Emotions have long been of interest to philosophers and have deep historical roots going back to the Ancients. They have also become one of the most exciting areas of current research in philosophy, the cognitive sciences, and beyond. -/- This book explains the philosophy of the emotions, structuring the investigation around seven fundamental questions: What are emotions? Are emotions natural kinds? Do animals have emotions? Are emotions epistemically valuable? Are emotions the foundation for value and morality? Are emotions the basis (...) for responsibility? Do emotions make us better people? -/- In the course of exploring these questions, the book also discusses cutting-edge empirical research on emotion, feminist approaches to emotions and their value, and methodological questions on how to theorize about the emotions. The book also contains in-depth discussions of specific emotions like compassion, disgust, anxiety, and curiosity. It also highlights emerging trends in emotion research. (shrink)

Grief is often described as characterized by a particular emotional response to another person’s death. While this is true of paradigm cases, we argue that a broader notion of grief allows accommodating forms of this emotional experience that deviate from the paradigmatic case. The bulk of the paper explores such a nonparadigmatic form of grief, anticipatory-vicarious grief, which is typically triggered by pondering the inevitability of our own death. We argue that AV-grief is a particular moral emotion that serves a (...) unique function and is indissolubly linked to the practical identities of human agents. An agent’s AV-grief is about the harm that occurs to individuals whose practical identities depend on the agent. (shrink)

In first personal accounts of the experience of grief, it is often described as disrupting the experience of time. This aspect of the experience has gained more attention in recent discussions, but it may nonetheless strike some as puzzling. Grieving subjects do, after all, still perceptually experience motion, change, and succession, and they are typically capable of orienting themselves in time and accurately estimating durations. As such, it is not immediately obvious how we ought understand the claim that grief disrupts (...) the experience of time. In the present discussion I suggest that we can shed light on this aspect of the experience of grief by distinguishing between three temporal perspectives that experiencing (human) subjects typically occupy: the perceptual, the agential, and the narrative. Appeal to these three temporal perspectives helps to clarify the phenomenology of grief; it reveals a way in which grief can disrupt the experience of time; and it can also help us to analyse pre-existing issues in the literature on grief. (shrink)

Articles in the popular media and testimonies collected in empirical work suggest that many people who have not been bereaved have nevertheless grieved over pandemic-related losses of various kinds. There is a philosophical question about whether any experience of a non-death loss ought to count as grief, hinging upon how the object of grief is construed. However, even if one accepts that certain significant non-death losses are possible targets of grief, many reported cases of putative pandemic-related grief may appear less (...) plausible. For instance, it might be argued that many of these losses are temporary or minor and therefore unlikely to be grieved, and that the associated experiences are phenomenologically dissimilar to grief. In this article, as well as discussing the more general question about the coherence of the idea of non-bereavement grief, we address these obstacles to taking reports of pandemic non-bereavement grief to be literal and true. In particular, we argue that some may have experienced grief over even apparently minor losses during the pandemic. This is generally so, we suggest, only insofar as experiences of such losses form part of an overarching grief process directed at some broader significant loss. Thus, we cast light on both the nature of non-bereavement grief and the kinds of disruption and loss experienced during the pandemic. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider the implications of grief for philosophical theorising about absence experience. I argue that whilst some absence experiences that occur in grief might be explained by extant philosophical accounts of absence experience, others need different treatment. I propose that grieving subjects' descriptions of feeling as if the world seems empty or a part of them seems missing can be understood as referring to a distinctive type of absence experience. In these profound absence experiences, I will argue, (...) the absence of a person as a condition on various possibilities is made manifest in the structure of experience over time. Thus, by paying close attention to grief, we can see that even accounts of absence experience that are presented as in competition with one another may not be so, and that to explain all kinds of absence experience we sometimes need to appeal to something overlooked in other accounts, and which is neither straightforwardly perceptual or cognitive. I also suggest that we would have good reason to take such experiences to be part of and not merely psychological effects of grief. (shrink)

This paper shows how phenomenological research can enhance our understanding of what it is to experience grief. I focus specifically on themes in the work of Maurice Merleau‐Ponty, in order to develop an account that emphasizes two importantly different ways of experiencing indeterminacy. This casts light on features of grief that are disorienting and difficult to describe, while also making explicit an aspect of experience upon which the possibility of phenomenological inquiry itself depends.

