From: Rafal Smigrodzki (rafal@smigrodzki.org)
Date: Wed Jul 30 2003 - 11:57:10 MDT
Hal Finney wrote:
>
> There is something about the mere possibility of a non-emotional
> response which is threatening to this mindset. My take on it is that
> there is a certain strategy, or perspective, or philosophy, which
> gives great value to emotional response. This is a widely held
> philosophical view, probably a majority viewpoint, possibly even a
> very wide majority. Sometimes it is combined with a spiritual or
> religious perspective.
>
> If we think of this philosophy as a meme-complex, it is in competition
> with an alternative philosophy which reduces the importance of
> emotional reactions relative to abstract intellectual reaasoning.
> These two points of view are threatening to one another, as each one
> attacks the basic presumptions of the other. And as memes, both are
> in competition for the hearts and minds (a phrase which itself
> embodies the two sides) of the population, each providing answers and
> strategies that are almost exactly the opposite of the other.
### I can echo Steve Witham's mention of Antonio Damasio's "Descartes'
Error" in this context. As it happens, I am now about halfway through
"Looking for Spinoza", the newest book by Damasio, and I am more attuned to
the interdependencies between emotions, feelings and reason, rather than
their opposition.
There seems be a line of tension between the built-in hardwired simple
emotional reactions (brainstem, limbic system) and the adaptive, learning,
general-purpose deliberation (prefrontal cortex). The former cannot accept
certain outcomes and automatically, unthinkingly act to achieve their preset
goals. The latter is capable of self-referential examination and recursive
change. If logical deliberation leads one to conclude that some unwished-for
event is inevitable, the emotional brain is incapable of accepting it.
Consequently, there are elaborate mechanisms of self-deception (evolved and
learned) to prevent a constant activation of the flight-or-fight systems is
response to the realization of the inability of reaching hardwired goals.
On the other hand, it is the feeling that provides the motive force for
deliberation to take place, and to tie its results to the actual physical
body where this information processing takes place. I am using "feeling" in
the sense that Damasio describes it, an awareness of one's body, the
condition it is in, and awareness of one's quality of thinking (fast,
brilliant, slow, muddled). Damasio's favorite subjects, patients with
prefrontal cortex damage, are incapable of binding the results of
deliberation (which they provably can perform, in IQ tests and in tests of
social reasoning) to appropriate actions (they tend to mess up their lives
horribly). It is unclear to me if it is possible to build a sentience
capable of long-term survival without having at least some form of the
information processing (and maybe the qualia) that we call feeling. I guess
it might be possible, but we have too little knowledge to reasonably
speculate here. However, at least for the classic human neuroform, feelings
are crucial to appropriate functioning.
The problem with the senator's reaction (aside from other contributing
factors, like cynical calculation of personal gain from publicity, against
the interests of other Americans) is that they have an insufficient level of
integration between their emotions and reasoning (if any). Whereas adult,
well-integrated personalities accept both reason *and* emotions, and learn
to live with them, our senators, like children who close their eyes to
danger, choose not to think in certain situations and instead let knee-jerk
reactions control them.
I noticed by introspection that feelings, which are subserved by cortical
mechanisms (mainly the insula, some parietal and frontal activity), are
modifiable. The switch from one emotional attitude to another can be pretty
slow, subconscious, and is helped by repetition of exposure to material,
including one's own deliberative activity, favoring one feeling over another
(this is BTW, the reason I am appalled by the Tranquility Bay brainwashing,
aimed at using quirks of our brains to destroy personalities with externally
provided input). We cannot change our emotions too much, but we can learn
new feelings, including feelings compatible with reason. It takes much more
time and effort to convince a human to change feelings than reasoned
positions but it is possible. This is why a neuroscientist arguing about a
synapse can convince another one by a bit of empirical data, quickly, since
usually we do not have feelings about every single synapse. This is why it
takes much longer for two people to come to an agreement on issues where
their rationality is directly impacted by emotional inputs (or doubts about
veracity).
In the long run, especially with improved intelligence, even politicians
might learn to combine feelings and deliberation into a rational whole.
Rafal
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