Experiencing Emotions

2020 ◽  
pp. 213-235
Author(s):  
Rebecca Copenhaver ◽  
Jay Odenbaugh
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Expression ◽  
Basic Emotions ◽  
Perceptual Knowledge ◽  
Expression Of Emotion ◽  
The World ◽  
Perceptual Systems ◽  
Mitchell Green

This chapter provides an account of the basic emotions and their expression. Emotions are experiences that have the function of indicating how we are faring in our environment. Emotions are also objects of experience: our perceptual systems are sensitive to the expression of emotion in our environment by features that have the function of indicating emotions. Thus, we come to have to knowledge of emotions by perceptually representing properties that function to indicate them. The chapter applies this account to expression in art. What does it mean to say that an artwork expresses sadness? Is perceiving joy in an artwork the same kind of experience as perceiving joy in a friend’s face? How may artworks express emotions without having emotions? The chapter offers a representationalist account of the basic emotions on which exteroceptive and interoceptive systems combine to constitute a system whose states—emotions—indicate how we are faring. Building on the work of Dominic Lopes (2005) and Mitchell Green (2007), the chapter offers a teleosemantic account of emotional expression in art that is impersonal and continuous with a representationalist account of the basic emotions. Features in the environment express emotions even in conditions in which there is no person to whom the emotion is attributable. We experience emotions in two ways: we may have emotions, and we experience emotions as represented properties of the environment. In both cases, experiencing emotions is a matter of experiencing how things are in the world and thus provides perceptual knowledge.

Numerical symbols as explanations of human perceptual experience

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Barner
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Number Words ◽  
The World ◽  
Symbolic Systems ◽  
Perceptual Systems

Why did humans develop precise systems for measuring experience, like numbers, clocks, andcalendars? I argue that precise representational systems were constructed by earlier generationsof humans because they recognized that their noisy perceptual systems were not capturingdistinctions that existed in the world. Abstract symbolic systems did not arise from perceptualrepresentations, but instead were constructed to describe and explain perceptual experience. Byanalogy, I argue that when children learn number words, they do not rely on noisy perceptualsystems, but instead acquire these words as units in a broader system of procedures, whosemeanings are ultimately defined by logical relations to one another, not perception.

scholarly journals Typical emotional expression in children’s drawings of the human face

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleonora Cannoni ◽  
Giuliana Pinto ◽  
Anna Silvia Bombi
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Expression ◽  
Visual Cues ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Emotional Expressions ◽  
Basic Emotions ◽  
Preferential Expression ◽  
Human Figure ◽  
Figure Drawings ◽  
Number Of Faces ◽  
Human Faces

AbstractThis study was aimed at verifying if children introduce emotional expressions in their drawings of human faces, and if a preferential expression exists; we also wanted to verify if children’s pictorial choices change with increasing age. To this end we examined the human figure drawings made by 160 boys and 160 girls, equally divided in 4 age groups: 6–7; 8–9; 10–11; 12–13 years; mean ages (SD in parentheses) were: 83,30 (6,54); 106,14 (7,16) 130,49 (8,26); 155,40 (6,66). Drawings were collected with the Draw-a-Man test instructions, i.e. without mentioning an emotional characterization. In the light of data from previous studies of emotion drawing on request, and the literature about preferred emotional expressions, we expected that an emotion would be portrayed even by the younger participants, and that the preferred emotion would be happiness. We also expected that with the improving ability to keep into account both mouth and eyes appearance, other expressions would be found besides the smiling face. Data were submitted to non-parametric tests to compare the frequencies of expressions (absolute and by age) and the frequencies of visual cues (absolute and by age and expressions). The results confirmed that only a small number of faces were expressionless, and that the most frequent emotion was happiness. However, with increasing age this representation gave way to a variety of basic emotions (sadness, fear, anger, surprise), whose representation may depend from the ability to modify the shapes of both eyes and mouth and changing communicative aims of the child.

The body and the verb

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 209-239
Author(s):  
Frances Kofod ◽  
Anna Crane
Keyword(s):  
Western Australia ◽  
The Body ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Expression Of Emotion ◽  
The World ◽  
Physical Impact ◽  
Local Representations ◽  
Australian Languages

Abstract This paper explores the figurative expression of emotion in Gija, a non-Pama-Nyungan language from the East Kimberley in Western Australia. As in many Australian languages, Gija displays a large number of metaphors of emotion where miscellaneous body parts – frequently, the belly – contribute to the figurative representation of emotions. In addition, in Gija certain verbal constructions describe the experience of emotion via metaphors of physical impact or damage. This second profile of metaphors is far less widespread, in Australia and elsewhere in the world, and has also attracted far fewer descriptions. This article explores both types of metaphors in turn. Body-based metaphors will be discussed first, and we will highlight the specificity of Gija in this respect, so as to offer data that can be compared to other languages, in Australia and elsewhere. The second part of the article will present verbal metaphors. Given that this phenomenon is not yet very well undersood, this account aims to take a first step into documenting a previously unexplored domain in the language thereby contributing to the broader typology that this issue forms a part of. Throughout the text, we also endeavour to connect the discussion of metaphors with local representations and understanding of emotions.

