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Whys and Hows about emotions?
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Ganesh J. Acharya
Sep 9, 2012, 2:45:54 AM9/9/12
to
What are emotions? How would have emotions come into existence? Are emotions necessary?
A glass of water is half empty for some, and half full for some.
A problem may be challenging for some and troublesome for some.
We seem to associate emotions with our observations. Again, associating either emotions with our observations can lead to bias. The research can get flawed. We just saw some time ago because humans can get mocked they just left out important observations out of their research.
Trying to understand emotions.
A glass of water is half empty for some, and half full for some.
A problem may be challenging for some and troublesome for some.
We seem to associate emotions with our observations. Again, associating either emotions with our observations can lead to bias. The research can get flawed. We just saw some time ago because humans can get mocked they just left out important observations out of their research.
Trying to understand emotions.
Sir Fred M. McNeill
Sep 9, 2012, 5:04:11 AM9/9/12
to
states about considered immediate conditions.
Similar as 'red' or colors are sensor qualia that
represent brain states about considered sensor
inputs. Then there are 'situation' qualia that represent
considered contexts, such as profession or place.
Zerkon
Sep 9, 2012, 10:41:51 AM9/9/12
to
In article <dc1f891b-13a2-4c20...@googlegroups.com>,
ganeshj...@gmail.com says...
> Trying to understand emotions.
>
It seems clear to understand emotions is to understand how you yourself
are experiencing your own life. If you're looking for some sort of
uniform answer as if this is an arithmetic problem that some one else is
going to just give or tell you.... I will be happy to do so but first
there is a (not very) small matter of my fee.
--
"The space ship hung in the air
exactly like
a brick does not"
Thus spaketh The Adams
ganeshj...@gmail.com says...
> Trying to understand emotions.
>
It seems clear to understand emotions is to understand how you yourself
are experiencing your own life. If you're looking for some sort of
uniform answer as if this is an arithmetic problem that some one else is
going to just give or tell you.... I will be happy to do so but first
there is a (not very) small matter of my fee.
--
"The space ship hung in the air
exactly like
a brick does not"
Thus spaketh The Adams
Immortalist
Sep 9, 2012, 11:56:33 AM9/9/12
to
On Sep 8, 11:45 pm, "Ganesh J. Acharya" <ganeshjacha...@gmail.com>
wrote:
Actually emotions evolved long before thinking came around. Think of
an "automatic pilot" able to control a plane without a human. Emotions
are probably counter feelings to feelings coming to the brain from
sense organs distributed all over the body. Whatit feels like proceeds
what it seems like.
---------------------------+
Your "3-Brains-in-One" Brain
You may have thought all you had was one, but inside there are two
more brains.
Actually, you already know this from your experience: for example,
remember a time when you really wanted to do something, but you knew
you shouldn't? The most illogical or irrational "wants" we have
probably derive from older parts of our brain, while the understanding
of smart versus dumb choices comes from the newest part. If that idea
offends you, or seems just too "Western" or "scientific", you might
take a "de-tour" for a moment and read this essay on science.
Take another example: you can be hungry, but not feel it until you
pay attention to it; then when you do notice, you realize you've been
getting hungrier for a long time. Hunger comes from the most basic
parts of our brain, but our awareness of it is controlled by the
newest part.
Here are the "3 brains":
Brain One
-Center of the Brain
-"R complex"
-snakes, lizards
Brain Two
-Wrapped around Brain One
-"limbic system" or "old mammalian brain"
-dogs, cats
Brain Three
-Outside Surface
-(Wrapped around Brain Two!)
-"neocortex"
-primates, especially human primates
Brain One
This is the brain we share with birds, and reptiles. Think of it as
the "housekeeping brain". Just the basics: hunger, temperature
control, fight-or-flight fear responses, defending territory, keeping
safe -- that kind of thing. The structures that perform these
functions within our brain are extremely similar to those in the
brains of reptiles. Thus, this brain is called the "R complex" (R for
reptilian). You can take a Tour of the R complex when you wish; and
you will see parts of it in the section on obsessions.
Brain Two
As animals became more complex, other structures were added around the
R complex in a shell, or "girdle". The Latin word for arc or girdle is
"limbus", and this brain is called the "limbic system". We humans
share this brain with older mammals like dogs, cats, and horses, and
even mice (as opposed to newer mammals like chimps; we'll get to them
in a moment). Their brains, and this part of our brains, are extremely
similar.
