Affect without object: moods and objectless emotions

Carolyn Price

113 citations0/0 files storedUniversity of Zagreb University Computing Centre (SRCE)

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Philosophy and Theoretical Science Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy Emotions and Moral Behavior

Abstract

Preliminaries IntroductionM oods play a central role in our psychological lives.We seem to be in some mood or other for much of the time.Moreover, the psychological effects that moods produce are profound and broad-ranging.As a result, moods feature prominently in our attempts to explain and evaluate the way in which people feel, think and behave.It is not obvious that we should welcome the influence of moods.On one familiar conception, a mood offers a view of reality that is at best distorted and at worst wholly subjective.However, this conception of moods is not universal.For example, Stephen Mulhall has drawn on the work of Cavell and Heidegger to argue for a view of moods as epistemically valuable states, embodying knowledge of the subject's relationship to the world (Mulhall 1996).In this paper, I would like to investigate two questions that relate closely to this issue: namely, whether moods are or involve intentional states of 49 ABSTRACT Should moods be regarded as intentional states, and, if so, what kind of intentional content do they have?I focus on irritability (understood as an angry mood) and apprehension (understood as a fearful mood), which I examine from the perspective of a teleosemantic theory of content.Eric Lormand has argued that moods are nonintentional states, distinct from emotions; Robert Solomon and Peter Goldie argue that moods are generalised emotions and that they have intentional content of a correspondingly general kind.I present a third model, on which moods are regarded, not as generalised emotions, but as states of vigilance; and I argue that, on this model, moods should be regarded as intentional states of a kind quite distinct from emotions.An advantage of this account is that it allows us to distinguish between a mood of apprehension and an episode of objectless fear.

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References

1991Emotion And Adaptation 1992An argument for basic emotions 1984Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories 1983Knowledge and the Flow of Information.2002Upheavals of thought: the intelligence of emotions 1994The nature of emotion: Fundamental questions.1990The past explains the present 1976The Passions: Emotions and the Meaning of Life

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