A Deflationary View of Moods as Self-Sustained Emotional Residues

Abstract Philosophers discussing moods have been struggling with finding a principled way to distinguish moods from emotions. This paper places itself distinctly against this mainstream. Its crucial upshot is that we do not need to postulate moods as a distinctive type of mental state, different from emotions. I will argue that alleged differences between moods and emotions that one can repeatedly find in the literature can be explained away simply in terms of certain features of emotions themselves. These features stem from the inertia found in some emotional episodes. Two key such features are, first, the residual character of such episodes, according to which they tend to remain, or at least retain some of their characteristics, even after the emotional response as such is in principle over. The second key feature is that such emotional residues take the slightest opportunity to reactivate and develop as a new full-fledged emotional episode of the same kind as the one it originates from. I will also argue that my deflationary view on moods is as a matter of fact consistent with the scientific, or empirical, literature on moods and can also easily accommodate commonsense thinking about moods.