Think about the difference between a mouse and a lizard, or between a
cat and a snake, and you'll recognize what this mammalian brain adds
to a creature's capacities. Mammals have "feelings" like ours. We'll
be looking at the structures of the limbic system in the sections on
mood, memory, and hormone control. The main parts of the limbic system
(except the thalamus, which is generally regarded as part of Brain
One) are shown below. By taking all the Brain Tours you'll see each of
these parts and get a better sense of how this set of structures is
positioned underneath the cortex.
Brain Three
Here is the familiar "cortex" you can see from the outside. With this
brain, primates can do things that horses and cows cannot, like
complex social interactions and advance planning (such as planning an
attack on a neighboring troop). In humans the cortex has grown to a
huge size, somehow in association with our development of language.
Other primates like chimpanzees, or monkeys, have much less cortex,
which is surprising since chimpanzee DNA differs from ours by only
1.6%! (stunning, really; I hope you're stunned. Recently some
technical issues have arisen with this number, but for now, it's still
generally regarded as, well, amazing!). If you wonder why we humans
have populated the entire globe, while our chimp relatives are stuck
in a shrinking rain forest with their nearly identical DNA -- read The
Third Chimpanzee, by Jared Diamond. You've got a great question, and
his is a great answer. (Similarly, if you wonder why white-skinned
humans seem to have an unfair share of the resources and money, his
other masterpiece offers a solid explanation beside skin color: Guns,
Germs, and Steel).
Three Brains in One
To keep all this straight, think of the following image (ok, it's a
little odd, but it seems to work; write if you have another one). The
R brain is like a golf club. Let's make it a driver, one of those with
a big fat wooden head. Hold the club so that the head is at the top.
There's your R complex, with your spine sticking down toward the
ground. The R brain is just a big swelling at the top of a spinal
cord, and that's how it developed. Worms have little swellings, snakes
have bigger ones. OK so far?
Next we'll add the layer that makes mammals behave so differently from
reptiles. This next "layer", the old mammalian brain, evolved on top
of the R complex. It was not a remodel so much as an addition, like
adding on bedrooms all the way around a kitchen/bathroom. This
addition covers the entire R complex, leaving the R complex deep
within the brain. In our model, take the golf club, and cover the head
with a sock; a big thick red one would be nice. Now you have the R
brain (golf club), with the old mammalian brain wrapped around it
(sock). Notice that the red sock forms a shell, or continuous border
around the golf club head.
To complete the brain picture, add a bicycle or hockey helmet on top
of your red-socked golf club head: that's the newest mammalian
addition, the "cortex", and it is the grey squiggly stuff you can see
on the outside. If you'd like a tour of the cortex itself, as you've
seen it so far (like, what are those colored parts?), click here.
http://www.psycheducation.org/emotion/triune%20brain.htm
An evolutionary perspective leads one to view the mind as a crowded
zoo of evolved, domain-specific programs. Each is functionally
specialized for solving a different adaptive problem that arose during
hominid evolutionary history, such as face recognition, foraging, mate
choice, heart rate regulation, sleep management, or predator
vigilance, and each is activated by a different set of cues from the
environment. But the existence of all these microprograms itself
creates an adaptive problem: Programs that are individually designed
to solve specific adaptive problems could, if simultaneously
activated, deliver outputs that conflict with one another, interfering
with or nullifying each other's functional products. For example,
sleep and flight from a predator require mutually inconsistent
actions, computations, and physiological states. It is difficult to
sleep when your heart and mind are racing with fear, and this is no
accident: disastrous consequences would ensue if proprioceptive cues
were activating sleep programs at the same time that the sight of a
stalking lion was activating ones designed for predator evasion. To
avoid such consequences, the mind must be equipped with superordinate
programs that override some programs when others are activated (e.g.,
a program that deactivates sleep programs when predator evasion
subroutines are activated). Furthermore, many adaptive problems are
best solved by the simultaneous activation of many different
components of the cognitive architecture, such that each component
assumes one of several alternative states (e.g., predator avoidance
may require simultaneous shifts in both heart rate and auditory
acuity; see below). Again, a superordinate program is needed that
coordinates these components, snapping each into the right
configuration at the right time.
