Consciousness, Literature and the Arts

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Volume 5 Number 3, December  2004

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The Actor-Problem:

Live and Filmed Performance and Classical Cognitivism

By

Jennifer Ewing Pierce

University of Pittsburgh

            The intersection of cognitive science and theater/performance studies, like in the sister field of literary theory, erupts with greater urgency each time it is applied, demonstrating the power of cognitive science to clarify the questions enshrouding performance reception and production.  Equally volatile, though less frequently rehearsed, is the possibility that the converse—that theater and performance studies provide multiple opportunities to elucidate cognitive studies—is also true.  To propose such a heresy is to violate the boundaries of the “two cultures” identified and interrogated over half a century ago by C.P. Snow and still woefully in tact today.  The artificial separation between the humanities and the sciences limits each culture profoundly.  The overall intent of this essay is to support a stronger liaison between theater/performance studies and cognitive studies.  A qualitative link between the two fields can reconstruct each of them as mutually clarifying lenses, rather than identifying one set of studies as handmaid to the other, as is often the case.  Intentionally, more problems will be identified than solved.  Uncovering the tensions that exist in each field independent of the other simply underscores the overall thesis—that a sincerely interdisciplinary union of cognitive studies and theater studies will deepen the work of specialists in both fields. 

            Another matter to consider before proceeding: why focus on the particular concerns of acting?  Or, rather, what are the particular concerns of acting, as separate from the arts in general—like literature, visual art, or music?  This essay will show that human affect is one hyperlink to theater studies and cognitive studies, and, more importantly, that human affect is the point at which the claims of classical cognitivism begin to unravel.  Acting is a fecund site for any serious contemplation of human affect, revealing the complex nature of human affect and its peculiarly corporeal embeddedness.  For as “embodied fiction,” as I like to call it, acting nudges its way to the outer-reaches of mimetic representation.  While all art forms may make the claim that they draw upon human affect in reception and even in production, the mimetic activity of acting is the only one that may make the claim that the imitated affect is the embodied affect of the artist herself.  And though it is an issue of some dispute—the artist may even make the claim that, being embodied, the imitated affect is an authentic affect.  While Beethoven’s emotions and feelings may be represented in the Ninth Symphony, and, then, elicited, experienced, and/or appreciated by the listener, the notes of the Ninth Symphony are not Beethoven’s feelings or emotions.  However, it is not  clear that Hecuba’s feelings in a production of The Trojan Women are not  the feelings of the actor portraying them.  Though this article narrows the discussion artificially to the reception of such a performance, it is important to bear in mind a) that the reception of the feelings and emotions of the actor is a part of the puzzle surrounding the nature of the enacted emotions and feelings of the actor and b) that the embodied nature of performance makes it worth specialized study. 

            It is a widely accepted notion in the field of cognitive science (and the even more recently emerging field of cognitive neuroscience) that emotion creates a portal through which all theories of cognition must pass.  The computational model of mind and connectionism in general are tested, and likewise confounded, by the simple reality of human affect.  Evolutionary biology has come up with the most satisfying explanations; but these mechanistic schemata do not do much to help us decide whether emotions should be considered in proper cognition at all.  Athena-like, embodied mind models jump from the cranium of cognitive science practically fully-formed; however, the intuitive sense that these models should automatically wed affect and its bodily states to cognition has proved problematic.  As this essay will demonstrate, emotion’s equally intuitive link to theater and performance (perhaps usefully called “embodied fiction”) will prove to be more than an interesting aside.  In fact, “the actor problem” as I call it, provides a measuring stick with utility for theater scholars and cognitive scientists alike—one that cannot easily be ignored for it’s ability to point to, if not solve, the conflicts within and surrounding classical cognitivism.  Using a close read of the theories of mimesis put forth by Kendall Walton, and augmenting it’s usefulness with a counterintuitive blending of Bruce Willshire’s phenomenological approach to “the actor problem,” with Derek Matravers and the much more recent work of the MIT philosopher of science, Craig Delancey, I will show the mutual usefulness of theater/performance studies and cognitive science. 

If we are to understand theater as a type of embodied fiction, we must first start with an understanding of typical theories of fiction.[1] In representative theories of fiction, a break occurs between the psychological (the fiction is the object of our attitudes) and the physical (we cannot and do not act upon the attitude).  As Walton (Mimesis as Make-Believe) writes, this break is innately unsatisfying: “[the] gulf separating fictional worlds physically from the real world [seems] unbridgeable…”(1990, 196).   Likewise, he asserts, it is even more difficult to theorize about psychological interaction across worlds.  What do we do about the fact that real people can fear and pity fictional creations? Fiction, like performance, is a strange phenomenon in which humans can experience emotions usually reserved for things that we take to be “actual.” 

