Luc Ciompi’s affect-logic

Tuesday, October 30th, 2012

1)      Johannes Hauswaldt studied Luc Ciompi’s affect-logic and gave an overview of his concept. Ciompi tried to overcome the System 1 / System 2 separation in decision making and wrote a book ‘Die emotionalen Grundlagen der Denkens. Entwurf einer fraktalen Affectlogik’ (1999). In his view affect is a kind of informal logic and he discerned 5 categories of affect: Alltags-Logik (e.g. appetite), Wut-Logik (anger), Angst-Logik (fear), Trauer-Logik (grief) and Freude-Logik (fun, joy). These affects are the fundamental operators of cognitive functions and can be considered as the ‘glue’ or the ‘connecting tissue’ of the human feeling and thinking, intending, deciding and action process. Kahnemann’s concept of thinking and reasoning discerns two interacting systems, analytical reasoning and non-analytical reasoning. The third track model of the Maastricht-Antwerp group used Kahnemann’s ideas but conceptualized gut feelings as a third track in diagnostic reasoning next to medical decision-making and medical problem-solving. Gut feelings are associated with two kinds of affect, a bad feeling (sense of alarm) or a good feeling (sense of reassurance).