Emotion: The Self-regulatory Sense
K. T. Peil
Northeastern University; Harvard Divinity School; EFS International
A dynamic systems model broadly redefines and recasts emotion as a primary sensory system – perhaps the first sense to have emerged, serving the biological function of “self-regulation”. Drawing upon the physical sciences and recent revelations from the field of epigenetics, the model suggests that human emotional perceptions provide an ongoing stream of “self-relevant” sensory information concerning optimally adaptive states between the organism and its immediate environment, along with coupled behavioral corrections that honor a universal self-regulatory logic. With its ancient substrates exemplified by the molecular circuitry in the E. coli bacterium, the model suggests that the hedonic (affective) categories emerge directly from fundamental positive and negative feedback processes, and that their good/bad binary appraisals relate to dual self-regulatory behavioral regimes – evolutionary purposes, through which organisms actively participate in natural selection, and through which humans can interpret “right” and “wrong” states of balanced being and optimal becoming. The self-regulatory sensory paradigm transcends anthropomorphism, unites divergent theoretical perspectives and isolated bodies of literature, and challenges some time-honored assumptions. Contrary to the notion that emotion must be suppressively regulated, it suggests that emotions are better understood as regulating us, providing a service crucial to all semantic language, learning systems, evaluative decision-making, and optimal physical, mental, and spiritual health. The implications for moral psychology are discussed.
