November 17\, 2023 3:30 - 5:00p PST
\nAbstract:
Some feelings seem to color everything. While an emotion like fear is typically &ldquo\;intentional&rdquo\; or directed\, being a fear of something\, feelings like anxiety or dread are characterized by the vagueness of their object and by the way they pervade consciousness\, potentially making any object appear as a threat. Matthew Ratcliffe defines these pervasive feelings as &ldquo\;existential feelings\,&rdquo\; senses of possibility like &ldquo\;feeling alive&rdquo\; or &ldquo\;feeling deadened\,&rdquo\; and argues that these feelings are &ldquo\;pre-intentional\,&rdquo\; conditions of the possibility of the scope and valence of intentional states like beliefs or desires. Change in existential feelings\, or &ldquo\;existential change\,&rdquo\; may thus have sweeping effects upon a subject&rsquo\;s mental states. The category of the pre-intentional seems promising in accounting for experiences of depression. However\, there remains a question of &ldquo\;bi-directionality&rdquo\;: how or if intentional states might affect the pre-intentional\, such that changes in\, say\, beliefs might affect the possibility of existential change. I propose the introduction of a feeling-disposition distinction: existential feelings are not pre-intentional structures but ways of becoming aware of the &ldquo\;existential dispositions&rdquo\; that are pre-intentional structures. I then argue that existential dispositions\, and the pre-intentional generally\, are a category of states that are introspectively opaque and so ambiguous between being an intentional state\, like a &ldquo\;quasibelief\,&rdquo\; or non-intentional state\, like a reflex. I will show that this redefinition clarifies how beliefs about what one&rsquo\;s experiences of depression signify may induce existential change that alleviates the suffering of these experiences.