Philosophy always begins in mood
The latest issue of New Philosopher magazine is on the theme of ‘Emotion’ so, as you can imagine, there’s quite a few mentions of Stoic philosophers. However, I want to share three parts which really struck a chord with me. Together, they’ve helped me reflect on the relationship between my moods and emotions (which I seem to feel quite strongly compared to some people) and philosophy — which is usually considered as a cold, rational pursuit.
The first is from Antonia Case’s essay entitled ‘The Meaning of Moods’ (p.19-20) in which she talks about the importance of matching what you read with your current mood:
Moods are mysterious because they aren’t necessarily tied to anything specific, nor can we reliably predict which mood will show up. You might wake up to a beautiful sunny day — it’s Sunday, with nothing much planned — and you feel a brooding unrest.
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Philosopher Lars Svendsen, in Moods and the Meaning of Philosophy, argues that philosophy always begins in mood. Our mood prompt the questions we ask.
[…]
Svendsen ponders why certain philosophers speak to us more powerfully than others. He admits he has never felt quite “at home” in Spinoza’s writings as he has with Kant or Wittgenstein. Despite understanding Spinoza intimately and lecturing on his work, he wonders: “Could it be that I have simply failed to enter these texts in the proper mood?” Not only is a philosophyical text infused with the mood of its author; when we read it, we too approach it in a particular mood. “If your mood and the mood of the text are at odds, there is the risk that the text simply will not ‘speak’ to you,” Svendsen observes.
The next extract is from Tom Chatfield’s piece ‘Happiness, quantified’ (p.34) where, along with reflecting on some Buddhist wisdom about ‘aliveness’, he discusses how all emotions are part of who we are:
[T]he lesson I struggle to teach my children — because I am also struggling to learn it myself — is that the sadness and anger can be as appropriate and important as the love and joy. They are not enemies to be overcome or data to be processed, but part of who we are. The trick is not to will or wish them away, but to notice them (to be fair, the Inside Out movies help with this one).
The final thing I want to share is from an interview with the psychologist and neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett (p.85) who shares some really interesting insights about the granularity of categories in which we place our emotions:
Granularity is really about the capacity to construct categories that are specifically tailored to the situation that you are in… [W]hen your brain is predicting, it is remembering the past, past instances that are similar to the present. It’s constructing a category. A category is a group of things which are similar enough to each other to be interchangeable or to be used for the same function. So your brain is always constructing categories on the fly, instantaneously or extemporaneously. And the ability to construct a category in a very situated way for a specific purpose is the concept of emotional granularity. Granularity is not about labelling; it’s about what you do and feel. Is the instance of emotion specific enough to the situation that you can engage in a behaviour that will allow you to function well in that situation.
I mean, when you feel like shit, what do you do when you feel like shit? That’s not a very specific category, right? If somebody has a single category for anger, that’s not very helpful, because in our culture, an instance of anger can be unpleasant or pleasant. Anger can involve physical movement or remaining still. Sometimes you shout in anger. Sometimes you smile in anger. Sometimes you sit quiety and plot the demise of your enemy of anger. The evidence shows that blood pressure can rise, fall, or stay the same in anger. The variation is not random. It is structured by the situation and the categories your brain is capable of making. The predictions that your brain makes when it’s constructing an instance of anger begin with allostasis, which support skeletomotor movements and give rise to felt experience.
So, basically, the more granular you are, the more tailored your actions and emotional experience will be to the specific situations you are in, the more varied your emotional life will be. On the other hand, too much specificity — and not enough generalisation — is also not helpful. So, it’s a metabolic balancing act: categories with too much generalisation are not helpful, and categories that are too specific are not helpful. There’s a sweet spot between simplification and complexity in emotional life.
Source: New Philosopher magazine
Image: Nik