Dr Carolyn Price

Professional biography

Carolyn's primary research interests lie in the Philosophy of Mind, and linking all her work is a broad interest in meaning and norms. In 2001, she published her first book, Functions in Mind (Oxford University Press) in which she set out a teleosemantic theory of intentional content. For many years, her research has focused primarily on the philosophy of emotion: she has published a series of articles and chapters on (for example) the nature of emotion, the distinction between emotion and moods, the intentional properties of emotion, as well as the nature and value of particular emotions, such as love and grief. In 2015, she published a book Emotion (Polity Press) in which she presents an account of emotion as a functional response to the world.

After publishing her book, she turned her attention to some fresh questions concerning emotional action, authenticity and the self. In 2016, she co-organised (with Manuel Dries and Sophie-Grace Chappell) a conference titled Owning Our Emotions: Emotion, Authenticity and the Self; and since then has published articles on the significance of regret and on the possibility of collective emotional action; Recent conference and seminar talks include talks on the nature of emotional action, presented at Glasgow University, and on the notion of a balanced emotional response, which was presented at conferences in London and Tartu (2017). She has also continued to work on the philosophy of mood: she spoke on mood, meaning and character at the Canadian Philosophical Association annual conference in 2018, and has contributed a chapter on mood to the Routledge Handbook of Emotion Theory, edited by Andrea Scarantino (forthcoming). She has co-edited (with Justin Caouette) a volume on the philosophy of compassion, published in 2018. 

As an Open University Lecturer, Carolyn contributed material to a number of Philosophy modules -- most recently, the MA module A853, to which she contributed material on the philosophy of  emotion. She chaired the production of A333 Key Questions in Philosophy, and contributed three chapters one of the module books -- Knowledge and Reason. In these chapters, she considers two questions about rationality. (1) What does it mean to think in a rational way? (Is it just a matter of reasoning logically, for example?) (2) Is it ever rational to take someone's word for something -- and if so, why, exactly?

Carolyn was also closely involved with a number of interdisciplinary modules. She played a leading role in the production of AA100 The Arts Past and Present, and went on to chair the module for a number of years: she remained a member of the module team until the module came to an end. More recently, she was deputy module team chair throughout the production of AA100's successor - A111 Discovering the Arts and Humanitities. She was also academic editor for Book 3 Crossing Boundaries, to which she contributed a chapter on the philosophy of compassion. Among other things, the chapter compares and contrasts the views of the eighth century Buddhist philosopher Shantideva and the nineteenth century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. She also contributed a chapter on the ancient Greek philosopher Plato: the chapter introduces Plato's dialogue Laches, in which he considers the nature of courage. Her final contribution to Open University teaching materials was a short piece on Martin Luther's theory of conscience, which forms part of the first block of A113 Revolutions. On both A111 and A113, she worked closely with colleagues specialising in Religious Studies, enabling her to experience first hand the value and pleasure of working across disciplines in the Humanities.

For many years, Carolyn has communicated her research on the philosophy of emotion to a broader audience through talks, blog posts and short chapters in publications aimed at the general public. For example, in 2018 she contributed a short chapter on grief to a book exploring negative emotions (Shadows of the Soul. Routledge 2018) and in 2020 she published a short on regret to a collection which arose from a theatre project exploring the seasons (Summer. Autumn. Winter. Spring. Staging Life and Death. Manchester University Press 2020). She has acted as academic consultant on a number of BBC documentaries, most recently a series of three documentaries on Socrates, Confucius and the Buddha (Genius of the Ancient World, BBC 2015). She has made contributed a number of pieces (mainly on ancient philosophy) to OpenLearn; and was academic consultant for Castle Forest Island Sea, an online game which enables players to explore their views on the philosophy of rationality, while trying to escape from a rather peculiar island. 

From 2017 to 2019, Carolyn was co-editor (with Eric Walle) of Emotion Researcher: an interdisciplinary sourcebook for research on emotion and affect belonging to the International Society for Research of Emotion.