Walton pinpoints the problem by isolating the idea that we have “psychological attitudes” toward fictions.  Although folk psychology uses language that suggests we do have psychological attitudes (Walton cites phrases like ‘caught up’ and ‘emotionally involved’), for Walton, this is patently false.  Although after watching, say Nightmare on Elmstreet, we may say that we were terrified, Walton claims that we were not actually terrified.  All of our bodily sign posts (referred to as “somatic markers”) exist, rigid muscles, heightened adrenaline, and elevated pulse; yet for Walton, this is not fear.  This is something he calls “quasi-fear,”---but this somatic state is a necessary but not sufficient condition of authentic fear (196). 

In this theory, subjective introspection is completely invalid and ultimately irrelevant, even if we have some way of verifying the veracity of the self-report.  We do not take reports of fictions literally: “I saw Freddy Krueger coming before Nancy did.”[2]  The reporter did not literally see Freddy Krueger coming at Nancy, nor was Nancy literally being attacked; the reporter saw a representation of this.  Walton asks why, then, if the reporter adds to the report, “…and it scared the hell out of me” do we assume that this is literal but the previous is not (197)?  The significant inference is not whether or not the reporter was afraid; in fact he may have been.  The truly significant inference is that Walton’s theoretical move challenges the notion that the reporter was afraid of Krueger (or the “ooze,” or Frankenstein’s monster, or Hannibal Lecter, or whatever).  In this schema, the viewer must believe that he is actually in danger in order to experience authentic fear of that object.  In other words, the fiction itself cannot be the object of our psychological attitude.  So far this falls in line with most emotion theory on fiction; fear “necessarily involves a belief or judgment that the fear object poses a threat” (ibid).  However, Walton complicates the theory slightly, by integrating some of the alternative arguments on the matter. 

Walton first considers the possibility that the viewer “half believes”[3] that he is authentically in jeopardy.  But he shows this to be unsatisfying; symmetrically, if one “half believes,” one should be at least halfway inspired to act on the belief.  For instance, if one half-believes that Freddy Krueger really exists, one would be at least half-motivated to stay up all night to prevent dreaming.  Furthermore, the somatic markers of fearing fictions are not present by half; they are 100% present. 

Next Walton considers that this belief in the authenticity of the fictional character, situation, or object is not a “half” belief but a belief of a “special kind” which he describes as a “gut” feeling as opposed to an “intellectual” one (198).   But again, Walton finds this idea unsatisfying, because it divorces the psychological from the physical.  Even an irrational gut feeling, such as a phobia, inspires the normal actions associated with the fear.  Our Krueger-watcher does not return home and take anti-hypnotics to stay awake.  The only physical associations with Krueger-fear (as opposed to phobic fear) are ones that Walton describes as involuntary, such as the adrenaline and sweating the viewer might experience. 

Walton then reflects on the possibility that there are ephemeral moments in which the viewer takes Krueger to be real, moments too fleeting for the person to consider action but long enough to inspire enough belief to create authentic fear.  But Walton also finds this to be “unconvincing” (199).  Even if this theory were correct, it still would not account for Walton’s quasi-fear; nor would it explain other emotions experienced toward fictions like pity or adoration, which don’t seem to be explained by intermittent belief at all.

Having rehearsed all of these possibilities and finding them inadequate, Walton reaffirms the idea that fear must involve a belief, a proposition which, if discarded, challenges the notion that there is anything cognitive in emotions at all.  At best, Walton writes, discarding the notion of belief states creates a whole host of other difficulties; difficulties involving the difference between imagination and belief being one of them.  (This point will re-emerge at a later point in this essay).  Walton asserts that a faulty assumption lies at the crux of this dilemma: most arguments tend to take the idea that a self-report of fear is a reliable indicator that the fear is real because it appeals to common sense.  But Walton warns that this is not necessarily the case.  “Initial intuition” about what Krueger-watching actually inspires may either bring one to the conclusion that it is real fear or that it is not real fear but something-other-than real fear and both bear an equal share the “burden of proof” (201). 

Walton then provides a gloss of Patricia Greenspan’s work on emotions and beliefs, which complicates the concept of beliefs as a natural kind.  This points to the following conclusion for Walton: that fear is “motivating in distinctive ways,” that it puts “pressure on behavior,” even if that pressure is “resisted” (201).    This puts Krueger-fear into a different category altogether than actual motivating fear.  Walton’s solution is to keep emotions in the realm of beliefs (thus keeping them classically cognitive in nature) and to treat the emotions experienced in Krueger-watching as a different beast. 

