The Emotion Ontology (MFOEM)

This branch is still very much under construction and will be worked on in collaboration with the Behaviour Ontology (George Gkoutos).

Excluded the following subjective feelings which appear on the GRID questionnaire since they seem debatable to what extent they are really feelings and to what extent they are actually evaluations or other things:

-- felt submissive/dominant -- felt powerless/powerful

Disgust is thought to have evolved to guard the body against dangerous foods and microbial infections. This basic physiological disgust has also culturally evolved to incorporate both moral and interpersonal disgust which protect the self from social threats.

The linguistic use of the verb 'hate' in English is ambiguous between registering any kind of aversion (e.g. in the sentence 'I hate spinach'), and the much stronger meaning which is associated with descriptions of the emotion hatred. [Source: OCEAS]

Fear is characterised by feelings of threat and impending doom, and by an urge to get out of the situation.

Not sure whether this should be seen as a synonym for 'having tears in the eyes' -- there probably need to be different degrees of crying.

GRID questionnaire distinguishes between appraisal of pleasantness FOR SELF and appraisal of pleasantness FOR SOME OTHER. So far we have defined appraisal as evaluation of relevance FOR SELF, thus, we only include one appraisal of pleasantness (for the time being), although we may expand this later -- although I suspect that all or most of the appraisal types would have to be so qualified.

Like pleasantness, the GRID questionnaire distinguishes between evaluations of goal importance/relevance for SELF and for an OTHER.

Distinguished in GRID questionnaire between FOR SELF and FOR OTHER.

Can also be defined FOR SELF and FOR OTHER, where a special case of OTHER is 'society' (=> a judgement that an event violated laws or socially accepted norms)

May want to distinguish violation of 'standards' from that of 'ideals', 'norms' and 'laws'. At the moment they are all lumped together.

This appraisal category stands alone: appraisal of loss is not a continuum like the others (pleasant---unpleasant; expected---unexpected). Rather it is quite discrete, loss or no loss, and is better defined by WHAT has been lost, or at least, in which relation the thing that has been lost stands to the person experiencing the emotion. Loss of a loved person, loss of the expectation of achieving a hoped for life goal, and loss of a limb are all kinds of loss.

While it is tempting not to categorise this as an appraisal at all, it should be noted that the loss does not actually have to occur -- it only has to be believed, judged, or (in other words) appraised to have occurred -- for the emotion to take place.

May have an evaluative component as well as a feeling component. Needs discussing.

Note that 'feeling nervous' is related to 'anxiety' but is not identical with it. Feeling nervous is the subjective experience of nervousness, while anxiety is a full-blown emotion process. Affective feelings are process parts of emotion processes.

Moods are more difficult to individuate into types than emotions. We may speak of a good mood, a bad mood, or suchlike. We may also speak of being in an angry mood or other moods which take their identity from emotions. These often accompany a heightened disposition to undergo the emotion they are named for.

Here phenomenologically similar' means inter alia: (1) that the experience isof' or is `targeted towards' some region R of the body of S, so that all pain is in this sense (and however diffusely) localized; (2) that the experience involves a dimension of unpleasantness which -- as is shown by the case of pain asymbolia -- is not necessarily of the sort that involves suffering or aversion on the part of the subject S.

Physical pleasure is not named just 'pleasure' as that has already been used for emotional pleasure.