The Anxious Mind: An Investigation into the Varieties and Virtues of Anxiety

259 Pages·2018·0.74 MB·English

by  Charlie Kurth

The Anxious Mind
C o n t e n t s
C o n t e n t s

The Anxious Mind
An Investigation into the Varieties and Virtues of Anxiety
Charlie Kurth
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
© 2018 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any
electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information
storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.
This book was set in ITC Stone by Jen Jackowitz. Printed and bound in the United
States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN: 978-0-262-03765-5
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Pippin

Contents
1 Introduction: The Philosophical Significance of Anxiety 1
1.1 Life’s Anxieties 2
1.2 Anxiety as a Biocognitive Emotion 6
1.3 Puzzles and Projects: A Preview of What’s to Come 13
I Unity, Diversity, and the Science of Anxiety 19
2 Kinds: Anxiety, Affect Programs, and the Biocognitive Model
of Emotion 21
2.1 The Biocognitive Model and Two Causes for Concern 22
2.2 A Way Forward: Predictive and Explanatory Power 29
2.3 The Case for Anxiety as a Genuine Category 32
2.4 What Kind of Thing Might Anxiety Be? 47
2.5 Conclusion 59
3 Diversity: Varieties of Anxiety and Vindication 61
3.1 Macroindividuation and the Anxiety Affect Program 62
3.2 Microindividuation Part I: Specifying a Standard 66
3.3 M icroindividuation Part II: Environmental, Punishment, and
Practical Anxiety 67
3.4 Microindividuation Part III: Elaborations and Refinements 84
3.5 Objection: This “Anxiety” Ain’t Anxiety 92
3.6 Taking Stock: Two Lessons for What’s to Come 97
II Anxiety’s Relevance to Moral Psychology and Ethical Theory 101
4 Value: The Ways Anxiety Matters 103
4.1 Is Anxiety Ever Fitting? 105
4.2 Is Fitting Anxiety Instrumentally Valuable? 110
viii Contents
4.3 More Than Just Instrumentally Valuable? 126
4.4 Two Implications 136
4.5 Conclusion 143
5 Virtue: Anxiety, Agency, and Good Decision Making 145
5.1 The Antideliberationist Challenge 147
5.2 Deliberation and the Skill Model of Virtuous Agency 153
5.3 Two Problems with the Skill Model 156
5.4 Vindicating Deliberation 164
5.5 Toward a Better Skill-Based Account of Virtuous Agency 171
5.6 Further Implications: Humean and Kantian Virtue 173
5.7 Conclusion 181
6 Progress: Anxiety and Moral Improvement 183
6.1 Anxiety and Moral Improvement 184
6.2 Anxiety and Resistance to Moral Change 187
6.3 Anxiety, Reformers, and Moral Improvement: A Closer Look 190
6.4 L essons from the Psychology of Moral Reformers: Cultivating
Practical Anxiety 197
6.5 Conclusion 200
III Conclusion 203
7 Conclusion: How Did We Get Here? 205
7.1 Chimps, Foragers, and Egyptians: Getting Here from There 206
7.2 Norms, Punishment, and Uncertainty 207
7.3 Practical Anxiety, Norm Uncertainty, and Social Regulation 211
7.4 Conclusion 215
Acknowledgments 217
References 219
Index 247
1 Introduction: The Philosophical Significance of Anxiety
If you ain’t nervous, you’re not paying attention.
—Miles Davis
This book is about the various forms of anxiety—some familiar, some not—
that color and shape our lives. The objective is twofold. The first aim, devel-
oped in part I, is to deepen our understanding of what anxiety is. We talk
of ‘anxiety’ as if the label picks out a distinctive, uniform category. But does
it? There is reason for doubt. We use ‘anxiety’ in a variety of ways: as a label
Chapter 1
for both social worries and hardwired responses to potential threats—not
to mention existential angst and clinical disorders. To make sense of this, I
develop an empirically informed account of anxiety. By providing a frame-
work that identifies different varieties of anxiety, my account brings a much
needed explanation of the diversity in our talk of anxiety. Moreover, my I n t r o d u c t i o n
account also demonstrates, contra skepticism from both philosophers of
science and emotion theorists, that we can reconcile empirical work indicat-
ing that anxiety is an automatic, hardwired feature of our psychology with
our ordinary experiences of it as a cognitive, socially driven phenomenon.
The second aim, developed in part II, is to reorient thinking about the
role of emotions in moral psychology and ethical theory. Here I argue that
the current focus on largely backward-looking moral emotions like guilt
and shame leaves us with a picture that is badly incomplete. To get a deeper
understanding of emotions’ place in the moral and evaluative domains, we
must also take note of the important role that more forward-looking emo-
tions—anxiety in particular—play in moral thought and action. Building
on the investigation of part I, I focus on what I call practical anxiety—an
unappreciated variety of anxiety that not only helps individuals identify
situations where they face a difficult choice, but also engages epistemic