Walton notes that there may be “genuine fear” involved in Krueger-watching, if the Krueger watcher believes that something similar to Krueger may exist outside the screen.  (He cites the well-known decline in ocean bathing immediately following the release of Jaws.) But this, for Walton, is merely a fear inspired by the representation on the screen and not the subject of the representation itself (i.e., fear of child molesters in the real having a long reaching effect beyond the actual incident of abuse).  He extends his conclusion to other emotions as well, asserting that any genuine emotion inspired by fiction is only genuine to the extent that they correlate to an emotion about something that may in fact exist in the real outside the fiction.  We pity not the fictional object, but objects we judge to be like it in the real world. 

Walton’s deductions provide a logically coherent model of emoting for fictions which keep emotion safely in the realm of cognition, and thus, erasing their messy association with somatic states.   But the assumptions forming the foundation of his deductive reasoning are an unsatisfying reduction of what is actually happening during Krueger-watching.  To begin with, it is not merely Krueger-watching but Englund/Krueger watching and, in Nightmare on Elmstreet, it is Enlgund/Krueger/Langenkamp watching in that we witness Englund/Krueger pursue Langenkamp/Victim.[4]  It may be less complicated to use the inanimate example Walton uses, the horror movie “ooze,” but the ooze itself is at least made more frightening by what it does to a human subject.  The ooze in itself may generate Walton’s quasi-fear (or actual fear) pre-human victim, however an off-screen association, like the type Walton describes through Jaws, may explain this, or we may find that what the person actually experiences pre-human ooze victim is more akin to disgust.  Furthermore, what may also inspire the most authentic fear in us, one that may linger beyond the initial experience, is Englund’s uncanny ability to locate Krueger in himself.  In short, removing the concept of the actor and what the actor is doing from the equation does not give an authentic representation of what is happening on a cognitive level, since there can be no argument that an understanding of “acting” is present in most viewers[5].  This is an especially significant oversight if we are testing purportedly cognitive models of fearing fiction.

 But still what does it mean to be afraid of Krueger?  To consider the what of Krueger-fear (bearing in mind this complicated Englund/Krueger) and to be able to distinguish it from or liken it to, say, mugger-fear, it will be helpful to consider possible functions of Krueger-fear; (for the purposes of this essay we will accept the ostensible function of mugger-fear as “protecting ourselves from being assaulted or killed” keeping in mind that this too could be argued against).

 Bruce W. Wilshire in his article “Enactment, transformation and identity of self”[6] presents “a theory of identity of self in which artistic reproduction in the theatre, creativity and inter-subjective relations are integral.” (50, 1978).  Wilshire argues for the necessity of art in constituting a stable self, an act that is predicated on presence and absence.  This argument indicates that the absence of an actual presence, (an actual Krueger) is necessary to the experience of the type of fear the Krueger-watcher experiences, and furthermore that the type of fear inspired by Krueger-watching is part of what confirms the self.  And that self is a bodily self.  Citing the usual suspects in phenomenology, Merleau-Ponty, Kant, and Heidegger, Wilshire makes a slightly more complex quasi-Cartesian argument, I see Krueger, I can be afraid of Krueger, therefore I both am and in possession of the I experiencing the fear: “I cannot grasp myself without grasping myself as expressive to and for others…” (51).  Wilshire argues that physical, biological expression (which, for the time being, we will equate to Walton’s “quasi-fear”) is an essential part of individuation.  For Wilshire, the subject is only able to begin to think when the subject has learned about its bodily self.  The bodily self is constituted through expression to and for others and expression to and for others is only learned through imitation in infancy.  Thus, Wilshire concludes: “cognition presupposes expression which presupposes mimesis” (ibid). 

            Wilshire uses acting as a lens through which to examine his thesis.  Acting, writes Wilshire “can be a deliberate and reasonable endeavor to become a clearer, more coherent and freer subject through becoming a thematic and coherent object both for others and for oneself as a performer” (54).   In theatre, the performer enacts an “as-if” which works for the performer herself as well as the audience.  Momentarily, this brings us up against the problem of the imagined and the believed that Walton addresses.  However, Wilshire insists that, contrary to the title of Walton’s book, that mimesis is not simply “make-believe”:

Now we can begin to see the significance and seriousness of enactment in the theatre.  It is badly misleading, though perfectly ‘natural,’ to say that acting is pretending.  To say this connotes that the pretender falsifies himself, though he knows perfectly well who he really is.  But the actor-artist is searching for himself through enactment---experimentally finding the other “in” himself, and so finding and developing himself in his freedom.  If he is in a production with a pre-established script, the playwright has left a character-type to be enacted.  But this type is to be contracted into a particular body-self, incarnated in a manner that it has never been before.  The role not only tests the actor (the Greek for actor, hypocrites: under the judgment of the role), but the actor tests the role.  Can it bear the weight of his experience?          (54)

