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Back when I was studying philosophy of Mind it was interesting moving from the analytic tradition, seeking to prove or quantify a Theory of Mind to trying to understand our ability to relate to other people to examining it from a phenomenological or emotional standpoint. Essentially it isn't that we have some set of beliefs regarding other people's having minds, etc. but seeing those we identify as 'others' triggers feelings in ourselves that mirror how we feel when we act. Essentially we can better understand the human experience by framing it in terms of emotional response than an accumulated set of analysable beliefs. Emotions under that picture act as reasoning heuristics, our conscious mind only pays attention to certain objects and deals with a limited number of possible actions, what those are is determined in large part by our emotional situation. When we're anxious it can be difficult to, say, enjoy a meal because our mind is focused on the object of our anxiety even if it's not in the immediate vicinity. When we feel scared the things we pay attention to can shift radically (imagine a spy terrified of being caught walking down a crowded street versus someone window shopping). The possible interpretations and actions in response to objects and others are always there our mind simply doesn't waste time trying to process them. Removing emotions means we need to either have a vast increase in our own computing abilities to deal with near infinite possible actions (which would really become bounded only by what is physically possible) or create a whole new set of reasoning heuristics and another set to help determine when those heuristics should be applied, etc. Emotions can definitely go wrong but they're a fundamental aspect of how we're able to actually act rationally in the world. We only think of them as irrational because we notice instances of irrational behaviour when emotions are inappropriate. We're not thinking about all the times that someone smartly ran when faced with a dangerous situation because they were terrified of it.
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Jul 23, 2015 04:38
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 06:34 |
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It's one level of understanding emotion but I think it's important to also emphasize that we can view emotions as heuristic devices, behavioural modifiers and even delve down to describing them as C-neurons firing at X time (or inconjunction with J-Neurons firing, etc. conditions) but these are also the experiences that give meaning to human experience. I'm talking about them in the more scientific terms because I believe that's what most people engaging in the discussion from the position that emotions are pointless or extraneous will respond to and I don't think it's somehow a wrong way of understanding them. I don't agree that it's a primary way to do so, I wouldn't agree that we should understand emotions in art or as conjured by a novel or important shared experience firstly in terms of how they caused people to behave or shift their thought processes. That's something for later analysis and on a mass level, doing crowd psychology, it has value. In terms of understanding what it's actually like to live that experience or what that means to another human being? That's a totally different issue. Also they're not crazy irrational things. You know all those stupid bits in ST:TNG where Data is acting like an idiot? That's probably a really, really generous picture of how an android devoid of emotions would behave in situations.
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Jul 23, 2015 19:38
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