Is Hope More Like Faith or More Like Worry?

There has been a renewed interest in the role of hope for our ability to act rationally under uncertainty, where accounts have tended to focus on either one of two (apparently contradictory) aspects of this attitude. On the one hand, like faith, hope is viewed as an attitude which grants us resolve and determination to continue striving towards uncertain goals. On the other hand, like worry, hope is also viewed as a process in which we cognitively engage with possible futures, motivated to reduce the epistemic uncertainty surrounding the occurrence of goal-relevant outcomes. I spell out how an emotional account of the psychological nature of hope is able to accommodate both of these claims, as well as classic challenges (such as cases of “recalcitrant hopes”). Within this framework, hope is both a positive emotion (it consistently evaluates its object as good) and also an “emotion of uncertainty” or epistemic emotion, through which we apprehend that a given goal-relevant outcome is possible, albeit uncertain.