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Experiencing Emotions: Aesthetics, Representationalism, and Expression

Rebecca Copenhaver & Jay Odenbaugh

Department of Philosophy
Lewis & Clark College

1. Introduction

In this essay, we provide an account of the basic emotions and their expression. On our

view, emotions are experiences that indicate and have the function of indicating how our

body is faring and how we are faring in our environment. Emotions are also objects of

experience: our perceptual systems are more or less sensitive to the expression of emotion

in our environment by features that indicate and have the function of indicating emotions.

We apply our account to expression in art. What does it mean to say that an artwork

expresses sadness? Is perceiving joy in an artwork the same kind of experience as

perceiving joy in a friend’s face? How may artworks express emotions without having

emotions or any other mental states?

In the next section, we provide an overview of unrestricted representationalism

about experience. In section three, we offer a representationalist account of the basic

emotions that combines exteroception and interoception. On our view, emotions are

perceptual experiences that represent properties of our viscera and properties in our

extra-bodily environment. Exteroceptive and interoceptive systems combine to constitute a

system whose states—emotions—indicate and have the function of indicating how our

body is faring and how we are faring in our environment. In the fourth section, we survey

aesthetic theories of expression in art including the resemblance, persona and arousal

theories, and argue that each faces signficant problems. Building on the work of Dominic

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Lopes (2005) and Mitchell Green (2007), we offer a teleosemantic account of emotional

expression in art that is impersonal and continuous with a representationalist account of

the basic emotions. Finally, in section five, we apply our view to an example—Théodore

Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa—in order to illustrate how we experience emotions as

representated properties of a painted canvas.

2. Representationalism

We hold a representationalist – or intentionalist – view of experience. Experiences are

mental states for which there is something it is like for the subject of the experience to have

or be in that state. In other words, experiences have a phenomenology. Experiences also

convey something to the subject of the experience. Experiences present, to the subject,

things in the subject’s environment as being a certain way, as having certain features.1

Representationalism, in the broadest sense, is a view about the relationship between these

two apparent facts about experience. Put most generally, it holds that the phenomenology

of experiences is a matter of how things are presented to the subject in her experience.

How things look, the way things feel, what things sound like—these are features presented

in experience as features of things: things look to have a certain shape, things feel to be a

certain temperature, things sound to be at a certain pitch, and so on.2 Experience presents

things in the environment as having certain features and this fixes or determines what

experience is like for the subject of experience. Representationalism with respect to

perceptual experience, particularly visual experience, has developed into a sophisticated

1
Some reserve the verb ‘to present’ for describing disjunctivist views of experience while reserving the verb
‘to represent’ for describing representationalist views. This is a fine distinction with some merit. We use the
terms interchangeably for what experience conveys to the subject of the experience.
2
For a selection of standard representationalist views, see Byrne (2001), Dretske (1995), Harman (1990),
Jackson (2002), Lycan (1996), Rey (1991), Thau (2002), Tye (1995, 2000, 2009). Byrne (2001) credits
Armstrong (1968) with presenting the view first in the analytic tradition.

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theory having several variants. We hold an unrestricted version of representationalism that

applies to perceptual experience but also to bodily sensations, memories, emotions, and

other experiential mental state kinds (Byrne 2001: 205).

Experiences are not the only sorts of mental states with content—with conditions

under which they would be accurate. On the basis of a book looking large and red Rebecca

may form a perceptual belief that there is large red book. Her belief has content composed

in part of concepts, concepts like LARGE, RED, and BOOK. The belief has conceptual

content. But the contents of experience need not be conceptual. Adult humans have

experiences, but so do infants and non-human animals, creatures that lack the conceptual

sophistication that adult humans possess. A book can look large and red to an infant

though she may yet be incapable of forming the perceptual belief that the book is large and

red. A refrigerator may sound rhythmic to a dog, though he is unlikely to experience it as a

refrigerator or as rhythmic and more unlikely to form the perceptual belief that the

refrigerator is making a low rhythmic sound.

The infant and the dog have experiences with content. This is evident from the fact

that their experiences can be inaccurate—the book may look large and red to the infant

when it is not, and the refrigerator may sound low-pitched and rhythmic to the dog when

it is not. The contrast between adult humans on the one hand and infants or non-human

animals on the other illustrates how the contents of experience need not be conceptual, but

beware of drawing the conclusion that the contents of adult human experience are

conceptual, while the contents of infant and non-human animals are not. Rather, the point

is that an experience may have content—it may present things to the subject as being a

certain way, which way is assessable for accuracy—without the subject whose experience

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it is possessing any of the concepts used when describing the accuracy conditions. This

point holds for adult human experience and the experiences of infants and non-human

animals alike.3

Another way the contents of experience differ from the contents of mental states

such as belief is that what they convey is rich and fine-grained.4 Take Rebecca’s perceptual

belief that there is a large, red book, formed on the basis of her experience of the book

looking large and red. This experience conveys more information than is contained in her

belief. It includes information about the placement of the book relative to other features in

her visual field and relative to her perspective as an observer. It contains information about

features of the book other than its relative size and color: perhaps the words on the spine,

the color of the pages, the shadow it casts on the table, and so on. And the experience

conveys information about other objects, properties, and relations in the environment

occupied by the book. Fred Dretske expresses this difference in informational content as a

difference between digital and analog encoding. We can think of beliefs as encoding

information digitally: Rebecca’s belief that the book is large and red conveys that

information and no more. By contrast, experiences are analog. Rebecca’s experience of the

book conveys information in addition to what it conveys about the book (Dretske, 1981).