scholarly journals Ten Famous Composers of the Romantic Era and their Cause of Death

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernest K.J. Pauwels
Keyword(s):  
Medical Research ◽  
Cause Of Death ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Causes Of Death ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Modern Medicine ◽  
Expression Of Emotion ◽  
The World ◽  
Romantic Era ◽  
Clinically Significant

The musical composers in the Romantic Era (1800-1910) strived for compositions that expressed human life, including happiness, harmony and despair. They lived in a period in which freedom of thinking, expression of emotion and inspiration by nature predominate. During this period, intensive trading with other parts of the world brought new microorganisms along, which made infections and epidemics very common. This article serves to address the cause of death and relevant biographic data of a number of well- known Romantic composers. Primarily, this review refers to clinically significant findings using reports that were retrieved from Pubmed, Embase and Google over the 19th, 20th and 21st century till 14th June 2021. Here, this text dwells on diseases and the cause of death of ten composers, namely Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Liszt, Mahler and Bruckner. It is evident that, in the sight of modern medicine, symptoms and forensic facts are not complete, but witnesses' reports and recent medical research have provided passable and plausible clarity. Although many questions will remain unanswered, it appears that the diseases of these composers and their causes of death have their origins in alcohol abuses, age, epidemics (like tuberculosis) and syphilis.

Knowledge from the Outside

2021 ◽  
pp. 40-79
Author(s):  
Hilary Kornblith
Keyword(s):  
The Third ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
The World ◽  
Third Person ◽  
First Person Perspective ◽  
Third Person Perspective ◽  
The Third Person ◽  
Perceptual Systems ◽  
Obvious Source

Knowledge may be examined from the third-person perspective, as psychologists and sociologists do, or it may be examined from the first-person perspective, as each of us does when we reflect on what we ought to believe. This chapter takes the third-person perspective. One obvious source of knowledge is perception, and some general features of how our perceptual systems are able to pick up information about the world around us are highlighted. The role of the study of visual illusions in this research is an important focus of the chapter. Our ability to draw out the consequences of things we know by way of inference is another important source of knowledge, and some general features of how inference achieves its successes are discussed. Structural similarities between the ways in which perception works and the ways in which inference works are highlighted.

1. What is perception?

2017 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Brian Rogers
Keyword(s):  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Past Experience ◽  
Word Perception ◽  
Sense Organs ◽  
The World ◽  
Perceptual Systems ◽  
Extract Information

The word ‘perception’ can be used in two different ways. It can refer to our experience of seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling objects and individuals around us. It can also refer to the processes that allow us to extract information from the patterns of energy that impinge on our sense organs. Thinking about perception as a set of processes has the advantage that it includes situations where there is no subjective experience. ‘What is perception?’ explains that sometimes our perceptual systems can be fooled and we experience illusions. Is this because of past experience and our knowledge of the world, or is it that we are not extracting the information in the patterns of energy reaching our senses?

scholarly journals Multistability in perception: binding sensory modalities, an overview

2012 ◽  
Vol 367 (1591) ◽  
pp. 896-905 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Luc Schwartz ◽  
Nicolas Grimault ◽  
Jean-Michel Hupé ◽  
Brian C. J. Moore ◽  
Daniel Pressnitzer
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Organization ◽  
Stimulus Information ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Physical Stimulus ◽  
Ambiguous Figures ◽  
Multistable Perception ◽  
Sensory Modalities ◽  
The World ◽  
Key Features ◽  
Perceptual Systems

This special issue presents research concerning multistable perception in different sensory modalities. Multistability occurs when a single physical stimulus produces alternations between different subjective percepts. Multistability was first described for vision, where it occurs, for example, when different stimuli are presented to the two eyes or for certain ambiguous figures. It has since been described for other sensory modalities, including audition, touch and olfaction. The key features of multistability are: (i) stimuli have more than one plausible perceptual organization; (ii) these organizations are not compatible with each other. We argue here that most if not all cases of multistability are based on competition in selecting and binding stimulus information. Binding refers to the process whereby the different attributes of objects in the environment, as represented in the sensory array, are bound together within our perceptual systems, to provide a coherent interpretation of the world around us. We argue that multistability can be used as a method for studying binding processes within and across sensory modalities. We emphasize this theme while presenting an outline of the papers in this issue. We end with some thoughts about open directions and avenues for further research.

