Original scientific paper

Affect without object: moods and objectless emotions

Carolyn Price

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 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.

Keywords

emotion; mood; intentionality; teleosemantic theory of content; state of vigilance

Hrčak ID:

91607

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/91607

Publication date:

1.5.2006.

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