Emotion as meaning

"Emotion as Meaning offers a new model of the mind based upon a new understanding of emotion. It resolves the debate between the imagists and propositionalists by tracing the translation of language into vicarious experience, showing that the mind represents its imagined world by means of not only image and idea but emotion.". "Until twenty years ago, most believed that we imagine within the medium of language. Then psychologists like Allan Paivio and Stephen Kosslyn showed that we think also by means of images, triggering a debate between the propositionalists, who define thought in terms of idea (or word), and the imagists, who insist we think in picture-like ways.". "Opdahl shows that emotion represents elements that elude those two codes: relationships, intangible mental states, large entities like cities or eras, and - always - context or background. Emotion provides the primary mode of the identifying reader, as he or she shares the emotions of the protagonist."--BOOK JACKET.