Despite great progress in our theoretical and empirical investigations of boredom, a basic issue regarding boredom remains unresolved: it is still unclear whether the construct of boredom is a unitary one or not. By surveying the relevant literature on boredom and arousal, the paper makes a case for the unity of the construct of boredom. It argues, first, that extant empirical findings do not support the heterogeneity of boredom, and, second, that a theoretically motivated (...) and empirically grounded model of boredom (the functional account) supports the view that the construct of boredom is a unitary one. (shrink)

On one predominant conception of virtue, the virtuous agent is, among other things, wholehearted in doing what she believes best. I challenge this condition of wholeheartedness by making explicit the connections between the emotion of boredom and the states of continence and akrasia. An easily bored person is more susceptible to these forms of disharmony because of two familiar characteristics of boredom. First, that we can be – and often are – bored by what it is that we (...) know would be best to do, and second, that occurrent states of boredom tend to give rise to positive interest in performing actions that we know are bad to perform. Moreover, while a person’s susceptibility to boredom can indicate a lack of attentiveness or acuity, or be evidence of a vice such as ingratitude or shallowness, it can in others indicate positive qualities of character, such as perspicacity, liveliness, and certain forms of intelligence. Upon imagining certain bored akratics without the psychological qualities that give rise to their boredom, we will either imagine them without these positive qualities, or with others that – though perhaps psychologically possible – are not clearly better. This yields the result that a person who is continent or even akratic because of her susceptibility to boredom may have a character no less excellent than that of the wholehearted agent. (shrink)

In the first book to argue for the benefits of boredom, Peter Toohey dispels the myth that it's simply a childish emotion or an existential malaise like Jean-Paul Sartre's nausea. He shows how boredom is, in fact, one of our most common and constructive emotions and is an essential part of the human experience. This informative and entertaining investigation of boredom—what it is and what it isn't, its uses and its dangers—spans more than 3,000 years of history (...) and takes readers through fascinating neurological and psychological theories of emotion, as well as recent scientific investigations, to illustrate its role in our lives. There are Australian aboriginals and bored Romans, Jeffrey Archer and caged cockatoos, Camus and the early Christians, Dürer and Degas. Toohey also explores the important role that boredom plays in popular and highbrow culture and how over the centuries it has proven to be a stimulus for art and literature. Toohey shows that boredom is a universal emotion experienced by humans throughout history and he explains its place, and value, in today's world. _Boredom: A Lively History _is vital reading for anyone interested in what goes on when supposedly nothing happens. (shrink)

In the first book to argue for the benefits of boredom, Peter Toohey dispels the myth that it's simply a childish emotion or an existential malaise like Jean-Paul Sartre's nausea. He shows how boredom is, in fact, one of our most common and constructive emotions and is an essential part of the human experience. This informative and entertaining investigation of boredom—what it is and what it isn't, its uses and its dangers—spans more than 3,000 years of history (...) and takes readers through fascinating neurological and psychological theories of emotion, as well as recent scientific investigations, to illustrate its role in our lives. There are Australian aboriginals and bored Romans, Jeffrey Archer and caged cockatoos, Camus and the early Christians, Dürer and Degas. Toohey also explores the important role that boredom plays in popular and highbrow culture and how over the centuries it has proven to be a stimulus for art and literature. Toohey shows that boredom is a universal emotion experienced by humans throughout history and he explains its place, and value, in today's world. _Boredom: A Lively History _is vital reading for anyone interested in what goes on when supposedly nothing happens. (shrink)

Boredom can motivate us to perform actions that are painful, imprudent, morally objectionable, or unwise in other respects. It can also give rise to forms of akrasia: we may be unwilling to do what we know we must, simply because we will find it boring; when we are racked with boredom—bored stiff, bored to tears—actions that might otherwise never occur to us to do can begin to appear attractive, and sometimes remain attractive against our better judgment. But (...) class='Hi'>boredom is also relevant to another set of moral or ethical con- cerns. Alongside questions about what we may do out of boredom, and about whether such actions are morally justifiable, conducive to our well-being, or instrumentally rational, a person’s character can be revealed by how her dispositions of boredom express themselves. And just as our emotional dispositions can be not just criticized, but also improved, so we may think that our dispositions of boredom, too, may be both criticized and improved. From a virtue-theoretical approach to boredom that would encourage this shift of focus from the ethical significance of actions to include assessments of character and motive as well, three questions emerge. What kind of atti- tude is boredom, such that it can motivate (sometimes objectionable) forms of action, while also reflecting or disclosing something about the kind of character one has? What does it disclose or reveal about a person that she is bored by particular things, and not others, and to greater and lesser extents? And is there a virtue that could come to govern our dispositions of boredom, providing an ideal that one might aspire to? (shrink)