 For Wilshire, the enactment of the as-if is not done to create a non-actual self; it is constitutive of the actual self.  Englund is not throwing off Englund to make-believe he is Krueger, he finds Krueger in himself.  For if Englund were just “making believe” what would be left for us to witness?  The audience doesn’t see what goes through his mind during his imagining, although what he imagines may provoke what he enacts.  He finds not only the imagined idea of Krueger but the physical enactment of Krueger within his body. The fact that Englund’s body can perform Krueger acts may be the thing that inspires authentic “cognitive” fear and not just quasi-fear. 

In this way Krueger tests Englund and Englund tests Krueger.  One step away, the audience is testing Englund, Krueger, and themselves.  Does Englund successfully discover Krueger?  The audience doesn’t “suspend their disbelief” in order to authentically experience Krueger.  The audience locates Krueger, Krueger/Victim, and Englund/Krueger, Victim/Langenkamp, within themselves simultaneously. If we accept this complicated cognitive process, it does not suffice to say simply that the Krueger-watcher does not believe in Krueger.  In light of this, saying that the Krueger-watcher does not believe in Krueger seems stultifying simplistic. 

What may be true is that mimesis itself provides a new problem for explicating the differences and similarities of mugger-fear (actual “real world” fear) and Krueger-fear.  What is most important in Krueger-fear is the expression of fear (in the actor and the audience) seems primary and the expression of mugger-fear is clearly a secondary factor (and may even decrease one’s chance for survival).  It also begs the question that if Walton is using the behavior-motivating factor of fear as a constitutive element in classifying it as authentic fear then, can we classify expression of emotion as one of these behaviors?  Is the (bodily) expression of affect a behavior?  Walton contends that expression of Krueger-fear (burying one’s face in the hands, or actually fleeing the theatre) is a fear of the representation.  If Krueger-fear inspires a scream this scream (an expression) is explained for Walton by an explanation that the viewer is pretending.  But then if we accept this, one must also ask is pretending a behavior?  Clearly burying the face in the hands is different than the behavioral tactic we may employ in mugger-fear.  Calming the mugger, doing as the mugger asks, or fleeing the mugger, all seem like better choices (though I suppose burying your face in your hands is also an option). 

            Derek Matravers complicates our understanding of what it is to believe in fiction in a way that maybe useful to our understanding of the presence or absence of belief in Krueger-fear.  Whether or not it ultimately proves useful in live and filmed performance, where there is two possible belief systems at work, the performer’s and the audience’s, remains to be seen.

Matravers cites the phenomenon of emotional response to fictions as a primary problem in the cognitive theory of emotions.  Emotions for fictions may tempt us to give up the conviction that they are emotions at all.  Although he tries out a convoluted mix of possible legitimate emotions and pretended emotions, Walton eventually does precisely this, refusing to admit that Krueger-fear is a proper emotion at all.  Matravers, however, suggests, firstly, that people can be disposed to acting (as in taking action, not as in performing) without “actually acting.” He cites two situations in which this may be so (that one is inclined to act but chooses not to).  The first situation arises when a competing desire wins out over the initial desire to act inspired by the emotion.  One maybe disposed to act but another desire, which may be compromised by our action, keeps the impulse at bay.[7] 

The second situation, and the one which speaks more closely to the issue of fiction, is one he calls “instrumental beliefs” which is to say, that we must know precisely what to do, or at least have a good hypothesis about what to do, in order to act.  For Matravers, instrumental beliefs do not need to be present in order to experience an emotion.  Simply, because the situation does not immediately present an action does not mean we do not experience the emotion (1998, 28).   Normally, for example, if we see someone in pain, we immediately respond in order to assist the person in pain.  However, if what we receive is merely a description of a person in pain, we do not know how to act to ameliorate the situation, therefore we do not.  “Fiction,” writes Matravers, is merely “a special case of this, where our emotions are never accompanied by the relevant instrumental beliefs.” “Failure to act” on emotions for fictions does not mean we do not have the disposition to (29). 

            However, Matravers still goes on to consider the fact that the disposition may still be absent.  He recalls Betrand Russell’s “theory of reference” which asserts that all propositions about non-actual subjects to be false.  However, Matravers contends that we can make propositions, true propositions, about “possible” worlds and possible characters (80).  He further argues that fictional works seldom rely solely on false or even possible propositions.  Most frequently they involve a mixture of possible propositions and true propositions about the actual world.  All of this leads Matravers to discard Russell’s theory of reference.  Using Lewis and Evans, Matravers asserts his acceptance of the idea that saying “x exists” is completely different from saying that “x is actual” (32).  For Matravers, one distinguishes between the actual and the possible in the following way:

The actual world is the world with which we have spatial and temporal relations; the world, which is causally connected to us.  It follows from this that there is no causal interaction between us and the worlds of fiction.  Hence, as we say in the previous section, if I believe a description to be fictional, I believe that there are no instrumental beliefs I could have which could actualize any disposition to action I might feel with respect to any character described in fiction (ibid).

