‘Fearish’ Moods: A Non-Intentional Theory

Abstract

Are moods directed at objects? Many philosophers have answered ‘yes’: moods are
about things like events or people – their intentional objects. One intentionalist
view of moods – which takes them as directed at their objects – is put forward by
Carolyn Price, in her “Affect Without Object: Moods and Objectless Emotions”,
where she claims that an apprehensive mood is about how likely it is that a threat will
occur. In this essay, I will develop some of Price’s insights and use them to give a non-intentionalist account of moods. In Section 1, I first characterise moods and contrast
them with emotions. Next, in Section 2, I outline Price’s intentionalist theory of
moods and raise two problems with it. Her theory of moods does not sufficiently
account for how they function and mischaracterises their motivational aspect. Then,
in Section 3, I propose a new way of thinking about moods by drawing on a theory of
colour-blindness. Byrne and Hilbert’s ‘alien view’ treats the colours that colour-blind
people see as less determinate and fine-grained than the ones that people with regular
vision see. After drawing the relevant parallels in the case of moods and emotions, I
show how moods, on this account, are pre-intentional, rather than non-intentional
mental states and I finish, in Section 4, by addressing some objections to this view.
I conclude that the mood of a subject should not be thought of as belonging to
the same class as (intentional) emotions, since moods are pre-intentional states that
structure the space of possible mental states in virtue of determining how likely it is
that we experience some intentional state.