Emotional Logic

Emotional Logic

The idea that emotions are exempt from logic is widely received. Emotion is supposed to be where logic breaks down, where the mind eludes logic’s inexorable grip. It is the domain of the unruly, the irrational, the unprincipled—a kind of mental anarchy. This is wrong on several levels. Of course, emotions are subject to logic: it is not logically possible to both love and not love the same thing at the same time. We can reason logically about the emotions, as we can about anything. The emotions do not constitute an extra-logical domain. Nor is it true that emotions lack a rational basis: they arise from solid biological roots (supplemented by learning) and serve a biological function; they enable their possessor to survive better. Emotions are not anti-prudential or somehow self-destructive (pace Mr. Spock).  They are useful adaptations just like intelligence or the ability to think logically. Sure, they can misfire and be disruptive on occasion, but they are not glitches or gremlins in our psychological economy. But is there anything logic-like in their internal geography—do they exhibit logical behavior? One point, frequently remarked, is that the range of emotions exhibits a certain kind of logical structure: emotions come in opposed pairs, rather like assertion and denial. Thus, love and hate, delight and disgust, attraction and repulsion, security and fear, calm and agitation, admiration and contempt, like and dislike, interest and boredom, happiness and misery. There are opposed poles of emotion, not unlike truth and falsity. Hence, we speak of positive and negative emotions. Emotions form a pattern, an intelligible structure, a kind of matrix. The mind (heart, soul) moves around this matrix in intelligible ways; it dances to the music of the emotions. We all understand this structure; we have a basic competence in its categories. We grasp its grammar. We speak its language. It isn’t just a haphazard assemblage of arbitrary urgings having neither sense nor logic. It isn’t just mental chaos.

But is there an emotional logic as there is a propositional logic or a quantifier logic or a modal logic or a tense logic or a deontic logic or an epistemic logic? That may seem like a bridge too far in the quest to redeem emotion from its reputation as logically inept (or sublimely transcendent). Surely, there cannot be a formal logic of emotion! Emotion words cannot function as logical operators, logical constants in a formal system of deduction. None such exists, and with good reason. What would a logic of love even look like? Could the concept of disgust play the same kind of role as the concept of necessity in modal logic? Could there be a logic text, littered with logical symbols, for happiness? Actually, I don’t see why not; in fact, it is surprising that such a logic does not already exist, since it follows the same pattern as those other types of logical system. Affect logic is a thing; it merely awaits codification. First, we need some logically true axioms expressed in conditional form. I will consider a system that employs two basic operators (there could be other such systems): L and F, where L is intuitively love and F is fear. Think of these as analogous to necessity and possibility. Then we have this axiom: if LLp, then Lp, i.e., if x loves to love y, then x loves y. I write the axiom with a propositional variable so that L and F can be seen as sentence operators like logical negation—x loves to love that p. The converse will not be an axiom, since someone might love another without loving to love this other. Love, like necessity, can be iterated indefinitely (if pointlessly): x loves to love loving y. We get a similar axiom for F: if FFp, then Fp, i.e., if you fear to fear something you also fear it (if only dispositionally). Again, the converse does not hold. We can make the same points about sadness, happiness, delight, etc. We have recursive operators that generate logical axioms. Accordingly, we have logical deductions employing these operators.

Are there any logical axioms containing both L and F? These would be analogous to modal axioms containing necessity and possibility. There ought to be such axioms because of an incompatibility between love and fear: we don’t love what we fear or fear what we love (in the normal course of things). We want to be close to the loved object but not the feared object. Thus, we have the axioms: if Lp, then not Fp; and if Fp, then not Lp.  Can we fear to love something? If so, we could add the axiom: if FLp, then Fp—if we fear to love something, then we fear that thing. Is that a logical truth? Why would we fear to love something unless we already feared it (heroin, say)? I won’t try to adjudicate the issue, merely remarking that it resembles similar questions about iterations of other operators (if it’s possible that p is necessary, is p thereby necessary?). In any case, we do have some plausible-sounding necessary truths in the axioms mentioned above, since love and fear are natural opposites. We approach what we love and we avoid what we fear, as the psychologists say; and these two kinds of behavior are not compatible. So, the logic of emotion might have some interesting complexity aside from the truisms already cited in the previous section. There is enough logical structure in the concepts to permit a logical treatment of emotions. As I noted, this is not terribly surprising in the light of the standard examples of non-classical logics; it isn’t hard to get a logic off the ground, since concepts tend to cluster in logically connected groups and iteration is a common feature of language (“not”, “know”, “necessary”, etc.). If you can love to love and fear to fear, then you have the foundations for a logic of these emotions. Emotions are naturally logical in their possible combinations: some imply others and some imply the absence of others.[1]

[1] Emotions are rather like colors in this regard: colors too exhibit logical relations of implication and exclusion. This logic cannot be reduced to a classical logic of truth functions (as Wittgenstein discovered). I can imagine the same hostility to emotional logic as greeted modal logic in its early days. I look forward to a formal semantics of emotional logic.