Journal of Philosophy of Emotion Podcast · Journal of Philosophy of Emotion

JPE Book Symposium: Propelled: How Boredom, Frustration, and Anticipation Lead Us to the Good Life, Part 2

·1 hr 37 min·5 clips

A virtual-and-augmented rabbit in an Alice in Wonderland setup was used to test whether boredom drives exploration.

The symposium becomes a taxonomy, but not a dry one. Elpidera starts with Contissi's objections: existentialism, analytic philosophy, the need for negative emotions, missing literature, and experimental studies. Then the reply moves to Hardcastle's challenge about unexpected non-reward and unexpected punishment as different kinds of events. A definition matters here. Dollard and colleagues give the classical account of frustration as interference with an instigated goal response. That account is wide on purpose. It can treat punishment, loss, and non-reward as obstacles that block expected gratification or goal attainment. Elpidera does not simply take it over. He uses it to show that broad accounts of frustration already have a home in the literature. The real turn is psychological. Propelled treats frustration as an emotional state, not just something that happens out there in the world. Appraisal does the work. Frustration depends on how a situation is evaluated, not only on the external event. Hardcastle can still resist that broader frame, and the reply leaves room for unexpected non-reward and unexpected punishment to matter differently in psychology. The ending opens the frame a bit. Pain, disgust, sadness, shame, anger, rage, frustration, depression, and existential ennui are all aversive, but they are not aversive in the same way. So deep boredom is not just ordinary boredom turned up. It looks functionally different, which makes simple comparisons between the two feel too quick.

As heard by us

A careful dispute over frustration, negative emotions, and boredom.

Andreas Elpidera is at his best when he keeps frustration as a worldly event separate from frustration as an emotional state, then uses that split to test what aversive phenomenology can actually prove.

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Why you'd press play

A compact reply session for listeners who like philosophy arguing with itself.

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