Emotions are such programs. To behave functionally according to
evolutionary standards, the mind's many subprograms need to be
orchestrated so that their joint product at any given time is
functionally coordinated, rather than cacophonous and self-defeating.
This coordination is accomplished by a set of superordinate programs -
the emotions. They are adaptations that have arisen in response to the
adaptive problem of mechanism orchestration (Tooby & Cosmides, 1990a;
Tooby, 1985). In this view, the exploration of the statistical
structure of ancestral situations and their relationship to the mind's
battery of functionally specialized programs is central to mapping the
emotions. This is because the most useful (or least harmful)
deployment of programs at any given time will depend critically on the
exact nature of the confronting situation.
How did emotions arise and assume their distinctive structures?
Fighting, falling in love, escaping predators, confronting sexual
infidelity, experiencing a failure-driven loss in status, responding
to the death of a family member (and so on) each involved conditions,
contingencies, situations, or event-types that recurred innumerable
times in hominid evolutionary history. Repeated encounters with each
kind of situation selected for adaptations that guided information-
processing, behavior and the body adaptively through the clusters of
conditions, demands, and contingencies that characterized that
particular class of situation. This could be accomplished by
engineering superordinate programs, each of which jointly mobilizes a
subset of the psychological architecture's other programs in a
particular configuration. Each configuration would be selected to
deploy computational and physiological mechanisms in a way that, when
averaged over individuals and generations, would have led to the most
fitness-promoting subsequent lifetime outcome given that ancestral
situation-type.
This coordinated adjustment and entrainment of mechanisms is a mode of
operation for the entire psychological architecture, and serves as the
basis for a precise computational and functional definition of each
emotion state (Tooby & Cosmides, 1990a; Tooby, 1985). Each emotion
entrains various other adaptive programs - deactivating some,
activating others, and adjusting the modifiable parameters of still
others - so that the whole system operates in a particularly
harmonious and efficacious way when the individual is confronting
certain kinds of triggering conditions or situations. The conditions
or situations relevant to the emotions are those that (1) recurred
ancestrally; (2) could not be negotiated successfully unless there was
a superordinate level of program coordination (i.e., circumstances in
which the independent operation of programs caused no conflicts would
not have selected for an emotion program, and would lead to
emotionally neutral states of mind); (3) had a rich and reliable
repeated structure; (4) had recognizable cues signaling their
presence; and (5) in which an error would have resulted in large
fitness costs (Tooby & Cosmides, 1990a; Tooby, 1985). When a condition
or situation of an evolutionarily recognizable kind is detected, a
signal is sent out from the emotion program that activates the
specific constellation of subprograms appropriate to solving the type
of adaptive problems that were regularly embedded in that situation,
and deactivates programs whose operation might interfere with solving
those types of adaptive problem. Programs directed to remain active
may be cued to enter subroutines that are specific to that emotion
mode, and that were tailored by natural selection to solve the
problems inherent in the triggering situation with special efficiency.
According to this theoretical framework, an emotion is a superordinate
program whose function is to direct the activities and interactions of
the subprograms governing perception; attention; inference; learning;
memory; goal choice; motivational priorities; categorization and
conceptual frameworks; physiological reactions (such as heart rate,
endocrine function, immune function, gamete release); reflexes;
behavioral decision rules; motor systems; communication processes;
energy level and effort allocation; affective coloration of events and
stimuli; recalibration of probability estimates, situation
assessments, values, and regulatory variables (e.g., self-esteem,
estimations of relative formidability, relative value of alternative
goal states, efficacy discount rate); and so on. An emotion is not
reducible to any one category of effects, such as effects on
physiology, behavioral inclinations, cognitive appraisals, or feeling
states, because it involves evolved instructions for all of them
together, as well as other mechanisms distributed throughout the human
mental and physical architecture...
...Specialized inference: Research in evolutionary psychology has
shown "thinking" and reasoning is not a unitary category, but is
carried out by a variety of specialized mechanisms. So, instead of
emotion activating or depressing "thinking" in general, the specific
emotion program activated should selectively activate appropriate
specialized inferential systems, such as cheater detection (Cosmides
1989; Cosmides & Tooby 1989, 1992), bluff detection (Tooby & Cosmides,
1989), precaution detection (Fiddick, Cosmides & Tooby, in press),
attributions of blame and responsibility, and so on. We are presently
conducting research to see whether, as predicted, fear influences
precautionary reasoning, competitive loss regulates bluff detection,
and so on...
