We conclude that the commentators seem to fundamentally agree on the substance of our proposal of a partial real definition of emotion as a dynamic episode which has to fulfill a certain number of conditions to count as a member of the class. We raise the issue of prescriptive functions of a definition, suggesting parallels to biomedical ontologies. We also clarify the issues of linguistic and cultural relativity and of differences in the nature of individual emotions.

In this brief reply, which cannot do justice to all of the valuable points my commentators have raised, I defend the view that the notion of natural kind I have introduced satisfies the ontological independence criterion and is in keeping with the commitments of realism. I also further clarify the scope of my argument against basic emotion theory, and reiterate that we should stop looking for universal theories of discrete emotions.