The Nature and Rationality of Worry

Worry is familiar to us all. We also have a good sense that worrying about something can be rational or irrational. However, despite this apparent familiarity, what worry is, and the conditions under which worrying can be irrational, are questions that are surprisingly difficult to answer. Moreover, there has been no dedicated account of worry or its rationality within the relevant philosophical literature. As such, the aim of this thesis is to explore the nature of worry itself – what worry is, what we are doing when we worry, and why we do it – as well as the boundaries of rationality within it – how worrying can be irrational and how irrational worry might come about. In doing so I aim to bring worry into focus, shedding light on it in a way that contributes both to our philosophical and lay understanding of it. The account I provide will be supported by the extant psychological and empirical literature on worry, anxiety and the emotions more generally.