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If I fear X, does that usually mean that I am worried that X may be true even if there is no evidence for it? If so, is fear nothing but an unjustified assumption?

Note that by fear, I do not mean the fight or flight response you may have from seeing a lion in front of you. I am referring to conscious fears, fears that require some forethought, such as "What if I grow old and never feel love?" "What if the girl I talk to laughs at me?" "What if I never become rich?" etc etc.

Is there any such fear like this that isn't ultimately an unjustified assumption? If the fear had evidence behind it, I fail to see how it would remain to be a fear. Instead of fearing it, you would simply believe in it. For example, if I did not study for a test at all, but had to do the test anyways, I fail to see how I would feel much fear given the near certainty in my knowledge that I would not do well. On the other hand, I can imagine one feeling stronger bouts of fear if they are an above average student, or even an excellent student, right before doing the test.

So is fear nothing but an unjustified assumption?

thinkingman
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  • "unjustified assumption"? It seems that your are considering conscious fears as a sort of "argument"... – Mauro ALLEGRANZA Jun 14 '23 at 08:15
  • if you did not studied for a test at all, you have the rational expectation that you will not pass the test: the level of worry ("fear") involved in it depends on your attitude toward stress etc. – Mauro ALLEGRANZA Jun 14 '23 at 08:18
  • What fundamental differences do you make between the two fears "What if the lion in front of me eats me?" and "What if the girl in front of me laughs at me?"? – Stef Jun 14 '23 at 08:22
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    See e.g. [Theories of Rational Choice](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationality-normative-utility/): if I did not studied at all, the rational choice will be : enroll for a future test session. – Mauro ALLEGRANZA Jun 14 '23 at 08:25
  • I suppose you could word it that way. But "unjustified assumption" makes it sound like a reasoning error, but worries are not arrived at through deliberation. – Scott Rowe Jun 14 '23 at 10:33
  • "If I fear X, does that usually mean that I am worried that X may be true even if there is no evidence for it?" Some fears are justified, some are not. Some worries are justified, some are not. It is an empirical question what proportion of fears are justified and what portion are nor. It is an empirical question what proportion of fears are justified and what portion are nor. It is also an empirical question what proportion of worries are justified and what portion are nor. – Ludwig V Jun 14 '23 at 12:10
  • "If the fear had evidence behind it, I fail to see how it would remain to be a fear." That means that a justified fear is not a fear. If you choose to use the word in that way, it follows that all fears are irrational. So if there is good evidence that an event F is likely to happen to me, with bad consequences, how would you describe a rational attitude to F? – Ludwig V Jun 14 '23 at 12:17

2 Answers2

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There's an important distinction to be made between your title question and some of the explanatory text.

Title question: Does fear stem from unjustified assumptions.

Concluding question: So is fear nothing but an unjustified assumption?

The answer to the title question is 'Yes'. Fear stems from unjustified and justified assumptions; from knowledge about the future (or as close as we can come to it) and from mere beliefs and guesses about what the future might hold.

"What if I grow old and never feel love?", "What if the girl I talk to laughs at me?", and "What if I never become rich?" are not assumptions. They are questions about future possibilities (about which the questioner is presumably fearful).

The concluding question conflates emotion with belief. Fear is not a belief. It is typically an apprehension caused by a belief that something might happen or is definitely going to happen. This question also seems to ignore the fact that fears might be justified.

Futilitarian
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Fear is somewhat the perception that a situation is of "life altering importance" in combination with the perception of being unable to handle it.

Also worth nothing this is just the perception of it, it neither means that the situation has to be life altering, the importance can be "objective" (like being eaten by a lion is something that a bystander is able to readily comprehend) or it could be subjective like making a step towards someone you like may not be seen like much for a bystander, but it could feel like the most important decision in your entire life to you. Likewise the situation might be actually severely dangerous but you might not perceive it as such.

Same goes for your ability to handle it, you might be unable to handle it and be fearless nonetheless or you might have all the tools to deal with it and more and you still might feel ill-equipped.

Also what do you mean by "unjustified assumptions"? That sounds like the problem is just being wrong or making assumptions. But the problem in many situations is that you're confronted with an uncertainty, not only about which outcomes will actually happen, but even what the possible outcomes will be and how they will "feel", yet in terms of fear you expect them to be bad.

And that assumption can be both justified or unjustified. And whether you stress about it is not related to that question. Like let me assure you it does not fill you with serenity to face a test if you haven't actively practiced beforehand. Removing the uncertainty about the outcome of the test kinda misses the point that what you're anxiousness about might not be the test itself but what comes after the test and that this is outside of your control and your knowledge but it's likely not positive. (Also not learning for a test isn't assuring instant failure either, you're learning all the time so just because you're not actively doing it doesn't mean you're not still doing it).

Likewise what's bothering is not whether the assumption is true of false but that you don't know how to handle the situation. Like often enough the exact worst case scenario actually happens and it's not a big deal. You might fail your first attempt? Who gives a shit. It's likely to end up being one of hundreds of failures in thousands of attempts, but if it's the first it's something that you don't fell equipped to handle and so you're running "what if"-scenarios in your head without knowing their outcome, probability or significance and increase the feeling of inadequacy.

Now most of them end up being wrong or different from your expectation, but are they therefor unjustified? Like I've recently read the advice that you should actually fully sketch out the worst nightmare scenario of yours and walk through it in your mind, that way you might build up the confidence by being able to prepare for something, rather than being overwhelmed by an abstract feeling of being powerless in the face of a threat.

haxor789
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