CONSCIOUSNESS

124 3. Cognitive Sciences and Psychology
essential to accounts of emotion, which leaves no possibility for purely affective theories. The
most an affective theorist could hope for is a hybrid theory, including both feelings and mental
states. Here I argue that all an affect theorist needs to do to solve the individuation problem is
show that feelings can inform in some way, so that what seems to be identical feelings across
situations evoking distinct emotion-types wouldn’t be identical after all. My feeling in a situation
evoking anger would differ from my feeling in a situation evoking fear, primarily because
my feeling in the former situation informs me that I have been maliciously wronged and my
feeling in the latter situation informs me that I am in immediate danger. Thus, all that needs
to be shown is that feeling can inform. I then provide what I take to be the most plausible explanatory
accounts of the disorder known as Capgras syndrome. Capgras syndrome is marked
by a delusional belief that one’s close relation has been replaced by an impostor. It’s widely
accepted that the Capgras delusion begins with a severe reduction or elimination of affect
upon seeing the relation’s face. Explanations of how this leads to the delusional belief come
in two flavors: explanationist and endorsement views. Explanationist views argue that patients
have the anomalous experience of reduced affect and then seek explanations for the experience.
One-factor views hold that the anomalous experience is the only problem – Capgras is
a perceptual, but not a cognitive disorder. Two-factor explanationist views hold that there are
biases or deficits further downstream from the anomalous experience that contribute to the
formation of the delusional belief. By contrast endorsement views propose that the impostorness
of the relation is contained within the experience itself. Thus, a Capgras patient doesn’t
form the belief as a result of the anomalous experience, but by endorsing the experience as
veridical. I conclude that on each of these kinds of account some evidence is provided that
feeling can and does inform. Here are the three possibilities, the arrows representing the onset
of the disorder: A. Informative feeling -----> non-informative lack of feeling B. Informative
feeling ------> informative new feeling C. Informative feeling ------> informative lack of feeling
Each view is committed, I argue, to at least one of these being the case. Thus, feeling
informs at some point – either prior to or after the onset of the disorder. P3
165 Some Characteristics of Feelings Chris Heavey, Russell T. Hurlburt, Noelle L.
Lefforge (Psychology, University of Nevada, Las Vegas,
Las Vegas, NV)
Feelings are phenomena that directly present themselves to a person. The scientific investigation
of feelings therefore requires the apprehension of phenomena. Descriptive Experience
Sampling (DES; Hurlburt, 1993, 1997; Hurlburt & Akhter, 2006; Hurlburt & Heavey,
2006) is a first-person method designed to produce high-fidelity accounts of inner experience,
including feelings when they occur. DES subjects are given a beeper to take with them into
their natural environments. When the random beeps sound (typically six times in a sampling
day), subjects are to jot down notes about whatever inner experience was ongoing at the ‘moment
of the beep,’ defined as the last undisturbed moment before the beep. The investigator
interviews the subject within 24 hours about their experiences at each of these moments to develop
an understanding and subsequently a faithful description of the subject’s ongoing experience
at each sampled moment. This process is then improved iteratively over multiple days,
ideally until the subject’s inner experience has been adequately apprehended. Based on our
observation of thousands of moments of experience across hundreds of subjects using DES,
we have made the following observations about the characteristics of feelings. First, feelings
occur. People do recognize ongoing, directly present emotional experiences. Second, feelings
frequently do not occur. Although we are agnostic about whether there are or are not always
ongoing emotion processes, we are confident that on many and perhaps most moments, people
do not have feelings as recognizable features of their ongoing, directly apprehended awareness.
Interestingly, there appear to be at least several important variants of moments with
no feelings in awareness where there is other evidence emotion is occurring. Third, feelings
range from distinct to vague. Sometimes people experience clear, vivid feelings which they
describe confidently. At other times people experience feelings which are vague, or nebulous,
leaving subjects struggling to grasp their characteristics. Fourth, sometimes feelings include
bodily sensations. These sensations are more often in the torso but sometimes they are in