
The Evolution of Emotion - mhelbig
http://aeon.co/magazine/being-human/stephen-t-asma-evolution-of-emotion/
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jostmey
Emotions to some extent could be conserved between related species. But this
does not mean that every animal has the same repertoire of emotions. Some
animals could exhibit emotions completely novel and unimaginable to the likes
of us, while at the same time some emotions could be uniquely human.

I would suppose that some very basic emotions such as fear might be widely
conserved among higher organisms.

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l33tbro
I don't mean to be abrupt, but did you honestly read all of the article? Your
musings here are really the most rudimentary points of what the author talked
about.

As the author states, "evolution is filled with contingent and convergent
pathways of adaptive behavior". So yeah, the anthropocentric notion that we
have "all of the feels" is bunk.

General intelligence is a fascinating field of neuroscience and is really
making mainstream evolutionary psych seem a bit naff.

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cristianpascu
Phenomenal experiences, like emotions, feelings, thoughts, sensations, are
inexplicable [a]. Yet we know they evolved.

[a]
[http://www.ted.com/talks/david_chalmers_how_do_you_explain_c...](http://www.ted.com/talks/david_chalmers_how_do_you_explain_consciousness)

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joe_the_user
It seems like the typical ploy of the new age pseudo-scientist is to begin
referencing people's internal experiences, jump from there to the point that
people highly value their internal experiences and finally claim that the
things explain the outside world couldn't possibly explain these internal
phenomena, that the intensity of internal experiences makes them
"inexplicable".

But the entire "argument" is purely psychological. An intelligent being having
internal representations seems very logical - computer programs often build a
variety of representation of the things they modeling. Memories can seem vivid
but my recall is that the brain doesn't reconstruct full movies. But even
more, the vividness of internal movies is pretty thin argument to the leap
halfway into Chalmers video where he speculates "(maybe) even a photon has
consciousness".

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cristianpascu
David Chalmers is not a scientist. Is a philosopher, and quite a respectable
one. Consciousness is a much older problem than the new age thingy. And
definitely is much older than the pseudo-skeptic that knows better than
scholars in a branch with a very long and wide tradition.

~~~
joe_the_user
It seems like you are defending his claims only based on authority.

I can't say whether modern philosophy has dived into New Age nonsense or
whether Chalmers just happened to be in the mood to make lazy, bogus arguments
just for the video link you posted.

But when someone starts saying "maybe a photon has a litter bit of
consciousness", they have rather clearly entered the realm of pseudo-science.

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l33tbro
To be fair, 'pseudo science' is both a very sweeping and loaded term. Hate to
be that guy, but we have to remember that scientism and 'new age' theory can
be equally toxic.

~~~
joe_the_user
Pseudo-science is a strong term indeed, but I'm not sure what's a clearer term
for an approach that uses a dose of social authority - indeed the mantle of
science, to make statements that clearly fly in the face of facts that real
scientific processes have established with some accuracy.

The properties of photons are very well documented. Consciousness has not been
found among them. Claiming that photons have "a little bit" of consciousness
based "we don't know what consciousness is so it must everywhere/in-
everything" seems to rather clearly like an abuse of logic.

I am not claiming the mantle of science myself to tell someone what their
subjective experiences are. I'm just saying the someone merely referencing
their subjective experiences doesn't refute a long string of scientific
experiments.

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egeozcan
_Neuroscience has begun to correct the computational model by showing how our
rational, linguistic mind depends on the ancient limbic brain, where emotions
hold sway and social skills dominate._

Why can't emotions be computational? For example, in case of danger, fear
event gets fired and body responds to that.

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joe_the_user
Well, you argue that all of the phenomena is "computational" if computing in
the brain means something.

The main difference between an emotional response and a "rational" or
"linguistic" response might be an emotional response would send a signal to
the whole system whereas a "linguistic" response might require a chain of
manipulations before a final result appeared.

Of course we have a long way to go before these speculations become at all
accurate.

~~~
tbrownaw
_...might be an emotional response would send a signal to the whole system..._

No wonder emotions are so messy: they're a form of mutable global state.