...Learning: Emotion mode is expected to regulate learning mechanisms.
What someone learns from stimuli will be greatly altered by emotion
mode, because of attentional allocation, motivation, situation-
specific inferential algorithms, and a host of other factors. Emotion
mode will cause the present context to be divided up into situation-
specific functionally appropriate categories so that the same stimuli
and the same environment may be interpreted in radically different
ways, depending on emotion state. For example, which stimuli are
considered similar should be different in different emotion states,
distorting the shape of the individual's psychological "similarity
space" (Shepard 1987). Highly specialized learning mechanisms might be
activated, such as those that control food aversions (Garcia, 1990) or
predator learning (Mineka & Cooke, 1985), or fear conditioning
(LeDoux, 1995). Happiness is expected to signal the energetic
opportunity for play, and allow other exploratory agendas to be
expressed (Frederickson, 1998)...
http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/emotion.html
http://mechanism.ucsd.edu/~bill/teaching/philbiology/EvolutionaryTheoriesofEmotion.pdf
http://www.brainandevolution.blogspot.com/2007/05/moral-emotions-vs-moral-reasoning.html
http://www.flyfishingdevon.co.uk/salmon/year3/psy364emotions/psy364_emotions_evolutionary_psychobiolog.htm
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=limbic+system
wrote:
an "automatic pilot" able to control a plane without a human. Emotions
are probably counter feelings to feelings coming to the brain from
sense organs distributed all over the body. Whatit feels like proceeds
what it seems like.
---------------------------+
Your "3-Brains-in-One" Brain
You may have thought all you had was one, but inside there are two
more brains.
Actually, you already know this from your experience: for example,
remember a time when you really wanted to do something, but you knew
you shouldn't? The most illogical or irrational "wants" we have
probably derive from older parts of our brain, while the understanding
of smart versus dumb choices comes from the newest part. If that idea
offends you, or seems just too "Western" or "scientific", you might
take a "de-tour" for a moment and read this essay on science.
Take another example: you can be hungry, but not feel it until you
pay attention to it; then when you do notice, you realize you've been
getting hungrier for a long time. Hunger comes from the most basic
parts of our brain, but our awareness of it is controlled by the
newest part.
Here are the "3 brains":
Brain One
-Center of the Brain
-"R complex"
-snakes, lizards
Brain Two
-Wrapped around Brain One
-"limbic system" or "old mammalian brain"
-dogs, cats
Brain Three
-Outside Surface
-(Wrapped around Brain Two!)
-"neocortex"
-primates, especially human primates
Brain One
This is the brain we share with birds, and reptiles. Think of it as
the "housekeeping brain". Just the basics: hunger, temperature
control, fight-or-flight fear responses, defending territory, keeping
safe -- that kind of thing. The structures that perform these
functions within our brain are extremely similar to those in the
brains of reptiles. Thus, this brain is called the "R complex" (R for
reptilian). You can take a Tour of the R complex when you wish; and
you will see parts of it in the section on obsessions.
Brain Two
As animals became more complex, other structures were added around the
R complex in a shell, or "girdle". The Latin word for arc or girdle is
"limbus", and this brain is called the "limbic system". We humans
share this brain with older mammals like dogs, cats, and horses, and
even mice (as opposed to newer mammals like chimps; we'll get to them
in a moment). Their brains, and this part of our brains, are extremely
similar.
Think about the difference between a mouse and a lizard, or between a
cat and a snake, and you'll recognize what this mammalian brain adds
to a creature's capacities. Mammals have "feelings" like ours. We'll
be looking at the structures of the limbic system in the sections on
mood, memory, and hormone control. The main parts of the limbic system
(except the thalamus, which is generally regarded as part of Brain
One) are shown below. By taking all the Brain Tours you'll see each of
these parts and get a better sense of how this set of structures is
positioned underneath the cortex.
Brain Three
Here is the familiar "cortex" you can see from the outside. With this
brain, primates can do things that horses and cows cannot, like
complex social interactions and advance planning (such as planning an
attack on a neighboring troop). In humans the cortex has grown to a
huge size, somehow in association with our development of language.
