Greetings Bo, I was intrigued by the attitudes that seemed to flow from the discussion of emotions. They are a bit over humanized in contradiction to biology.
<snip> B > IMO emotion is the social "expression" (Sensation the biological and > Reason the intellectual). Animals wouldn't survive if they had > emotions. When an antelope has escaped a lion it continues to graze > as if nothing has happened. If it had been afraid in the emotional > sense it would never have dared venture out in the open again and > quickly succumbed. <snip> m As the functional physiology of the brain is described, the seat of emotions is in the "reptile brain," the older portions of the brain deeper within than the crenellated mass we are most fascinated with most of the time: cerebral cortex. Since the emotional center is deeper in the brain and part of an older structure we share with all mammals, there must be a functional reason for it. After all it did not suddenly evolve. Your statement: "Animals wouldn't survive if they had emotions." is, I believe exactly backwards. Animals survive because they have emotions. You can see this in their behavior from the rearing of their young to their 'social' behaviors, to how they meet their demise. Animals possessing older forms, pre-emotional forms of central nervous systems have a survival strategy of casting high numbers of young out into the world and letting them fend for themselves. The nurturing behaviors are more generally found in animals with the emotional centers. Their young, as individuals have a higher survival rate in an environment that requires more complexity of behavior. Emotions, far from being a paralyzing force are a motivating force for the survival of not just the individual creature but the herd. The aggression of ungulates towards predators is not fueled by some bio-chemical instinct, but by emotion and a clear orientation to protect as far as possible what is important--what the buffalo/yak/elephant cares about, the young. The difference in your example is that the antelope after it has escaped the lion has nothing to worry about that is any more important than feeding and surviving. Lions are busy feeding on a kill that no longer is a part of the herd. Humans, due to their own peculiar, extreme sense of self-awareness, invent a horror by replaying the emotion and perseverating on the original action, hence developing phobias, post-traumatic stress, etc. Some people in traumatic events, say a plane crash, just 'slide' past the emotional part as easily as the antelope its near encounter with a lion. Other times people from the same crash are devastated and never recover. Watch the way dogs try to manipulate people. They don't use reasoned debate, they use something older, and more direct, something they understand--emotion. As a small child I had a dog. In my teen years the beast was half-blind and largely deaf, but physically active. If the dog wanted inside, even on a warm day, he would shiver and yelp and make a show of how pitiful he was. But if he didn't see or hear anyone in the house he'd simply sit at the backdoor patiently waiting. Once he knew you were there he gave all the physical signs of great distress. Dogs know emotions well. Another of my dogs would meet me at the door and as soon as we stepped inside we knew if she had done something she knew we disapproved of. If, the moment after greeting us her head dropped and tail went between her legs we knew 9 out of 10 times she'd been in the garbage can. She telegraphed her feeling of guilt. Extrapolating from that action, she knew enough about us to know how we would feel about her rooting in the trash. That is a pretty sophisticated modeling of human behavior by a dog, when you think about it. She anticipated our reaction and her communication was largely emotionally driven. Any way, something to consider. thanks--mel . Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
