Greetings,
This is by way of an aside on the Emotions question, as I must confess to
not having had a proper chance to digest everything that has been said so
far in this thread, but I feel the following might be of interest (it comes
from an essay I wrote a couple of years back):
Antonio Damasio, Descartes' Error - Damasio is an American neuro-scientist.
Damasio's work began with research into the predicament of patients
suffering from anasognosia, which is an inability to experience emotion,
although the disorder leaves rationality and linguistic abilities intact.
One case is particularly revealing for our purposes. Damasio was discussing
with the patient the possibility of a meeting at a later date, and gave the
patient the option of choosing between two dates. The patient then began
analysing which of the two dates would be preferable and considered the pros
and cons of each in considerable detail. In fact, the consideration only
stopped - after half an hour of thought - when Damasio himself stated a
preference for one of the dates.
Through the results from these case studies, and from other experiments,
Damasio has formulated what he calls the 'Somatic Marker Hypothesis', which
has direct relevance for our discussion of mind-body relations. The argument
is that the body, particularly the emotions, play a central part in our
reasoning capacity, most importantly when it comes to making decisions. An
analogy may make things clearer: in playing chess there are an infinite
number of possible moves. A normal player will automatically exclude certain
moves from consideration, for example those which lead directly to the loss
of a queen, thus winnowing down the number of options that have to be
considered. The somatic marker hypothesis is that the emotions play this
role within normal human reasoning. When the brain is considering certain
courses of action it 'presents' the outcome to the body, and makes decisions
based on how the body reacts.
There are a number of elements which are central to the hypothesis:
a) firstly, it is a serious error to consider the brain separately from the
body within which it is placed. In Damasio's terms, 'Nature appears to have
built the apparatus of rationality not just on top of the apparatus of
biological regulation, but also from it and with it'. Furthermore, the
reasoning capacity is not localised to a particular area of the brain but is
distributed within it. The way in which the brain and wider body interact is
not just neuronal but also chemical, through the operation of the endocrine
glands and other hormonal outputs, in a situation of reciprocal feedback;
b) secondly, the brain has evolved in such a way that it is able to
establish an internal representation of the state of the wider body, both in
terms of the internal organs and also in terms of how the body interacts
with the wider environment. Damasio considers that this would 'ensure body
survival as effectively as possible... representing the outside world in
terms of the modifications it causes the body proper';
c) thirdly, the brain is able to hypothesise and consider imaginary
scenarios, and represent these to itself 'as if' they were really happening;
and
d) finally, the body reacts to these scenarios in certain ways and these
affect the cognitive evaluation of the scenarios.
Damasio sees this as providing a possible basis for a neurological
understanding of consciousness. To summarise his argument, he sees the
constantly refreshed picture of the internal body state as the original
source for a sense of self: 'our experiences have a consistent perspective'
rooted in 'a relatively stable, endlessly repeated biological state'.
Damasio writes, 'I see self and the subjectivity it begets as necessary for
consciousness in general'. This is confirmed by his studies of
anasognosiacs, who, uniquely amongst mental patients, are unable to reflect
upon their illness - indeed, unless told, many patients are unaware that
there is something wrong at all. No anasognosiac is capable of saying
'Something has happened to me' - their capacity for self representation has
been removed.
According to this model, therefore, the sense of the self arises from the
presentation to the brain of the ongoing body state, constructed from both
the state of internal organs and also the wider environment (note that this
means that the sense of self-identity is not linguistic in origin). The self
is constructed by the consideration of two inputs within the brain: this
body state, and also an understanding of key events in the past of the
biological actor (ie memory and character); and the sense of subjectivity
arises when these inputs are processed in a third area of the brain.
Damasio's view could be summarised as an advocacy of 'Body-minded brains'
and the implications for our philosophical analysis are clear. At one point
he considers the cliché of the brain in a vat and writes: 'I believe that
this brain would not have a normal mind. The absence of stimuli going out
into the body...would result in suspending the triggering and modulation of
body states that, when represented back to the brain, constitute what I see
as the sense of being alive'. As he describes it, 'Mind is probably not
conceivable without some sort of embodiment'.
However, the relative truth of the specific elements of Damasio's hypothesis
are less important than the validity of the principal conclusion relating to
the impossibility of separating reason from emotion. As he puts it 'It does
not seem sensible to leave emotions and feelings out of any overall concept
of mind'.
~~~~~~
>From the point of view of integrating this with the MoQ, I would argue that
'emotion' cannot be reduced to either the biological, the social, or even
the intellectual level. It is a combination of all the different parts of
human being. It would also be true to say that the intellectual level
depends upon the social and biological for both existence and proper
functioning.
Sorry if this is a random intervention, or if it has already been covered. I
thought it might be useful.
Sam
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