In this commentary on Elpidorou‘s book, I first note a certain arbitrariness in his choice, for his purpose of showing the bright side of negative emotions, of boredom, frustration, and anticipation. Many other emotions carry negative valence and might be said to be useful in motivating us to avoid or escape them. I then focus on boredom, and consider four candidates for the role of its formal object. All four turn out to be problematic. I then consider the (...) moral and prudential value of boredom, and conclude that if boredom is to be attributed some sort of intrinsic value, it is more likely to derive it from its complex role in aesthetic experience. (shrink)

The author proposes an analysis of boredom. The analysis he proposes is that boredom is an unpleasant mental state consisting of weariness, restlessness, and lack of interest, where certain causal relations exist among the components. He goes on to elaborate on and defend his analysis, concluding with some thoughts on the idea that boredom has some grand metaphysical significance.

Bernard Williams famously argued that eternal life is undesirable for a human because it would inevitably grow intolerably boring. I will argue against Williams and those who share his view. To make my case, I will provide an account of what staves off boredom in our current, earthly-mortal lives, and then I will draw on this account while advancing reasons for thinking that eternal life is desirable, given certain conditions. Though my response to Williams will partly overlap with some (...) prior responses to Williams, especially the one offered by J. M. Fischer, my response will also be distinctive in some important ways. For instance, it will be distinctive in that it will discuss the role that one’s part-whole-reality conception plays in fending off boredom, where by “one’s part-whole-reality conception” I mean “one’s conception of his or her place in the whole of reality.”. (shrink)

In this commentary on Elpidorou‘s book, I first note a certain arbitrariness in his choice, for his purpose of showing the bright side of negative emotions, of boredom, frustration, and anticipation. Many other emotions carry negative valence and might be said to be useful in motivating us to avoid or escape them. I then focus on boredom, and consider four candidates for the role of its formal object. All four turn out to be problematic. I then consider the (...) moral and prudential value of boredom, and conclude that if boredom is to be attributed some sort of intrinsic value, it is more likely to derive it from its complex role in aesthetic experience. (shrink)

Bernard Williams has famously argued that an immortal life would necessarily be boring. Despite the obvious importance that boredom occupies in Williams’ argument, he says very little about the nature of boredom. In this paper, I argue that attention to the empirical literature on boredom reveals a serious flaw in Williams’ argument. Specifically, I show that there is no available explication of boredom that is supported by the empirical research and which at the same time establishes (...) Williams’ conclusions. (shrink)

The functional theory of boredom maintains that boredom ought to be defined in terms of its role in our mental and behavioral economy. Although the functional theory has recently received considerable attention, presentations of this theory have not specified with sufficient precision either its commitments or its consequences for the ontology of boredom. This essay offers an in-depth examination of the functional theory. It explains what boredom is according to the functional view; it shows how the (...) functional theory can account for the known characteristics of boredom; and it articulates the theory’s basic commitments, virtues, and limitations. Ultimately, by furthering our understanding of the functional theory of boredom, the essay contributes to a better theoretical grounding of boredom. (shrink)

Addresses a common criticism of Williams' so-called "Necessary Boredom Thesis," arguing that the criticism misconstrues the kind of boredom that Williams is worried about. Then offers an independent reason to worry about the Necessary Boredom Thesis, given the relevant construal of boredom. Finally, develops a weaker version of Williams' worries about choosing to live an immortal existence, arguing that immortality threatens to undermine our ability to stand for the things in our lives.

