why does De Cruz think that we sometimes delight in natural disasters? She mentions Miyazaki's Ponyo (which I don't remember well enough to comment on) and says that several times in the movie he expresses his "aesthetic delight in natural disasters." She also links to this article which talks of the Japanese as celebrating nature in spite of (my emphasis) its destructive power (not quite the same thing as delighting in disaster) and quotes Miyazaki saying that natural disasters such as typhoons and earthquakes are a given in Japan and must be accepted as part of life. Again, this is a long way from celebrating disaster. De Cruz also says that Turner's painting of a steamboat in a storm is done "with gusto," which strikes me as an inaccurate description of the painting. Turner has a sense of awe, an important concept for De Cruz, but I don't sense any relish in his portrayal of the boat's fate. If he is enthusiastic at all it isn't about what is happening to the boat, let alone to the people on it, but about the amazing power of the storm.       

De Cruz goes on to discuss the sublime and awe:

The prototype model of awe by Keltner and Haidt suggests that awe - the emotion most commonly associated with the sublime - is elicited by stimuli that are vast and that prompt a need for psychological accommodation. Keltner and Haidt see awe as an adaptive emotion that arose in our primate ancestry, in particular, in the need for lower-status individuals to recognize the status of higher-status individuals within the group: by feeling awe for an alpha individual, one would desist in fruitlessly trying to challenge his or her authority, which would have been adaptive. Keltner and Haidt propose that the primordial form of awe is the emotions a low status individual feels towards a powerful one.

As she says, "To me, this is quite a stretch." 

Rather than propose an alternative theory she raises the questions: why do we feel awe, and is it morally objectionable to do so? Here's an example (from Job) of which she says that, "One cannot help but feel how insensitive and morally objectionable Elihu is when he says this":

God’s voice thunders in marvelous ways;
    he does great things beyond our understanding.
 He says to the snow, ‘Fall on the earth,’
    and to the rain shower, ‘Be a mighty downpour.’
 So that everyone he has made may know his work,
    he stops all people from their labor.
 The animals take cover;
    they remain in their dens.
 The tempest comes out from its chamber,
    the cold from the driving winds.
 The breath of God produces ice,
    and the broad waters become frozen.
 He loads the clouds with moisture;
    he scatters his lightning through them.
 At his direction they swirl around
    over the face of the whole earth
    to do whatever he commands them.
 He brings the clouds to punish people,
    or to water his earth and show his love.
Listen to this, Job; stop and consider God’s wonders.
Do you know how God controls the clouds
     and makes his lightning flash?
Do you know how the clouds hang poised, 
     those wonders of him who has perfect knowledge?
You who swelter in your clothes 
     when the land lies hushed under the south wind,
Can you join him in spreading out the skies, 
     hard as a mirror of cast bronze?   

One can help feeling that this is insensitive and morally objectionable, even if one knows that Job's house and children have been destroyed by the storms and floods being described. I agree that it could be very objectionable to tell sufferers that their loss is all part of God's plan or that whatever doesn't kill them will make them stronger. But Elihu's words are powerful, and spoken to a man who does not want to give up his faith in God. I don't see things the same way, but I don't find these words objectionable. Delighting in disaster qua disaster is obviously no good, but seeing a disaster under some different aspect and delighting in, or just being impressed by, that is surely OK. Imagine you see a volcano erupt and enjoy the spectacle, but later find out that someone was killed by it. Your previous enjoyment doesn't suddenly become wicked (assuming you weren't reveling in the thought of someone's possibly being killed by the lava or a hail of rocks).

One way to understand the question "Why do we feel awe?" is to take it as asking what it is about a particular phenomenon that is awe-inspiring. This calls for aesthetic criticism and careful attention to the phenomenon in question. De Cruz means something else though. She wants to know why human beings evolved to feel awe. This calls for little attention to particular phenomena (although examples and counterexamples must be considered) and requires us to try to fit awe into an existing framework that accounts for emotions. What could be wrong with that?

