Description
Book SynopsisAn empirically informed, philosophical account of the nature of anxiety and its value for agency, virtue, and decision making.In The Anxious Mind, Charlie Kurth offers a philosophical account of anxiety in its various forms, investigating its nature and arguing for its value in agency, virtue, and decision making. Folk wisdom tells us that anxiety is unpleasant and painful, and scholarly research seems to provide empirical and philosophical confirmation of this. But Kurth points to anxiety's positive effects: enhancing performance, facilitating social interaction, and even contributing to moral thought and action.
Kurth argues that an empirically informed philosophical account of anxiety can help us understand the nature and value of emotions, and he offers just such an account. He develops a model of anxiety as a bio-cognitive emotion—anxiety is an aversive emotional response to uncertainty about threats or challenges—and shows that this model captur
