nucleation

CLAIM-437: 'Wanting' and 'liking' are saliences relative to different, overlapping processes, pursuit and consummation, each ranking states by their bearing on its own concerns; valence is then relative to a perspective, every perspective in the negotiation has its own, the system's valence is that of the perspective whose ordering is the negotiation's potential, and ambivalence is strong saliences of opposite sign with no potential absorbing them

7 min read

Properties11
StatusProposed
Version3
Rolethesis
Warrantinterpretive
Tagsemotion-and-affect, motivation
Lineorganizational-affect
Rests onCLAIM-440 — An organization's appraisal is the negotiation among its perspectives, a common currency is that negotiation's admitting an ordering of the options it faces, and goal-conduciveness valence is a regime in which an ordering of the organization's own states by their bearing on its maintenance prevails in the negotiation; so valence presupposes contested rankings, not frustrated demands, its sign is whether the organization runs ahead of or behind a reference course along the potential ordering, its intensity is how far the negotiation's decisions follow that ordering, and ambivalence, where no ordering prevails, differs from neutrality, where one prevails and the organization keeps to its course
GroundsTHEORY-893 — Reward has separable components: 'liking', its hedonic impact, measurable without report by orofacial taste reactivity in humans, apes, monkeys and rodents, and 'wanting', its incentive salience; brain stimulation and sensitization can raise 'wanting' without raising 'liking', so motivation can grow while pleasure stays flat or falls, and 'liking' reactions can occur without any subjective feeling of pleasure, THEORY-895 — Incentive sensitization: repeated drug exposure can make the mesolimbic 'wanting' system lastingly hyper-reactive to drug cues and contexts, so that cue-triggered incentive salience grows, persists for years and even increases during abstinence, while 'liking' need not rise and may fall; sensitized 'wanting' can oppose the person's cognitive desire, and incentive salience can run without any reportable change in feeling, LIT-1458 — Levels of valence
SupportsCLAIM-447 — Model-based wanting is a pursuit process's ranking of the futures it predicts under candidate interventions, P(S | do(a)) against P(S | do(a₀)), while cue-triggered wanting is learned salience that need not compute those futures; a process's causal model, its wanting and its practical efficacy are separable, so learning to want differently, learning that a want will not pay, and learning not to act on it are three different changes
ComplementsCLAIM-433 — The potential account of valence is an account of goal-conduciveness valence, not of intrinsic pleasantness: on the component process model's separation of levels of valence, the ordering that prevails ranks states by need satisfaction and goal attainment, the potential's strength tracks 'wanting' and its sign tracks goal conduciveness, while 'liking' is a separate appraisal with its own ordering; so the wanting–liking dissociation is two valence systems coming apart, as that separation predicts, and the objection that the account is not about pleasure is conceded rather than answered, CLAIM-438 — An ordering serving as the negotiation's potential, as the potential account of valence defines it, tracks 'wanting', not 'liking': sensitized incentive salience wins a system's conflicts, persists and resumes while hedonic impact measured by taste reactivity stays flat or falls, so the regime the account calls hedonic valence is motivational valence, and hedonic valence, if it is anywhere in the account, is elsewhere
Cited as “rests on” byCLAIM-442 — Frijda's emotion and the potential account's system valence sit on opposite sides of the gap between the precedence a motive claims and the authority it is granted: an emotion, action readiness claiming control precedence, is a claim, a perspective's valence is read on its claims, and the system's valence is read on what the negotiation grants, so a change in grants with the claims fixed, as mindfulness is said to make, changes the system's valence and leaves the perspectives' emotions and valences as they were

Graph View

The claim

The owner, 2026-10-23: “maybe ‘wanting’ and ‘liking’ can be differentiated by characterizing them as saliencies relative to different (possibly overlapping) processes?”

Salience relative to a process. Frijda’s concern pertinence is already relative to a concern (THEORY-055). Read with the record’s negotiation, each perspective has its own salience map: how much an event bears on that perspective’s concerns, and which way.

  • ‘Wanting’ is salience relative to the pursuit process, the one that ranks what to do next. Berridge’s incentive salience is this (THEORY-893, THEORY-895).
  • ‘Liking’ is salience relative to the consummatory process, the one that evaluates a state once it is reached.
  • Overlapping. The processes share components. Berridge and Kringelbach’s hedonic hotspots lie within the larger mesolimbic system that generates ‘wanting’, which is why the two usually move together; sensitization re-keys one without the other, which is why they can come apart.

The precedent is in the component process model: Shuman, Sander and Scherer’s levels of valence turn on “the qualitative difference between perspectives with which the same object may be approached (e.g., pleasantness or goal conduciveness of food)” (LIT-1458, p. 13). The claim says those perspectives are processes in the record’s negotiation.

Valence relative to a perspective, and the system’s valence. Every perspective has its own valence, its ranking and its progress against its own reference course. The system’s valence is that of the perspective whose ordering is the negotiation’s potential (TERM-076). That is Shuman and colleagues’ micro-valences and macro-valence, the latter “an integrative “common currency” to compare alternatives for choices” (p. 1), and it is Carver’s many goal loops each with a valence of its own, of which one governs. The micro-valences are the perspectives’ rankings and the macro-valence is the class of orderings that fit the negotiation’s wins (TERM-077). A record need not single out one perspective: several perspectives’ orderings can fit the same wins (CLAIM-434, part 7). Until an intervention contests the pairs on which they differ, “the perspective whose ordering is the potential” is any member of that class, and the system’s valence is reported for the class. This was revised before merge after a review; the draft read the macro-valence as the gradient part of a Hodge decomposition, which can reverse what the wins settle (part 4).

