Abstract
Among the characteristic features of depression is a diminishment in or lack of action and motivation. In this paper, I consider a dominant philosophical account which purports to explain this lack of action or motivation. This approach comes in different versions but a common theme is, I argue, an over reliance on psychologistic assumptions about action–explanation and the nature of motivation. As a corrective I consider an alternative view that gives a prominent place to the body in motivation. Central to the experience of depression are changes to how a person is motivated to act and, also as central, are changes to bodily feelings and capacities. I argue that broadly characterizing motivation in terms of bodily capacities can, in particular, provide a more compelling account of depressive motivational pathology.
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Notes
For discussion of related issues, see Nordenfelt (2007).
The term ‘silenced’ here refers to John McDowell’s idea that a virtuous agent does not deliberate about what the right thing to do is by weighing considerations for and against virtuous behaviour. Rather, being virtuous ‘silences’ considerations that might compete or conflict with what virtuous action requires. See McDowell (1998, Chaps. 1, 3 and 4).
The example is Law’s (2009, 352).
Empirical research on ‘learned helplessness’ by Seligman and colleagues purports to show that people with depression have a tendency to adopt a ‘pessimistic explanatory style’ when characterizing events (e.g., Abramson and Seligman 1978; Seligman et al. 1988), and they suggest that ‘undoing’ this style ‘may be a curative element in the cognitive therapy of depression’ (Seligman et al. 1988, 17). Law draws on the cognitive account of depression as advanced by Beck (e.g., Beck et al. 1979) to show that ‘cognitive restructuring’ can have important therapeutic effects for people with depression.
A complimentary view emphasizes how a depressed person’s psychology can be described as hyperactive or ‘on overdrive’ rather that as ‘deficient’, particularly in cases of moral evaluations. See O’Conner et al. (2007).
See also Smith (1994, 120–121).
In the context Roberts draws on David Lewis (1989) to help show that values cannot merely be beliefs.
This characterization of moral judgement is thus a form of ‘internalism’ with regard to motivation. For a helpful recent attempt to assess the credentials of motivational internalism with regard to depression, see Cholbi (2011).
Extracts from an on-line depression questionnaire conducted during 2011 as part of an AHRC and DFG funded project, ‘Emotional Experience in Depression: A Philosophical Study’, based at Durham University and Osnabrück University. The questionnaire was formulated in collaboration with researchers at the UK mental health charity SANE.
Changes to temporal experience are often reported in depression, sometimes in quite radical ways. As Andrew Solomon writes: ‘When you are depressed, the past and the future are absorbed entirely by the present moment, as in the world of a three-year-old … Being upset, even profoundly upset, is a temporal experience, while depression is a-temporal’ (Solomon 2001, 55). See Fuchs (2001, 2005b, 2010) and Ratcliffe (forthcoming).
A notable theme in the questionnaire responses (see no. 10) as in other accounts of depression is how people describe the world as looking ‘grey’ (or ‘dark’ or ‘black’) and use numerous other references to colour. Recent empirical research has suggested that such descriptions may have a physiological basis since studies on retinal response purport to show a ‘reduced sensitivity of subjective contrast perception in depressed patients’ and thus how ‘depression can be measured in the eye of the diseased’. See Bubl et al. (2010).
For an overview of this and related topics, see McLaughlin and Bennett (2011).
See Carman (1999) for discussion of the differences between Husserl and Merleau-Ponty on the body. I am contrasting a Humean and a phenomenological perspective. However, it is worth pointing out that what is considered ‘Humean’ has taken on a distinctive meaning in analytic philosophy of mind, one that need not be shared by all readers of Hume. For instance, Husserl and Merleau-Ponty recognized Hume as an early (if not entirely convincing) phenomenologist. For example, see Merleau-Ponty (2002, 256). Also, for a phenomenological engagement with Hume particularly with respect to the body, see Todes (2001).
Such emotional resonance can be understood as wide-scope, involving changes in the structure of interpersonal relations and self-understanding. As Graham puts it: ‘Depression … is not just a mood disorder or specific to feeling or affect. It also is a disorder of care and emotional commitment as well as, oftentimes, of self-comprehension’ (Graham 2010, 47).
See no. 10.
What unites these aspects is an ‘intentional arc’ which in illness ‘goes limp’, as he puts it (Merleau-Ponty 2002, 157).
See also Wrathall (2005).
The slightly different context is a discussion of how to characterize the meaning of speech. Again, Merleau-Ponty suggests an alternative to what he characterizes as intellectualist and empiricist accounts and one that builds on the approach to the body being here considered. See Baldwin (2007, p. 88 and no. 2) for a warning not to run Merleau-Ponty’s ‘realm of reasons’ and Sellars’s ‘space of reasons’ together — although there is some affinity. See also Taylor (2005).
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Acknowledgements
Research for this paper was supported by funding from the AHRC and DFG for the project ‘Emotional Experience in Depression: A Philosophical Study’. I would like to thank my colleagues on this project for numerous helpful conversations, particularly Matthew Ratcliffe, Hannah Shand and Angela Woods. Earlier presentations of this paper also received very helpful feedback from Lisa Bortolotti, Jonathan Cole, Jonathan Lowe, Donnchadh O’Conaill, Jennifer Radden, Fredrik Svenaeus and Tim Thornton, and it has been improved by the insightful comments and suggestions from two anonymous referees. Also many thanks to those people who took the time to complete the depression questionnaire.
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Smith, B. Depression and motivation. Phenom Cogn Sci 12, 615–635 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-012-9264-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-012-9264-0