Martin Heidegger was convinced that we can learn something about the way we inhabit the world by turning attention to our fundamental moods. It was one important theme of his fundamental ontology in the 1920s. There is, according to Heidegger, an intricate connection between awakening our moods and developing a reflexive stance. He provides us with a rich phenomenological description of different forms of boredom. In this article I approach Heidegger’s conception of boredom from an educational point of (...) view. I am suggesting a reading where the experience of boredom has transformative potentialities that also can illuminate our cultural situation as a whole. By turning away from boredom there is always a possibility of turning away from ourselves. (shrink)

Boredom Studies is an increasingly rich and vital area of contemporary research that examines the experience of boredom as an importan - even quintessential - condition of modern life. This anthology of newly commissioned essays focuses on the historical and theoretical potential of this modern condition, connecting boredom studies with parallel discourses such as affect theory and highlighting possible avenues of future research. Spanning sociology, history, art, philosophy and cultural studies, the book considers boredom as a (...) mass response to the atrophy of experience characteristic of a highly mechanised and urbanised social life. (shrink)

The aim of this chapter is to articulate the ways in which our social standing, and particularly our socio-economic status (SES), affects, even transforms, the experience of boredom. Even if boredom can be said to be democratic, in the sense that it can potentially affect all of us, it does not actually affect all of us in the same way. Boredom, I argue, is unjust—some groups are disproportionately negatively impacted by boredom through no fault of their (...) own. Depending on our social position and self and others’ perceptions of our SES, we can experience it more frequently, more intensely, and in ways that either leave us incapable of alleviating it or push us to harmful and maladaptive responses to it. Hence, seen in a socio-economic light, boredom can become a serious threat to our physical and psychological well-being. Insofar as freedom to pursue and achieve one’s well-being is essential to human life and a primary concern of contemporary liberal societies, boredom should be considered to be a social justice issue. The disproportionately negative effects of boredom on lower SES groups indicate the profound ways that boredom affects individuals and further disadvantages those who are already in marginalized positions. Contrary to many historical accounts, boredom is not only the experience of the elite, the wealthy, or those with ample free time. In our current political, social, and economic climate, boredom is primarily the experience of the less privileged, the disadvantaged, and the marginalized. (shrink)

Boredom: A History of Western Philosophical Perspectives The essayist Joseph Epstein has remarked, "Boredom is after all part of consciousness, and about consciousness the neurologists still have much less to tell us than do the poets and the philosophers." Although not a major topic for Western philosophers, some important Western philosophers have spoken of it, … Continue reading Boredom →.

Teachers’ emotions are explicitly and conceptually presented as part of an educational system that affects and is affected by learner upshots, namely, learners’ self-emotions, behaviors, and cognition since educators and learners are involved in the outcomes of the school setting. English as a foreign language educators recurrently experience emotional damages during involvement in their profession as burnout, stress, boredom, and anxiety. EFL teachers need to regulate their emotions when facing a multivariate class environment that provides each learner with undeniable (...) uniqueness. The subject of the relationship between emotion regulation and the teacher’s emotions is receiving increasing attention in research. EFL teachers should be provided with an emotional regulation strategy to have a positive learning-instructing effect in the entire school community as fun learning activities, energetic students, enthusiastic educators, and strong relationships between the board of education. To focus on the role of teachers’ emotion on the one hand and the mediator role of emotional regulation, on the other hand, the current study endeavored to review the role of emotional regulation strategies more intensely to decrease negative emotions. Finally, some educational suggestions of the study regarding the educators’ behaviors are pinpointed. (shrink)

The present article deals with Heidegger’s research into boredom. The phenomenon cannot be simply described as an emotion but as a fundamental attunement, which represented a pathway to being qua being for Heidegger. Many scholars have argued that the philosopher’s treatment of the phenomenon led to sublimation or transgression in describing it beyond its phenomenological limits. While I agree with the general assessment, I also believe that there is a need to expand the argument further. I will argue that (...) the cause of such transgression lies mainly in Heidegger’s inability to separate the truth from the notion of meaning or sense. (shrink)

