Emotions as dynamic systems in viability sets

Emotions are viewed as dynamic systems with potentially varied contingent consequences and under viability constraints, responding to the principle of maintenance or acquisition of desired properties. Most emotions are classified by their memberships of viability sets, which in turn conceal the quantifiers ‘there exists’ (‘$$\exists $$∃ ’) and ‘for all’ (‘$$\forall $$∀ ’). Describing emotions in this way uses most of the concepts of viability theory, because emotions and viability sets both deal with survival and change. Emotion regulation mirrors mathematical controls, which can be operated in various ways, optimally or not, and that allow for improvement by learning. Application is to Maupassant’s A Woman’s Life, with viability kernels and capture basins succeeding each other in a description of the sequence of emotions felt by the heroine, and to a reappraisal of Laura and Petrarch’s emotional cycle.