Perceiving expressions of emotion: What evidence could bear on questions about perceptual experience of mental states?

Abstract

What evidence could bear on questions about whether humans ever perceptually experience any of another's mental states, and how might those questions be made precise enough to test experimentally? is paper focusses on emotions and their expression. It is proposed that research on perceptual experiences of physical properties provides one model for thinking about what evidence concerning expressions of emotion might reveal about perceptual experiences of others' mental states. is proposal motivates consideration of the hypothesis that categorical perception of expressions of emotion occurs, can be facilitated by information about agents' emotions, and gives rise to phenomenal expectations. It is argued that the truth of this hypothesis would support a modest version of the claim that humans sometimes perceptually experience some of another's mental states. Much available evidence is consistent with, but insufficient to establish, the truth of the hypothesis. We are probably not yet in a position to know whether humans ever perceptually experience others' mental states.

Encapsulated social perception of emotional expressions

“…As we saw, there are data that seem to suggest the dependence of the categorization effect on the presence of a color term in a language. Since emotion perception, like color perception, is a case of categorical perception (see Butterfill, 2015;Marchi & Newen, 2015) then we have prima facie evidence for believing that emotion perception is cognitively penetrated as well.…”

“…Usually, however, these claims focus on further processing of the emotional stimuli, involved in recognition, and not on the very early mechanisms of social perception. For example, Butterfill (2015) has argued that perception of emotional expressions might be a case of categorical perception. In his paper, however, he is not concerned with questions related to cognitive penetrability, and in particular his position is perfectly compatible with beliefs and other cognitive states influencing the categorization of the emotional stimuli.…”

Recent issues in high‐level perception

“…Some advocates of high‐level perception claim that high‐level perception is ontically on a par with paradigm low‐level perceptual experiences, such as seeing something as purple or feeling something as cold (Butterfill, ; Siegel, ). One possible way of spelling out this claim is as follows: if and insofar as a completed cognitive science must account for (say) the visual experience of color, so too must a completed cognitive science account for the perceptual experience of high‐level features.…”

“…Recently, several theorists have proposed that we can perceive a range of high‐level features, including natural kind features (e.g., being a cat ), artifactual features (e.g., being a hammock ), and event‐causal features (e.g., being the cause of a hammock's bulge ; Bayne, ; Butterfill, ; O'Callaghan, ; Scholl & Tremoulet, ; Siegel, , , ). Other recently proposed high‐level percepts include agency features (e.g., being oneself the cause of a window's shattering ), action features (e.g., being graspable ), the emotional and intentional features of others (e.g., being surprised ), social features (e.g., being masculine ), and moral features (Bayne, , ; Begby, ; Block, ; Butterfill, , ; Cullison, ; Di Bona, In preparation; Fish ; Helton, ; Masrour, ; Nanay, , ; Scholl & Gao, ; Siegel, , , ; Toribio, , ; Van Gulick, ; Wisnewski, ).…”

Recent Issues in High-Level Perception

“…2014; Butterfill, 2009Butterfill, , 2015Cullison, 2010;Di Bona, In preparation;Fish 2013;Helton, 2015;Masrour, 2011;Nanay, 2011Nanay, , 2012Scholl & Gao, 2013;Siegel, 2005Siegel, , 2010Siegel, , 2014Toribio, 2015aToribio, , 2015bVan Gulick, 1994;Wisnewski, 2015).…”