Gender plays an important role in various aspects of second language acquisition, including lexicon learning. Many studies have suggested that compared to males, females are less likely to experience boredom, one of the frequently experienced deactivating negative emotions that may impair language learning. However, the contribution of boredom to gender-related differences in lexicon learning remains unclear. To address this question, here we conducted two experiments with a large sample of over 1,000 college students to explore the relationships between (...) gender differences in boredom and lexicon learning. In Experiment 1, a cohort of 527 participants completed the trait and state boredom scales as well as a novel lexicon learning task without awareness of the testing process. In Experiment 2, an independent cohort of 506 participants completed the same novel lexicon learning task with prior knowledge of the testing procedure. Results from both experiments consistently showed significant differences between female and male participants in the rate of forgetting words and the state boredom scores, with female participants performing better than male participants. Furthermore, differences in state boredom scores partially explained differences in the rate of forgetting words between female and male participants. These findings demonstrate a novel contribution of state boredom to gender differences in lexicon learning, which provides new insights into better language-learning ability in females. (shrink)

In this paper we address Bernard Williams' argument for the undesirability of immortality. Williams argues that unavoidable and pervasive boredom would characterise the immortal life of an individual with unchanging categorical desires. We resist this conclusion on the basis of the distinction between habitual and situational boredom and a psychologically realistic account of significant factors in the formation of boredom. We conclude that Williams has offered no persuasive argument for the necessity of boredom in the immortal (...) life. 1. (shrink)

I argue that the state of boredom (i.e., the transitory and non-pathological experience of boredom) should be understood to be a regulatory psychological state that has the capacity to promote our well-being by contributing to personal growth and to the construction (or reconstruction) of a meaningful life.

Though largely ignored by educators and researchers, boredom, an aversive emotion, is the hurdle for many translation learners to be professional. It is all the more important to unpack the boredom factors of Chinese foreign language major students in translation classes, which will serve in promoting students’ engagement in L2 classes and translator cultivation. By using a sequential mixed approach, this study conducted a thematic analysis and built a structural equation model. Quantitative data were gleaned from 483 foreign (...) major college students in China and qualitative data were selected from students of 7 universities through snowball sampling. Initially, the first-order confirmatory factor analysis verified the adapted questionnaire and the second-order CFA finds each factor’s contribution. Then, the thematic analysis gives support to the empirical findings. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses revealed that task-based boredom is the most routinely experienced boredom. Moreover, two major sources of boredom in translation classes are found, including task-based boredom and teacher-related boredom. It is suggested that teachers should improve their classes and use more interesting and engaging materials and tasks with the proper level of difficulty. The finding can help educators to identify the major boredom in the translation class and help potential professional translators to grow. Future studies will also be facilitated by the present study to find approaches to tackle these boredom sources. (shrink)

This article examines recent scholarly work on boredom by drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin’s account of modernity, irony, and mass skepticism. In The Arcades Project, Walter Benjamin noted that, beginning in the 1840s, Western societies had been gripped by an “epidemic of boredom.” He was referring to a peculiarly modern form of mass boredom, associated with the “atrophy of experience” in a mechanized and urbanized social life—a boredom Elizabeth S. Goodstein has characterized as the “democratization of skepticism.” (...) Although Bakhtin says little about “boredom” directly, he probes the sociocultural conditions that give rise to it. Bakhtin, for example, celebrates the liberatory and egalitarian promise of modern vernacular speech, which displays a healthy suspicion of “monotonic” qualities of elite genres, and which springs not from the pulpit or the palace, but from the street, the marketplace and the public square. Bakhtin is concerned about the nihilistic implications of this disenchantment of the world and the threats it poses—indifference, reification and alienation—to the “participative” mode of social life he favours. (shrink)

Media multitasking entails simultaneously engaging in multiple tasks when at least one of the tasks involves media. Across two studies, we investigated one potential trigger of media multitasking, state boredom, and its relation to media multitasking. To this end, we manipulated participants’ levels of state boredom using video mood inductions prior to administering an attention-demanding 2-back task during which participants could media multitask by playing a task-irrelevant video. We also examined whether trait boredom proneness was associated media (...) multitasking. We found no direct evidence that state boredom leads to media multitasking. However, trait boredom proneness correlated with greater amounts of media multitasking in Experiment 1, but not in Experiment 2. Surprisingly, in both experiments, post-task ratings of state boredom were equivalent across conditions, alerting us to the short-lived effects of video mood inductions and the boring nature of cognitive tasks. (shrink)

On the dominant interpretation, Schopenhauer possesses a will to will view of boredom: boredom consists in the dissatisfaction of a second-order desire to pursue objects of first-order desire. I ch...