Hence, the difference between emotional response to fiction and emotional response to the actual is the absence or presence of a particular kind of belief, instrumental belief, and not belief in general.  One cannot act when one cannot see a logical possibility for acting with efficacy. 

The problem with the above description is Matravers’ definition of actual worlds: actual worlds are worlds in which we can have actual spatial and temporal relations.  Clearly, live theatre, a very specific kind of fiction Matravers’ ignores, presents a problem for both the actor and the audience; one inhabits and the other witnesses a world in which they do have spatial and temporal relations.  A play with an actor who doesn’t spatially and temporally inhabit the stage would be a very dull play indeed.  And one could argue that the actual possibility of the audience interacting spatially and temporally within that world at any given moment increases the excitement and pleasure of both the audience and the actor.  In this case the audience does not act, not because there is not a logical action one could take (one could charge the stage and force Hamlet to kill Claudius) but that option is over-ridden by our desire to see the story enacted  (And would be damned impolite).  On with Matravers.

            Matravers explores the problem of historical situations: how does one, then, distinguish between historical situations (where the possibility for acting with efficacy is also nonexistent) and fictional situations?  He answers this problem quickly by saying that there is an implicit understanding of the grounds for the lack of instrumental belief and discusses this distinction in greater depth in a later section.  Matravers then asks the question, “why?”  Why should we feel emotions for non-actual events and people?  Imagination, the term which caused some trouble for Walton, is the answer.  In order for a narrative to arouse emotions, it must, argues Matravers, stimulate and engage our imagination.  Thus, for Matravers, is not the problem of responding to fiction but to responding to descriptions (34).  But can a live performance, or even a filmed one, be reduced to the category of “a description”?  Is to enact Krueger tearing apart sexy teenagers the same as describing him doing so?  Obviously not.  Then what makes enacting different than describing?  The physical body.  Again, as Wilshire helped us to do previously, we return to the presence of the physical body and its relationship to self-possession, and again, this poses a problem for cognitive models of the emotions.  Also, even if we could reduce live enactment to mere description (perhaps we could call it a description of a different type) this conclusion must also lead to the further conclusion that description is inherent to all art objects and, in fact, is a qualifying feature of them.  This poses very interesting questions about aesthetics and art making; it begs the question, is description the same as narrative?  Is narrative necessary to evoke emotion?  And if it is, what about post-modernity which claims to subvert all narratives and metanarratives?  Can a color, a line, a word evoke an emotion without a metanarrative or description attached to it?  Ceci n’est-ce pas un objet d’art? 

            Matravers final claim is that he has, through his complication of belief with the proposal of the “instrumental belief,” has rescued the cognitive theory from the trap of fiction, both explaining our proclivity for emoting for fictions and vindicating cognitive models of the emotions.  But clearly, as has been demonstrated, instrumental belief does not rescue cognitive emotion theory from the trap of  live fictions in theater---at least not without a few problems.  It may not even do well for our Krueger-fear phenomenon.  For Matravers, we do believe in a possible Krueger, so our fear is both cognitive and authentic, (not merely quasi as Walton would hold), but that does not include our awareness of the Englund/Krueger phenomenon.  To use Matravers, as with most models defending the cognitive position, we must accept that the most clearly cognitive aspect of enacted fictions (the representation of “acting” in the mind) does not even work into the equation. 

            Craig Delancey presents interesting arguments against working emoting for fictions into classical cognitivism.  For Delancey, the problem of fictions merely assists him in his larger argument that it is autonomy, not cognition, that is the most relevant issue of philosophy of the mind. But the problems he raises also assist us in looking at the actor problem.  He includes in his description of fiction “stage dramas, novels, and films” (2001, 103). 

            Delancey is the first to bring up one of the most obvious problems with cognitive models of emotions: music, “Music need not be about anything to generate affects; we hear a particular melody and, as if entrained to the dynamic of the flow, our affective state can change (104).   This also complicates our understanding of Krueger-fear vs. mugger-fear.  Since we have never tested models of muggings involving a soundtrack, it is safe to say, based on current evidence, that the soundtrack of Nightmare on Elm Street enhances our Krueger experience, and that the soundtrack has little or nothing to do with our belief in Krueger, Elm Street, or child molestors in the real world. 