Other primates like chimpanzees, or monkeys, have much less cortex,
which is surprising since chimpanzee DNA differs from ours by only
1.6%! (stunning, really; I hope you're stunned. Recently some
technical issues have arisen with this number, but for now, it's still
generally regarded as, well, amazing!). If you wonder why we humans
have populated the entire globe, while our chimp relatives are stuck
in a shrinking rain forest with their nearly identical DNA -- read The
Third Chimpanzee, by Jared Diamond. You've got a great question, and
his is a great answer. (Similarly, if you wonder why white-skinned
humans seem to have an unfair share of the resources and money, his
other masterpiece offers a solid explanation beside skin color: Guns,
Germs, and Steel).
Three Brains in One
To keep all this straight, think of the following image (ok, it's a
little odd, but it seems to work; write if you have another one). The
R brain is like a golf club. Let's make it a driver, one of those with
a big fat wooden head. Hold the club so that the head is at the top.
There's your R complex, with your spine sticking down toward the
ground. The R brain is just a big swelling at the top of a spinal
cord, and that's how it developed. Worms have little swellings, snakes
have bigger ones. OK so far?
Next we'll add the layer that makes mammals behave so differently from
reptiles. This next "layer", the old mammalian brain, evolved on top
of the R complex. It was not a remodel so much as an addition, like
adding on bedrooms all the way around a kitchen/bathroom. This
addition covers the entire R complex, leaving the R complex deep
within the brain. In our model, take the golf club, and cover the head
with a sock; a big thick red one would be nice. Now you have the R
brain (golf club), with the old mammalian brain wrapped around it
(sock). Notice that the red sock forms a shell, or continuous border
around the golf club head.
To complete the brain picture, add a bicycle or hockey helmet on top
of your red-socked golf club head: that's the newest mammalian
addition, the "cortex", and it is the grey squiggly stuff you can see
on the outside. If you'd like a tour of the cortex itself, as you've
seen it so far (like, what are those colored parts?), click here.
http://www.psycheducation.org/emotion/triune%20brain.htm
An evolutionary perspective leads one to view the mind as a crowded
zoo of evolved, domain-specific programs. Each is functionally
specialized for solving a different adaptive problem that arose during
hominid evolutionary history, such as face recognition, foraging, mate
choice, heart rate regulation, sleep management, or predator
vigilance, and each is activated by a different set of cues from the
environment. But the existence of all these microprograms itself
creates an adaptive problem: Programs that are individually designed
to solve specific adaptive problems could, if simultaneously
activated, deliver outputs that conflict with one another, interfering
with or nullifying each other's functional products. For example,
sleep and flight from a predator require mutually inconsistent
actions, computations, and physiological states. It is difficult to
sleep when your heart and mind are racing with fear, and this is no
accident: disastrous consequences would ensue if proprioceptive cues
were activating sleep programs at the same time that the sight of a
stalking lion was activating ones designed for predator evasion. To
avoid such consequences, the mind must be equipped with superordinate
programs that override some programs when others are activated (e.g.,
a program that deactivates sleep programs when predator evasion
subroutines are activated). Furthermore, many adaptive problems are
best solved by the simultaneous activation of many different
components of the cognitive architecture, such that each component
assumes one of several alternative states (e.g., predator avoidance
may require simultaneous shifts in both heart rate and auditory
acuity; see below). Again, a superordinate program is needed that
coordinates these components, snapping each into the right
configuration at the right time.
Emotions are such programs. To behave functionally according to
evolutionary standards, the mind's many subprograms need to be
orchestrated so that their joint product at any given time is
functionally coordinated, rather than cacophonous and self-defeating.
This coordination is accomplished by a set of superordinate programs -
the emotions. They are adaptations that have arisen in response to the
adaptive problem of mechanism orchestration (Tooby & Cosmides, 1990a;
Tooby, 1985). In this view, the exploration of the statistical
structure of ancestral situations and their relationship to the mind's
battery of functionally specialized programs is central to mapping the
emotions. This is because the most useful (or least harmful)
deployment of programs at any given time will depend critically on the
exact nature of the confronting situation.
How did emotions arise and assume their distinctive structures?
