Something important people who want an acurate model of the world should know: all the terms used to describe emotions are only valid as anthropological descriptions—they correlate very badly with anything physiological. In fact, emotions are unstructured collection of distinct beings and therefore fail to capture our foundations about the similarities and differences of emotions. A dimensional view of emotions is not incompatible with a categorical view. Interrelations among emotions are not new. In 1896 it was proposed that we can dissolve emotions into a three dimensional structure and in 1941 experiments began a series of investigations into the structural interrelations among emotions.
Pleasantness and level of activation (or arousal) are the only dimensions that have been found consistently to define emotions across studies.
Every other attribution made to emotions, across the ‘cultural universals’, are merely social constructs—from joy to anger to yes, homestatic emotions like hunger. When we are hungry it is instead senses that alert us to it, and we simply have bad target location. That’s that—emotions are best decribed as just degrees of pleasures—the counterpart to feelings of pain but for even cognitive things.
This is why sensory information is more meaningul. This is why empiricism is true for all human beings, regardless of weather they believe in it.
Something important people who want an acurate model of the world should know: all the terms used to describe emotions are only valid as anthropological descriptions—they correlate very badly with anything physiological. In fact, emotions are unstructured collection of distinct beings and therefore fail to capture our foundations about the similarities and differences of emotions. A dimensional view of emotions is not incompatible with a categorical view. Interrelations among emotions are not new. In 1896 it was proposed that we can dissolve emotions into a three dimensional structure and in 1941 experiments began a series of investigations into the structural interrelations among emotions.
Pleasantness and level of activation (or arousal) are the only dimensions that have been found consistently to define emotions across studies.
Every other attribution made to emotions, across the ‘cultural universals’, are merely social constructs—from joy to anger to yes, homestatic emotions like hunger. When we are hungry it is instead senses that alert us to it, and we simply have bad target location. That’s that—emotions are best decribed as just degrees of pleasures—the counterpart to feelings of pain but for even cognitive things.
This is why sensory information is more meaningul. This is why empiricism is true for all human beings, regardless of weather they believe in it.