Her experience of the book is also more fine-grained than her belief that it is large and red.

She experiences the book not only as large, but as a determinate (if relative) size, and a

determinate shade of red (Raffman, 1995).

3
May adult human experience have conceptual content? The answer depends on an adequate account of
concepts and concept-possession. For a survey of standard views on the non-conceptual content of
experience, see section 4.1 of Bermúdez and Cahen (2015).
4
These features are used to support experience non-conceptualism. See Bermúdez and Cahen (2015) and
(Siegel 2015). We offer them here as merely as observations about the phenomenology of experience and
about what information experience conveys.

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In addition to representationalism, we hold a liberal view about the contents of

experience (Bayne, 2009).5 Conservatives hold that the contents of perceptual experience

are confined to low-level properties, most commonly properties that are specific to

particular sensory modalities. The contents of visual experience are confined to color,

illumination, figure, motion, while the contents of audition are confined to pitch, volume,

timbre, and so on. The overall contents of perceptual experience, then, include only

low-level sensory properties. Put more simply, conservatives hold that the features

presented in the contents of experience are best understood as features that are visible,

audible, gustable, olfactable, and so on. By contrast, liberals hold that experience presents

some features that are not strictly visible, audible, gustable, and so on. In particular,

liberals hold that some high-level features are represented in the contents of experience:

“These include being an artificial kind, being a natural kind, being a specific individual,

causation, the nature of the backsides of objects, the nature of the occluded parts of

objects, directionality…” (Macpherson, 2011: 9). Some liberals, including us, hold that the

high-level features that may figure in the contents of experience include multi-modal

features (what a strawberry looks to taste, how a bell sounds to look) as well as evaluative

features (sounding dangerous, smelling rotten, looking ill) and affective features (looking

sad, sounding angry). The liberal view is intended to be compatible with

non-conceptualism about the contents of experience: something can look to be an acorn to

a squirrel; something can smell rotten to an infant, something can sound angry to a dog. In

addition, our liberalism applies to bodily sensations, memories, emotions, and other

experiential mental state kinds, not just perceptual experience, in keeping with our

5
For a discussion of liberalism vs. conservatism about the contents of experience, see Bayne (2011), and the
other papers collected in Hawley and Macpherson (2011). See also Siegel (2006), Siewert (1998).

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unrestricted representationalism.

The position that some high-level features are represented in the contents of

experience is independent of an account of how such features come to figure in experience.

One obvious route is by means of various forms of perceptual learning: habit, association,

acquired perception, and cognitive permeation.6 One might be tempted to think that all

high-level properties enter into the contents of experience via this route—that the

conservative view is correct concerning the original contents of experience while the liberal

view is correct concerning acquired experiential abilities. But the ability to experience

some low-level properties appears to require training (e.g., tasting trichloroanisole—the

natural compound gustable in wine and other food and beverages) while some high-level

properties (looking wounded, looking dangerous) may be underwritten by innate

mechanisms as a function of the evolutionary history of a species. Just what features are

represented in the experiences typical of a species—be they low-level features or high-level

features—is not likely a matter of principle but an empirical matter having to do with the

evolutionary history and environment of the species. Just what features are represented in

the experiences an individual typical of her species is also not likely a matter of principle

but a matter of what sorts of features are prevalent in her environment and their

significance in her practical life.

Humans are social primates and the basic emotions—happiness, sadness, fear,

anger, surprise, and disgust—lay at the center of our practical lives. These emotions are

experiences. There is something it is like for us to have them and something they convey:

something it is like to fear something behind you, to be disgusted by a den of snakes, to be

6
We prefer the term ‘cognitive permeation’ to ‘cognitive penetration’.

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happy with the sunlight on your skin, to be sad at the close of day. The phenomenology of

emotions is a matter of how things are presented to the subject in her experience. As with

other experiences, the features presented in emotional experience are represented as

features of the world: threatening movements, revolting food, comforting embraces. But

emotions are also objects of experience – they are among the features represented in our

experience: the happiness expressed in a friend’s smile, the fear in a child’s trembling hand,

the surprise in an award-winner’s voice. We experience these emotional features as features

of the world. And, we will argue, among the experiences that present emotions are

experiences of art. Our subject is thus two-fold: emotions as representations and the

representation of emotion.

3. Emotions as Representations

As noted above, the basic emotions include happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, and

disgust (Ekman, 1992). The non-basic emotions include guilt, shame, jealousy, envy, etc.

We focus on the basic emotions. What are emotions? We contend that basic emotions are

experiences. Because we take experiences to be representational, we hold that emotions are

representational. Emotions present various properties and features; they are not mere

sensations. In this section, we elaborate on this proposal.

There are a variety of theories of representational content, one of which is

teleosemantics.7 On a teleosemantic account of the representational content of emotions,

emotions indicate certain properties and have the function of indicating those properties.

