(Un)reasonable doubt as affective experience: obsessive–compulsive disorder, epistemic anxiety and the feeling of uncertainty

Abstract

How does doubt come about? What are the mechanisms responsible for our inclinations to reassess propositions and collect further evidence to support or reject them? In this paper, I approach this question by focusing on what might be considered a distorting mirror of unreasonable doubt, namely the pathological doubt of patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Individuals with OCD exhibit a form of persistent doubting, indecisiveness, and over-cautiousness at pathological levels (Rasmussen and Eisen in

Apprehending anxiety: an introduction to the Topical Collection on worry and wellbeing

“…To this, Nagel ( 2010 ) adds that “epistemic anxiety” is a psychological phenomenon which allows us to better calibrate the cognitive resources we invest in forming beliefs based on the stakes in play. Juliette Vazard ( 2021 ) has hypothesized that if epistemic anxiety is responsible for our adaptive inclinations to doubt and gather further evidence on high-stakes matters, then an excess of epistemic anxiety might be involved in certain forms of dysfunctional doubting or epistemic over-cautiousness – what we see, for instance, in patients with obsessive–compulsive disorder.…”

“…How might experiencing anxiety help us achieve epistemic success or maintain our moral standing? A handful of authors have suggested that anxiety can be intrinsically valuable by contributing to epistemic success (Hookway, 1998 ; Nagel, 2010 ; Vazard, 2021 ), virtuous agency (Kurth, 2018a , b ), moral decision making (Lacewing, 2005 ; Kurth, 2015 ), and our sense of ourselves (Ratcliffe, 2008 ). Anxiety, it has been argued, is an emotion that allows us to reliably achieve both practical, moral, and epistemic goods.…”

“…In an attempt to illuminate the relationship between anxiety and risk, Newton asks: how should risk be conceived if it is to be the kind of thing that can elicit anxiety as an emotional response? Proposing a refinement to existing accounts (specifically, Nagel 2010 and Vazard, 2021 ), Newton considers three accounts of risk: normic (in which risk is determined by the most normal worlds in which a negative event obtains), probabilistic risk (determined by the likelihood of its obtaining), and modal (determined by the closeness of worlds in which a negative event obtains). She argues that epistemic anxiety is a response to epistemic risk triggered by normic and probabilistic, but not modal risk.…”

Stuck on repeat: Why do we continue to ruminate?

“…To be hypocognitive means you lack a certain concept or schematic for a concept, which includes the necessary knowledge to represent, organize, and make meaning from things or events in the world (Wu & Dunning, 2018). Wu and Dunning (2018, 2019, 2020 follow the similar school of thought as Barrett (above) that concepts are needed to make sense of the world but, they add, lacking certain concepts or the overuse of some concepts (termed 'hypercognition') shapes our cognitive experiences (through what we can remember, identify and recognise: Wu & Dunning, 2019). For example, in an experiment comparing the ability of North-American participants to remember familiar versus unfamiliar fruit, Wu and Dunning (2019) found that participants showed a bias towards not recognising culturally unfamiliar fruit rather than familiar fruit.…”

“…Similarly, research byVazard (2019) suggests there is some epistemic value to anxious doubting, when it is adaptive to do so, andKurth (2018) argues that anxiety can be both instrumentally and intrinsically valuable under some conditions.…”