Epistemic Anxiety, Adaptive Cognition, and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Abstract

Emotions might contribute to our being rational cognitive agents. Anxiety-and more specifically epistemic anxiety-provides an especially interesting case study into the role of emotion for adaptive cognition. In this paper, I aim at clarifying the epistemic contribution of anxiety, and the role that ill-calibrated anxiety might play in maladaptive epistemic activities which can be observed in psychopathology. In particular, I argue that this emotion contributes to our ability to adapt our cognitive efforts to how we represent the practical factors relevant to the task at hand, by signaling the need for increased cognitive processing and evidence gathering in highstakes situations. I hypothesize that dysfunctional or ill-calibrated epistemic anxiety might play an important role in the motivation driving persons with obsessivecompulsive disorder (OCD) to invest high amounts of cognitive resources into the resolution of apparently simple and innocuous questions. As I argue, OCD might be conceived as a case in which epistemic anxiety is inappropriately elicited, representing these as high-stakes questions, and inadequately signaling a need for cognition. In this paper, I thus make use of the concept of (epistemic) anxiety as developed in the philosophy of emotion and in epistemology, to propose an account of the role of anxiety in the pathological doubt that is central to obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Epistemic anxiety and epistemic risk

“…It has greater explanatory power than Nagel's: where Nagel says only that epistemic anxiety is a force, I argue that it is an emotion, hence has a particular representational, affective and motivational profile that explains how epistemic anxiety can do the epistemological work to which Nagel puts it. My account is also more plausible than Juliette Vazard's (2018Vazard's ( , 2021 account, on which epistemic anxiety is an emotional response to threat to one's practical interests. Vazard's account is problematic in two ways: it cannot distinguish epistemic anxiety from anxiety in general, and it cannot capture all instances of epistemic anxiety.…”

“…In offering an account of epistemic anxiety as an emotion, my account explains how it is able to do the epistemological work to which Nagel puts it. My account is also more plausible than Juliette Vazard's (2018Vazard's ( , 2021, on which epistemic anxiety is an emotional response to potential threat to one's practical interests. Vazard's account cannot distinguish epistemic anxiety from anxiety in general, and also fails to capture all instances of what we want to call epistemic anxiety.…”

“…In this section, I compare my account of epistemic anxiety to two extant accounts in the literature: Jennifer Nagel's (2010a) and Juliette Vazard's (2018Vazard's ( , 2021. I argue that my account has an explanatory advantage over Nagel's, because it explains how epistemic anxiety is able to do the epistemological work to which Nagel puts it, and that it is preferable to Vazard's account for two reasons: my account, but not Vazard's, distinguishes epistemic anxiety from anxiety more broadly; and my account captures all instances of emotional episodes of epistemic anxiety, while Vazard's cannot get a grip in cases where nothing is at stake for the subject.…”

Anticipating and enacting worlds: moods, illness and psychobehavioral adaptation

“…As part of the "what if" stories we use to anticipate events and our ability to cope, anxiety stands out as an epistemic emotion (Vazard 2018), enhancing performance when levels are moderate (Barlow 2001, Ch. 1).…”

“…none of the definitional components necessarily apply, so that it is not just one thing. After all, we can suffer anxiety over past choices or about unpleasant dental procedures foreseen with certainty; we can also anxiously adjudicate between two great job options, just as we can anxiously await a fond meeting with a lover (Miceli & Castelfranchi 2005;Kurth 2015;Vazard 2018). It is worth remembering emotional concepts are handed down in language and culture and are accordingly unlike notions such as electron degeneracy that are nearly exclusively determined by scientists (Miceli & Castelfranchi 2005;Prinz 2007;Crippen 2018Crippen , 2023.…”