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The Format of Emotion: Toward a Theory of Affective Representation| title | The Format of Emotion: Toward a Theory of Affective Representation |
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| start_date | 2026/02/20 |
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| schedule | 10h45 |
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| online | no |
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| location_info | salle des Actes |
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| summary | Both philosophers and cognitive scientists have offered influential theories of emotion, yet a fundamental question has largely been neglected: what is the representational format of emotion? Philosophical accounts have focused primarily on the ontology of emotion—on what emotions are—and on describing their components, including phenomenology, evaluative content, physiological bases, and action tendencies. Much less attention has been paid to how these components are encoded and integrated as mental representations. At the same time, computational and cognitive-scientific models have developed sophisticated accounts of representational format in perception, thought, and action, while remaining largely silent about emotion.
This project aims to fill this gap by investigating how emotions are represented—by identifying their structure and format, the kinds of information they make explicit, and the ways they interact with other mental systems. Emotions are often modeled as computations over informational content, yet without specifying the representational medium through which that content is encoded. I argue that this omission obscures how affective states integrate with cognition. By uncovering the representational format of emotion, the project sheds light on the mechanisms through which emotions influence belief, expectation, and reasoning, helping to explain why affective states can sometimes override purely instrumental considerations and shape motivated cognition—why, for example, what we feel can reshape what we take to be true. |
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| responsibles | de Vignemont |
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Workflow history| from state (1) | to state | comment | date |
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| submitted | published | | 2026/02/13 11:03 UTC |
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