Systemic Design: A Methodology For Investigating Emotional Phenomena (In the process of being updated)

In this paper I introduce Systemic Design as a methodology for studying complex phenomena like those commonly referred to as being emotional. This methodology is an extension of the design-based approach to include: organismic phylogenetic considerations, a holistic design strategy, and a consideration of resource limitations. It provides a powerful technique for generating theoretical models of the mechanisms underpinning emotional phenomena, the current terminology associated with which is often muddled and inconsistent. This approach enables concepts and mechanisms to be clearly specified and communicated to other researchers in related fields.