What properties do emotions have the function of indicating? One proposal is that

7
Classical discussions of teleosemantics include (Millikan, 1984) and (Dretske, 1988). For applications of
teleosemantics to the emotions see (Price, 2006) and (Prinz, 2004).

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emotions represent evaluative properties—specifically, relational properties concerning

how we are faring in our environment. For example, anger tracks threat, fear tracks

danger, and sadness tracks loss. 8 An alternative proposal is that emotions track

non-evaluative properties but do so through affective framing, that is, through bodily

feeling. Which proposal is correct is an empirical matter.

How do emotions come to have these functions? One possibility is that the basic

emotions and their expressions evolved by natural selection to do certain jobs. Perhaps the

basic emotions contribute to reproductive success by alerting and motivating us with

regard to important features of our social and non-social environment (Millikan 1995).

Emotional expressions themselves are often social signals of our commitments. Perhaps

they enable us to forge alliances (Trivers, 1971). 9 However, we are wary of casual

evolutionary hypothesizing. A trait evolves by natural selection if, and only if, there is

heritable variation in fitness (Sober, 1993). Too often, evidence for the relevant variability

and heritability is lacking. Likewise, adaptationist hypothesizing ignores the possibility

that emotions and their expressions are homologous traits rather than adaptations, and

screens off other sources of “design” such as culture (e.g., learning and imitation).10

One can think of emotions as affect programs. Following Charles Darwin (1998),

Paul Ekman (1971; 1983; 1984) argues that the basic emotions form distinct families each

composed of perceptions, facial expressions, physiological responses, and behavioral

8
This is roughly the view of psychologist Richard Lazarus, who calls these features core relational themes
(Smith and Lazarus, 1993); see (Prinz, 2004) as well.
9
The most important discussion of emotions as “commitment devices” is in (Frank, 1988, 2001). This is due
to the fact that expressions are “hard to fake.” Evolutionary biologists have studied the evolution of costly
behaviors that reliably signal phenotypic features, and some have claimed that facial expressions are “hard to
fake” signals of this sort. For detailed discussions see (Ekman and Friesen, 2003; Green, 2007; Zahavi,
1997).
10
Important recent essays on the evolution of emotions and their expressions include Panksepp (1998);
Plutchik (1980); Tooby and Cosmides (1990).

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tendencies. And William James (1884) and Antonio Damasio (1994; 1999) hold that the

emotions are experiences of characteristic bodily states. You see a bear in a clearing: your

heart rate increases, you begin to sweat, the hair on the back of your neck stands up, and

you prepare to run. According to James, the emotions consist in perceiving these changes

in one's bodily state. He asks:

What kind of an emotion of fear would be left if the feeling neither of quickened
heart-beats nor of shallow breathing, neither of trembling lips nor of weakened
limbs, neither of goose-flesh nor of visceral stirrings, were present, it is quite
impossible for me to think. Can one fancy the state of rage end picture no ebullition
in the chest, no flushing of the face, no dilatation of the nostrils, no clenching of the
teeth, no impulse to vigorous action, but in their stead limp muscles, calm
breathing, and a placid face? The present writer, for one, certainly cannot. (James,
1884, 193—4)

We deny that emotions are simply perceptions of one’s bodily states, though we hold that

such perceptions are one component of emotions. The main reason for rejecting a purely

somatic theory such as James’ is that the phenomenology of emotions is at least in part

directed at the world outside our bodies. The fear you feel in the forest clearing is very

much bear-directed.

Jesse Prinz has developed a sophisticated neo-Jamesian theory of emotions (Prinz,

2004). Following James, he argues that emotions are perceptions of one’s bodily states,

including one’s heart rate, breathing, sweating, facial expressions, and so on. These

perceptions have a valence: they may be positive or negative. When you see the bear, your

perception of the hairs at the back of your neck, your sweating, and your heart rate has a

negative valence. When you see the bear retreat, your perception of your muscles relaxing,

your breath returning, and your heart slowing has a positive valence. These perceptions are

also appraisals in the sense that they represent core relational themes: they represent how

you are faring in your environment. When you see the bear, your body responds

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immediately—you freeze, you sweat, your hair bristles, your heart rate increases, and your

facial expression changes. Your body registers the danger. Additionally, you perceive those

bodily changes. Your bodily awareness indicates and has the function of indicating the

relational property danger. Following Dretske, Prinz argues that our bodily states indicate

and have the function of indicating such properties.11

But Prinz’s perceptual theory of the emotions is subject to a worrisome objection.

On his view, an emotion is a perception of a bodily state that represents a core relational

theme. But perceptions themselves are representations. Thus, Prinz’s view commits him to

the position that emotions are representations of bodily states that are representations of

core relational themes. But transitivity is not guaranteed in intensional contexts. Emotions

may represent bodily states and bodily states may represent the properties in the

environment that comprise core relational themes without the emotions themselves

representing these external properties. Consider an analogy. While browsing in your local

bookstore, a curious book catches your eye: The Nematode and Nasturtium: A Story of

Greed, Madness, and the Race to Design the Perfect Garden.12 The book is about the lives

of two rival landscape gardeners in the 19th century (though you do not know this). You

wonder whether the book is worth reading. Your thoughts are about the book, and the

book is about rival landscape gardeners, but your thoughts are not about rival landscape

gardeners—otherwise, why read the book? So too, your emotions may be about your

bodily state, and your bodily state may be about properties in the environment, but this

does not entail that your emotions are about properties in the environment. Prinz’s
11
Walter Cannon argued that the Jamesian approach was doomed to fail since state of the autonomic
nervous system are shared across different emotions (Cannon, 1927). Hence, they cannot indicate different
emotions. However, we now know that emotions are associated with distinctive state of the autonomic
nervous system (Ekman et al., 1983).
12
The example is fictional.

