ABSTRACT
To approach the problem of emotion, physiologists consider some physiological measures, and some Al researchers propose computational processes. Yet the problem remains. We may ask, are these things emotion or emotional? To determine what emotion is, we must, first of all, clarify what it is meant by "emotion". We argue that actually the concept of emotion and that of desire are one and the same. When we are talking of thirst, for instance, we are, by that very token, talking of the desire to drink. For illustration, we give some emotions in terms of the notion of desire:
feeling an itch: desiring to scratch;
feeling cold (hot): desiring to warm (cool) oneself;
feeling of fear: desiring to flee, or escape, etc.;
feeling of love: desiring to be with;
hate: desiring to make someone feel pain, die, etc.; desiring to retaliate against someone.
pain (in the general sense of unpleasant feeling): desiring, when P (a fact or a state of affairs) is true, to do something as a result of which P will not hold;
pleasure: desiring to do what is being done.