This paper addresses how and why social restrictions imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic have affected people’s experiences of grief. To do so, I adopt a broadly phenomenological approach, one that emphasizes how our experiences, thoughts, and activities are shaped by relations with other people. Drawing on first-person accounts of grief during the pandemic, I identify two principal (and overlapping) themes: (a) deprivation and disruption of interpersonal processes that play important roles in comprehending and adapting to bereavement; (b) disturbance of an (...) experiential world in the context of which loss is more usually recognized and negotiated. The combination, I suggest, can amount to a sort of “grief within grief”, involving a sense of stasis consistent with clinical descriptions of prolonged grief disorder. (shrink)

Various claims have been made concerning the role of narrative in grief. In this paper, we emphasize the need for a discerning approach, which acknowledges that narratives of different kinds relate to grief in different ways. We focus specifically on the positive contributions that narrative can make to sustaining, restoring and revising a sense of who one is. We argue that, although it is right to suggest that narratives provide structure and coherence, they also play a complementary role in disrupting (...) established structure and opening up new possibilities. We add that both of these roles point to the importance of interpersonal, social and cultural factors in shaping the trajectory of grief. We conclude by briefly considering the implications for distinguishing between typical and pathological forms of grief. (shrink)

This paper sketches an account of what distinguishes emotional intentionality from other forms of intentionality. I focus on the ‘two-sided’ structure of emotional experience. Emotions such as being afraid of something and being angry about something involve intentional states with specific contents. However, experiencing an entity, event, or situation in a distinctively emotional way also includes a wider-ranging disturbance of the experiential world within which the object of emotion is encountered. I consider the nature of this disturbance and its relationship (...) to the localized content of an emotional experience. (shrink)

In reflecting on events of considerable significance, it is commonplace to remark that ‘it hasn’t sunk in yet’ or ‘it’s still sinking in’. Such talk is sometimes associated with things seeming unreal, surreal, unfathomable, or somehow impossible. In this paper, I develop an account of what these experiences consist of. First of all, I suggest that they involve explicitly acknowledging the reality of one’s situation, while at the same time experiencing it as inconsistent with the organization of one’s life. I (...) go on to show how this tension is experienced dynamically, through disturbances of unfolding patterns of anticipation. I suggest that these patterns contribute to our grasp of what is and is not the case, thus accommodating the manner in which things can seem ‘unbelievable’ or ‘unreal’. (shrink)

The philosophy of grief has directed little attention to bereavement’s impact on perceptual experience. However, misperceptions, hallucinations and other anomalous experiences are strikingly common following the death of a loved one. Such experiences range from misperceiving a stranger to be the deceased, to phantom sights, sounds and smells, to nebulous quasi-sensory experiences of the loved one’s presence. This paper draws upon the enactive sensorimotor theory of perception to offer a phenomenologically sensitive and empirically informed account of these experiences. It argues (...) that they can be understood as deriving from disruption to both sensorimotor expectations and perceived opportunities for action, stemming from the upheaval of bereavement. Different facets of the enactive sensorimotor approach can help to explain different types of post-bereavement perceptual experience. Post-bereavement misperceptions can be accounted for through the way that alterations to sensorimotor expectations can result in atypical ‘amodal completion’, while bereavement hallucinations can be understood as ‘appearances’ that fail to form part of the usual patterns of sensorimotor contingency. Quasi-sensory experiences of the presence of the deceased can be understood as resulting from changes to perceived affordances. This paper aims to demonstrate the explanatory value of key aspects of the sensorimotor approach by highlighting how they can help to explain the phenomenology of post-bereavement experiences. However, it also illuminates certain areas in which the sensorimotor approach ought to be supplemented, especially if it is to account for tight connections between perception, affect, and intersubjectivity that are salient in grief. (shrink)