The essay argues that boredom is an affective state that monitors and regulates our behavior. Boredom informs us when we are out of tune with our interests and motivates us to engage in situations that are perceived by us as fulfilling or meaningful. Boredom is thus important. It promotes our interests by trying to keep us in touch with what we care about. And it safeguards us from emotional traps and long-term dullness. -/- .

In this paper, I consider what it might mean to approach boredom as a problem of post-history, rather than of modernity as such. Post-history, or ‘end of history’, in this sense, is linked with the...

By examining boredom through the lens of Sartre’s account of the emotions, I argue for the significance of boredom. Boredom matters, I show, for it is both informative and regulatory of one’s behavior: it informs one of the presence of an unsatisfactory situation; and, at the same time, owing to its affective, cognitive, and volitional character, boredom motivates the pursuit of a new goal when the current goal ceases to be satisfactory, attractive, or meaningful. In the (...) absent of boredom, one would remain trapped in unfulfilling situations, thereby missing out on many rewarding experiences. In helping us to articulate the function and significance of boredom, Sartre’s account provides a much-needed counterbalance to accounts of boredom that portray it as a distinctively negative state. (shrink)

In this paper, we aim to clarify and evaluate the contention that immortality would be necessarily boring . It will emerge that, just as there are various importantly different kinds of immortality, there are various distinct kinds of boredom. To evaluate the Necessary Boredom Thesis, we need to specify the kind of immortality and the kind of boredom. We argue against the thesis, on various specifications of “immortality” and “boredom.”.

The paper presents a phenomenological investigation into experiencing boredom in everyday life. The analysis is grounded in several concrete experiences that the reader is invited to participate in and imaginatively stage for him or herself. Based on these thought experiments, and theoretically proceeding from the work of Husserl, Heidegger and others, the paper argues that boredom has to be seen as a particular way of experiencing time, namely, experiencing it as being non-eventful. The characteristic feature of experiencing a (...) situation as eventful depends on the possibility of filling the time of the situation with meaning by colonizing and domesticating it with narratives, purpose, usefulness, etc., whereas in boredom we are facing the not yet domesticated, not yet cultivated, not yet narrativized time that is perceived as empty, uncanny, and unhomely. The time of boredom is experienced as “not mine,” and, in its most alienating form, as inhuman. (shrink)

Despite the impressive progress that has been made on both the empirical and conceptual fronts of boredom research, there is one facet of boredom that has received remarkably little attention. This is boredom's relationship to morality. The aim of this article is to explore the moral dimensions of boredom and to argue that boredom is a morally relevant personality trait. The presence of trait boredom hinders our capacity to flourish and in doing so hurts (...) our prospects for a moral life. -/- . (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. In this paper, I consider what it might mean to approach boredom as a problem of post-history, rather than of modernity as such. Post-history, or ‘end of history’, in this sense, is linked with the impossibility or unlikelihood of political-systemic change, and thus with the disappearance of the contingency or temporal flux that had been understood as the context or prerequisite of political action and political freedom. I will, argue, firstly, that both (...) Rousseau and Fukuyama depict societies that are ‘post-historical’, in this sense, and which are marked by ‘boredom’ of this specifically post-historical kind. Secondly, I will argue that both thinkers link post-historical boredom with the disappearance or diminution of the ‘drive for recognition’ that both understood as both an agent and effect of ‘history’. Thirdly, I will argue that while Fukuyama understands post-historical boredom as an ‘irritant’ that threatens to restart history without quite succeeding in doing so, Rousseau understands it as an essentially stabilising condition that maintains post-historical man in an equilibrium modelled on the order of nature itself. And fourthly, I consider certain ways in which this ‘post-historical’ boredom might coexist and overlap with the ‘promise of intensity’ experienced in post-Fordist neoliberal society. (shrink)

In this book Lars Svendsen examines the nature of boredom, how it originated, its history, how and why it afflicts us, and why we cannot seem to overcome it by any act of will.