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account has difficulty accounting for the representational content of emotions as

perceptions directed toward the world.

On our view, emotions are an instance of multimodal perception (O’Callaghan,

2012). Perceptual experience is not the conjunction of visual experience, auditory

experience, tactile experiences, and so on. Rather, experience is integrated across

modalities such that the contents of experience includes the representation of features that

are neither confined nor available to a single modality in isolation. We hypothesize that

emotions are complex experiences that represent both external objects and their

properties, and properties regarding the viscera; emotions are complexes composed of and

integrating exteroception and interoception (Zaki et al., 2012). Interoception is a sensory

system that tracks physiological states of the body used for achieving homeostasis (Craig,

2002).13 Interoceptors include: mechanoreceptors, chemoreceptors, thermoreceptors, and

osmoreceptors, each indicating specific properties of the body. Plausibly, interoceptors

evolved in order to maintain bodily homeostasis. But the overall content of emotional

experience is directed beyond the body towards the world. As Antoine Bechara and Nasir

Naqvi write, “when we feel joy on seeing someone we love, information from the viscera is

passed on to a second-order map to be re-represented in relation to an emotional stimulus

in the world.” (Bechara and Naqvi, 2004: 103) The content of emotions is not merely the

conjunction of the contents of interoception and exteroception, but a content unavailable

to either as isolated representational systems.

When we see the bear in the forest clearing, our visual, auditory, and olfactory

experiences of the bear and our experiences of physiological disturbances in our bodies are

13
Whether proprioception and the vestibular system is part of interoception is subject to debate (Ritchie and
Carruthers 2015).

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integrated in the emotion fear. This emotion indicates and has the function of indicating

both the properties in the world that compose core relational themes—how we are faring

in our environment—and the states of our bodies. It is worth noting that on our view,

James’ subtraction argument still holds. If we subtract the perception of physiological

changes in our body from the overall content of the state, the emotion disappears.

However, on our view, the emotion also disappears if we subtract the perception of

properties in the environment from the overall content of the state.

On our view, exteroceptive and interoceptive representational systems combine to

constitute a system whose states (emotions) indicate and have the function of indicating

how our body is faring and how we are faring the environment. How these systems come

to be so combined is an empirical matter. One might hypothesize they are merely

correlated (Prinz, 2004, 181). One might suppose that exteroceptive perceptions cause

interoceptive ones (Prinz, 2004, 62). Finally, one might hold that emotional experiences

are composed of and integrate exteroceptive and interoceptive experiences (Barlassina and

Newen, 2014; Goldie, 2002; Tye, 2008b). We assume that the problem of how these

modalities bind will be resolved by the sciences, but we believe that the integrative

approach is the most plausible.14

Traditionally, philosophers have recognized two broad positions on the nature of

emotions. Cognitivists claim that necessarily emotions contain judgments (propositional

attitudes) as parts. Non-cognitivists deny this. We find this way of viewing the options

14
Some have worried that representationalism about emotions, and more specifically moods, fails because
they possess phenomenal character that cannot be captured in terms of representational content (Kind 2013).
One may feel “down” but think that this is not directed towards any external object. In addition to other
representationalist strategies (Crane 1998, Tye 2008b, Mendelovici 2013), we suggest that interoception is
important in our understanding of moods. For example, often when one has an emotion, the bodily
disturbance continues longer then perception of the external elicitor. Moods then would be a subset of
emotions for which the bodily disturbance is especially long-lived.

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misleading. With regard to the basic emotions, we side with non-cognitivists for several

reasons (Zajonc, 1980; LeDoux, 1998). First, infants and some non-humans experience

emotions though they lack the ability to form judgments. Second, some emotions—such as

fear—are directly elicited through the amygdala bypassing the cerebral cortex, making it

implausible to account for such emotions in terms of judgment. Third, in experimental

(and cultural) contexts we may induce emotions directly absent the formation of

judgments by administering drugs. Fourth, affect-inducing images shown to subjects at

speeds too fast for recognition can induce emotional reactions absent judgment.

Still, emotions are information-carrying mental states. They convey something to

the subject of the emotion. Emotions present, to the subject, the state of her body and

things in her environment as being a certain way, as having certain features. Moreover,

emotions may misrepresent. We may feel fear when there is no danger, be angry where

there is no threat, feel sadness when nothing has been lost. Emotions are experiences with

content. They present things to the subject as being a certain way, which way is assessable

for accuracy. Thus, in an important sense, emotions are cognitive.

