Affect without object: moods and objectless emotions

• Main Author: Carolyn Price
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: University of Rijeka. Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences 2006-01-01
• Series: European Journal of Analytic Philosophy
• Subjects: emotion; mood; intentionality; teleosemantic theory of content; state of vigilance
• Online Access: https://hrcak.srce.hr/file/135314

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 non-intentional 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.