Boredom has been characterized as a crisis of meaning, a failure of attention, and a call to action. Yet as a self-regulatory signal writ-large, we are still left with the question of what makes any given boredom episode meaningless, disengaging, or a prompt to act. We propose that boredom is an affective signal that we have deviated from an optimal (‘Goldilocks’) zone of cognitive engagement. Such deviations may be due to a perceived lack of meaning, arise as (...) a consequence of struggles we are experiencing in attending to a task, or be interpreted as a blunt call to find something different to engage with. Thus, the key to understanding boredom lies in its role in keeping us cognitively engaged. -/- . (shrink)

Phenomenology's central insight is that affectivity is not an inconsequential or contingent characteristic of human existence. Emotions, moods, sentiments, and feelings are not accidents of human existence. They do not happen to happen to us. Rather, we exist the way we do because of and through our affective experiences. Phenomenology thus acknowledges the centrality and ubiquity of affectivity by noting the multitude of ways in which our existence is permeated by our various affective experiences. Yet, it also insists that such (...) experiences are both revealing and constitutive of human nature. It is precisely this last point that marks an important distinction between a phenomenological study of affectivity and perhaps all others. For phenomenology, one cannot understand the nature of human existence without coming to terms with the character of affectivity and at the same time, one cannot come to terms with the character of affectivity without understanding the nature of human existence. Practical and social engagements, scientific endeavors, familial and political interactions are all predicted on the fact that we are beings who are capable of being affectively attuned to ourselves, to the world, and to others. In this entry, we discuss Martin Heidegger's and Jean-Paul Sartre's respective accounts of affectivity. In the first section, we present Heidegger's understanding of affective existence. In this context, we discuss the significance of moods and offer an analysis of the affective phenomena of fear, anxiety, and boredom. In the second section, we present an overview of Sartre's account of emotions and advance a Sartrean interpretation of fear and boredom. We conclude by raising some brief concerns with both accounts. (shrink)

This article discusses the ethical and methodological issues associated with boredom experienced by human participants during psychological experiments. Ways are suggested in which informed consent, briefing, and debriefing can be used to prevent or remedy boredom induced during experiments. We address methodological and ethical concerns, and we discuss the advantages of the proposed approach for experimenters' practice and training of undergraduate students. Future directions for much needed research on these topics are also emphasized.

Many of our endeavors -- be it personal or communal, technological or artistic -- aim at eradicating all traces of dissatisfaction from our daily lives. They seek to cure us of our discontent in order to deliver us a fuller and flourishing existence. But what if ubiquitous pleasure and instant fulfilment make our lives worse, not better? What if discontent isn't an obstacle to the good life but one of its essential ingredients? In Propelled, Andreas Elpidorou makes a lively case (...) for the value of discontent and illustrates how boredom, frustration, and anticipation are good for us. Weaving together stories from sources as wide-ranging as classical literature, social and cognitive psychology, philosophy, art, and video games, Elpidorou shows that these psychological states aren't unpleasant accidents of our lives. Rather, they illuminate our desires and expectations, inform us when we find ourselves stuck in unpleasant and unfulfilling situations, and motivate us to furnish our lives with meaning, interest, and value. Boredom, frustration, and anticipation aren't obstacles to our goals--they are our guides, propelling us into lives that are truly our own. (shrink)

By focusing on the unique velocity and over-stimulation of metropolitan life, Georg Simmel pioneered an interpretation of cultural boredom that has had a significant impact on contemporary social theory by viewing it through the modern experience of time-pressure and social acceleration. This paper explores Simmel's account of boredom by showing how--in the frenzy of modern life--it has become increasingly difficult to qualitatively distinguish which choices and commitments actually matter to us. Furthermore, this emotional indifference invariably pushes us towards (...) more excessive and risky behavior, towards, what I call, "extreme aesthesia." Insofar as novel experiences quickly become routine in the technological age, it appears that only extreme sensations and experiences can break the spell of boredom, allowing us to momentarily feel strongly for something. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger is often credited as having offered one of the most thorough phenomenological investigations of the nature of boredom. In his 1929–1930 lecture course, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude, he goes to great lengths to distinguish between three different types of boredom and to explicate their respective characters. Within the context of his discussion of one of these types of boredom, profound boredom [tiefe Langweile], Heidegger opposes much of the philosophical and literary (...) tradition on boredom insofar as he articulates how the experience of boredom can be existentially beneficial to us. In this chapter, we undertake a study of the nature of profound boredom with the aim of investigating its place within contemporary psychological and philosophical research on boredom. Although boredom used to be a neglected emotional experience, it is no more. Boredom’s causal antecedents, effects, experiential profile, and neurophysiological correlates have become topics of active study; as a consequence, a proliferation of claims and findings about boredom has ensued. Such a situation provides an opportunity to scrutinize Heidegger’s claims and to try to understand them both on their own terms and in light of our contemporary understanding of boredom. (shrink)

