Second-Best Philosopher Ever

Skipping preliminaries, I am going immediately to nominate Bertrand Russell. It might be thought that he can be ruled out by the principle that later philosophers have absorbed his work and so surpass him trivially. That would certainly be true of his contemporaries and predecessors, but Russell wrote so much that it is hard for anyone to absorb all of it (how many people have actually read Principia Mathematica?). I have read a lot of Russell, from The Analysis of Matter to Marriage and Morals, and reviewed at least three biographies of him; but there is still a lot I haven’t read (I’ve never read The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism). So, there may be stuff that has not been absorbed by contemporary philosophy, or simply forgotten. But my main reason for choosing him is that I think he would be best able to master and contribute to contemporary philosophy: he had the brain and the breadth. Also, much of our current philosophy was shaped by him. He was a great writer, an original thinker, often right, and massively erudite. You can imagine him today dominating the subject, as he once did. He doesn’t strike us as belonging to the past. I do sometimes wonder about Gareth Evans, who clearly had enormous potential; but his life was taken from him at such a young age that it is impossible to predict his later development. What would he have achieved if he had lived a full life? Would he have branched out from the somewhat narrow field of interests that preoccupied him in his youth? I can go both ways on this question. In any case, it is impossible to say. But Russell had a long active life and demonstrated his intellectual powers to the fullest. He was never much for ethics and aesthetics, and he was somewhat stuck in a crude form of empiricism, but he obviously had broad abilities, scientific and literary. He was ahead of his time and extremely clever. He outshone his contemporaries. It’s hard to think of anyone at his intellectual level. Diehard Wittgensteinians might dispute his title to second-best—they might even make Wittgenstein the very best (!)—but Russell certainly has a strong claim to the coveted title. If he had been acquainted with the best, he would probably have won the race; but that figure lay in the future. I think we would have been friends; I would certainly revere him. Still, he strikes me as the strongest candidate for second-best, despite my admiration for many others (long since dead). I believe that in a not-so-remote possible world Saul Kripke might have been second-best, but we are talking actualities now; he just lacked breadth and didn’t write much. I also have a soft spot for Berkeley (if it were not for the religion), and find Hume adorable (like everyone else). Most current philosophers I disqualify for being too specialized and too mired in contemporary professional norms. I therefore happily nominate Bertrand Russell for the number two position. Come on up here, Bertie!

Expressions of Belief and Desire

Darwin investigates the expression of emotion, leaving out thought. He also says nothing directly about belief and desire, but we can attempt to fill that gap. Are there characteristic expressions of belief, disbelief, desire, and lack of desire (antipathy)? We can think of emotional expressions as the extended psychological phenotype of an animal: not just what is internal to the animal but also its outward manifestation in the face and posture—the total emotional complex that is subjected to natural selection. The proper scientific name of this complex trait is the Extended Expressive Psychological Phenotype (EEPP)—external expression (particularly facial) plus internal state of mind. Darwin gave us several EEPPs for emotions—can we do the same for belief and desire? I don’t see why not, though hard empirical data are scanty. Then we would have two types of behavioral manifestation for belief and desire: expressions and goal-directed actions. Folk psychology would recognize two forms of externalization for these twin pillars of the mind. You act on your beliefs and desires to achieve your goals and you also express these mental states in your face (and possibly other bodily parts). There is a bodily duality. The same would be true of other animals, and the package would be inherited (genetically coded). Psychophysical laws could be formulated, predictions made. There may be a divergence in the two types of bodily manifestation. So, what does this mode of expression look like (literally)? How is the face configured during periods of belief and desire?

First, we need to recognize that belief and desire are dispositional and do not manifest themselves in the face and body at all times. We are searching for expressions that correspond to belief and desire occurrences—upsurges, conscious episodes. What does the face look like when someone is actively believing and desiring? From my preliminary researches, we can assemble the following picture. For belief we typically have an open-eyed gaze, slightly elevated or unmoved eyebrows, a relaxed mouth, a slight smile, nodding, and a forward lean of the body—a receptive, unsuspicious look. In extreme cases, such as a religious gathering, we might witness more spectacular expressions—shouts, dances, uplifted eyes, an attitude of general excitement and pleasure. The look of the faithful, or the deeply convinced. For disbelief we have a narrowing of the eyes, an averted gaze, a lowering of the eyebrows, a furrowing of the brow, pursed lips, a downturned mouth, a shaking of the head, a look of distaste bordering on fear in some cases. This is the look of someone resistant to persuasion—a rejecting negative look. There might be actual rolling of the eyes, wrinkling of the nose, eyelids fluttering. These are the signs of agreement and disagreement, respectively, more or less vehement. They tell you what the person really thinks about the subject at hand. They may be highly attenuated and scarcely perceptible; they may also be intentionally suppressed altogether, though liable to assert themselves when no one is looking (we sometimes have every reason to keep our beliefs and doubts to ourselves). We have a yes-face and a no-face, an assent-face and a dissent-face. These faces are widely shared and sometimes human universals (as Darwin suggested for emotional expressions). There will be the usual mixture of the innate and acquired, the involuntary and voluntary, the instinctive and culturally conditioned. They tend to be processed at a subconscious level and are not usually explicitly articulated by the observer. We might just say “You look skeptical” or merely note that the interlocutor looks to be onboard or in tune with the brotherhood (or suitably brainwashed). The look on the face tells us all we need to know and we are skilled at face-reading (we don’t need a verbal commitment or long-term observation of the person’s non-linguistic behavior). The facial expression is a kind of shorthand, useful for knowing where we stand. It is a quick and easy way for belief to show itself.

