Grief as Attention

Abstract

Abstract: Grief seems difficult to locate within familiar emotion taxonomies, as it is not a basic emotion nor a hybrid thereof. Here I propose that grief is better conceptualized as an emotionally rich attentional phenomenon rather than an emotion or sequence of emotions. In grieving that another person has died, the loss incurred by the grieving, etc. occupies the forefront of the grieving subject's consciousness while other candidate facts for their attention recede into the background. The former set of facts thus sit near the top of their mental 'priority structures' throughout a grief event. The hypothesis that grief is attentional helps to explain several common phenomenological features of grief experience, underpins a credible 'metaphysics' of grief, accounts for the extent to which grief is susceptible to choice and agency, and addresses a recent puzzle regarding our reasons to grieve and our apparent proclivity toward 'resilience' in the face of grief.