China Social Science Review

No.1, 2023

 

External Behavioral Reasoning in Which Emotion Acts as Internal Feelings: An Understanding of Emotion Based on Predictive Processing

(Abstract)

 

Yu Shuang

 

To weigh current theories of emotion and their merits and demerits, we can look at perceptual and behavioral reasoning, two approaches that minimize prediction errors (PE) in the theoretical framework of predictive processing by introducing a view of external behavioral reasoning in which emotions act as internal feelings. In this way, predictive processing theory can be applied to understanding emotion. This view regards emotion as an ad hoc strategy for emotional valence regulation, holding that through the pathways of external behavioral reasoning where emotion acts as internal feelings, the subject actor’s coordinates of internal sensory perception (emotional valence) serve to maintain an internal equilibrium. This view commands clear advantages for integrating the explanatory resources of other theories.