"byzantine" -- from Grice's Dictionary

Agitation. A Byzantine feeling is a Ryleian agitation. If Grice were to advance the not wholly plausible thesis that ‘to feel Byzantine’ is just to have a an anti-rylean agitation which is caused by the thought that Grice is or might *be* Byzantine, it would surely be ridiculous to criticise Grice on the grounds that Grice saddles himself with an ontological commitment to feelings, or to modes of feeling. And why? Well, because, alla Parsons, if a quantifier is covertly involved at all, it will only be a universal quantifier which in such a case as this is more than adequately handled by a substitutional account of quantification. Grice’s situation vis-a-vis the ‘proposition’ is in no way different. In the idiolect of Ryle, “a serious student of Grecian philosophy,” as Grice puts it, ‘emotion’ designates at least three or four different kinds of things, which Ryle calls an ‘inclination, or ‘motive,’ a ‘mood’, an ‘agitation,’ or a ‘commotion,’ and a ‘feeling.’ An inclination or a mood, including an agitation, is not occurrences and doest not therefore take place either publicly or privately. It is a propensity, not an act or state. An inclination is, however, a propensity of this or that kind, and the kind is important. A feeling, on the other hand, IS an occurrence, but the place that mention of it should take in a description of human behaviour is very different from that which the standard theories accord to it. A susceptibility to a specific agitation is on the same general footing with an inclination, viz. that each is a general propensity and not an occurrence. An agitation is not a motive. But an agitation does presuppose a motive, or rather an agitataion presupposes a behaviour trend of which a motive is for us the most interesting sort. There is however a matter of expression which is the source of some confusion, even among Oxonian Wilde readers, and that did confuse philosophical psychologists of the ability of G. F. Stout. An expression may signify both an inclination and an agitation. But an expression may signify anything but an agitations. Again, some other expression may signify anything but an inclination. An expression like ‘uneasy’, ‘anxious’, ‘distressed’, ‘excited’, ‘startled’ always signifies an agitations. An expression like ‘fond of fishing’, ‘keen on gardening’, ‘bent on becoming a bishop’ never signifies an agitation. But an expression like ‘love’, ‘want’, ‘desire’, ‘proud’, ‘eager,’ or many others, stands sometimes for a simple inclination and sometimes for an agitations which is resultant upon the inclinations and interferences with the exercise of it. Thus ‘hungry’ for ‘having a good appetite’ means roughly ‘is eating or would eat heartily and without sauces, etc..’ This is different from ‘hungry’ in which a person might be said to be ‘too hungry to concentrate on his work’. Hunger in this second expression is a distress, and requires for its existence the conjunction of an appetite with the inability to eat. Similarly the way in which a boy is proud of his school is different from the way in which he is speechless with pride on being unexpectedly given a place in a school team. To remove a possible misapprehension, it must be pointed out that an agitation may be quite agreeable. A man may voluntarily subject himself to suspense, fatigue, uncertainty, perplexity, fear and surprise in such practices as angling, rowing, travelling, crossword puzzles, rock-climbing and joking. That a thing like a thrill, a rapture, a surprise, an amusement and an relief is an agitation is shown by the fact that we can say that someone is too much thrilled, amused or relieved to act, think or talk coherently. It is helpful to notice that, anyhow commonly, the expression which completes  ‘pang of . . .’ or ‘chill of . . .’ denotes an agitation. A feeling, such as a man feeling Byzantine, is intrinsically connected with an agitation. But a feeling, e. g. of a man who is feeling Byzantine, is not intrinsically connected with an inclination, save in so far as the inclination is a factor in the agitation. This is no novel psychological hypothesis; It is part of the logic of our descriptions of a feeling that a feeling (such as a man feeling Byzantine) is a sign of an agitation and is not an exercise of an inclination.

A feeling, such as a man feeling Byzantine, in other words, is not a thing of which it makes sense to ask from what motive it issues. The same is true, for the same reasons, of any sign of any agitation.

