Translation of disposition and emotion terms cannot be adjudicated on lexical evidence alone. The same observable behaviour can issue from different neurochemical and affective-architectural states, and the source author was naming or evoking one such state with its particular signature, not the behavioural pattern alone. The discipline of philological translation already performs implicit affective-signature reconstruction whenever translators choose between covenant loyalty and lovingkindness for Hebrew hesed, or between love and charity for Greek agape; it does so without naming the variable being weighed. This paper proposes that a complete philological apparatus for disposition and emotion vocabulary should include plausible affective-signature reconstruction as a primary auditing variable alongside lexical, contextual, and diachronic conditioning. The apparatus draws coarse categories from affective neuroscience (oxytocin and vasopressin pair-bonding circuits, Pankseppian basic affective systems, somatic-marker theory, Barrett's constructionist framework) and uses them not to claim certainty about ancient authors' neurochemistry but to constrain the space of admissible reconstructions and render the underlying choices perturbable. Four worked examples (Hebrew hesed, the Sanskrit brahmaviharas, Japanese amae, Old Norse hugr) develop the apparatus. The paper specifies the methodology, pre-empts six predictable objections, and names the downstream research programme.
Storm Bjørn Temte (Wed,) studied this question.