A REVIEW ON MEANINGS OF EMOTIONS: STEPS TO A NEURAL-INFORMATIONAL NOTION OF SEMANTICS

Author

Ebrahim Oshni ALVANDI*

Psychological Studies, Faculty of Arts, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

ABSTRACT

The current analytical review begins with a procedural discussion of semantics over antecedent philosophical perspectives such as platonic approach, semantic realism, and Fregeanism, showing that such frameworks are not capable in explaining the semantics of emotions. The review then introduces an alternative view to emotional semantics. The notion of Neuro-Informational Semantics refers to a cognitive-neural approach in considering affective meanings. This approach suggests that the emotional lexicon is conceptualized by individuals only if objectified correlates of emotional terms are fabricated through a sign, or piece of information, within the brain system or the brain-like organism. This alternative approach describes the neural-informational coding of semantics, and it proposes that behavioral attributes, cognitive values, and informational structure of emotional states should be employed to follow the idea that emotional words are labeled for meanings due to their correlated neuron-like bodies as their referents. Available evidence achieved from neuro-scientific experiments augment this particular idea. The review concludes that meanings of emotions are generated when there is a perceptual process including informational interaction of agents with the environment.

KEYWORDS: semantics, psycho-semantics, cognitive, neural-information, agents

PAGES:45-63

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