One of the ongoing debates in neuroscience is on the nature of emotions, where they originate, where they are felt, and how innate versus learned they are. One view, championed by the late Jaak Panksepp and his followers, see emotions as innate, primal, and subcortical. They allow that the more complex social emotions, such as … Continue reading The layers of emotional feelings
Tag: Emotion
Joseph LeDoux’s theories on consciousness and emotions
In the last post, I mentioned that I was reading Joseph LeDoux's new book, The Deep History of Ourselves: The Four-Billion-Year Story of How We Got Conscious Brains. There's a lot of interesting stuff in this book. As its title implies, it starts early in evolution, providing a lot of information on early life, although … Continue reading Joseph LeDoux’s theories on consciousness and emotions
The reflex and the feeling
Stephen T. Asma and Rami Gabriel have an interesting article at Aeon on emotions. Their main thesis is that many emotions are biological, universal, and rooted in evolution. And that they arise through "the strata of consciousness": the physiological, the experential, and the conceptual. They start off casting aspersions on computationalism, evolutionary psychology, and artificial … Continue reading The reflex and the feeling
The layers of emotion creation
What are emotions? Where do they come from? Are they something innate or something we learn? The classic view is that they're precognitive impulses that happen to us. If so, this would imply that they have specific neural signatures. Early in her career, psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett attempted to isolate the neural basis of emotions … Continue reading The layers of emotion creation
Fruit fly fear and AI sentience
I found this study interesting: Do flies have fear (or something like it)? -- ScienceDaily. A fruit fly starts buzzing around food at a picnic, so you wave your hand over the insect and shoo it away. But when the insect flees the scene, is it doing so because it is actually afraid? Using fruit flies … Continue reading Fruit fly fear and AI sentience
Reason is a tool of emotion
Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them. David Hume Reason, logic, is a tool. It is a means to an end. It is never an end unto itself, never the goal. It is the journey, not … Continue reading Reason is a tool of emotion
The Dark Side of Emotional Intelligence – Adam Grant – The Atlantic
Emotional intelligence is important, but the unbridled enthusiasm has obscured a dark side. New evidence shows that when people hone their emotional skills, they become better at manipulating others. When you’re good at controlling your own emotions, you can disguise your true feelings. When you know what others are feeling, you can tug at their … Continue reading The Dark Side of Emotional Intelligence – Adam Grant – The Atlantic
Rationally Speaking: Rationally Speaking cartoon: Evidence & Reason
via Rationally Speaking: Rationally Speaking cartoon: Evidence & Reason. Click through to see a enlarged version. This succinctly mirrors my earlier comments on a post Massimo made a while back expressing frustration on a relative's unwillingness to see logic. Sometimes the logical thing to do is to recognize that logic won't work. Related articles Rationally Speaking … Continue reading Rationally Speaking: Rationally Speaking cartoon: Evidence & Reason
Countering emotion with logic is often not effective
Massimo Pigliucci posted yesterday: Rationally Speaking: Irrationality, a personal study, his personal frustration in a conversation with a relative who, despite being a fairly rational person, had an emotional aversion to gay marriage. Massimo lamented the difficulty in convincing people to approach things rationally. I think trying to counter emotional positions with logic is a tricky … Continue reading Countering emotion with logic is often not effective
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