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Accepted manuscript

What’s Low Mood All About? An Indicative-Imperative Account of Low Mood’s Content

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 March 2025

James Turner*
Affiliation:
Associate Researcher at the Hang Seng Centre for Cognitive Studies, Humanities Research Institute, University of Sheffield, 34 Gell Street, Sheffield, S3 7QW, E-mail: jrturner1711@gmail.com
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Abstract

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Does low mood have intentional content? If so, what is it? Philosophers have tried to answer both questions by appealing to low mood’s phenomenal character. However, appeals to phenomenology have not settled this debate. Thus, I take a different approach: I tackle both questions by examining low mood’s complex functional role in cognition. I argue that if we take this role into account, we have excellent reason to believe that low mood a) has content, and b) has the following indicative-imperative content: Good events are, on average, less likely to occur than bad events & Limit [the subject’s] resource expenditure!

Type
Article
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Philosophy of Science Association