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ABSTRACT
Do moods have intentional objects? If so, what kinds of intentional objects might they have? Some theorists hold that moods are objectless affective states, not ‘about’ anything. Others argue that moods are directed toward a maximally general object like ‘the world’, and so they are about everything, in some sense. In this article, I advance a new theoretical account of the intentional object of moods. According to what I call the ‘present-situation view’, moods are directed toward, or about, the present situation. In other words, a mood is essentially an interpretation of one’s current situational context. As such, our moods change over time in a way that tracks our changing sense of how things are going, here and now. This article aims to make the case that the present-situation view, so understood, offers unique theoretical resources to describe and explain how we experience moods and how they change over time, while also suggesting a helpful way to think about the functional role moods play in our broader cognitive architecture, and pointing toward promising directions for future research into the ways that moods can be experienced, managed, and shared.
Disclosure statement
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Notes
1 My aim is to articulate what I understand to be the standard view in the literature regarding the defining and characteristic features of mood (Armon-Jones Citation1991; Ben-Ze’ev Citation2000; Goldie Citation2000; Deonna and Teroni Citation2012; Roberts Citation2003; Brady Citation2018). As we will see, theorists often use the term ‘mood’ to refer to different things. I address some of these debates in section two.
2 For a discussion of ‘affective atmosphere’, read Griffero (Citation2019). Some theorists argue that neither moods nor emotions are intentional mental states. For an overview of the debate regarding the intentionality of emotions, read Hufendiek (Citation2018).
3 A full defense of the present-situation view would require a comparative evaluation of every major position on this topic. In addition to the views I consider here, several other philosophical accounts of the intentional object of moods deserve consideration. For example, Rossi (Citation2021) argues that moods are directed toward epistemically undetermined objects. Mendelovici (Citation2013) argues that moods are directed toward sui generis affective properties. Tye (Citation1995) argues that moods are directed, in part, toward disruptions of our physical state of functional equilibrium. Moreover, a full defense of the present-situation view would also require an examination of disagreements among advocates of what I am calling the ‘no-object view’ and the ‘whole-world view.’ For these reasons, I this article relies a model of the theoretical terrain that is rather rough, though hopefully still helpful.
4 Another version of what I am calling the ‘no-object view’ holds that moods are dispositional, functional, or computational states, with no specific, corresponding phenomenological profile (Lormand Citation1985; Griffiths Citation1989; Sizer Citation2000; Siemer Citation2009). This view had largely fallen out of favor among theorists, but it was recently defended by Grzankowski and Textor (Citation2022). For arguments against dispositional accounts, read Mitchell (Citation2019).
5 For a discussion of emotional recalcitrance and its significance for debates about the intentionality of affective states, read Brady (Citation2007, Citation2009).
6 If it is true that we experience moods as being object-directed and reason-responsive states, this would not prove that moods do, in fact, have intentional objects, since of course the phenomenology could be misleading in this case. That is, moods could merely seem to be object-directed, even if they are not. However, if phenomenological adequacy is taken as a primary desideratum of any theoretical account of moods, as I have suggested it should be, then the no-object view would be put under significant pressure by the finding that the view diverges significantly from way people typically experience moods.
7 The most relevant research may be a study reported in Siemer (Citation2005), where participants on average reported viewing their moods as being ‘somewhat justified’, with a mean score of 3.88 on a 7-point scale between ‘absolutely unjustified’ to ‘absolutely justified.’ Curiously, Siemer (Citation2009) interprets these results, together with the fact that participants rated their emotions as comparatively more justified, as providing evidence that people experience their moods as being neither justified nor unjustified, i.e., that we do not experience our moods as being externally directed at all. However, the author seems to overlook the fact that the standard deviation in this study was relatively high (SD = 1.99). With this in mind, I believe a more plausible interpretation of the results is that participants were readily able to talk about their moods being justified or unjustified. If this is correct, then the study should be seen as providing indirect evidence that we experience our moods as reason-responsive, and therefore as indirect evidence that we experience moods as being intentionally directed states.
