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From: ckk@pobox.com (Chris Koenigsberg)
Subject: Re: being unaware of your emotions (was Re: Emotional computers)
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Date: Mon, 27 Jan 1997 19:19:51 GMT
Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.ai:43790 comp.ai.philosophy:51523 sci.cognitive:14582

A.Sloman@cs.bham.ac.uk (Aaron Sloman) writes:
> There are all sorts of internal states of which we are not aware
> (e.g. what we know about the rules of our own language) and these
> states are not definable in terms of behaviour or
> situation/behaviour relationships....
> [snip...]
> A lot of these debates about emotions, qualia, and other mental
> states go on because people make simplistic assumptions such as: if
> X has a mental state then X must be aware of that state.

I'm reading Dr. Antonio Damasio's book "Descartes Error: Emotion,
Reason, and the Human Brain" and just got through chapters where he
proposes his theory of somatic markers as physical "emotions", which
may affect behavior with or without being "consciously noticed",
vs. "feelings" on the other hand, which are "conscious perceptions" of
these somatic marker states. (I'm sure I'm mangling the words in
trying to paraphrase, read the original, he's a scholarly researcher
not a Usenet kook like me!)

Last night I just read a part where he described a case, of prefrontal
something-or-other brain damage, which disconnects the decision-maker
from "feeling" his somatic marker states, and vice versa. On his way
to a doctor's appointment with the author, the patient drove through
an ice storm, watched someone in front of him skid off the ice into a
ditch, but calmly proceeded on through, making all the correct driving
decisions to navigate the treacherous patch perfectly. In this case,
lacking the "emotions" was an advantage to the guy. He was totally
"rational" and calm in the crisis situation.

But then after arriving at the doctor's office, the same guy was stuck
for a half hour, unable to decide between two alternative dates for a
future appointment, because all he could do was exhaustively enumerate
all the possible reasons for and against each choice, until the
doctors finally interrupted. In this situation his emotional, somatic
markers would have provided the heuristic clues to cut right through
and make an arbitrary choice.

Also after that there was a discussion of the mechanism in bumblebees,
where they "choose" which flowers to land on, in an entirely
"unconscious" process which is dominated by neurochemical, somatic
marker states (i.e. "emotional" sorts of processes). Their short-term
memory can only hold maybe 3 or 4 encounters (landing on a flower of
color X, seeing whether any nectar is present). After a couple of
positive experiences with color X flowers yielding nectar, their
neurotransmitter system (I think it was "octamine" based, instead of
dopamine? spelling?) alters, so their muscular system will execute the
landing maneuvers the next time they pass color X again.

This would be a good example of a "covert" mechanism, of an
"emotional" or somatic nature, that can affect a seemingly "rational
decision-making" process.

Again, read the book, and follow the references to the bumblebee work
etc., don't argue with my mangled paraphrasing here :-).

--------------------
Chris Koenigsberg: ckk@pobox.com
<URL: http://www.pobox.com/~ckk>

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