What about desire? Here the situation is even clearer, because desire is close to emotion. The animal’s face and body will tell you what it wants and doesn’t want. It wants food but it doesn’t want confinement. A dog will show its desire to go for a walk with its tail, barks, and eager eyes; and its lack of desire for a trip to the vet or a hot bath. The characteristic expression of human desire is a focused determined look, a look of anticipated (or actual) pleasure—open bright eyes, a salivating mouth (or some equivalent), a chomping at the bit (as when hungry and about to eat). An absence of desire (or actual antipathy) will show itself in a droopy listless posture, open distaste, a disgust face, a faraway look in the eyes. It is easy to decode such signs for even the moderately competent social observer. Desire efficiently reveals itself, though here again there may be reasons for concealment, which can be more less difficult. What a person says he wants may not fit what his body is signaling. We therefore have two epistemic routes to the mind–bodily expression and ordinary intentional action—and they may not tell the same story. But they usually do, so we have a kind of epistemic overdetermination. Thus, facial expressions can act as lie-detectors, because they can come apart from verbal declarations, especially in the case of children, who have not yet developed the skills of concealment. The best subjects for research are indeed children—we can examine (as Darwin did for emotion) the forms of expression children manifest when agreeing or disagreeing, desiring or not desiring. As adults, we tend to guard our beliefs for fear of interpersonal conflict, but young children are subject to no such inhibition—they let it all hang out (they are flagrant externalizers). Someone should make a study of Dissent Expression in Children—it might well follow a developmental schedule analogous to Piaget’s cognitive stages theory.

Philosophers have considered belief and desire from the point of view of the explanation of action. They constitute the reasons for action. But they have neglected the role of belief and desire in relation to expression—a quite different kind of bodily outpouring. People don’t (usually) raise their eyebrows for a reason; they just spontaneously do it (or their body does). This, too, is part of their nature—their nature in Nature, as it were. We might call it part of their animal nature, intending no disrespect—it is an aspect of their inherited biology. Even belief in elevated matters (morals, mathematics) has its bodily expression; the form of the face is part of what belief naturally is. The facial muscles, the eyebrows, the mouth—all play their part in broadcasting belief. Language is really a latecomer to the biology of belief; long before language the face was conveying someone’s state of belief. Where there is a face, there is belief, roughly speaking. Let’s not overintellectualize belief; let’s recognize its place in the biology of the organism. Darwin’s discussion of human emotion located it (partly) in the physiology of the organism, stressing its continuity with the emotions of other animals (thus producing incidentally a more enlightened attitude towards animals); I am doing the same thing with belief. The face, we might say, is the face of belief.[1]

[1] It is interesting how little the face has interested philosophers, given its centrality in human life. Even existentialists say little about it, let alone analytic philosophers. The brain, yes, but not the countenance, not the thing we gaze on every day, if only in the mirror, and try to interpret. The face fascinates but it doesn’t attract the attention of the typical philosopher. How does the content of belief (and desire) shape the facial expression? How much facial detail mirrors what lies within? What is meant by “expression” here? How would the lack of a face change our affective life? Would facial paralysis paralyze the affective mind? What is the function of expression? Would inversions of expression be possible (snarling in place of laughing, say)? Is the connection arbitrary or principled? How strong is the correlation between facial mobility and intelligence? What would it be like to have more than one face?

Expressing Mind

In The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals Darwin goes into great (indeed excruciating) detail about the ways emotions are expressed in the body—the face, the voice, the hands, the posture. He leaves no doubt that animals and man express their emotions in characteristic bodily configurations, particularly facial expressions. But he never discusses whether thought likewise has a bodily expression; in fact, he doesn’t even bring up the question. Why not? Evidently because it has none: thought itself does not contort the face in a specific way (the facial muscles remain relaxed) and particular kinds of thought don’t correspond to different types of facial expression. Only when thought proves difficult does it shape the human face, but not when it is proceeding unimpeded. A book called The Expression of Thought in Man and Animals would be very short, indeed non-existent. This is why we cannot read a man’s thoughts from his face, but we can detect his emotions this way. Thought is unexpressive. But that fact cries out for explanation: why is the emotional part of the mind so physically expressive but not the cognitive part? What makes emotion so prone to externalization but not thought? Why the link to muscles in the emotion case but not in the thinking case? (And why did Darwin never make this point?).

