Explaining Emotional Pain with Affective Perspectives
Emotional pain can be just as bad as physical pain, and it is a major source of ill-being. Yet, surprisingly, philosophy lacks a well-developed picture of what emotional pain is, how it relates to other kinds of mental states, and why it is bad for us. Here it is argued that emotional pain refers to one or the other of two emotional phenomena: (1) particular negative emotional episodes (e.g. an episode of sadness) or (2) what are here called ‘negative affective perspectives’. Negative affective perspectives are longer-lasting emotional phenomena, somewhat akin to moods, but defined by the cognitions involved, which are cognitions about things of deep concern to the subject. The chapter first offers a brief theory of emotion and emotional episodes, one that emphasizes the role of cognition in emotion, understood as intuitive thoughts that are the conscious product of unconscious processes. Emotional episodes are disturbances of ordinary mental life that arise when we acquire potentially significant information about something we care about. Ordinary mental life, however, also contains a great many intuitive thoughts about objects of concern which are not themselves part of any disturbance. When a person’s intuitive thoughts about her objects of concern become negatively skewed, in the sense that her thoughts about the things that matter most to her are predominately negative, the person has a negative affective perspective. Examples include depressions or cases of extended grief. Negative affective perspectives represent the world in a negative light, and they also feel bad.
