Category: Commentary, Critique, and Response

Junk Science at its best. Either we have three or four emotional ‘reward’ systems, we can describe Pluchik’s eight dimensions (which is a projection of four). Then we have five or six personality factors that bias them (certain, because they correspond to physical reward systems). And if we assume that in general, humans can distinguish at best, between five states, that should yield Pluchik’s diagram, of, at least five levels, with no less than three emotions ‘active’ at the same time. Meanwhile we can experience any combination at once, or sequence of emotions that result in a transitory, temporal, or durable state of emotional experience. That means there are no less than 64 simple emotions, at no less than five degrees of intensity, in some combination … often in many combinations, including ’emotional confusion’. Ergo the number of discernable permutations may be more than two thousand, even if we only possess names for a few hundred of them, and even if we have only four reward(punishment) systems.