4. Representations of Emotion

Emotions are experiences, or so we have been arguing. But emotions are also objects of

experience. Among the high-level features that may figure in the contents of experience are

emotional features: something may sound to be angry, look to be happy, or feel to be

frightened. Emotions are experiences that are expressed in humans (and in non-human

animals) through various embodied states: anger as expressed in tone of voice, happiness

as expressed in facial expressions, fear as expressed in trembling, disgust as expressed in

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wretching, and so on. Embodied states such as facial expressions express emotions because

they indicate and have the function of indicating these emotions. Jay’s small dog Sam is

frightened of paper bags. Jay knows this because he sees her trembling before them and

feels her trembling when he picks her up. In doing so, Jay has an experience that represents

Sam as frightened. Jay experiences Sam’s fear as a feature of the world—as a property of

Sam. Jay does not thereby experience Sam’s fear as experienced by Sam. That is, Jay’s

experience of Sam’s fear is not identical with Sam’s fear, which is also an experience. This

much is clear from the fact that Jay’s experience of Sam’s fear is not directed at paper bags,

while Sam’s fear is. The point is the same as the one presented as an objection to Prinz’s

perceptual theory of the emotions: transitivity is not guaranteed in intensional contexts.

Typically, artworks do not experience emotions and thus do not express emotions

in the ordinary way that humans do.15 How then do artworks express emotions? How can

an artwork express fear when it cannot be afraid? At first sight, this is puzzling. But it is no

more puzzling (or perhaps just as puzzling) as how sentences and utterances express

thoughts though they cannot think. Traditionally, there are three approaches to this

problem: the resemblance, persona, and arousal theories. We consider a fourth, minimal

contour approach with which we are sympathetic.

The first approach is the resemblance theory of expression. Stephen Davies, a

defender of the view, writes the following concerning instrumental (“pure”) music: “What

form does it take when what is experienced is music’s expressiveness? I believe it is an

experience of resemblance between the music and the realm of human emotion” (Davies,

2011: 181). Consider Miles Davis’ Blue in Green—what resemblance is there between it

15
We say ‘typically’ because there are instances of performance, dance for example, in which an artwork is a
human.

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and say, sadness? For there to be a resemblance between the two, there must be at least one

property that they share. Davies supposes that the shared properties are gestural. For

example, the cadence of sad people is typically slow and their voices are in a low register.

Insofar as Blue and Green and the gesture of a sad person resemble one another, the

former expresses the latter’s emotion.16 Besides the gestural similarity, the listener must

experience the resemblance. Thus:

RESEMBLANCE: an artwork expresses emotion if, and only if, there is an experienced
resemblance between the work and a person’s emotion.

There are several problems with this approach. First, though some aspects of some

artworks may resemble some emotional gestures, surely there are emotions expressed by

artworks that do not resemble emotional gestures. The scope of emotional expression in

artworks appears wider than the scope of gestural resemblance. Second, resemblance is

symmetric while expression is asymmetric. Suppose Rothko’s Black on Maroon (1958)

resembles and (thereby) expresses sadness. It follows that sadness resembles Rothko’s

Black on Maroon, but it does not follow that sadness expresses Black on Maroon. Davies

proposes that the expressive asymmetry arises because we animate objects with human

emotions. Black on Maroon expresses sadness while sadness does not express Black on

Maroon because we animate Black on Maroon with the sadness we experience it as

resembling. However, this adjustment threatens to account for expression primarily in

terms of animation, since unrestricted experienced resemblance itself is insufficient.17

Another approach—the persona theory of expression—adopts just this strategy.

16
According to Davies, emotional predicates do not apply in their primary sense to pure music but only in a
secondary sense.
17
It should be noted that Davies thinks that the notion of animation does not commit him to the Persona
theory described below.

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Jay’s dog Sam expresses fear when around paper bags—she is frightened by them and

expresses her fear by whining and trembling. Her fear is evident in these expressions.

Edvard Munch’s The Scream expresses fear as well. But The Scream is not frightened. On

the persona view, Munch’s The Scream expresses fear because it makes fear evident: it is

evidence of someone’s fear, of someone’s being frightened. The painting is animated by

supposing a persona whose fear the paining expresses. Jerold Levinson writes,

As a number of philosophers have rightly underlined, expression is essentially a

matter of something outward giving evidence of something inward. Otherwise put,
expression is essentially the manifesting or externalizing of mind or psychology.
(Levinson, 2006, 191)

On this view, though a painting itself cannot be afraid, it expresses the fear of an imagined

persona, who is frightened. Bruce Vermazen has argued that when a thing expresses an

emotion, it is evidence of that emotion (Vermazen, 1986). Expressions are evidence of

emotion because expressions indicate emotion. For example, suppose Rebecca spills coffee

on Jay’s expensive art book. Jay experiences anger and his furrowed brow, clenched fists,

and flushed face indicate his anger. These observable embodied states are thereby evidence

of Jay’s anger. However, artworks often do not evidence a specific person’s emotion. The

artist need not feel the emotion expressed in her work, and there need not be a specific

person, fictional or real, depicted in an artwork that expresses an emotion. Thus, we must

imagine a person—a persona—who expresses the emotion evidenced in the work. In the

context of pure music, Levinson writes, "A passage of music 𝑃 is expressive of an

emotion 𝐸 iff 𝑃, in context, is readily heard by a listener as the expression of 𝐸 by a

persona" (Levinson, 1996, 192). Thus,

PERSONA: an artwork expresses an emotion if, and only if, the artwork can be
imagined as evidence of a persona’s emotion.