It might be said that Darwin’s text provides the answer: we inherited our emotions from animals that made use of the bodily expressions they produced, but we didn’t inherit our capacity for thought from them—so we didn’t get anything like the whole feeling-behaving package. If animal emotions didn’t come with natural expressions, then we would not have such expressions either—for they have no real utility in our lives. But thoughts originate with us, it may be said, and hence don’t carry any such animal baggage. There are two problems with this explanation: it is implausible that we did not inherit the capacity for thought from our ape-like ancestors; and the same question arises for perceptual capacities, and we surely inherited them. Apes think and believe and know, but they too show no sign of these mental acts in instinctive facial expressions or gestures: and we inherited this trait from them. And perception is generally not accompanied by distinctive facial expressions or other bodily signs: your face doesn’t automatically change when you stop perceiving, or perceive something else. You don’t have one face for seeing red, say, and another for seeing blue. Nor does your face change its expression when you close your eyes or unplug your ears. Yet we surely inherited these senses from our animal ancestors, going back a long way. The fact is that perception and cognition are intrinsically disconnected from musculature, but emotion is so connected, intimately. Emotions naturally and forcibly express themselves in the body, often in puzzling ways, but not so for thoughts and perceptions. This seems intuitively correct, but it is theoretically puzzling: what is the reason for this asymmetry? Your face goes a certain way when you are angry or fearful or disgusted without the intervention of will, but nothing like this happens when you are thinking about, say, the meaning of life (or what to have for lunch), or seeing a tree in the distance. Your emotion makes your body do such-and-such, but your thought or perception doesn’t make your body do anything. Cognition leaves your body alone, but emotion messes with it (often pointlessly). It can be hard to hide your emotions, but your thoughts are naturally hidden (and can be difficult to reveal). In this sense thoughts are private and emotions are public—but why?

Can we imagine inverting the two—could there be beings whose faces contort with thought but not with emotion? Logically, that seems conceivable; humanly, it seems strange. Isn’t it in the nature of emotion to seek expression, but not so thought? Here is a possible explanation: emotions are episodic and transitory but thoughts and perceptions are always with us. Emotions motivate animals to act and they come and go with the events surrounding the animal, but animals are always perceiving and thinking (except when asleep). If there were a facial signature of perceiving and thinking, it would always be there—you would always be making a thinking and perceiving face (knitted brow, puckered mouth, perhaps). That seems like a complete waste of biological resources; better to let the face relax while you think and perceive. But emotions are responsive to the passing show and hence demand action—say, flight or aggression or consumption. Emotions are mental states we act on in the struggle to survive, but we don’t need to act on our every thought or perception. Hence, emotions are motoric, but cognition isn’t; cognition informs and guides action rather than peremptorily prompting it. Fear of a looming lion makes you run, but thinking about a lion doesn’t make you do anything. There is something to this explanation, though it needs some spelling out; but it doesn’t touch the hard question—namely, what is it about the nature of emotion, but not about the nature of thought, that suits it to have its behavioral role? Why is emotion built to be expressed, but thought isn’t? And how does emotion succeed in shaping behavior whereas thought does not? How come emotion is active in this way but cognition is passive? As we know from Darwin, emotion is elaborately expressive, dedicated to bodily manifestation, but other aspects of the mind are unconcerned about expression, expressively indifferent. The Cartesian mind is cut off from the muscles as a matter of its intrinsic character, but the affective mind (the Darwinian mind) is closely bound up with the muscles—indelibly movement-oriented. Darwin lovingly details the manner of this expressive dimension, but no such project attends the consideration of other aspects of the mind. True, animals can communicate their thoughts and perceptions in bodily action, especially if they have a real language, but this is not the same as the expression of emotion, which is not generally communicative. Having a behavioral effect is not the same as having a behavioral expression. Nor would be it be correct to describe general behaviorism as an expressive theory of the mind in the sense of “expression” intended by Darwin. In that sense we are dealing with an instinctive habitual bodily correlate not with an intentional action that may be withheld at will. This is why we can be surprised at the way our body is behaving under the influence of emotion; it takes close study to see how your eyebrows are behaving when experiencing certain emotions. Emotions reflexively produce bodily expressions of specific types, but the same is not true of thoughts and their behavioral effects (saying, for example, “I was thinking about going shopping”). So, the puzzle remains: why the difference? There is a kind of dualism at work here, but its rationale remains obscure.[1]

[1] What is called belief-desire psychology is completely oblivious to the distinction I am drawing, and has nothing to say about the kind of expressiveness in action that Darwin is interested in. Habitual facial expressions are hardly intentional actions, yet they are clearly things done. The agent does not have a reason to perform these actions (the body performs them). Emotional expressions and intentional actions may both be caused by states of mind, but it would be wrong to assimilate the two. The philosophy of action should really fall into two parts: the philosophy of intentional reason-based action, and the philosophy of instinctive expressive action.