The philosophy of grief has directed little attention to bereavement’s impact on perceptual experience. However, misperceptions, hallucinations and other anomalous experiences are strikingly common following the death of a loved one. Such experiences range from misperceiving a stranger to be the deceased, to phantom sights, sounds and smells, to nebulous quasi-sensory experiences of the loved one’s presence. This paper draws upon the enactive sensorimotor theory of perception to offer a phenomenologically sensitive and empirically informed account of these experiences. It argues (...) that they can be understood as deriving from disruption to both sensorimotor expectations and perceived opportunities for action, stemming from the upheaval of bereavement. Different facets of the enactive sensorimotor approach can help to explain different types of post-bereavement perceptual experience. Post-bereavement misperceptions can be accounted for through the way that alterations to sensorimotor expectations can result in atypical ‘amodal completion’, while bereavement hallucinations can be understood as ‘appearances’ that fail to form part of the usual patterns of sensorimotor contingency. Quasi-sensory experiences of the presence of the deceased can be understood as resulting from changes to perceived affordances. This paper aims to demonstrate the explanatory value of key aspects of the sensorimotor approach by highlighting how they can help to explain the phenomenology of post-bereavement experiences. However, it also illuminates certain areas in which the sensorimotor approach ought to be supplemented, especially if it is to account for tight connections between perception, affect, and intersubjectivity that are salient in grief. (shrink)

The widely accepted “continuing bonds” model of grief tells us that rather than bereavement necessitating the cessation of one’s relationship with the deceased, very often the relationship continues instead in an adapted form. However, this framework appears to conflict with philosophical approaches that treat reciprocity or mutuality of some form as central to loving relationships. Seemingly the dead cannot be active participants, rendering it puzzling how we should understand claims about continued relationships with them. In this article, we resolve this (...) tension by highlighting two fundamental aspects of paradigmatic loving relationships that can, and often do, continue in an adapted form following bereavement: love and mutual shaping of interests, choices, and self-concepts. Attention to these continuing features of relationships helps to capture and clarify the phenomenological and behavioral features of continuing bonds. However, love and mutual shaping must also change in important ways following bereavement. Love becomes unreciprocated, and although the dead continue to shape our interests, choices, and self-concepts, we predominantly shape their legacies and memories in return. These changes place important constraints upon the nature of our interpersonal connections with the dead. (shrink)

Recent developments in AI programming allow for new applications: individualized chatbots which mimic the speaking and writing behaviour of one specific living or dead person. ‘Deathbots’, chatbots of the dead, have already been implemented and are currently under development by the first start-up companies. Thus, it is an urgent issue to consider the ethical implications of deathbots. While previous ethical theories of deathbots have always been based on considerations of the dignity of the deceased, I propose to shift the focus (...) on the dignity and autonomy of the bereaved users of deathbots. Drawing on theories of internet-scaffolded affectivity and on theories of grief, I argue that deathbots may have a negative impact on the grief process of bereaved users and therefore have the potential to limit the emotional and psychological wellbeing of their users. Deathbot users are likely to become dependent on their bots which may make them susceptible to surreptitious advertising by deathbot providing companies and may limit their autonomy. At the same time, deathbots may prove to be helpful for people who suffer from prolonged, severe grief processes. I caution against the unrestricted usage of deathbots and suggest that they should be classified as medical devices. This classification would not the least mean that their non-harm, as well as their helpfulness for people suffering from prolonged grief needs to be proven and that their potential for autonomy infringements is reduced. (shrink)

Many of the most popular and critically acclaimed horror films feature grief as a central theme. This article argues that horror films are especially suited to portraying and communicating the phenomenology of grief. We explore two overlapping claims. First, horror is well suited to represent the experience of grief, in particular because the disruptive effects of horror “monsters” on protagonists mirror the core experience of disruption that accompanies bereavement. Second, horror offers ways in which the experience of grief can be (...) contained and regulated and, in doing so, may offer psychological benefits for the bereaved. While our focus will be squarely on film, much of what we say applies to other media. (shrink)