What it answers

  1. The relapsing addict (CLAIM-433’s third defeater). There is no single sign to get wrong. The pursuit perspective prevails and its valence is positive; the perspective that wants to abstain has negative valence, regret; the system’s valence is the prevailing one’s. Relapse is craving relieved and regretted at once.
  2. The asymmetry of the kind clause (CLAIM-433’s note of 2026-10-23). ‘Wanting’ and ‘liking’ each rank states by their bearing on their own process’s concerns, so they are of one kind. The kind clause becomes relative to a perspective, and QUESTION-267 becomes the question when the prevailing perspective’s concerns have come apart from the organism’s maintenance; sensitization is the case of a pursuit perspective prevailing on a cue-keyed proxy.
  3. Ambivalence (the evaluative space model’s coactivation): two perspectives with strong saliences of opposite sign and no potential absorbing them: wins that cycle within a window, or a pair’s outcome reversing across windows.

What it does not say

  • Why ‘liking’ so rarely governs action. On this reading ‘liking’ is usually a perspective that does not prevail, valence without control, which fits small, fragile hotspots and ‘liking’ reactions that run unfelt. That is a description, not an explanation.
  • How pursuit and consummation are individuated without appeal to the dissociations. That is TERM-072’s open problem, with stakes now.
  • Whether the system’s valence is more than bookkeeping. If every perspective has its own, the system’s may be nothing beyond the prevailing perspective’s.
  • Which valence is felt. On CLAIM-439, whichever the system models, which allows a felt pleasure that does not govern action and a governing ‘wanting’ that is not felt.

Note of 2026-10-24: where hedonic drive sits

The owner: “where does hedonic drive fit into our model?” (workbench entry of 2026-10-24, U23). Inside the distributed motivational organization, not as a fourth coordinate beside CASE-124’s meaning, authority and legibility. Four quantities: hedonic impact (how pleasant an experienced outcome is, the consummatory perspective); anticipated pleasure (a prospective model’s prediction under an intervention, CLAIM-447); incentive wanting (cue-triggered pull); and hedonic authority (how much any of these influences the negotiation). A schematic pursuit score W = Q^H + κC lets cue-triggered pursuit diverge from expected pleasure; it is not a neural equation. Two consequences: a strong hedonic drive can lose the negotiation, and a process can control pursuit while yielding little pleasure. Wanting and liking then differ not only as evaluations but in their capacity to govern, which raises QUESTION-270. Relief after avoidance is reduced distress, kept apart from positive pleasure and from reinforcement (CLAIM-446). Nothing here makes pleasure the organism’s ultimate value: CLAIM-433 keeps pleasantness apart from goal-conduciveness, and QUESTION-266 keeps the inferred potential, a hedonic marker and the self-model apart.

Note of 2026-10-26: wanting and liking as separate quantities in a synthetic model

The lab’s v2.6 (dmarx/PerspectiveLab@74621fb experiments/affective_dissociation/) builds on this claim’s distinction and on QUESTION-270. It makes wanting and liking separate operational quantities. Liking is an exogenous outcome value, read by an assay that does not use action. Wanting is a proxy, anticipated pleasure plus cue drive plus another pursuit motive, read with noise of its own. It leaves out habit and the final choice, and the study’s inference does not use it. After devaluation every class has liking −1 and pursues with probability 0.668. In the cue class the wanting proxy is +1.9. In the habit class it is −0.5, so pursuit there runs with neither wanting nor liking by these measures. The claim’s first defeater asks for a wanting–liking dissociation, and this is action dissociated from both. Whether habit belongs to the pursuit process the model does not say.

A longitudinal run, with liking dropping from +1 to −1 in one step, shows anticipated pleasure and pursuit adjusting at different rates in different classes. The rates are programmed: the learning rate is 0.045 in the belief-error class and 0.028 in the others, and only the habit class has a habit term that grows and decays. Three of the five classes follow the same course.

The model has no pursuit or consummatory process ranking states by its own concerns. Wanting and liking are terms in one logit. So it does not individuate the processes, which is TERM-072’s open problem, and it has no perspectives’ valences, no prevailing ordering and no ambivalence. Its relations are stipulated and are not evidence about incentive sensitization (THEORY-895). It neither meets nor defeats the claim. The claim is unchanged.

Note of 2026-10-29: what holds it back

It rests on CLAIM-440, which is held by CLAIM-441’s unanswered flow case and by clause 3’s open sign (CLAIM-468). Its grounds THEORY-893 and THEORY-895 hold the dissociation and sensitization, which its overlap clause and its reading of the relapsing addict use as facts, only through their authors’ reviews. Its second defeater, pursuit and consummation individuated apart from the dissociations they explain, is unanswered: TERM-072 takes perspectives as given.

Note of 2026-10-30: what holds it back

Rechecked after CLAIM-441’s version 3 and CLAIM-468’s version 3 (both 2026-10-30), which add read grounds to both and a defeated_if to CLAIM-468. Both are still Proposed objections to CLAIM-440. CLAIM-440, this claim’s premise, stays Proposed on them and on CLAIM-039, as its own note of 2026-10-30 says. THEORY-893 and THEORY-895 are still Proposed, and TERM-072 still takes perspectives as given, so the second defeater is unanswered.

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