This point shows why we were right to suggest above that a feeling (like a man feeling Byzantine) does not belong directly to a simple inclination. An inclination is a certain sort of proneness or readiness to do certain sorts of things on purpose. These things are therefore describable as being done from that motive. They are the exercises of the disposition that we call ‘a motive’. A feeling (such as a man feeling Byzantine) is not from a motive and is therefore not among the possible exercise of such a propensiy. The widespread theory that a motive such as vanity, or affection, is in the first instance a disposition to experience certain specific feeling is therefore absurd. There may be, of course, a tendency to have a feeling, such as feeling Byzantine; being vertiginous and rheumatic are such tendencies. But we do not try to modify a tendency of these kinds by a sermon. What a feeling, such as being Byzantine, does causally belong to is the agitation. A feeling (such as feeling Byzantine) is a sign of an agitation in the same sort of way as a stomach-ache is a sign of indigestion. Roughly, we do not, as the prevalent theory holds, act purposively because we experience a feeling (such as feeling Byzantine); we experience a feeling (such as feeling Byzantine), as we wince and shudder, because we are inhibited from acting purposively. A sentimentalist is a man who indulges in this or that induced feeling (such as feeling Byzantine) without acknowledging the fictitiousness of his agitation. It seems to be generally supposed that ‘pleasure’ or ‘desire’ is always used to signify a feeling. And there certainly are feelings which can be described as a feeling of pleasure or desire. Some thrills, shocks, glows and ticklings are feelings of delight, surprise, relief and amusement; and things like a hankering, an itche, a gnawing and a yearning is a sign that something is both wanted and missed. But the transports, surprises, reliefs and distresses of which such a feeling is diagnosed, or mis-diagnosed, as a sign is not itself a feeling. It is an agitation or a mood, just as are the transports and distresses which a child betrays by his skips and his whimpers. Nostalgia is an agitation and one which can be called a ‘desire’; but it is not merely a feeling or series of feelings. There is the sense of ‘pleasure’ in which it is commonly replaced by such expressions as ‘delight’, ‘transport’, ‘rapture’, ‘exultation’ and ‘joy’. These are expressions of this or that mood signifying this or that agitation. There are two quite different usages of ‘emotion’, in which we explain people’s behaviour by reference to emotions. In the first usage of ‘emotion,’ we are referring to the motives or inclinations from which more or less intelligent actions are done. In a second usage we are referring to a mood, including the agitation or perturbation of which some aimless movement may be a sign. In neither of these usages are we asserting or implicating that the overt behaviour is the effect of a felt turbulence in the agent’s stream of consciousness. In a third usage of ‘emotion’, pangs and twinges are feelings or emotions, but they are not, save per accidens, things by reference to which we explain behaviour. They are things for which diagnoses are required, not things required for the diagnoses of behaviour. Since a convulsion of merriment is not the state of mind of the sober experimentalist, the enjoyment of a joke is also not an introspectible happening. States of mind such as these more or less violent agitations can be examined only in retrospect. Yet nothing disastrous follows from this restriction. We are not shorter of information about panic or amusement than about other states of mind. If retrospection can give us the data we need for our knowledge of some states of mind, there is no reason why it should not do so for all. And this is just what seems to be suggested by the popular phrase ‘to catch oneself doing so and so’. We catch, as we pursue and overtake, what is already running away from us. I catch myself daydreaming about a mountain walk after, perhaps very shortly after, I have begun the daydream; or I catch myself humming a particular air only when the first few notes have already been hummed. Retrospection, prompt or delayed, is a genuine process and one which is exempt from the troubles ensuing from the assumption of multiply divided attention; it is also exempt from the troubles ensuing from the assumption that violent agitations could be the objects of cool, contemporary scrutiny. One may be aware that he is whistling ‘Tipperary’ and not know that he is whistling it in order to give the appearance of a sang-froid which he does not feel. Or, again, he may be aware that he is shamming sang-froid without knowing that the tremors which he is trying to hide derive from the agitation of a guilty conscience.