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Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain?
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I saw the word entity and started to scroll past the post, but I think this is actually a really interesting theory that makes sense. If you haven't, you should read Descartes' Error. He explores the studies done on blind-sight and split brains, and it does appear that separate, distinct consciousnesses can emerge in one brain under the right conditions (this is entirely different from Dissociative Identity Disorder, which isn't really multiple distinct consciousnesses the way it's popularly portrayed in media).
Not a neurologist, but isn't the idea of "mind and body separation" kind of debunked?
From what I've read (e.g. Damasio) the body plays a significant part in cognition, and we'd be little more than calculators if we were just a homeostatic brain.
> also, empathy/emotion does not belong in policy. It is how bad policy is created. You need to think with your brain, not your heart when making decisions.
You're confused:
>Since Descartes famously proclaimed, "I think, therefore I am," science has often overlooked emotions as the source of a person’s true being. Even modern neuroscience has tended, until recently, to concentrate on the cognitive aspects of brain function, disregarding emotions. This attitude began to change with the publication of Descartes’ Error in 1995. Antonio Damasio—"one of the world’s leading neurologists" (The New York Times)—challenged traditional ideas about the connection between emotions and rationality. In this wondrously engaging book, Damasio takes the reader on a journey of scientific discovery through a series of case studies, demonstrating what many of us have long suspected: emotions are not a luxury, they are essential to rational thinking and to normal social behavior.
If you're interested in this subject I would recommend listening to what neuroscientists have to say rather than Ben Shapiro.
I should have added that everyone believes things at least partially for non-smart reasons. There are no real life Dr. Spocks or Cmdr. Datas. As Damasio points out, all reasoning is partly emotional and those unfortunate individuals who have brain damage to the emotional areas involved in reasoning are actually terminally indecisive not super-rational.
There really are a few people with neurological disorders or brain injuries who don't use any emotion or gut instinct to make decisions. They are totally rational people because they are disconnected from their emotions.
Rather than being Spock (or, I suppose, a full Vulcan), they are people who are paralyzed by decisions that the rest of us make quickly without thinking. Sure, it's one thing to try to make economic policy decisions without emotion, but try using pure rationality to choose between a blue tie and a red tie. They can't do it, and they get hamstrung by it.
>That is a very poorly presented argument. His entire point is based on anecdotal evidence...
Nothing poorly presented about it, you just don't know any of the literature so go read up.
Damasio demonstrates how patients (his own as well as the 19th-century railroad worker Nicholas Gage) with prefrontal cortical damage can no longer generate the emotions necessary for effective decision-making. A gifted scientist and writer, Damasio combines an Oliver Sack-like reportage with the presentation of complex, theoretical issues in neurobiology.
Right, but I don't see how you can work bottom-up using reasons as a base. Reasons without supporting motivations ring hollow. Antonio Damasio's book Descartes' Error is a great source on this issue. Have you looked at any of the philosophical or psychological literature on the issue of the relation between reason and motivaiton?
[Fuckin' write a book about it](#descartes)
>https://www.amazon.com/Descartes-Error-Emotion-Reason-Human/dp/014303622X
[damn](#descartes)
Check out the book Descartes Error. He goes into the split-brain studies, and yes, two distinct consciousnesses do seem to form.
These are interesting questions that go back to the ancients. I think most philosophers who have thought seriously about the emotions today would reject the pop view that emotions are inherently opposed to logic. (In fact, people who study the issue empirically would question that view too). The degree to which the pop view is missing something will vary depending on the particular view of the emotions the theorist subscribes to.
Broadly speaking, there are three traditions in the philosophy of emotions that this SEP article does a nice job outlining. There's the "feeling" tradition, the "evaluation" tradition, and the "motivation tradition." To see how these views differ, consider the question, what does it mean to be afraid? Someone in the feelings tradition would say "to be afraid is to experience some syndrome of bodily feelings like a beating heart, sweaty palms, fluttering stomach, etc." Someone in the evaluative tradition would say "to be afraid is to judge (or appraise or believe) that something dangerous is nearby." Those in the motivational tradition might say "to be afraid is to be motivated to flee from something." Notably, a lot of philosophers will try and mix and match various elements from these theories to make their account more successful.