The music is not dependent on a narrative content.  If you were to argue, as Matravers might, that the Krueger music is describing to the audience that: “this scene is scary” then what do you do when the narrative content of the music contrasts with what the scene represents?  If this were so, we might feel like getting up and dancing when Steeler’s Wheel sings the upbeat and catchy song, “Stuck in the Middle With You,” while Michael Madsen saws a cop’s ear off in  Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs.[8]  Mugger-fear, it is likely, would be unaffected by music.  If we were to somehow able to test a mugging set to Enya, and find that fear is greatly reduced by new-age music (but I don’t suppose either the experiment or the result to be very feasible). 

In previous chapters, Delancey has identified something he names “doxastic cognitivism,” which identifies forms of cognitivism (like the one Walton uses) which require a marriage between authentic emotion and a belief state.  Doxastic cognitivism holds that, “for someone to be angry, she must believe she has been wronged; to feel sad, she must believe that someone has suffered some loss; to feel fear, she must believe that something of value is in danger” (104).   The problem posed by fiction is that we have a situation in which a person (at least appears to) feel emotion for someone they cannot form a true belief about.  As Delancey suggests, in face of this we must either discard our claim that what audiences/readers experience is actually an emotion (like Walton does), or we must discard the claim that beliefs are necessary to emotions (like Matravers almost does—but not quite).

Delancey summarizes the arguments that have been made which attempt to save cognitivism.  The first solution he puts forth is the one proposed by Colin Radford in his 1975 paper: “How Can We Be Moved by the Fate of Anna Karenia?”[9]  Radford’s proposes the following scenario: if we heard a dramatic story recounted by someone in a pub, we would feel the appropriate emotions.  However, if we are suddenly made aware of the fact that the story was false, we would “normally stop having the emotion” (105).   Radford and Delancey call this type of scenario a “report.”  Radford generalizes from reports to fiction claiming that fiction is merely special because we realize from the outset that the narrative is false; Radford doesn’t see this as much of a problem.  For him, it is only that, in the special case of fictions, we are merely inconsistent.  Delancey aptly points out how unhelpful Radford’s argument (except in that it  perserves doxastic cognitivism) is:

But it is not clear how this “inconsistency and…incoherence” (1975,78) plays itself out in [the viewer]…except in that they emote for fiction.  [The viewer] might be an impeccably rational person in all other maters, a logician by trade, continent and calm.  In what sense is she prone to inconsistency and incoherence except in this case of the emoting for fictions?  Inconsistency is posited only for the purpose of saving an implicit cognitivist theory of emotions (106).

            Next Delancey rehearses the Walton argument for quasi-emotions which he calls, at best, “a taxonomic move” providing no good reason why we should accept these two categories of emotion (107).  Similar to Radford, Delancey points out that the move is merely one that saves cognitivism but fails to provide any truly enlightening information.  In both Radford and Walton, the phenomenon of emoting for fictions emerges as a bizarre anomaly, a mutation of the human ability to emote, an anomaly with which neither cognitivist seem greatly concerned yet seems significant enough to deserve further investigation.    

            Furthermore, neither explanation includes the desire to emote for fictions—the equally bizarre circumstance that humans continue to seek out fiction in differing varieties and forms does not seem to fall in line with the anomaly or inconsistency argument.  Nor does either account attempt to explain that there appears to be a pleasure principle involved.  For example, as has been previously noted in the argument made against Matravers definition of actual worlds, the spatial and temporal reality of theatre seems to fulfill Matravers definition of the actual.  Some may argue that the possibility of the audience member entering the theatrical frame and interacting spatially and temporally with the actors and the setting increases the pleasure.  The desire engendered by and for fiction is clearly an important issue for Matravers to address, in that he hypothesizes that the action normally following emotions in the actual may be suppressed by a competing desire.  It seems that the desire for the fiction to continue is the central issue in why emoting for fictions does not follow the model of emoting in everyday life.  In everyday life, our desires are quite the opposite. 

            There are two further arguments for saving the cognitive theory of emotion, which Delancey cites, the first of the two being:  “We emote that these kinds of things actually happen” (108).   He brings in Michael Weston who, in replying to Radford, “has given a subtle account of emoting for fiction, accepting that these are genuine emotions, and rejecting that we are irrational when we so emote” (ibid.)   For Weston, we only emote for fictions to the degree that we can formulate a belief that they happen in the actual world.  Weston’s argument, as Delancey points out, hangs on the notion of narrative content, but as this essay has rehearsed, this provides a whole host of other theoretical problems in that it is not clear (at least in the case of music or post-modern performance) that  narrative is always necessary to generate emotion.  It is possible that a distinction between emotion and mood may, in part, account for this problem, but so far no one has attempted to make this distinction. 