8 If moods were non-intentional states, there would be no objective standard for evaluating their aptness, and in this case, we would probably not engage widely in the practice of giving and asking for reasons about moods. But we do seem to engage widely in the practice of giving and asking for reasons about moods. Therefore, it is probably not the case that moods are non-intentional states – i.e. moods are probably intentionally directed states.
9 Most studies of cognitive therapy focus on its effectiveness for treating mood disorders, rather than managing everyday, non-disordered moods. However, discussions of the theoretical underpinning of cognitive therapy typically posit a continuum between everyday, non-disordered moods and mood disorders, rather than a difference in kind. The effectiveness of cognitive therapy for managing moods thus provides indirect evidence that we can alter our moods through rational means (Hollon, Stewart, and Strunk Citation2006; Driessen and Hollon Citation2010; Thoma, Pilecki, and McKay Citation2015). This is only indirect evidence, and so not conclusive, because it does not rule out the possibility (often emphasized by defenders of the no-object view) that moods can cause or be causally determined by intentional states, even if moods are not themselves intentional states.
10 Ratcliffe (Citation2013) argues that moods are ‘pre-intentional’, in the sense that they shape what sorts of intentional states it is possible to have. Nevertheless, Ratcliffe holds that moods track our most basic sense of ‘how we find ourselves in the world’ (157). Thus, putting aside technical disputes about what counts as an intentional state, it is not misleading to say that Ratcliffe’s view holds that moods are directed toward ‘the world as a whole’ in the sense that is relevant here. Likewise, theorists drawn to enactivism (e.g. Colombetti Citation2017) tend to hold that only representational states can be intentional states, and affective states like moods are not ‘representational’ states, strictly speaking, but something more like 'presentational' states (Hufendiek Citation2018). Such theorists would reject the claim that moods are intentional states. However, the more important question for theorists drawn to enactivism, from the perspective of my project, is whether moods enact our interpretation of the world, or moods enact our interpretation of the present situation.
11 Ratcliffe (Citation2013, 160) acknowledges that the category of ‘existential feelings’ and ‘moods’ may not overlap precisely, and he is clear that his own inquiry does not aim to analyze the phenomenon or category of moods as such, but only aims to illuminate the nature and function of existential feelings. With this in mind, my dispute with Ratcliffe here could seem to be merely terminological, insofar as Ratcliffe might agree with me that at least some moods are better understood as being directed toward the present situation, rather than the whole world. However, if I am right that most of our ordinary, non-pathological moods are better understood as being directed toward the present situation, then I would argue there is good reason to reject the whole-world view, and more importantly, to develop and utilize the theoretical resources associated with the present-situation view – including its emphasis on time, place, and narrative structures – in future research into the nature and function of moods.
12 If moods are central to our existential framework, then we have reason to worry about attempts to alter moods in ways that bypass an individual’s reasoning capacities. By the same token, however, the whole-world view does not necessarily support the claim that we can or should attempt to manage our moods primarily through rational means, because if moods are truly fundamental to our sense-making capacities, then changes in our mood are likely to be more akin to experiences of conversion than persuasion.
13 The objections I raise here are informed by Gallegos (Citation2017) and Kriegel (Citation2019). The whole-world view has been criticized on other grounds as well. For example, it has been noted that this view implies that moods would almost always have to be assessed as inapt, because the whole world never (or very rarely) instantiates any particular evaluative property, e.g., fearsome or offensive (Deonna and Teroni Citation2012, 13). Price (Citation2006, 52) argues that ‘the theory underplays the differences between moods and emotions’, because ‘it is not obvious how the account will distinguish between a mood and an objectless emotion, such as objectless panic or rage.’
