Denis asked:

I am interested in the study of Stoicism, especially their attitudes towards the emotions. Lieutenant
Castillo of the TV program Miami Viceis portrayed as the classic Stoic. My question is, Is it possible
for one to accomplish such an indifference towards external circumstances? Also, do you agree with
my belief that the more inner strength a person has, the more likely he or she will be able to control
their emotions?

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This is a great question, especially since it's so thoroughly philosophical while lying at the intersection
of philosophy and psychology. Stoicism, or at least some interpretations of it, has informed Aaron
Beck's Cognitive Therapy and, perhaps to an even greater extent, Albert Ellis's Rational Emotive
Behavior Therapy. Both therapeutic techniques explicitly embrace the Stoic principle that our own
thoughts determine our emotions. This would seem to be true in some trivial sense. If I don't learn of
a loved-one's death until two days after the event then I don't feel grief until two days after she's died.
Similarly, if I am misinformed that a loved-one has died whereas, in reality, she's alive and well and
shopping at the mall, I will grieve for her just as though she were really dead. In some sense, then,
my grief is caused by my belief that my loved-one has died and not by the actual death itself.
Evaluations are even more emotively influential than beliefs, and, in fact, beliefs probably couldn't
generate emotions without them. Suppose, for example, that I believe a traffic jam is going to make
me late for an appointment. This belief won't lead me to feel frustrated unless I attach to it a certain
evaluative judgement like "It's bad to be late for appointments in general" or "It will be awful for me if
I'm late for this appointment in particular." As a first pass, then, we can say that emotions are
generated and probably partially constituted by beliefs and evaluations — both cognitive things.

Of course, all of this is a far cry from saying, with the Stoics, that we can exercise control over our
emotions. From our previous observations, it follows that we can control our emotions to the extent
that we can control our beliefs and evaluations. Epistemology (the philosophical study of knowledge
and belief) is divided over the extent to which we can determine what we believe. I think that our
control over our beliefs is limited. I suppose I couldretain my belief that my loved one is alive, despite
being informed of her death, seeing her body, performing medical tests on her to check for signs of
life and witnessing her cremation. I could believe that the body I'm seeing is actually a cloneof my
loved-one, for instance, but I doubt that I could willfully carry out a program of such profound
self-deception. Instead, I'm willing to bet that to a large extent our beliefs are the natural outcome of
the evidence, the evidence is a natural product of our senses, and our senses automatically pick up
on external facts in the world. Many beliefs, then, probably come upon us from the outside (if we're
physically and psychologically healthy, at any rate) so controlling our emotions by controlling our
beliefs might hold only limited promise.

What's needed, probably, is control over the othercognitive element of emotion: evaluation.
Judgments of good and bad seem more "internal" than judgements of fact. The Truth, as Fox Mulder
says, may be out there, but the Good might not be. If my loved-one is dead, for example, that's a
state of the world external to me. But the badness of my loved-one's death? Is that a state of the
world external to me, too? It doesn't seem to be. Instead, that appears to be a judgement I make. If
states of the world color our minds with belief from the outside in, our minds seem to color the world
with evaluations from the inside out. Evaluation seems to be in our control, and since evaluation
generates and constitutes emotion, if there were some way to change our evaluative patterns then we
could control our emotions as well.

Which brings me (finally!) to your question. (Bet you thought I forgot it.) "Is it possible for one to
accomplish such an indifference towards external circumstances?" In other words, is it possible to
form correct beliefs while draining those beliefs of their evaluative significance? Since this is a matter
of psychological fact, a psychologist might be more equipped to answer this part of your question
than I am. Nevertheless, I'd say that it's possible. Buddhists, from what I understand, claim to have
done it. More crudely, I suspect that certain kinds brain surgery could do it. Perhaps, after engaging in
a program of meditation to resign myself to the impermance of all things, or after checking into the
hospital to have certain parts of my cerebral cortex removed, I could accept the news of a love-one's
death with complete equanimity.

Philosophically, the interesting question is shouldI do this? (At least that's the question that most
vexes meat the moment and since I'm writing this, I can preemptorily declare this to be the
philosophically most interesting question.) As you can probably tell from the tone of the previous
paragraph, I don't think that we should cultivate such emotional indifferance. My reasons for this are
evolving, and I might change my mind, but at the moment psychological and philosophical
considerations are leading me to decry indifference. Psychologically, there are good reasons to
suppose that our emotions have evolved to serve useful purposes and to believe that cultivating
indifference, or even effecting a significant blunting of our emotions, in order to avoid painful or
excessive feelings may be like removing a lung to cure a case of asthma. Fear helps to keep us alive.
Anger helps to keep people from treating us like objects. Love helps us to care for others.

So emotions, I think, are a good thing psychologically. And I think that they're good philosophically,
too. Although certain ethical theories (Kant's, for instance) hold that ethical behavior should be
motivated entirely by reason, other ethical theories (like Hume's) maintain that emotions are central to
moral behavior. It isn't obvious to me that Kant wins out over Hume here, and, in fact, I'm strongly
inclined to bet on Hume. If I could reallycultivate indifferance to the death of my loved-ones, what
impact would this have on my attitudes toward and treatment of them while they are alive?

So, I guess my answer to your first question, "Is it possible for one to accomplish such an indifference
towards external circumstances?" is "Yes it's possible, but the Stoics notwithstanding, it isn't
necessarily desireable."

Which brings us to your second question of whether or not inner strength enables people to control
their emotions. Here I think it depends upon the source of the emotion, because emotions are
complicated things and come at us from a lot of different places. If the emotion, like depression, is the
result of unbalanced brain chemistry, then I don't think that inner strength has much to do with
controlling it. Undoubtedly, when a person is depressed, it takes extraordinary inner strength to get
out of bed, to get dressed and to get to work. It takes inner strength to get to a doctor and get help,
too, but I doubt that any amount of inner strength will render that help unnecessary. Sometimes
people need pills, not pep talks.

There are othertimes, though, when inner strength is probably quite important to controlling our
emotions. If I'm angry at someone, for instance, it takes inner strength to smile and behave civily. It
takes even more inner strength to reframe the insult in such a way that I forgive the person and am
no longer angry. Nonetheless, it can be done and sometimes, ethically, it should be done. If I feel
great compassion for the suffering of others, it takes inner strength to help them. It may take even
more inner strength to rid myself of the compassion. Here, however, exercising of such Herculian
strength is not a virtue.

Dona Warren
Department of Philosophy
University of Wisconsin — Stevens Point