Despair and Diachronic Agency: Disheartening Chances and the Rational Revision of Plans

Juliette Vazard (University of Zürich)

We are pleased to invite you to the next session of the Empirically Informed Philosophy of Mind online Seminar 

Who: Juliette Vazard (University of Zürich)
When: Wednesday, May 13th, 2026 — 5:30–7 pm (CET)
Where: Online via Zoom:
https://pantheonsorbonne.zoom.us/j/92782580594?pwd=a5p3WfunQQxJICrjJaUenFJFzmllbx.1
What: Despair and Diachronic Agency: Disheartening Chances and the Rational Revision of Plans

In this paper, I add to the current debate regarding the nature and value of despair. I argue that despair should not be viewed strictly as a form of sadness (Milona and Stockdale, 2025) but rather as an emotional reaction through which we apprehend the loss of a future as likely. As such, despair is not only valuable because it provides a “reflective break” (Menges & Altehenger, 2025). Instead, it is a response of “restless apathy” which prepares us both to retreat and renounce our commitments, and to launch ‘last resort’ ‘desperate’ acts. Despair is not only valuable as an antidote to “wishful hoping” (Huber, 2024) but, more fundamentally, because it counteracts our resistance to reconsidering plans we are diachronically committed to. As beings with temporally extended agency, we form intentions that guide, monitor, and rationally control action across time (Mylopoulos & Pacherie, 2019). Despair allows us to respond to the disheartening lowering of chances of success by urgently reconsidering our plans, in spite of our inherent resistance to doing so.

For any questions, please contact:
Sacha Behrend — [email protected]
Elodie Boissard — [email protected]

Program

• 17 Sept 2025: Géraldine Carranante — Can we list what we can see?
• 1 Oct 2025: Jérôme Dokic — Two levels of confusion between Imagination and Memory
• 12 Nov 2025: Margherita Arcangeli — Episodic Memory through the lens of Aphantasia
• 3 Dec 2025: James Grayot — How do embodied and extended minds internalize contents?
• 13 Jan 2026: Raphaël Künstler — Is the human mind receptive to reasons? A confrontation with experimental social psychology
• 4 Feb 2026: Constant Bonard — Can a Belief–Desire Theory Explain All Affective States?
• 12 March 2026: Lucie Berkovitch — Psychedelics and the therapeutic potential of altered states of consciousness
• 2 April 2026: Piotr Kozak — Attentional Templates, Mental Imagery, and Rigidity of Imaginative Content
• 13 May 2026:Juliette Vazard — Despair and Diachronic Agency: Disheartening Chances and the Rational Revision of Plans
• 4 June 2026:Francesco Iani — Mental simulation(s) as memory process(es)

Organizers:

Sacha Behrend — Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Hradec Králové (Czech Republic) / Affiliated Researcher, Institut d’histoire et de philosophie des sciences et des techniques (IHPST), Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

Elodie Boissard — Postdoctoral Researcher, Bordeaux Neurocampus Department / Institut de Neurosciences Cognitives et Intégratives d’Aquitaine (UMR 5287), Université de Bordeaux, CNRS