14 A similar point can be made in response to Ratcliffe’s (Citation2010) analysis of the ‘emotional depth’ of moods. Unlike major depression, an everyday mood of depression typically does not make the possibility of future happiness utterly unintelligible to us, nor does it remove all beauty and goodness from our experiential world. Thus, in order to understand everyday moods, we will need to clarify the notion that the intelligibility of possibilities can be a matter of degree, while filling out Ratcliffe’s analysis by examining a broader range of depths that a mood might have.
15 Ratcliffe (Citation2016) acknowledges the important relationship between moods and narrative, but his analysis remains focused on the narratives that underlie the most general parameters of a person’s sense of self and world, rather than the more restricted and mundane narrative structures that underlie a typical, non-pathological mood.
16 In principle, the present-situation view could remain neutral regarding theoretical disputes about what kind of mental state moods consist in – e.g., judgments, construals, attitudes, feelings-toward, and so on. Understood in this way, the present-situation view holds that a mood is essentially an interpretation of one’s current situational context, where the term ‘interpretation’ is used simply as a placeholder for whatever kind of mental state moods may turn out to be. In this article, I defend a more ‘metaphysically committed’ version of the present-situation view, according to which moods are ‘embodied interpretations’ of one’s present situation – i.e., construals of the temporal, environmental, and normative parameters of our situational context, occurring primarily at the pre-reflective level, implicitly and automatically.
17 This analysis is indebted to Heidegger’s (Citation1919/2000) early account of situations, pieced together from lecture notes by Guignon (Citation2000).
18 The normative aspect of the present situation is thus closely interrelated with its temporal and environmental aspects. What is experienced as being a constitutive element of the present situation – i.e. what objects are here, within the present place, and what is happening now, within the present duration-block – will be influenced by the concerns that are currently at stake, just as what is currently at stake will be influenced by what is going on here and now. In other words, the temporal, environmental, and normative aspects of the present situation all co-vary as parts of a structured whole.
19 A full defense of the present-situation view would also need to compare it with the no-object view. I forego doing so here for the sake of brevity, and because the present-situation view and the whole-world view are both ‘intentional accounts of moods.’ As such, they will share many of the key advantages over a ‘non-intentional account of moods’, and so a comparison with the no-object view will not reveal compelling reasons to prefer the present-situation view over the whole-world view.
20 For detailed discussion of the way that moods give rise to this kind of ‘emotional disconnection’ – in which we construe an object in a way that would normally provoke an emotional reaction, but yet remain emotionally unmoved – read Gallegos Citation2017.
21 For a discussion of Dewey’s account of ‘situation’ and its relation to the ‘situated approach to mind’, read Gallagher (Citation2009).
22 The idea that moods are simultaneously directed both inwardly and outwardly is a central insight from the philosophical tradition of phenomenology. For example, it is a centerpiece of the account of moods offered by Heidegger (Citation1927/1962, 173/134), according to which one’s moods ‘make manifest ‘how one is and how one is faring.’’ For discussion of this aspect of Heidegger’s account and its relationship to accounts of moods and emotions in analytic philosophy and empirical psychology, read Elpidorou and Freeman (Citation2015a) and (Citation2015b) and Freeman (Citation2014) and (Citation2015). A related discussion of the ‘double intentionality’ of affective states is taken up by Cochrane (Citation2017) and Magalotti and Kriegel (Citation2022), among others.
23 This formulation is a variation on Blattner’s (Citation2006, 80) argument that moods have both a self-monitoring and a world-monitoring function.
24 Other theorists have also argued that the distinction between moods is a matter of degree. For example, Goldie (Citation2000, 17) writes: ‘What, in part, distinguishes emotions from moods is that emotions have more specific objects than moods. The distinction is thus a matter of degree.’ Likewise, Mendonça (Citation2017, 1463) suggests what distinguishes moods from emotions is, in part, that ‘moods seem to be dependent on aspects which are further from the control of the subject who experiences them.’ I would modify Mendonça’s suggestion here to say that moods depend on aspects that are taken as defining our situational context and so are ‘taken for granted’ as the setting in which events can transpire as the situation develops.