If you subscribe to the feeling tradition you are more likely to see emotions as something that can't be assessed for their rationality. Just as it can't be rational or irrational for me to feel cold, it can't be rational or irrational for me to feel my heart beating or stomach fluttering. In fact, one of the things the feelings views have the hardest time accounting for (though some try to by adopting a hybrid view) is the intuition we have that emotions can be rational or irrational and are subject to rational correction in a way brute feelings lie being cold are not.
If you subscribe to the evaluative tradition, you would likely see emotions as just like any other judgements, subjection to rational assessment and correction. It could be rational for me to evaluate something as dangerous, but it could also be irrational. I am the least familiar with the motivation tradition but assume someone in this tradition would see emotions as subject to at least some rational assessment.
I think really all these views have resources to explain why we sometimes think of emotions as opposed to reason when in fact they are sometimes key to reasoning well. The feelings view offers us the thought that feelings, while not subject to rational assessment themselves, may mislead us into developing beliefs and other attitudes that are irrational. If my fear (beating heart, sweaty palms) is usually triggered by things that are dangerous but is also triggered by heights and harmless slithering things (let's say, by some fluke of evolution), I may be misled by my feelings into believing there's danger when there is none. If, on the other hand, emotions are value judgements, it's easy to see how they can lead to a kind of distorted motivated reasoning. People often reason poorly about things they care about or value because they are motivated to draw one conclusion or the other (as in when my fear of failing the test, my belief that that is dangerous for me, leads me to reassure myself "I'm sure attending every other lecture sufficed...")
The book that lit a fire in me to learn this stuff actually has nothing to do with drugs at all, just the brain: https://www.amazon.com/Descartes-Error-Emotion-Reason-Human/dp/014303622X
It explains a lot about what we knew about the brain at the time (it's a little outdated now), and how neurological and psychology research works, in a very readable writing style.
Next, I picked up an introductory pharmacology textbook intended for psychologists (instead of neurologists/neuroscientists). I can't find the exact book I had, but this one looks like a really good one: https://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Clinical-Psychopharmacology-Psychologists-Mark/dp/0470907576
From here, what I do when I want to research something, I'll read some wiki articles. A useful thing to do is read the "pharmacology" sections in the entries for lots of different drugs. After that, I jump into actual research articles and then pause and look up any terms I don't understand.
A few other books which helped with getting comfortable with theories of mind, neuroscience jargon, etc even if only tangentially related:
- https://www.amazon.com/Zen-Brain-Understanding-Meditation-Consciousness/dp/0262511096/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=zen+and+the+brain&qid=1596419392&s=books&sr=1-1
- https://www.amazon.com/Neurophilosophy-Toward-Unified-Science-Mind-Brain/dp/0262530856
- https://www.amazon.com/Consciousness-Explained-Daniel-C-Dennett/dp/0316180661/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=daniel+dennett&qid=1596419893&s=books&sr=1-2
Would you characterize The Core of the Christian Faith Isn’t Intellectual, It’s Emotional as "debating religion"? I'd put it closer to "trying to understand how humans & groups work". And then you could apply that to your own group and see how much of your rooting is intellectual vs. emotional—especially given science such as Antonio Damasio reports in his 1994 Descartes' Error (36,000 'citations'). If we aren't as reasonable as we would like to believe, but pretend that we are, what happens?
This book is a little outdated now, but when I was an undergrad philosophy major, this was THE book for the materialist viewpoint: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/neurophilosophy
I'd also recommend reading https://www.amazon.com/Descartes-Error-Emotion-Reason-Human/dp/014303622X . Again, it's a little dated but should help you understand where most materialists are coming from.
> labreuer: Do you mean a force disconnected from any intellect or intelligence?
> Yes. Not sure how others think of ‘will.’ But that’s how I imagine they do.
