Comparing Formal Cognitive Emotion Theories

Abstract. We discuss an approach for evaluating cognitive emotion theories that explicitly relies on the use of formal logics of agency. This approach offers various benefits, which range from the fact that a formal logical approach is able to provide an explicit account of the inferential machinery used by an agent to elicit emotions to the fact that logical specifications provide a precise model of what is and what is not relevant in a computational model of emotions. Several formal emotion models have been proposed that derive emotions from the mental state of an agent using basic logic. The benefit of formal models of emotions is that they allow for a precise comparison. One of the key challenges, however, in comparing these models is that the conceptual basis that provides the starting point for deriving emotions is different. We present two simplified formal models and provide a preliminary comparison for illustrative purposes and identify some problems in comparing them. We also propose an alternative, more empirical approach for comparing and validating these models. To do so, we argue that there is a need for standard and detailed accounts of the evolution of emotions in particular scenarios that can be used as “benchmarks”.