In this article, we develop a new approach to integrating philosophical phenomenology with qualitative research. The approach uses phenomenology’s concepts, namely existentials, rather than methods such as the epoché or reductions. We here introduce the approach to both philosophers and qualitative researchers, as we believe that these studies are best conducted through interdisciplinary collaboration. In section 1, we review the debate over phenomenology’s role in qualitative research and argue that qualitative theorists have not taken full advantage of what philosophical phenomenology (...) has to offer, thus motivating the need for new approaches. In section 2, we introduce our alternative approach, which we call Phenomenologically Grounded Qualitative Research (PGQR). Drawing parallels with phenomenology’s applications in the cognitive sciences, we explain how phenomenological grounding can be used to conceptually front-load a qualitative study, establishing an explicit focus on one or more structures of human existence, or of our being in the world. In section 3, we illustrate this approach with an example of a qualitative study carried out by one of the authors: a study of the existential impact of early parental bereavement. In section 4, we clarify the kind of knowledge that phenomenologically grounded studies generate and how it may be integrated with existing approaches. (shrink)

Since Erich Lindemann's seminal work on 'the symptomatology and management of acute grief' from 1944, it has been common to define grief through its particular emotional structure and dynamics. According to this perspective, grief announces itself in socalled 'pangs of grief' in which the bereaved is occasionally flooded by waves of emotions. This picture has become so ingrained in our understanding of grief that it has defined both public discourse on grief and contemporary clinical constructs. In this paper, I propose (...) that underneath grief's fluctuating emotivity, there is a deeper feeling of grief. This deeper feeling reflects an altered mode of being in the world in which the bereaved experiences herself as 'at a distance' from the worldly. I will refer to this state as world-distancing and emphasize it as a protective affective state that shields the bereaved from a limit situation in which the world has become overwhelming in the absence of the deceased. It is experienced as being in a bubble or as if enclosed in a kind of membrane that shields the bereaved from the intrusiveness and penetrating character of the world. Worlddistancing, however, comes with significant perils if the bereaved are unable to reattach to the world. I outline this danger as a state of existential loneliness that follows from what Eugené Minkowski termed a felt lack of vital contact with the world. (shrink)

Grief is, and has always been, technologically supported. From memorials and shrines to photos and saved voicemail messages, we engage with the dead through the technologies available to us. As our technologies evolve, so does how we grieve. In this paper, we consider the role chatbots might play in our grieving practices. Influenced by recent phenomenological work, we begin by thinking about the character of grief. Next, we consider work on developing “continuing bonds” with the dead. We argue that for (...) some, chatbots may play an important role in establishing these continuing bonds by helping us develop what we term “habits of intimacy”. We then turn to the “ick factor” some may feel about this prospect, focusing especially on ethical concerns raised by Patrick Stokes and Adam Buben about the risk of replacing our dead with chatbots. We argue that replacement worries are not as pressing as Stokes and Buben suggest. We resist these replacement worries by appealing to the “thin reciprocity”, as we refer to it, that such bots offer, as well as the fictionalist stance that we think users of the bots adopt when engaging with them. We conclude by briefly raising some additional concerns and highlighting future research questions. (shrink)

Contemporary and emerging chatbots can be fine-tuned to imitate the style, tenor, and knowledge of a corpus, including the corpus of a particular individual. This makes it possible to build chatbots that imitate people who are no longer alive — deathbots. Such deathbots can be used in many ways, but one prominent way is to facilitate the process of grieving. In this paper, we present a framework that helps make sense of this process. In particular, we argue that deathbots can (...) serve as affective scaffolds, modulating and shaping the emotions of the bereaved. We contextualize this affective scaffolding by comparing it to earlier technologies that have also been used to scaffold the process of grieving, arguing that deathbots offer some interesting novelties that may transform the continuing bonds of intimacy that the bereaved can have with the dead. We conclude with some ethical reflections on the promises and perils of this new technology. (shrink)

Adam Smith qualifie de selfish l’expérience affective du deuil qui prend en anglais le nom de grief. D’après Patrick Frierson, Smith a pourtant bien conscience que nous sommes peinés par la perte d’un être qui avait à nos yeux une valeur intrinsèque et non une simple valeur instrumentale. Mais alors, pourquoi qualifier la peine de selfish? Pour répondre, nous mettons en regard la conception de Smith et l’approche de Lord Kames sur la peine. Puis nous expliquons pourquoi cette selfishness n’empêche (...) pas la peine d’être moralement approuvée. Enfin, nous montrons que Smith en vient à proposer une délicate psychodynamique du deuil. (shrink)

