Emotions have had a sad history in western philosophy. Emotions or passion where seen upon as irrational, they were on a lower level than, and a disturbance to reason, and something that reason had to control.
The dualism between reason and emotions were insisted and fitted well with the “pure mind” - “dirty body” dualism of the church.
It is very clear that remnants of this dualism is still very alive and present in our modern schooling and educational system. Movement and dance are always prioritized low, while pure logic subjects like mathematics are prioritized high.
I use the definitions offered by Damasio (1994) that differentiate emotions and feelings. Emotions are the automatic, subconscious changes in the body that follows the experience of a stimulus. Feelings are the conscious part of this process.
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Feelings are expressed universally and can be interpreted and understood by people in all cultures. Feelings are a critical ingredient in all social behavior and relationships.
We all experience the motivational power emotions and feelings can have. Human behavior is motivated by emotions and feelings, and this is widely reflected in history and art.
A large part of the western population uses some sort of medical prescription to numb their feelings, and we go far to escape unpleasant feelings: by excessive eating, drinking, or the use of drugs or medicine.
Despite the critical importance of feelings and emotions in the life of humans in all cultures to all times, very little is known about feelings and emotions, and in fact very little research have been done on the subject.
Why is something as central and vital for humans as feelings and emotions not investigated more and understood better?
One of the reasons for this is the paradigm that Psychology was born into. In the beginning of the 20.th. century, Freud wrote the groundbreaking "The interpretations of dreams", that changed psychology. It showed clearly that we were not totally in control of our own psyche, but that subconscious complexes, emotions and forces where influencing and partly controlling our behavior and decisions.
This have by some philosophers been interpreted as the third critical existential impact on western human psychology. First, Copernicus broke the illusion that we, the earth and the humans was the center of the universe, that everything revolved around us. From being the most valuable, the center of the whole universe we became reduced to a small planet, by many others in a large universe with planets and stars much bigger than the earth, all governed by the laws of physics.
The second big psychological influence came from Nietzche, proclaiming that God was dead. There where no longer any divine meaning with the humanity and the universe. From this moment on we had to create all meaning by ourselves. Humans where reduced to small parts in an enormous cosmic, chemical accident, governed by mechanical laws, and the properties of the atoms and the molecules, in a long, endless chain of reactions.
On top of this Freud claimed that we did not have control over, and not even access to our own subconsciousness. Humans were motivated and driven by sexually drives and complexes, that where to shameful to be accessed.
These scientific breakthroughs had a huge impact on our collective psychology. With the scientific discoveries the myths and stories and beliefs about gods, magical figures, places and rituals in the nature lost their meaning and power. Some new powerful myths and stories where born out of the industrial and technological revolution, especially the beginning of the space age. But the collective psychology of the western man where shaken up by these quick, radical changes in our existential foundation.
Science and technology where now to become the great new forces in the western society.
People looked upon the answers more and more in the new paradigm, and psychology changed accordingly. Freud and the psychoanalysis, having focused on human feelings and emotions and our subconscious material, where now facing much resistance from the positivistic wave of thinking, arguing that feelings and subconscious processes not could be quantified and where therefore not a case for science. Only what could be clearly observed and pointed to could be investigated in science. The psychological school of behaviorism was born with Skinner as a main figure from the 1920´s.
The human psyche, feelings and emotions where excluded as irrelevant by many within psychology, and continued to study mostly animal behavior to understand psychology. They showed that most behavior in animals could be explained by reactions to reward and punishment. These findings where consistent with the linear cause-and-effect thinking of the positivists.
With the upcoming of computers, the analogy of man and computer was born: input (stimuli) comes into man (or the computer), something happens with this material inside the man (or the computer) and an output (behavior) is produced. Cognitive computer science was born, and a race initiated to build the largest, fastest computer networks that could simulate the working of the brain. The computer had to list all relevant alternatives for each choice and execute a cost-benefit analysis before making a decision. This led to the development of highly complex Artificial Intelligence that today can control vacuum cleaners and walking robots. The problem that AI face today is that for each relative simple added operation, the calculation process is multiplied many times.
The AI experts have realized that a linear cost-benefit analysis is not working, as it becomes to complex and recourse demanding. Something is missing in this picture, something that humans have, in addition to the ability to analyze an calculate.
A similar problem is seen in certain patients with damage to the frontal part of the brain, specifically the prefrontal cortex. These patients are incapable of efficient decision-making. Some are incapable of the simplest decisions, as they end up in an endless cost-benefit analysis of all the different factors that might be relevant. They cannot efficiently make good decisions about a small detail, or big life decisions. Prefrontal cortex is highly connected to the limbic system and amygdala, known to be responsible for emotions. These patients report that they lack the appropriate emotional reactions to things they see, even though they “know that they should feel this or that”.
This have led Damasio (1994) to his well known “Somatic marker theory” that states that emotions guides decisions every moment, by acting as a guiding system, automatically excluding most alternatives and focusing in on a few. This is possible because each experience, stimulus and object we experience gets associated with a somatic marker (a sort of bodily manifested emotion) that is created from the outcome of that experience. So everything we have experienced is marked with an emotion (that is more or less positive) that guide us toward certain alternatives and away from others in new, similar situations.
Extencive findings within neuroscience support this theory, maybe first pointed clearly out by Zajonc in 1980. Findings shows that emotions are not irrational and impulses to be controlled by reason, but in their selves are highly rational and intelligent.
The old paradigme is now facing a big challenge, not only from the school of psychoanalysis and psykodynamic thinking, but from neuroscience with the use of quantified methods.
In summary research confirms Freud in that the subconscious level of our consciousness hides information and processes that are relevant, critical and motivational for behavior. The notion that our consciousnes is just a small fraction of our total consciousness, have been largely accepted after Freud, but now its is also shown by quantifiable research.
In the next blog will look more into the rationality of emotions, mirror neurons and other subconscious processes.