There are several possibilities. One might reject the framework (evolutionary psychology). One might reject the project of trying to fit emotions (or 'mental states' in general) into that framework. Or one might reject the idea that this emotion, awe, fits the framework. Or all of the above. And perhaps more as well.

I'm not qualified to comment on the merits of evolutionary psychology, but it certainly has its critics, and Wittgenstein's skepticism about psychology as a science might be a source of additional criticisms. As far as I know psychologists today mostly study brains and behavior. Presumably brains evolved: animals with brains that helped them survive would tend to survive longer and reproduce more, and their offspring would be expected to have somewhat similar brains. Behavior seems like a different matter. I don't inherit my parents' behavior in the way that I might inherit their curly hair or straight teeth. But we're talking about emotions, so perhaps behavior is not really relevant. Wittgenstein thinks of emotions as something like aspects of human life or modes of our complicated form of life. Does it make sense to think of such things as evolving? In some sense it must, I think. Anything self-destructive is likely to die out, and anything life-preserving is likely to thrive. But, again, I don't inherit emotions from my parents in the way that I inherit purely biological traits. And if an emotion or form of behavior dies out it does not do so in the same literal way that a species of animals dies out. Animals die, behavior does not. Nor do emotions. So there are questions to be asked about the very idea that emotions are part of evolution. That's all I'll say about that for now. (By which I don't mean to imply that there is no more to be said.)

What about the project of fitting emotions into the evolutionary psychology framework? Part of me thinks this cannot possibly be wrong. It's like a game, and if you don't want to play it you don't have to. But it's possible to disapprove of certain games. And this one asks us to adopt a certain perspective on such things as awe, wonder, and love. This could be regarded as a kind of blasphemy. It could also be regarded as dangerous, as likely to undermine ways of thinking, feeling, and living that are important. It might, for instance, trick us into thinking that we understand more than we do (e.g. what love really is), or that what we value is actually not so special after all. A dangerous game is not wrong per se, of course, (it's possible to gamble and win) but we still might object to its being played.  

And in the particular case of awe we might well feel that there is something both misguided and dangerous about the attempt to fit it into a pre-existing theoretical framework. For one thing, the fact that we have a word does not mean that we have a thing for which that word stands. And awe seems like an especially pronounced case of this. It surely isn't a Cartesian entity, and I can't really imagine someone feeling awe except in the presence of something properly awe-inspiring. Drug-induced awe, for instance, would not (it seems to me) be real awe at all. It only make sense to talk of awe in certain kinds of context, and that makes awe unlike standard objects, including heritable biological traits. Perhaps the biological basis that gives us the ability to feel awe is heritable, but that's a different matter. We might have evolved to have this capacity for reasons that have nothing to do with awe.

Why do we feel awe? What evolutionary advantage might it have given us? If awe combines fear of dangerous things (which sounds like a useful emotion) with a funny kind of pleasure at the thought of great power then this doesn't seem so mysterious. Power is a useful thing, so contemplating power that does us no harm might well trigger a positive reaction. But all this seems like a strange line of inquiry. Why turn away from the awesome to think about the evolution of awe? It's like pointing to some fantastic sight and finding your audience looking at your pointing finger. I think that's what feels wrong about De Cruz's questions. It shows a preference for the uninspiring over the inspiring, like a student choosing to major in something 'practical' rather than something that really interests them. It's a bit depressing. And the question doesn't only show an interest in the wrong things. It also directs our attention towards those things (our awe or its biological basis) and away from the awesome. And that seems not just depressing but bad.

I don't mean to exaggerate. De Cruz is not a monster, and her questions are in some sense legitimate (how generous of me!). But I think it is thoughts along the lines that I have sketched above that make me less than enthusiastic about her project. If we're going to study psychology I much prefer this kind of approach (h/t dmf). It may not be about the awesome directly, but it is about people behaving in interesting ways, and it's quite different from the evolutionary psychology approach to explanation of such behavior. It keeps everything within the human sphere. Attempts to explain the human in terms of the non-human seem to leave out everything that really matters. Which I suppose is the kind of point Winch might make.