Fighting, falling in love, escaping predators, confronting sexual
infidelity, experiencing a failure-driven loss in status, responding
to the death of a family member (and so on) each involved conditions,
contingencies, situations, or event-types that recurred innumerable
times in hominid evolutionary history. Repeated encounters with each
kind of situation selected for adaptations that guided information-
processing, behavior and the body adaptively through the clusters of
conditions, demands, and contingencies that characterized that
particular class of situation. This could be accomplished by
engineering superordinate programs, each of which jointly mobilizes a
subset of the psychological architecture's other programs in a
particular configuration. Each configuration would be selected to
deploy computational and physiological mechanisms in a way that, when
averaged over individuals and generations, would have led to the most
fitness-promoting subsequent lifetime outcome given that ancestral
situation-type.
This coordinated adjustment and entrainment of mechanisms is a mode of
operation for the entire psychological architecture, and serves as the
basis for a precise computational and functional definition of each
emotion state (Tooby & Cosmides, 1990a; Tooby, 1985). Each emotion
entrains various other adaptive programs - deactivating some,
activating others, and adjusting the modifiable parameters of still
others - so that the whole system operates in a particularly
harmonious and efficacious way when the individual is confronting
certain kinds of triggering conditions or situations. The conditions
or situations relevant to the emotions are those that (1) recurred
ancestrally; (2) could not be negotiated successfully unless there was
a superordinate level of program coordination (i.e., circumstances in
which the independent operation of programs caused no conflicts would
not have selected for an emotion program, and would lead to
emotionally neutral states of mind); (3) had a rich and reliable
repeated structure; (4) had recognizable cues signaling their
presence; and (5) in which an error would have resulted in large
fitness costs (Tooby & Cosmides, 1990a; Tooby, 1985). When a condition
or situation of an evolutionarily recognizable kind is detected, a
signal is sent out from the emotion program that activates the
specific constellation of subprograms appropriate to solving the type
of adaptive problems that were regularly embedded in that situation,
and deactivates programs whose operation might interfere with solving
those types of adaptive problem. Programs directed to remain active
may be cued to enter subroutines that are specific to that emotion
mode, and that were tailored by natural selection to solve the
problems inherent in the triggering situation with special efficiency.
According to this theoretical framework, an emotion is a superordinate
program whose function is to direct the activities and interactions of
the subprograms governing perception; attention; inference; learning;
memory; goal choice; motivational priorities; categorization and
conceptual frameworks; physiological reactions (such as heart rate,
endocrine function, immune function, gamete release); reflexes;
behavioral decision rules; motor systems; communication processes;
energy level and effort allocation; affective coloration of events and
stimuli; recalibration of probability estimates, situation
assessments, values, and regulatory variables (e.g., self-esteem,
estimations of relative formidability, relative value of alternative
goal states, efficacy discount rate); and so on. An emotion is not
reducible to any one category of effects, such as effects on
physiology, behavioral inclinations, cognitive appraisals, or feeling
states, because it involves evolved instructions for all of them
together, as well as other mechanisms distributed throughout the human
mental and physical architecture...
...Specialized inference: Research in evolutionary psychology has
shown "thinking" and reasoning is not a unitary category, but is
carried out by a variety of specialized mechanisms. So, instead of
emotion activating or depressing "thinking" in general, the specific
emotion program activated should selectively activate appropriate
specialized inferential systems, such as cheater detection (Cosmides
1989; Cosmides & Tooby 1989, 1992), bluff detection (Tooby & Cosmides,
1989), precaution detection (Fiddick, Cosmides & Tooby, in press),
attributions of blame and responsibility, and so on. We are presently
conducting research to see whether, as predicted, fear influences
precautionary reasoning, competitive loss regulates bluff detection,
and so on...
...Learning: Emotion mode is expected to regulate learning mechanisms.