III. Basic Emotions, Complex Emotions, Machiavellian Emotions

2003 ◽  
Vol 52 ◽  
pp. 39-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul E. Griffiths
Keyword(s):  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Complex Model ◽  
Stimulus Situation ◽  
Basic Emotions ◽  
General Properties ◽  
Richard Wollheim ◽  
Complex Emotions ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject

According to the distinguished philosopher Richard Wollheim, an emotion is an extended mental episode that originates when events in the world frustrate or satisfy a pre-existing desire (Wollheim, 1999). This leads the subject to form an attitude to the world which colours their future experience, leading them to attend to one aspect of things rather than another, and to view the things they attend to in one light rather than another. The idea that emotions arise from the satisfaction or frustration of desires—the ‘match-mismatch’ view of emotion aetiology—has had several earlier incarnations in the psychology of emotion. Early versions of this proposal were associated with the attempt to replace the typology of emotion found in ordinary language with a simpler theory of drives and to define new emotion types in terms of general properties such as the frustration of a drive. The match-mismatch view survived the demise of that revisionist project and is found today in theories that accept a folk-psychological-style taxonomy of emotion types based on the meaning ascribed by the subject to the stimulus situation. For example, the match-mismatch view forms part of the subtle and complex model of emotion episodes developed over many years by Nico Frijda (Frijda, 1986). According to Frijda, information about the ‘situational antecedents’ of an emotion—the stimulus in its context, including the ongoing goals of the organism—is evaluated for its relevance to the multiple concerns of the organism. Evaluation of match-mismatch—the degree of compatibility between the situation and the subject's goals—forms part of this process.

scholarly journals Visual Expression of Emotion in Dynamic 3D Painting System Based on Emotion Synthesis Model

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shenghe Cheng
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Mean Value ◽  
Continuous Method ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Basic Emotions ◽  
Average Value ◽  
Expression Of Emotion ◽  
Visual Expression ◽  
Painting System

Emotion is a unique ability possessed by human beings as advanced creatures. Emotions give people a unique physical and mental experience. Assigning emotions to computer systems is one of the latest topics in artificial intelligence research. The purpose is to allow machines to achieve natural coordination between humans and computers. This article focuses on the visual expression of emotion in the dynamic three-dimensional painting system, creating an intelligent painting system and realizing a good user experience. In this paper, the discrete method is used to qualitatively analyze emotions, and the continuous method is used to quantify basic emotions, and emotional modeling and emotional quantitative analysis are proposed to realize quantitative analysis of emotions. Combining these two methods, a comprehensive method is proposed, which uses a continuous method to quantify the basic emotions of each discrete dimension, and finally superimposes them into a comprehensive emotional synthesis model. Emotion modeling is the basis of emotion visualization. Borrowing the relationship between emotion synthesis model and visual emotion elements, this article puts forward the concept of qualitative and quantitative visual emotion elements, and expounds that the multidimensional superposition of visual emotion elements makes dynamic three-dimensional painting system emotions. The experimental results in this article show that the emotional visualization scheme of 100 samples is tested by quantitative statistical methods to demonstrate its effectiveness. Starting from 5 points of concern, the emotion visualization method discussed in this article can indeed convey or suggest a certain positive emotion (the average value of experience, transitivity, and infectiousness > 2.5, and the variance is close to 0), but we also found this recognition at the same time The degree is not high enough, and individual differences are large (mean value < 2.5, variance close to 1). This can indicate that different subjects have different feelings and evaluations of this emotional visualization. As long as the difference is within a reasonable range, this emotional visualization also has practical value, and has the ability to convey or suggest emotions.

scholarly journals Harmonic organisation conveys both universal and culture-specific cues for emotional expression in music

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. e0244964
Author(s):  
George Athanasopoulos ◽  
Tuomas Eerola ◽  
Imre Lahdelma ◽  
Maximos Kaliakatsos-Papakostas
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Expression ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Pitch Height ◽  
Emotional Cues ◽  
Minor Mode ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Cross Cultural Study ◽  
Expression Of Emotion ◽  
Time Harmonic ◽  
Cultural Connotations

Previous research conducted on the cross-cultural perception of music and its emotional content has established that emotions can be communicated across cultures at least on a rudimentary level. Here, we report a cross-cultural study with participants originating from two tribes in northwest Pakistan (Khow and Kalash) and the United Kingdom, with both groups being naïve to the music of the other respective culture. We explored how participants assessed emotional connotations of various Western and non-Western harmonisation styles, and whether cultural familiarity with a harmonic idiom such as major and minor mode would consistently relate to emotion communication. The results indicate that Western concepts of harmony are not relevant for participants unexposed to Western music when other emotional cues (tempo, pitch height, articulation, timbre) are kept relatively constant. At the same time, harmonic style alone has the ability to colour the emotional expression in music if it taps the appropriate cultural connotations. The preference for one harmonisation style over another, including the major-happy/minor-sad distinction, is influenced by culture. Finally, our findings suggest that although differences emerge across different harmonisation styles, acoustic roughness influences the expression of emotion in similar ways across cultures; preference for consonance however seems to be dependent on cultural familiarity.

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