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There are two problems with this approach. First, it is possible to imagine any

number of mutually incompatible personae expressing emotions in an artwork. A single

abstract painting could then express any emotion imaginable, quite literally. But even the

most abstract paintings that express emotions express a particular range of emotions.

Second, in order to constrain the limits of imagination, we would have to identify

expressive qualities independently of the imagined personae. But this implies that it is the

expressive qualities of the artwork that are responsible for the emotions expressed—the

personae are incidental.

Finally, let us consider arousal theories of expression. Like persona theories,

arousal theories locate the emotions expressed by artworks in a person. However, the

person so located is the spectator. A painting expresses sadness, for example, in virtue of

arousing sadness in the viewer. Derek Matravers has offered the most sophisticated

arousal account (Matravers, 1998).

A work of art x expresses the emotion e, if, for a qualified observer p experiencing x
in normal conditions, x arouses in p a feeling which would be an aspect of the
appropriate reaction to the expression of e by a person, or to a representation of the
content of which was the expression of e by a person. (Matravers, 1998: 146)

We may summarize this account as follows,

AROUSAL: an artwork expresses an emotion if, and only if, the artwork would
arouse that emotion (or a distinct but suitable emotion) in a qualified observer in
appropriate circumstances.

As Dominic McIver Lopes notes, the arousal theory is not the trival claim that some

artworks do arouse emotions in observers (Lopes, 2005: 66). Rather, according to the

arousal theory, what it is for an artwork to express an emotion is for it to arouse that

emotion (or a distinct but suitable emotion) in the observer. Emotional expression in

artwork is constituted at least in part by the arousal of emotions in persons observing the

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artwork. Note as well that the emotion aroused need not be the emotion expressed. It may

be a distinct but suitable emotion: a painting may express fear by arousing pity in the

observer.

As with each account so far, the arousal view faces some problems. First is the

problem of dry eyes: qualified viewers in ordinary circumstances may perceive an emotion

expressed by an artwork without feeling the emotion expressed or a distinct but suitable

emotion. Perhaps this condition is to be lamented, perhaps not. The arousal theory holds

that dry eyes are impossible. It is committed to the view that an artwork cannot express an

emotion, and thus that an observer cannot perceive the emotion expressed, unless that

emotion or a distinct but suitable emotion is aroused in the observer. But dry eyes are

possible. Second, recall that the requirement that the emotion aroused be suitable allows

the arousal theory to accommodate the insight that an artwork may express fear by, for

example, arousing pity. Unfortunately, this requirement also loosens the restrictions on

which aroused emotions are sufficient for successful expression, rendering the crucial

emotional contribution to expression entirely generic, or, as Lopes puts it, “The emotion

aroused in phenomenological window-dressing” (Lopes, 2005: 69).

We suggest a different approach. Following Lopes, we recognize three expressive

devices in paintings (Lopes, 2005). First, figure expression is expression attributable to a

figure depicted in the painting. Degas’ The Absinthe Drinker expresses despair because the

woman in the painting is depicted as despairing. Second, scene expression is expression

attributable to the depicted scene and not any depicted figure. Turner’s Snow Storm: Steam

Boat off a Harbor’s Mouth expresses fear though there are no figures in the scene; the

whole depicted scene expresses fear. Third, design expression (i.e. color, form, texture) is

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expression attributable to the picture’s designed surface, and not to any figure or scene

(Lopes 2005, 62-68).18 Picasso’s The Weeping Woman expresses sorrow and torment

through clashing colors and discordant geometric shapes. A figure and scene are depicted

in The Weeping Woman but the designed surface expresses misery independently of its

depictive content.

Our approach is similar to that offered by Lopes for representational painting in his

Sight and Sensibility. Lopes writes, “The physical configuration of a picture’s design or the

figure or scene a picture depicts expresses E if and only if (1) it is an expression-look that

(2) has the function, in the circumstances, of indicating E” (Lopes, 2005, 78).19 Adapting

Lopes’ account of pictoral expression, we are committed to:

MINIMAL CONTOUR: An artwork or element of it (design, depicted figure, or

depicted scene), expresses an emotion if, and only if, it indicates the emotion and
has the function of indicating it.

The minimal contour theory is an impersonal account of expression in artwork. An

artwork may express an emotion without there being a person or persona to whom the

emotion is attributable and without there being a person whose emotion constitutes (even

in part) successful expression.

The minimal contour theory is a teleosemantic account of expression in artwork.

An artwork or an element of an artwork—its design, depicted figures, or depicted

18
Here we oversimplify. There are instances of abstract pictorial art that do contain depicted figures or
scenes. For example, Willem de Kooning’s Women I depicts a female figure and J. M. W. Turner’s
Snowstorm depicts a steamboat. How might this be? One potential explanation for this is that paintings can
be more or less abstract. Fewer and fewer properties of an object can be depicted in the works. Second,
Richard Wollheim considers concepts like BOY, DANCER, and TORSO as figurative and concepts like
IRREGULAR SOLID, SPHERE, and SPACE as abstract (Wollheim, 1987, 62). Hence, insofar as a spectator is
object-aware of those properties or fact-aware of those properties deploying the associated concepts, the
work is abstract.
19
The notion of an "expression-look" is unhelpful in part because that is precisely what we are trying to
analyze; when does something appear to have an emotion? Thus, we have dropped it from the account.

