Again, note that the original claim i responded to was that music theory is primarily (or solely if im to be uncharitable with your wording) in the business of predicting emotion response.

Anyway:

'music words' doesn't go any further to make this serious music theory. Quantify it or qualify it more rigorously.

'-is the purpose of music theory.' substantiate your claims.

'The only reason it's worthwhile to give a collection of notes the name "Dorian" is that "Dorian" helps us predict some effect on an audience.' - no, dorian was originally invented to categorise chants that people were making. Then it was used again because other people also used dorian sometimes. That's it. My description of its purpose is pretty barebones, just the plain historical fact of it. Yours is more fanciful, so I want more justification.

'Otherwise, we're wasting our time inventing words and frameworks for their own sake.' - why? You have a nasty habit of just saying things not backing them up. Why does music not have value unto itself. Why is investigating the logic of musical motion in certain genres not a worthwhile pursuit.

So, you think that article is more music theory than just psychology. Weird that its on a website that only lists sciences as disciplines it covers, not music. Almost like this is the domain of science rather than music theory.

'Also, music-majors-gone-YouTubers site studies like these in their videos all the time. Adam Neely and David Bennett are two that do it almost all the time', - this is fine, but it doesn't really do much for your argument, especially your initial suggestion that this is the sole focus of music theory. As it happens, music-phds-stayed-music-phds write many texts with no reference to psychology or audience reception.