emotions and the brain
Natalie commented ...
"If emotions are pre-symbolic, to know an emotion (which necessitates the symbolic) is to impose a symbol (and I would argue, a Gestalt) over a heterogeneous field of affect. One does not really know the emotion in its non-symbolic state, but inevitably interprets (transforms it) it through the symbolic."
Fair enough, especially when we get to the point of thinking about emotions during the liguistic phase of infancy. By the time the child has started to speak about how they feel they are defintely interpreting an array of physiological phenomena.
The brain has distinctive physiological affects for the 4 main emotions ... fear, anger, sadness and joy. The chemicals released and the electrical connections between brain parts is different for each of these. (This finding is more LeDoux work. ) Most of the time, however, one never feels just one of these at a time, but a mixing or 2 or more affects at the same time. The nuances and, eventually, the words we use to describe these nuances contain a considerable degree of intepretation.
[Aside - There are those who believe there are more than 4 base emotions ... disgust is another that gets thrown on the list., and there are 2-3 others. The key point is that, whatever the number you like, they are physiologically distinctive to ourselves and to observers with the right brain tools.]
Going back even further ... the newborn is feeling the rush of these emotions, and their blends, from the get-go. But the internal feeling of these feelings has a natre akin to external stimuli ... the better trained "listener" can here more. Just as Karajan would hear a different symphony than me, and a violinist will here a deffierent symphony than both of us, and different from the trombone player ... the raw data of these internal stimuli are different in consciousness from one newborn to the next ... and the newborn that seeks to learn more about these internal stimuli will soon learn to see nuances.
This learning is also interpretation ... but there is something in the term "interpretation" that makes me think of a static set of stimuli ... like interpreting the words on a page from German to English. The interpretation problem here is ... even if you know every definition (primary, secondaries, and slang) of every word, still the task of combining the right definitions in the right order is a finite computational task, but near impossible .. and then you add to it that some words likely mean more than one thing at a time. Etc etc.
The interpretation of raw stimuli, internal or external, is problematic in a different way. First is the question of knowing "what is out there to be seen or heard, etc" versus what a body actually sees or hears ... and then a second layer of how the brain filters and combines what actually makes it that far, and thirdly, what finally we become conscious of.
Karajan has trained his ear to hear more of what is out there than we others, and his brain filters and combines things differently and reports different stimuli to consciousness. The violinist and trombone player may have the same ear training to pick up roughly the same sounds, but then filter and combines them very differently based on their experiences in their sections of the orchestra, as well as persoanl whims, and finally consciousness hears different things.
Internal stimuli have similar differentiations. An infant that can self-calm, or that is calmed by a caregiver, can relax and take in the emotional stimuli very differently than the one who's baby brain is being overbeared by such stimuli. I tend to use the term filtering and nuancing in this regard, meant more mechanically, than interpretation as it seems far less intentional than i take interpretation, as above described, to be. It more like filtering with a learning mechanism (nuancing).
The emotion to which we eventually apply words is going to be based on that segment which has made it through the filters and conmbinations and into consciousness.
[Aside 2 - It is my belief that words can only point to (pick out) things of which we are conscious, or things directly deducible from the things of which we are conscious. Conversely, i find such phrases as "what is really out there" to be mostly vague and meaningless pointers, at best. But these are language and reference issues better set aside for now.]
That is all for now, must collect more thoughts ...
"If emotions are pre-symbolic, to know an emotion (which necessitates the symbolic) is to impose a symbol (and I would argue, a Gestalt) over a heterogeneous field of affect. One does not really know the emotion in its non-symbolic state, but inevitably interprets (transforms it) it through the symbolic."
Fair enough, especially when we get to the point of thinking about emotions during the liguistic phase of infancy. By the time the child has started to speak about how they feel they are defintely interpreting an array of physiological phenomena.
The brain has distinctive physiological affects for the 4 main emotions ... fear, anger, sadness and joy. The chemicals released and the electrical connections between brain parts is different for each of these. (This finding is more LeDoux work. ) Most of the time, however, one never feels just one of these at a time, but a mixing or 2 or more affects at the same time. The nuances and, eventually, the words we use to describe these nuances contain a considerable degree of intepretation.
[Aside - There are those who believe there are more than 4 base emotions ... disgust is another that gets thrown on the list., and there are 2-3 others. The key point is that, whatever the number you like, they are physiologically distinctive to ourselves and to observers with the right brain tools.]
Going back even further ... the newborn is feeling the rush of these emotions, and their blends, from the get-go. But the internal feeling of these feelings has a natre akin to external stimuli ... the better trained "listener" can here more. Just as Karajan would hear a different symphony than me, and a violinist will here a deffierent symphony than both of us, and different from the trombone player ... the raw data of these internal stimuli are different in consciousness from one newborn to the next ... and the newborn that seeks to learn more about these internal stimuli will soon learn to see nuances.
This learning is also interpretation ... but there is something in the term "interpretation" that makes me think of a static set of stimuli ... like interpreting the words on a page from German to English. The interpretation problem here is ... even if you know every definition (primary, secondaries, and slang) of every word, still the task of combining the right definitions in the right order is a finite computational task, but near impossible .. and then you add to it that some words likely mean more than one thing at a time. Etc etc.
The interpretation of raw stimuli, internal or external, is problematic in a different way. First is the question of knowing "what is out there to be seen or heard, etc" versus what a body actually sees or hears ... and then a second layer of how the brain filters and combines what actually makes it that far, and thirdly, what finally we become conscious of.
Karajan has trained his ear to hear more of what is out there than we others, and his brain filters and combines things differently and reports different stimuli to consciousness. The violinist and trombone player may have the same ear training to pick up roughly the same sounds, but then filter and combines them very differently based on their experiences in their sections of the orchestra, as well as persoanl whims, and finally consciousness hears different things.
Internal stimuli have similar differentiations. An infant that can self-calm, or that is calmed by a caregiver, can relax and take in the emotional stimuli very differently than the one who's baby brain is being overbeared by such stimuli. I tend to use the term filtering and nuancing in this regard, meant more mechanically, than interpretation as it seems far less intentional than i take interpretation, as above described, to be. It more like filtering with a learning mechanism (nuancing).
The emotion to which we eventually apply words is going to be based on that segment which has made it through the filters and conmbinations and into consciousness.
[Aside 2 - It is my belief that words can only point to (pick out) things of which we are conscious, or things directly deducible from the things of which we are conscious. Conversely, i find such phrases as "what is really out there" to be mostly vague and meaningless pointers, at best. But these are language and reference issues better set aside for now.]
That is all for now, must collect more thoughts ...
posted by Thomas F. Schminke at 9:23 AM
1 Comments:
I agree. Consciousness is consciousness of something. And someTHING is always interpreted as such. It's that fine line between imminence and transcendence that puzzles me. Wordsworth also believed that emotions help us form concepts. His "spots of time" idea is organized around this principle.
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