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scene—need not resemble the emotions expressed. An artwork or element of it expresses

an emotion if it indicates and has the function of indicating that emotion; it need not

resemble the emotion in order to so indicate. Indicator-functions are contingent. In the

case of facial expressions and other embodied states that indicate emotion, the mechanisms

that ground indication are a matter of the evolutionary history and environment of the

species along with cultural and social conventions. In the case of expressions in artworks,

the mechanisms are often cultural and social and far more contextual. For example, in the

United States, the color yellow is expressive of happiness, but in Egypt, it is expressive of

sadness and is associated of mourning. Embodied expressions and expressions in artworks

have a history that could have been otherwise than they are: smiles could have indicated

aggression, and dissonant colors could have indicated delight. As Lopes writes, “No single

factor explains what gives…physical configuration the function of indicating one or

another emotion…Nevertheless, it is their having emotion-indicating functions that makes

them expressions” (Lopes, 2005: 81).

The minimal contour theory of expression in artworks is continuous with a

teleosemantic account of expression in embodied states: anger as expressed in tone of

voice, fear as expressed in trembling, and so on. Embodied states express emotions because

they indicate and have the function of indicating these emotions. Artworks and their

elements—design, depicted figure, depicted scene—express fear, sadness, anger and other

emotions because they indicate and have the function of indicating these emotions. In

neither case does the expression of emotion require the emotion expressed to be present.

Your friend’s smile expresses happiness even as she struggles in silent sorrow; Picasso’s

Weeping Woman expresses sorrow even as no woman weeps. Whether a feature expresses

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an emotion is a matter of it having the function of indicating the emotion, not a matter of

the presence of the emotion indicated.

Our view is inspired by Lopes, and it is useful to juxtapose it with another theory

similar to his: the acccount developed by Mitchell Green in his book Self-Expression.

According to Green, an emotion is expressed if and only if that emotion is signaled and

shown. We signal emotions by functionally indicating them as Lopes suggests. We show

emotions in one of three ways: we show-that, show-α, and show-how. One shows-that one

is angry by providing evidence that allows another to perceive-that one is angry. Jay’s

email with its terse wording and no signoff allows Rebecca to form a perceptual belief that

Jay is angry. One shows-α by making one’s anger perceptible. Jay’s clinched fist, lowered

eyebrows, and tight, straight lips make his anger perceptible. Finally, one shows-how one’s

anger by enabling or inacting in another the ability to be empathetically aware of one’s

anger. In seeing Jay’s expression of anger, Rebecca may come to know-how he feels by

feeling anger as well, empathetically. We think Green’s notion of showing is suggestive but

that it makes expression more opaque than it need be. As with Lopes’ notion of

expresssion-look, the notion of showing simply stands for that which functionally

indicates an emotion and is availabe to the senses such that a person may form perceptual

beliefs, perceive, or be empathically aware of another’s emotion.

One objection to the Minimal Contour approach is the following. If expression is

functional indication, then some abstract paintings represent emotions in virtue expressive

devices that have the function of indicating emotions. However, abstract expressive

paintings are not representational. Therefore, expression is not functional indication. In

response, we would like to make two points. First, abstract artists like Mark Rothko and

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Adolf Gottlieb were adamant that their paintings had subjects. They famously commented

in their abstract expressionist “statement,”

It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one
paints as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academism. There is no
such thing as good painting about nothing. We assert that only that subject matter
is valid which is tragic and timeless. (Rothko, 1943)

Rothko also wrote,

I’m not an abstractionist. I’m not interested in the relationship of color or form or
anything else. I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions: tragedy,
ecstasy, doom, and so on. (Rodman, 1957: 93)

According to abstractionists their paintings have a subject: in this instance, the emotions.

Second, the objection by modus tollens above equivocates between two different senses of

being representational:

Rd: a painting represents sadness by a depictive property (figure or scene).

Ra: a painting represents sadness by a design property.

Non-representational (abstract) paintings may nevertheless represent emotions. They do

not represent by way depicted figures or scenes but they represent nonetheless, via design

properties that functionally indicate emotions. We claim that Rothko’s Black on Maroon is

representational in the latter sense.

5. Experiencing Emotions

Finally, let us apply our view to an example—Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the

Medusa—in order to illustrate how we experience emotions as representated properties of

a painted canvas.

Suppose two art afficianados, Rebecca and Jay, find themselves at the Louvre.

Rebecca is a fan of classical art whereas Jay is enamored with modern art. Contrary to his

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impulses, they head to the first floor and stand before Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the

Medusa (1818 – 19) which she very much admires.

Figure 1. Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa, 1818 – 19

Jay is a novice with respect to classical art but he immediately perceives several

things. He perceives the facial and gestural expressions of the raft’s passengers: the sadness

of the figure on the bottom left hovering over near-dead fellow passengers, the surprise of

the figures on the right waving to the distance below the darkened mast, the fear of the

figures in the center. Jay experiences these emotions: they are represented in the contents of

his experience as represented properties of the figures and scene depicted in the painting.

