Abstract
We conclude that the commentators seem to fundamentally agree on the substance of our proposal of a partial real definition of emotion as a dynamic episode which has to fulfill a certain number of conditions to count as a member of the class. We raise the issue of prescriptive functions of a definition, suggesting parallels to biomedical ontologies. We also clarify the issues of linguistic and cultural relativity and of differences in the nature of individual emotions.
None of our commentators, we are happy to note, object to our partial definition of emotions. But John Deigh (2012) wonders what the point or usefulness of our definition might be. Definitions come in many kinds. There are verbal definitions, conceptual analyses, theoretical definitions, and real definitions. Our partial definition is not a verbal definition. John Deigh ascribes to us a charmingly old-fashioned understanding of our definition as a contribution to conceptual analysis. He correctly notes that our partial definition is “not a theoretical definition” and is not offered “as part of a theory” (2012, p. 374). But our partial definition was not offered as a contribution to the analysis of concepts either. Rather, it is a partial real definition. It is intended to specify some of the conditions something fulfils if it is an episode of a certain kind. Just what sort of a kind emotions are: natural, psychological, linguistic, biological … we leave open. (We argue only against the claim that the kind in question is “constructed.”) Our model is provided by recent biomedical ontologies, such as the Gene Ontology. Here, too, the goal is to provide maximally neutral real definitions.
Just as definitions come in many kinds, so too, they may have many functions. One such function is prescriptive. Thus the definitions in biomedical ontologies are intended to make it possible to annotate and analyse data by ensuring consistent annotation. Neutral definitions may be used by scientists in many different disciplines and help to ensure common reference. The situation in affective science has some similarities with the situation in the biomedical sciences, although on a very much smaller scale. Our hope is that our partial definition might provide a norm which would allow those working in the different disciplines making up affective science, to communicate, collect data, and converge.
We agree that there are many different ways in which the special episodes we tried to define are categorized and labeled in different languages and cultures, as are the individual kinds. This is a fascinating topic for further work and may provide a very important way of understanding the inner workings of cultural value and regulation systems. But we hold that the mechanisms may be very similar and that there are a number of “modal emotions” for which many languages have comparable and translatable labels. We were able to demonstrate that the semantic profiles for 24 such terms, as defined by 144 features spanning all components of emotion, are highly similar across more than 30 languages and cultures (Fontaine, Scherer, & Soriano, in press). Richard Shweder (2012, p. 384) wonders how we would interpret the fact that in some cultures parents react to “apparent ‘loss,’” the death of a child, not with sadness but with fatigue. In order to understand this observation it would be necessary to know just how the parents appraise the death of a child, what the resulting response patterns are, and what word of the respective language, if any, best captures the integrated representation of these components.
Just as our partial definition solves no theoretical disputes but may help to formulate them, so too, the GRID (grid-like feature profile analysis) framework is intended to make it possible to examine the issues raised by differences between cultures and languages in a principled fashion and in the form of concerted efforts by the scientists involved. This requires the use of a common conceptual framework in a commonly understood language which today happens to be English (this in response to Asifa Majid’s [2012] complaint concerning our reliance on examples from this language).
We are not sure what Joseph LeDoux (2012) means by “one emotion at a time.” If he means that the definition of what it is to be an emotion is different for each individual kind such as fear, we do not agree. Our purpose is to define the special nature of a kind of episode, episodes which, as it happens, are popularly described as emotions. However, we agree that the underlying neural phenomena should not be forgotten in isolating constitutive features that are endorsed by many scientists. In particular, we appreciate his description of the neural processes constitutive of emotions. We reiterate our proposal to focus on the dynamic nature of emotion as an ever-changing episode, a process rather than a state. None of our commentators has taken up this point—they all talk about steady states and often use analogies with chairs or tigers rather than rain or thunderstorms, which might be more appropriate.