            Walton would probably find Weston’s argument useful in that Walton admits that there may be some genuine emotion mixed in with the genuine emotion if we can make the leap from the fiction to the real world.    But ultimately, Delancey rightly discards this third cognitivist account of emoting for fictions as well, using Yanal’s argument that we do, in fact, emote for fantastic characters and figures that do not and cannot exist in the real world.

            The fourth and final argument Delancey examines before moving to a rejection of cognitivism is the argument that we can “emote for a possible world or for counterfactual situations” (108).   This argument would also fall in line with  Matravers—which is to say that this argument contends that a belief in the propositional content of the narrative can be formulated on propositions in possible worlds as well as in actual worlds.  But Delancey finds this very unsatisfying; citing Italo Calvino’s “Tutto inun punto,” Delancey says that there are clearly fictions which can and do “describe impossible situations” (109). 

            Using Roger Scruton, Peter Lamarque, and Robert Yanal, Delancey examines the idea that we “reject cognitivism about emotions,” which Delancey finds the most logical idea (109).   In light of all the arguments rehearsed above and their highlighted inadequacies, Delancey suggests that we reject not cognitivism about emotions in general, but specifically the belief condition of the cognitive theory of emotions, although this opens the question, for Delancey, in several other directions.  He points to Lamarque as moving in the right direction.  Lamarque’s argument makes a distinction between being frightened of and frightened by.  To be frightened by Krueger we must meet Krueger on the street in similar fashion to meeting the mugger.  But to be frightened of Krueger requires no such actual interaction.[10]  In general, Delancey agrees with this move; however, he feels that affect program theory may do a better job of accounting for emoting for fictions. 

            Affect program theory, as defined by Delancey “is the view that some emotions are pancultural syndromes enabled by inherited biological capabilities” (3).   In affect program theory, the problem doesn’t emerge in such a strong fashion; there is no assumption in the theory that belief is a necessary condition of emotion.  However, Delancey stills wishes to do a closer examination of the theory and uses the heterogeneous intentionality of the basic emotions and the hierarchical theory of mind to do so [11]:

Our reactions to fictions, inasmuch as they are reactions to propositional contents, are not therefore reactions about possible worlds, nor about the actual world but about a human construction of intentional contents.  And as a result…we can meaningfully say or think about impossible things in the fiction.  This does not cause logical confusion because we understand that the reference to such objects lacks active reference.[12]

            This argument is the first to speak to the Englund/Krueger conundrum brought up earlier in this essay.  The deactivated referent is a concept introduced by Nino Cocchiarella.  Cochiarella suggests that there is a “fiction operator” at work, which implies a system the mind uses when viewing/reading fiction that understands the narrative to have “deactivated reference.”  This doesn’t speak to our other problem, that all of these proposed solutions in some way rely on the presence of narrative, and not only that, but strong narrative, for even Delancey asserts that “the features of good storytelling are requisite for emotions to occur” (110).[13]   However, it may shed some light on the Englund/Krueger problem: the presence of the “deactivated reference” can also speak to a schema present for the concept of “acting” in that the character is simultaneously “deactivated” (Krueger) and actual (Englund) which increases both the pleasure and the level of engagement of the viewer.  This would be doubly enhanced with the presence of a live actor as opposed to a celluloid (or digital) one. 

            A whole other argument can be opened up when we consider the problem of the actor’s emotion while performing.  Namely, what about the emotion the performer is enacting?  Can this be considered authentic human emotion?  And is the authenticity of this emotion an aspect of the the viewer’s belief or lack of belief, above and beyond the narrative content?  This essay has already demonstrated the problem that occurs when hanging any explanation of emoting for fictions on the necessity of narrative.  Would an actor on stage enacting say, grief,

devoid of any narrative explanation, “move” an audience? Yes, it is plausible that a genuinely (perceived as genuine) grieving woman on stage may evoke emotion in her audience even in the absence of a narrative explaining the intention of her emotions.  And what about the actor herself?  Is she relying on narrative to generate her performed emotions?

