抄録
In this paper, we develop a functional theory of emotions. Emotions are described as changes in the state of readiness for maintaining or modifying particular forms of relationship with the environment, and as control shifts in favor of those states of readiness, and the behaviors flowing from that readiness. Emotional feelings consist of the subjective awareness of those changes in state of readiness, and of the events eliciting them. Emotions are elicited by events that are appraised as relevant to the individual's concerns. Concerns can be understood as representations of the basis for the individual's preferences or preferred states of the world. Detection of relevance of events for the concerns is function of the emotions. This emotional relevance detection proceeds in parallel with other activities, such as the execution of tasks. Emotion thus may interrupt ongoing activities, and emotion may be suppressed in favor of such activities. In order to model such processes, an architecture has been developed consisting of a set of parallel-operating, semi-independent modules, communicating by way of a central blackboard; modules take their information from the blackboard, and/or deposit their results on it. A program, called “Will”, embodying the model and architecture, is under development.