He experiences sadness, surprise and fear, even as he is not sad, surprised or frightened.

However, Rebecca knows there is more that Jay may perceive in the The Raft of the

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Medusa than this, so she offers Jay a lesson in art history.

Rebecca tells Jay about the events on which the painting is based. In 1816 the

French Royal Navy frigate Méduse set sail for Senegal, captained by an officer who had

not sailed for twenty years and who ran the ship aground. The ship had few lifeboats, so

one hundred and forty-six of the four hundred passengers were forced to build an

impromptu raft: the raft of the Méduse. They drifted for nearly two weeks, during which

those on the raft starved, fought, and resorted to cannabilism. Fifteen remained when the

raft was rescued by mere chance by the Argus.

Next Rebecca describes the artistic skills Géricault brings to the canvas, realized

after Géricault interviewed two passengers, prepared models, and drew sketches in

preparation for the final painting. Jay is already sensitive to the figure expression in the

paining, but Rebecca highlights the scene and design expression. She draws Jay’s attention

to the diagonal movement from the dead bodies on the bottom left to those waving in hope

at the horizon on the upper right. She points to the speck in the upper right corner, where

Jay notices a small ship in the distance, a detail he had overlooked. Where Jay perceived

despair and and surprise in distinct depicted figures, he now perceives an emotional

transformation from sadness and despair to hope—hope rising from loss. Jay perceives in

the painting the temporal unfolding of emotions over the thirteen days the passengers

awaited their fate. Rebecca asks Jay to consider the color palette used by Géricault: dark

tones that are naturally or conventionally expressive of negatively-valenced emotions such

as sadness and fear. Géricault uses chiaroscuro for the passengers, clouds and water: a

somber design. And she asks him to consider the size of the painting. It is enormous: 491

cm × 716 cm (16’ 1” × 23’6”). The figures at the base of the painting are larger than those

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who would view the painting—larger than Jay and Rebecca—a design that renders the

emotions expressed urgent, impending, looming.

Jay has learned some history, but he also learned to perceive in the The Raft of the

Medusa emotions and features to which he was initially blind. He has become more astute

about how to approach artworks, to be sure, but he has also become more sensitive to the

features in his environment that indicate emotions. He has gained propositional

knowledge, but he has also gained recognitional and discriminatory abilities that alter the

kinds of representational contents that figure in his experiences of emotion, rendering

those possible contents richer, more fine-grained, and discerning. He has learned facts,

and he has made new judgments, but he has also learned something about how to look

and what to look for, as well as what sorts of things he might perceive in such looking.

The alternative theories of expression we have considered explain what is going on

with artworks like this painting in the Louvre differently. The resemblance theory holds

that Jay and Rebecca experience a resemblance between the human figures depicted and

the gestures of actual humans, but it has difficulty explaining how scene and design

expression contribute to what Jay and Rebecca experience when they perceive the

painting. The persona theory holds that Jay and Rebecca experience the emotions

expressed by The Raft of the Medusa by make-believe: they imagine personae that have

the emotions expressed. The arousal view holds that Jay and Rebecca experience the

emotions expressed by The Raft of the Medusa by having those emotions themselves, or

by having emotions suitable to witnessing misery on such a scale. But there need be no

persons—real or imagined—who have the emotions expressed in The Raft of the Medusa

in order for the painting to express those emotions or for Jay and Rebecca to perceive

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them. And while Jay and Rebecca may have emotions upon perceiving the emotions

expressed in the painting, they need not. They may experience the emotions expressed in

The Raft of the Medusa without thereby having those emotions or having emotions

suitable to the knowledge of what the passengers of the raft endured.

6. Conclusion

On our representationalist account of the basic emotions, emotions are representations.

Emotions are experiences that indicate and have the function of indicating how our body is

faring and how we are faring in our environment. And on our representationalist account

of experience, emotions are the among the features presented in the contents of experience.

Emotions are objects of experience. Among the features that figure in the contents of

experience are features that indicate and have the function of indicating emotions. Thus

there are two senses in which we may be said to experience emotions: we may have

emotions, and may we experience emotions as representated properties of the

environment. In both cases, experiencing emotions is a matter of experiencing how things

are in the world: experiencing how one is faring and one’s body is faring in our

environment, or experiencing emotional features as features of our environment.

We examined one way of experiencing emotional features: emotional expression in

art. Artworks and their elements express fear, sadness, anger and other emotions because

they indicate and have the function of indicating these emotions. In this way, our account

of emotional expression is continuous with our representationalist account of the basic

emotions. We experience the emotions expressed in artworks not by having those

emotions, but by perceiving them. We perceive them they same way we perceive the

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emotions expressed by the embodied states of humans (and non-human animals): by being

attuned to properties that have the function of indicating emotions. In neither artworks

nor humans does the expression of emotion require the emotion expressed to be present.

Whether a feature expresses an emotion is a matter of it having the function of indicating

the emotion, not a matter of the presence of the emotion indicated. In this way, our

account of emotional expression is impersonal. Features in the environment (including

artworks and their elements) express emotions even in conditions in which there is no

person to whom the emotion is attributable.

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