By synthesizing research from psychology, economics, and philosophy, Propelled criticizes notions of well-being that overly focus on positive emotions and experiences. Against a tradition that has condemned boredom and frustration to be emotional obstacles that hinder human flourishing, Propelled shows that to live a good life we must experience and react appropriately to both. In addition, it argues that we need to anticipate, wait for, and even long for future events. Boredom, frustration, and anticipation are not unpleasant accidents (...) of our lives. Rather, they are vital psychological states that illuminate our desires and expectations, inform us of when we find ourselves stuck in unpleasant and unfulfilling situations, and motivate us to furnish our lives with meaning, interest, and value. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger gave a penetrating account of the different varieties of the moods of anxiety and boredom, which have no doubt been prevalent in the human experience of the Covid-19 pandemic. Heidegger theorized a particular type of anxiety and boredom as what I call 'revelatory moods', intense affective experiences that involve an encounter with our existence as such, our world, freedom and responsibility for the creation and proliferation of significance. Revelatory moods contain much emancipatory potential, acting as existential (...) catalysts for our being able to authentically seize hold of our lives and possibilities as free agents. For Heidegger, the experiences of anxiety and boredom as ones that put us into contact with the structure of our world and the stunning scope of our freedom, letting us know what we can do and are capable of. But can the same be said of these experiences as they occur in a time when our freedom has been dramatically reduced? I claim that Heidegger's theory can be productively built on, arguing that the anxiety and boredom of the pandemic puts us into contact not with the scope of our freedom, but its reduced limits. But it is the experience of encountering these limits that makes it possible for us to begin to work out how to live in spite of them, forging new modes of solidarity and its enactment. Living authentically in this new situation in spite of our reduced freedom must take place on a prior disclosure of the limits of this freedom. Heidegger locates the possibility of such a disclosure in revelatory anxiety and boredom. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to argue that the human capacity for boredom is philosophically interesting because it illuminates the kinds of problems that evaluators face just in being evaluators. I aim to challenge the “boredom as problem” approach to understanding boredom that is pervasive throughout the multi-disciplinary literature on boredom. I examine five quite different contexts of boredom that illuminate five different reasons why evaluators sometimes find the world not worth their attention and (...) address a set of puzzles about boredom, e.g., why meaningless diversions are an especially attractive method of escaping boredom and why both regimented work time and unregimented leisure time might be primary occasions for boredom. (shrink)

in Undetermined Table d’Hôte Ingar Brinck: Investigating the development of creativity: The Sahlin hypothesis 7 Linus Broström: Known unknowns and proto-second-personal address in photographic art 25 Johan Brännmark: Critical moral thinking without moral theory 33 Martin Edman: Vad är ett missförhållande? 43 Pascal Engel: Rambling on the value of truth 51 Peter Gärdenfors: Ambiguity in decision making and the fear of being fooled 75 Göran Hermerén: NIPT: Ethical aspects 89 Mats Johansson: Roboethics: What problems should be addressed and why? 103 (...) Johan Laserna: Ambivalenta bilder 113 Anna-Sofia Maurin: Metaphysical explanation 161 Kevin Mulligan: Is preference primitive? 169 John D. Norton: How does your garden grow? 181 Johannes Persson & Annika Wallin: The distinction between internal and external validity 187 Johanna Seibt: Becoming our selves 197 Paul Slovic, Robin Gregory, David Frank, and Daniel Vastfjall: Confronting the collapse of humanitarian values in foreignpolicy decision making 209 Peter Sylwan: Det eviga livet 215 Claudine Tiercelin: Chance, love and logic: Ramsey and Peirce on norms, rationality and the conduct of life 221 Epilog 257 Frank Ramsey. (shrink)