Various acting theories answer this question in different ways.  These theories can be generalized to two categories: “inside out” acting and “outside in” acting.  The inside out theory (the theory underlying most American method-based acting training) relies heavily on psychological narrative.  The actor is encouraged to perform narrative actions and to develop a “story” of the character’s desires.  If the actor does this, the emotion need not be played, it will be perceived by the audience regardless.  The “outside in” acting theory (more common to non-Western technique and recent psycho-physiological forms of training) encourages the actor to replicate the outward signs of the emotion, (shallow, nasal, chest breathing and clenched muscles for anger for instance) and that the emotion will both be “genuinely” raised in the performer and consequently the audience.  In this approach, narrative is almost completely irrelevant, although it may enhance both the actor and audience’s experience.  The compelling question is: which is more likely to evoke emotional response in the audience?  Which is most likely to be perceived as authentic?    While recent experimental psychology has employed both techniques to elicit emotion in subjects and both are supposed to produce measurable emotional responses, more research in the area is clearly warranted for both cognitive science and acting theory. 

The other aspect to the problem of the actor is this:  what about the audience’s supposed cognitive awareness of the concept of acting?  The very idea of acting adds multiple layers of desire and pleasure on the part of the audience.  For instance in the recent Hannibal, Julianne Moore took over the role of Clarisse Starling from Jodi Foster.  Popular interest in the movie increased through a curiosity about the Moore/Starling in contrast to the Foster/Starling.  Furthermore, in live performance, to what degree is our pleasure, engagement, and emotion linked to whether we know the actor portraying the role?  If the actor is a personal acquaintance, friend or family member, do we actually “forget” that it is her?  Does intimate knowledge of the actor increase or interfere with our ability to emote for the character?  Clearly, when watching filmed and live performance we are not only watching the narrative of the film or the play, we are watching known and unknown actual people create the deactivated referent for which we will emote.  We are simultaneously watching, desiring, and emoting for both the story enacted and the story created by the enactment. 

Conclusion

Emoting for fictions has provided an unrelenting barometer against which emotion theory maybe measured—within and outside of the classical cognitivist model.  Acting theory could be informed by an in depth scrutiny of the existing literature; the results of the interrogation would hold interest for the theatre studies scholar and the philosopher of mind alike.  The double lens of the actor-audience relationship would provide an even further test of existing models of emotion theory.  Is enacted emotion, emoting performed on film or stage, the same as genuine emotion?  Using Delancey’s hierarchy of mind as a model for acting theory may prove fruitful; which systems are primary to the art of performance? In what ways can experimentation in acting inform the cognitive theory of emotions?  Clearly, several questions must be more carefully examined; theorizing emoting for fictions must include a more specific examination of performed fictions, and performed fictions on film can and should be contrasted to performing live on stage. 

Also clear, is that arguments which examine emoting for fictions should carefully distinguish between different kinds of fictions (namely, the difference between enacted fictions and read fictions) and extend the debate to other art forms such as music and visual art.  The areas will begin to overlap as the presence of music in performed fictions adds to the perceived emotional experience as does the presence of art objects; the performance of Walton’s ooze is a very different thing than the Englund/Krueger performance. 

            In essence, the actor problem precedes the problem of emoting for fiction.  Creating and enacting fiction carries with it a host of problems that speak to the heart of the cognitive issue.  Is creating and enacting emotion essentially cognitive or essentially perceptuomotor? What is the goal of enacted emotion?  Which systems is performance designed to speak to?  And finally is the desire for creating and watching performance constitutive of our cognitive ability or is it a happy accident?  These questions have yet to be adequately addressed in the existing emotion theory; yet, the concept of acting, of performing our emotions, seems the most logical place for the interrogation to begin.  A satisfying model of what the actor does and why we desire him to do it lies at the crux of a comprehensive philosophy of the emotions.  There are promising alternative theories of emotion that do not necessarily aim to subsume a theory of emotion into a classically cognitivist position.  Among them are affect program theory, propositional attitude theory, evolutionary psychology, and social constructionism, all which incorporate varying degrees of the social and biologically material explanations of emotions (Griffiths 1997). Propositional attitude theory is most closely linked with a classically cognitivist view, while affect program theory comes the closes to rehearsing an embodied cognition model.  Consequently, affect program theory, with its link to William James theories of emotion and perception of feeling, holds the most promise for linking cognitive studies to performance studies.  And while considering the special case of the actor would do much to test and augment the existing theories of emotion, similarly, theater studies has yet to develop a contemporary ontology of performance that provides a satisfactory definition of acting as both a philosophical and phenomenological category of human behavior and includes the most recent understandings of human cognition. 

Delancey, Craig.  Passionate Engines: What Emotions Reveal About Mind and Artificial     Intelligence.  Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.   

Griffiths, Paul.  What Emotions Really Are: the Problem with Psychological Categories.      Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1997.

Matravers, Derek, 1998.  Art and Emotion.  London: Clarendon Press.  

Walton, Derek, 1990.  Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational        Arts.    Cambridge: Harvard University Press     

Wilshire, Bruce W.  “Enactment, transformation and identity of the self.”  Dialectics and           Humanism.  3:2, 52-68.