Ah, fascinating. There has been a raging debate in theology about whether to construe God as more intellectual or more voluntaristic, with 'voluntarism' seeming to align with how you understand 'will'. I think the reason that debate rages is because neither extreme is actually right. And I would argue that science agrees:
> When emotion is entirely left out of the reasoning picture, as happens in certain neurological conditions, reason turns out to be even more flawed than when emotion plays bad tricks on our decisions. (Descartes' Error, xii)
That book, published in in 1994, has garnered 35,000 'citations'. This is for good reason: it pushed hard, against a longstanding dichotomy of 'reason' and 'emotion'.
> Spider-Man-fan: Yes, determinism is unfalsifiable. You can look at a rat in a maze and put food down and an electric shock and see if it goes towards the food and away from the electric shock. We can observe these things. We are just bigger rats in a far more complex maze.
> labreuer: Then it is not a deliverance of the senses, but a philosophical choice.
> Spider-Man-fan: I really don’t know what you’re saying.
> labreuer: Perhaps it would help if you recounted how you came to believe in determinism—given that it is unfalsifiable.
> Like I’ve described before, like the rat in the maze. If someone feels hungry, I can determine that they will attempt to get food. If someone’s pants catch fire, I can determine that they will try to put it out or remove the pants.
And yet, some people intentionally fast, rendering your prediction false for them. Humans are remarkably good at not acting on their immediate urges; one might say that it is a primary way we are distinguished from all other life. You seem to have picked a few examples where your mode of explanation does seem to work, while not expending any effort to see where maybe it doesn't work.
> There is no point in debating true believers of any variety.
That seems tautologically true. Having observed and interacted with John W. Loftus while he was an atheist, I'm guessing you would have characterized his Christian self as a "true believer". Yes? No? If yes, then we could see whether atheists debating with him were any part of his deconversion. If yes, then perhaps it is impossible to tell who is actually a "true believer", making your observation pragmatically iffy.
> Beliefs are not points of debate, they are emotional premises upon which all else is built.
Is this true only of theists, or atheists as well? If only theists, can you point to peer-reviewed science which establishes your point?
> Emotions and reason (the mechanism of debate) have little intersection.
I suggest checking out Antonio Damasio 1994 Descartes' Error. Damasio found that people with brain lesions which disconnected them from their emotions made it very difficult for them to pursue long-term goals in life, while leaving their ability to solve logic puzzles and the like unaffected. Here's how Damasio summarizes his findings:
> When emotion is entirely left out of the reasoning picture, as happens in certain neurological conditions, reason turns out to be even more flawed than when emotion plays bad tricks on our decisions. (xii)
That book stands at 35,000 'citations'. While it might not be 100% right, it also isn't 100% wrong.
I encourage you to study the neuroscience on the subject, maybe starting with Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain.
>What talk is this video from?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOdJMuCreDA
Book they talk about with stats/facts/evidence/etc.
> Sadly your references and examples appear to be b-grade at best
Sorry to tell you but you're full of shit. You just confirmed lakoff saying that. This stuff is well researched.
How bout you look at this video of dan dennet and watch the experiments therein.
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_dennett_on_our_consciousness
The monkey illusion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGQmdoK_ZfY
Damasio demonstrates how patients (his own as well as the 19th-century railroad worker Nicholas Gage) with prefrontal cortical damage can no longer generate the emotions necessary for effective decision-making. A gifted scientist and writer, Damasio combines an Oliver Sack-like reportage with the presentation of complex, theoretical issues in neurobiology.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/014303622X
Go do some reading. There a hard medical reference for you.
> even if the neuroscience he refers to is correct, his analysis seems flawed.
Nope, where do you think religion comes from? Religion is overwhelming evidence that people don't reason correctly. People live in an abstraction and emotion by and large not in reality, what you're seeing right now is an abstraction imposed on you by your unconscious processing. The noise you're hearing right now where you are is all generated for you by unconscious processes.
You can go get this book and look at the medical cases from science.
http://www.amazon.com/Descartes-Error-Emotion-Reason-Human/dp/014303622X/
I'm sorry to tell you but you have google, one can easily lookup george lakoff or damasio
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Damasio
http://www.amazon.com/Descartes-Error-Emotion-Reason-Human/dp/014303622X
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