I am pleased to say that the flurry of recent posts have been delightful. I agree with them all, even those that state they are disagreeing with me.
As Chris says, the technical mathematics and programming of that nasty computer program may be fine, but their understanding of the phenomena they claim to be studying is incredibly flawed.
Did I stop Chris cold with citations? Hey -- the secret weapon! We don't need silver bullets, wooden stakes, or magical incantations: just find some random citations and throw them. Anywhere -- just throw. Hell, it works wonders on promotion committees as well. Oh, if you cite my papers I will cite yours -- that is how we boos our citation count, which is what promotion is about. It isn’t about great work, important findings or anything like that, it is like that emotion program: just give me the numbers.
And Terry is absolutely correct in stating that we are trying to fit the square pegs of old-fashioned emotion terms into the round holes of contemporary society, design, and life. Yes, Ortony, Clore and Collins struggled in their book with terminology. That book is old and barely surviving. But Engineers love it because they can program to it. It doesn’t matter whether or not they understand it -- what matters is that it is easy to write a program following it.
The problem is that we don’t have new terms to replace the old. Actually all fields suffer when they try to use a term already in the popular vocabulary to mean something precise and technical. Even new terms do not fare well: look at the horrible misconceptions that have arisen trying to maintain the purity of the concept of "affordance." (I just wrote an article using the word and the editor rejected it, saying "can't you think of a different word for this?" No, said I, in a hurt tone of voice, well, in a hurt tone of typed writing.)
As for the sublime, I don't count that as an emotion. She was sublime? I am sublime? I am sublimed with her. At her? By her? Instead of her?
Oh well.
Ciao
Don
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