That sounds like an interesting blend of purpose trickling into function - as someone who tends to lead with the “are” as opposed to “are for”, I (authentically) look forward to being challenged.

Brain/mind researchers: How do you think about terminology and how it maps to "theories of" {the brain/mind thing you're trying to understand}?

I'm writing & I'm checking in to make sure I capture the full spectrum of ideas out there.

To calibrate, let's consider 3 options.

/1

Belief might be illustrative (and similarly challenging). It has:
1) a dictionary definition (assent to some proposition)
2) a folk psychological notion - related to (1) but also connoting "faith", beyond the available evidence
3) a mathematical definition - derived from Bayes theorem...

Building on these four aspects of information and use, we then organize existing perspectives on neural representations into three lev- els: Representations as Information (Level 1); Representations as Usable (Level 2); and Representations as Used (Level 3). Our account is meant to give readers an appreciation for the diversity of notions of “neural repre- sentation,” help them navigate the vast and multi-disciplinary literature on the topic, and help them clarify the appropriate notion of representa- tion for their own investigations.

I always appreciate sense making in confused conceptual spaces, and this is a great example of that. Thank you for it.

Congrats!

Tricky! Thank you.

Thank you! I look forward to seeing where you go with this. In the realm of operationalizations,
there’s an interesting distinction between where we start and where we think we’re heading. I feel much more certain about the former than the latter; it will be great to see more insights there.

I do not understand why memory and attention have had different paths in this realm historically.

Yes, thank you. The contrast between “memory” (which everyone agrees means many things) and “attention” (where there is dispute about how many things it is and on what basis we should determine that N) is fascinating. I can explain what sets emotion apart from memory. /1

Thank you! I get the gist. Much appreciated.

Appreciated - thank you!

THAT WHALE AMONG THE FISHES—THE THEORY OF EMOTIONS BY MAX F. MEYER University of Missouri The whale has a twofold distinction among the fishes: first, when seen from a distance, it looms large among them; and second, on close examination it is found to be no fish at all. Something like that I predict for the theory of emotions among the theories in psychological textbooks and periodicals. Psychology, the science furnishing the foundation for human engineering, so young a science, need not feel ashamed of the fact that it has to cast out some humbug which has established itself within during its infancy. Physiology in its infancy had to rid itself of the theory of the four humors. Physics had to rid itself of the theory of the four elements, each "seeking" its place, if we make allowance for such unruly representatives as cork. Chemistry had to rid itself of the humbug called phlogiston. If psychology have its humbug, let it be only for a while.

It's such an old problem (here's some grumbling circa 1933). It certainly feels like it's beyond time to sort things out ...

Thank you!

Recently have been putting a lot of thought into what norms govern the movement between folk concepts and scientific concepts. What concepts are resistant to operationalization? Really interesting thread from a cognitive scientist on what concepts we can have “theories of.”

Emotion research has a communication conundrum In 2025, the words we use to describe emotions matter, but their definitions are controversial. Here, I unpack the different positions in this space and the rationales behind them—and I invite 13…

And there are so many competing forces at play here, holding us back from "emotion A"; "emotion B", "emotion C".

www.thetransmitter.org/the-big-pict...

Absolutely! Backing up what you are saying, here's a case in point from just a few weeks ago. I expect it takes quite a lot of expertise to understand what a "functional"definition of emotion means and what it might imply for Claude to have them.

transformer-circuits.pub/2026/emotion...

Terrific - thank you! Can't wait to dive into this one.

Thx for asking. I'm using it broadly to ask "What is it that you envision yourself and your broader community trying to achieve with your work? What is it you are trying to *explain* (perhaps to lay the foundation for understanding/fixing/building/controling/educating, etc ...)"?

A terrific illustration of the trickiness in this space; thank you for it.

To paraphrase Joe LeDoux: When researchers call a gene "hedgehog", no one confuses the gene/protein and the animal. But call it a "fear" circuit, and all manner of chaos ensues ...

+1 for belief and its neural correlates.

First, a general theory would need to identify a single computational goal that is broad enough to cover the entire nervous system and to subsume all of the more specific computational problems that the nervous system encounters. Second, the theory should describe how the computational goal is achieved; that is, how information is organized in the nervous system and how it flows through space and time. Finally, the theory should specify the physical mechanisms that implement the computation, the molecular and cellular processes that hold and transform information. The present theory attempts to address all three of these levels.

Adding on, there are also bigger targets, e.g. this link. Here, the explanatory goal, as I understand it, is to explain all of brain/mind function: "Towards a General Theory of Neural Computation Based on Prediction by Single Neurons"

h/t @philcorlett.bsky.social.

bsky.app/profile/phil...

(I’m honestly not here to disagree with anyone broadly sensible - just to capture diversity of usages. Like “cause” or “mechanism”, there are multiple reasonable ways to think about things and progress depends on pinpointing what that set of usages is).

Another way to ask it: Insofar as you used phrases that included things like “a theoretical understanding of Y,” in what sense did you define Y?

with an emphasis on the uniqueness across episodes, individuals, and cultures.

4): Something whose spirit is not captured by the 1st 3 options, which is {please describe that here; bonus pts for refs!!}.

I'm looking to capture the ~full ethos of ideas. Thx!

The Psychological Construction of Emotion This volume presents cutting-edge theory and research on emotions as constructed events rather than fixed, essential entities. It provides a thorough introduction to the assumptions, hypotheses, and s...

Option 3) Categories and definitions of brain/mind functions follow from misguided ideas (like the brain is a machine trying to compute objectives). Instead of 'What is an emotion?' (a thing), we should focus on 'how emotional episode are made' (processes) ... /5

www.guilford.com/books/The-Ps...

What Emotions Really Are In this provocative contribution to the philosophy of science and mind, Paul E. Griffiths criticizes contemporary philosophy and psychology of emotion for failing to take in an evolutionary perspectiv...

Riffing on that, "water" is a legit term b/c it's a target (H2O). However, "Superluminary" (things that lie above vs below the moon's orbit) is not b/c there's nothing those things have in common that's a target. /4

press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

Demystifying Emotions Cambridge Core - Cognition - Demystifying Emotions

2) Like some researchers, "emotion". Here, the idea is that a term should reflect a legit explanatory target, ala "theories of emotion". Per this book, ~37 theories of emotion exist. The gist is that umbrella terms should capture something explainable. /3
www.cambridge.org/core/books/d...

1) Like "memory", where researchers would *not* formulate a "theory of memory" b/c it's used to refer to many things: recollection, familiarity, your laptop ... Here, "memory" is a functional def (store info for later use) not an explanatory target (but! a "theory of recollection" is legit). /2

Brain/mind researchers: How do you think about terminology and how it maps to "theories of" {the brain/mind thing you're trying to understand}?

I'm writing & I'm checking in to make sure I capture the full spectrum of ideas out there.

To calibrate, let's consider 3 options.

/1

Brain Dynamics during Architectural Experience: Prefrontal and Hippocampal Regions Track Aesthetics and Spatial Complexity Abstract. Architectural experience involves processing the spatial layout of an environment and our emotional reaction to it. However, these two processes are largely studied separately. Here, we used...

I'm increasingly interested, my research has moved more into exploring how we feel about spaces. In our recent fMRI study it was specifically activated when subjects had to decide if they liked a space when they were watching a movie of the space:
direct.mit.edu/jocn/article...

Exciting! (And so great to hear it).