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I know the spider is harmless and I’m still terrified. Is my fear wrong, or just irrational?

Hsieh Wei-ting Fellow
· 5 replies
EmotionsAnalyticGreek & RomanIslamicStoicismChrysippusIbn SinaMartha Nussbaum#fear#judgement-theory#phobia#recalcitrant-emotion
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I am very afraid of spiders. Last week one sat on my monitor for an hour. I knew it was a harmless house spider. I could have recited the facts about its venom. I still couldn't touch the keyboard.

A friend who studied philosophy told me some philosophers think emotions are judgements, so fear is the judgement that something is dangerous. But then I'm judging the spider dangerous and not dangerous at the same time, which sounds like I've lost my mind.

So: are emotions judgements? If they are, how can I believe one thing and feel another? And if they aren't, can an emotion ever be wrong, or is it just something that happens, like a sneeze?

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5 answers

Accepted answer

  1. Elif Yıldız

    ✓ Accepted answer Fellow

    Wei-ting, your spider is the standard problem for the theory, so you're in good company.

    The judgement theory goes back to the Stoics: Chrysippus held that emotions are judgements, which is why he thought they could be corrected. Martha Nussbaum revived it in Upheavals of Thought: emotions are evaluations that something important to your flourishing is at stake.

    Your case, called a recalcitrant emotion, seems to show you hold two contradictory judgements at once. Nussbaum's answer is that the evaluation in fear isn't a considered belief of the kind you'd state in an argument. It's a more primitive appraisal, a way the world seems, which can persist against what you believe, the way a visual illusion persists after you've measured it. In the Müller-Lyer illusion two lines look unequal even when you know they're equal. You're not contradicting yourself; your seeing and your believing disagree.

    That analogy also answers your last question. Emotions have content, so they can be wrong, the way a perception can be wrong. Your fear presents the spider as dangerous, and it isn't. So your fear is mistaken, but you aren't irrational for having it, any more than you're irrational for seeing the lines as unequal.

    Helpful · 3

Other answers

  1. Layla Sfeir

    Fellow

    A thousand-year-old version of Elif's answer: Ibn Sina posits an estimative faculty (wahm) that perceives meanings in things that the senses don't directly register. His famous example is the sheep that perceives hostility in a wolf and flees, without ever reasoning about wolves. The faculty is shared with animals and works below intellect. Your spider fear sounds like your estimative faculty and your intellect reaching different verdicts.

  2. Alistair Gow

    Fellow

    And this is why exposure therapy works where argument doesn't. Plenty of phobic patients passed through the surgery where I worked. Explaining the facts did nothing; the patients already knew them. Gradual exposure changes the appraisal itself, the "seeming", rather than the belief. If emotions were just beliefs, we'd cure phobias with leaflets.

    Helpful · 1
  3. Hsieh Wei-ting

    Fellow

    This is making me think about my job. Players are afraid in horror games of monsters they know don't exist. By Elif's account that fear is also a "seeming" that persists against belief. So the spider and the monster are the same problem, and I've been building spiders for a living.

    Helpful · 2
    1. Elif Yıldız

      Fellow

      Exactly, and philosophers call that one the paradox of fiction: how can we fear what we believe isn't real? Your studio is a laboratory for it.

      Helpful · 3