What someone learns from stimuli will be greatly altered by emotion
mode, because of attentional allocation, motivation, situation-
specific inferential algorithms, and a host of other factors. Emotion
mode will cause the present context to be divided up into situation-
specific functionally appropriate categories so that the same stimuli
and the same environment may be interpreted in radically different
ways, depending on emotion state. For example, which stimuli are
considered similar should be different in different emotion states,
distorting the shape of the individual's psychological "similarity
space" (Shepard 1987). Highly specialized learning mechanisms might be
activated, such as those that control food aversions (Garcia, 1990) or
predator learning (Mineka & Cooke, 1985), or fear conditioning
(LeDoux, 1995). Happiness is expected to signal the energetic
opportunity for play, and allow other exploratory agendas to be
expressed (Frederickson, 1998)...
http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/emotion.html
http://mechanism.ucsd.edu/~bill/teaching/philbiology/EvolutionaryTheoriesofEmotion.pdf
http://www.brainandevolution.blogspot.com/2007/05/moral-emotions-vs-moral-reasoning.html
http://www.flyfishingdevon.co.uk/salmon/year3/psy364emotions/psy364_emotions_evolutionary_psychobiolog.htm
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=limbic+system
Ganesh J. Acharya
Sep 10, 2012, 12:23:17 AM9/10/12
to
On Sunday, September 9, 2012 9:26:33 PM UTC+5:30, Immortalist wrote:
> On Sep 8, 11:45 pm, "Ganesh J. Acharya" <ganeshjacha...@gmail.com>
>
> wrote:
>
> > What are emotions? How would have emotions come into existence? Are emotions necessary?
>
> >
>
> > A glass of water is half empty for some, and half full for some.
>
> >
>
> > A problem may be challenging for some and troublesome for some.
>
> >
>
> > We seem to associate emotions with our observations. Again, associating either emotions with our observations can lead to bias. The research can get flawed. We just saw some time ago because humans can get mocked they just left out important observations out of their research.
>
> >
>
> > Trying to understand emotions.
>
>
>
> Actually emotions evolved long before thinking came around.
How do you say that?
> On Sep 8, 11:45 pm, "Ganesh J. Acharya" <ganeshjacha...@gmail.com>
>
> wrote:
>
> > What are emotions? How would have emotions come into existence? Are emotions necessary?
>
> >
>
> > A glass of water is half empty for some, and half full for some.
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> >
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> > A problem may be challenging for some and troublesome for some.
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> >
>
> > We seem to associate emotions with our observations. Again, associating either emotions with our observations can lead to bias. The research can get flawed. We just saw some time ago because humans can get mocked they just left out important observations out of their research.
>
> >
>
> > Trying to understand emotions.
>
>
>
> Actually emotions evolved long before thinking came around.
I guess only after one could think, one would have been able to comprehend emotions.
Doug Freyburger
Sep 10, 2012, 11:13:01 AM9/10/12
to
Ganesh J. Acharya wrote:
thinking being to work? That's not how evolution happens. Creatures
that behave in ways that lead to them breeding more, competing better
and cooperating better leave more offspring in the next generation. No
one needs to understand anything for that to happen.
Understanding is a fun idea held by humans. It's important to us. We
have not existed for long on an evolutionary time scale.
> Immortalist wrote:
>
>> Actually emotions evolved long before thinking came around.
>
> How do you say that?
> I guess only after one could think, one would have been able to comprehend emotions.
Why do you think an evolved behavior pattern needs to be understood by a
>
>> Actually emotions evolved long before thinking came around.
>
> How do you say that?
> I guess only after one could think, one would have been able to comprehend emotions.
thinking being to work? That's not how evolution happens. Creatures
that behave in ways that lead to them breeding more, competing better
and cooperating better leave more offspring in the next generation. No
one needs to understand anything for that to happen.
Understanding is a fun idea held by humans. It's important to us. We
have not existed for long on an evolutionary time scale.
chelloveck
Sep 10, 2012, 11:28:53 AM9/10/12
to
without invented language, or minus concepts represented by abstract
vocal / visual signs and symbols. How a rabbit 'feels' about things or
situations in its environment as well as how it feels about its own
current body conditions replaces the personal linguistic thoughts a
human would have for presenting his/her interpretation and understanding
of what is transpiring. Also, certainly just by their behaviors and
expressions some animals can exhibit their emotional states to each
other, further bolstering emotions as a primeval form of meaning, both
in terms of personal / internal communications as well as the external
displays that impart information about one's moods in social encounters.
jonathan
Sep 10, 2012, 9:05:54 PM9/10/12
to
"Ganesh J. Acharya" <ganeshj...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:dc1f891b-13a2-4c20...@googlegroups.com...
The Heart is the Capital of the Mind
The Mind is a single State
The Heart and the Mind together make
A single Continent
One is the Population
Numerous enough
This ecstatic Nation
Seek -- it is Yourself.
by E Dickinson
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