From Toda's urge theory to the commitment theory of emotions

In the early 1980s, Toda proposed that emotions be envisioned as a set of r ational survival programs, tailored through evolution so as to provide orga nisms with the opportunity to handle critical situations in reasonable time . To illustrate these ideas, Toda imagined the "fungus eaters," a community of animats to be sent in space for uranium mining. He further proposed to design them with a set of "urges" defined as "built-in motivational subrout ines for making decisions and executing the chosen action plan." Although t his proposal proved interesting, one nevertheless feels some uneasiness, si nce all the urges specified in the model do not stand at the same conceptua l level, some being more behavioral, and some more abstract. The article pr esents the theory of "emotions-as-commitments-operators" which shows striki ng similarities with Toda's system. The article concludes by stressing how the concept of commitments as second-order resources could help simplify To da's proposal, and clarify the concepts of motivation and emotions.