In a recent article, Ratcliffe and Byrne (2022) propose a multifactorial phenomenological account of the influence of narrative on grief. Specifically, they argue that certain kinds of narrative can help navigate and negotiate the phenomenological disturbance of practical identity associated with bereavement. In this critical note, I identify and discuss two problems of their account. First, Ratcliffe and Byrne’s (2022) considerations rest on conceptually ambiguous distinctions between different narrative categories (the conceptual ambiguity problem). Second, their account appears to neglect the (...) variability of both grief experiences and different kinds of narrative engagement (the variability problem). These problems need to be resolved to make progress in understanding the influence (if any) of narrative engagements on the phenomenology of grief. (shrink)

En el duelo frecuentemente rememoramos con pesar los sufrimientos que le causamos a la persona fallecida, pero algunos de esos apesadumbrados recuerdos nos desconciertan y hasta pueden hacernos dudar de la sinceridad de nuestro amor por ella porque, aunque lamentamos profundamente haberla hecho sufrir, no nos arrepentimos de haber actuado como actuamos. En este artículo examino las características, tipos y naturaleza de la emoción a la que Bernard Williams llamó «_agent-regret»_ (lamentación o pesadumbre del agente), para sostener que aquella experiencia (...) del doliente puede entenderse como una instancia particular de esta emoción. Además, hago algunas consideraciones acerca de cómo el proceso mismo del duelo complica la de por sí difícil experiencia de lamentarse como agente. (shrink)

El duelo anticipado es un tema al que la filosofía ha prestado muy poca atención, a diferencia de lo que ocurre con el duelo que sigue a la muerte. Una peculiaridad obvia del primero es que sucede mientras todavía existe una relación interpersonal entre el doliente y aquel por quien se duele. En este artículo examino el impacto que el duelo anticipado puede tener en dicha relación, particularmente con respecto a las actitudes reactivas de sanción, propias del conflicto interpersonal.

“Deathbots,” digital constructs that emulate the conversational patterns, demeanor, and knowledge of deceased individuals. Earlier moral discussions about deathbots centered on the dignity and autonomy of the deceased. This paper primarily examines the potential psychological and emotional dependencies that users might develop towards deathbots, considering approaches to prevent problematic dependence through temporary use. We adopt a hermeneutic method to argue that deathbots, as they currently exist, are unlikely to provide substantial comfort. Lacking the capacity to bear emotional burdens, they fall (...) short of meeting idealistic expectations. By repositioning deathbots, we aim to mitigate the risk of emotional dependency and respect the natural grieving process. Our goal is to propose the use of deathbots as a novel means of mourning through transitory use, rather than as a method to alleviate grief or as a patterns for communication with the deceased. (shrink)

This paper challenges an orthodoxy in recent philosophical discussions of grief, namely, that grief is essentially tied to the thought that a person of significance to oneself has died. As first‐person reports make clear, one can find oneself cut off from the significant other not simply in body but also in thought. This is not, moreover, an isolated difficulty but one that may have repercussions for one's capacity to form an outlook on the social world, the natural world, and the (...) world viewed from one's own scheme of ends. Taking C. S. Lewis's diary of grief as a guide, I argue that our capacity to think of our significant others depends, surprisingly enough, on our capacity to acknowledge their independence from us even in death. (shrink)

Philosophical discussion tends to converge on the view that narratives are at the center of the emotion of grief. In this article, I expand on this kind of view. On the one hand, I argue that key strands of phenomenological and neuroscientific studies suggest that grief consists in a complex emotional process of disconfirmation-and-updating of the narrative self-model. By heuristically drawing on an analogy between binocular rivalry and grief, I show that certain salient aspects of the phenomenology of grief, such (...) as self-alienation and ambiguity, are straightforwardly reflected by this account. On the other hand, I argue that this hierarchical approach has the resources to: (i) show that both narratable and unnarratable experiences of personal loss are both instances of grief; and (ii) differentiate between narratable and unnarratable experiences of grief, without compromising the view that self-constituting narratives are at the center of the phenomenon. (shrink)