Hi Diana,
Still lurking, and just couldn't resist your article on emotion. ( I have
also filed your 'Giraffes and Stuff' article which I found to the point,
balanced and cogent.)
I have been reading Pinker's 'How the Mind Works', which explores mental
functioning from the bases of evolutionary theory and information theory.
I'll elaborate on his understanding of the emotions because I happen to
think that one of the real problems with a view of the intellect as the
highest order static value is that it just doesn't do justice to the
complexity of life, in which emotions play a powerful and significant role.
This accords with my experience, both personal and in working as a
therapist, where intellect is as much a problem as an advantage.
Pinker explores emotions and passions from the point of view of their
likely evolutionary value. As Darwin noted "The same state of mind is
expressed throughout the world with remarkable uniformity; and this fact is
in itself interesting as evidence of the close similarity in bodily
structure and mental dispositions of all the races of mankind." Pinker
summarises the evidence supporting this view "that the emotions of all
normal members of our species are played on the same keyboard". (p365) For
example, as Darwin also noted, children blind and deaf from birth display
the full range of emotions on their faces. Pinker denies there is much
variation in the feelings experienced by members of different cultures,
though how these are expressed may vary significantly.He argues that
"emotions are adaptations, well-engineered software modules that work in
harmony with the intellect and are indispensable to the functioning of the
whole mind. The problem with the emotions is not that they are untamed
forces or vestiges of our animal past; it is that they were designed to
propogate copies of the genes that built them rather than to promote
happiness, wisdom, or moral values." (p370)
Pinker defines intelligence as "the pursuit of goals in the face of
obstacles". But an animal cannot pursue all its goals at once. "The animal
must commit its body to one goal at a time, and the goals have to be
matched with the best moments for achieving them." In his view, "emotions
are mechanisms that set the brain's highest level goal." (p373) (In this
sense, at least, they are superior to intelligence.) "Each human emotion
mobilizes the mind and body to meet one of the challenges of living and
reproducing in the cognitive niche. Some challenges are posed by physical
things, and the emotions that deal with them, like disgust, fear, and
appreciation of natural beauty, work in straightforward ways. Others are
posed by people. The problem in dealing with people is that people can deal
back. The emotions that evolved in response to other people's emotions,
like anger, gratitude, shame, and romantic love, are played on a
complicated chessboard, and they spawn ... passion and intrigue." (p374)
Pinker is interesting in the high value he places on our sense of natural
beauty, which he asserts "is the mechanism that drove our ancestors into
suitable habitats." (I won't go into his extensive evidence for this.)
Pinker explores emotions in more detail to elucidate their survival value.
Disgust, for example, helps omnivores avoid poisoning from eating dangerous
animal stuff. "Disgust is intuitive microbiology." (p383) Fears in
childhood recapitulate a hunter-gatherer past. Chicago schoolchildren are
most afraid of lions, tigers and snakes, none of them particularly common
in their habitat. He challenges the popular view that self-control or delay
of gratification is always better than immediate gratification. Discounting
the future makes good economic sense unless there is a high enough return
on investing. "At every moment we choose, consciously or unconsciously,
between good things now and better things later." (p394) Love is defined as
"feeling pleasure in another's well-being and pain in its harm." While
genes are selfish, by their very nature, as replicators, organisms (or
bodies) need not be. "Confusion comes from thinking of people's genes as
their true self, and the motive of their genes as their truest, unconscious
motives. From there it's easy to draw the cynical and incorrect moral that
all love is hypocritical. That confuses the real motives of the person with
the metaphorical motives of the genes. Genes are not puppetmasters; they
acted as the recipe for making the brain and body and then they got out of
the way. They live in a parallel universe, scattered among bodies, with
their own agendas." (p401)
Reciprocal altruism, in which non-kin offer assistance to each other in
return for expectations of similar favours in the future, is probably the
source of many human emotions. Liking, for example, is the emotion "that
initiates and maintains an altruistic partnership". However, humans can
sham liking, and other emotions, and the ability to discriminate between
real and sham emotions then becomes important. Trust and mistrust evolved
from this situation. We have become "avid consumers of gossip" because
comparing notes is a good way of checking for untrusworthiness. "In turn,
our reputation becomes our most valuable possession." But one can "protect
one's own cheating by imputing false motives to someone else", leading
Trivers to suggest that "the expansion of the human brain was driven by a
cognitive arms race, fueled by the emotions needed to regulate reciprocal
altruism." (p405)
Pinker concludes "Many people still resist the idea that the moral emotions
are designed by natural selection to further the long-term interests of
individuals and ultimately their genes. Wouldn't it be better for everyone
if we were built to enjoy what was best for the group?" But, he says, "When
human leaders have manipulated or coerced people into submerging their
interests into the group's, the outcomes are some of history's worst
atrocities." (p406)
In contests of strategy victory does not necessarily go to "the side with
the most intelligence, self-interest, coolness, options, power and clear
lines of communication." When predicting what the other guy will do in
response, each of these assets can be a liability. Safety in the nuclear
age can come from exposing one's cities and protecting one's missiles. The
Doomsday Machine is only a credible threat when it is programmed to act
irrevocably in the event of a nuclear attack. Understanding the passions
can be improved by viewing them as emotional Doomsday Machines. "People
consumed by pride, love or rage have lost control." There is method in this
madness. "Precisely these sacrifices of will and reason are effective
tactics in the countless bargains, promises, and threats that make up our
social relations." (p412) The intellect is designed to relinquish control
to the passions which, in effect, guarantee that promises or threats are
not bluff.
Similarly, the facial expressions which Darwin noted were universal
accompaniments of emotion are extemely hard to fake. A social smile looks
different to a smile of pleasure because they are actually executed by
different brain circuitry, one voluntary, the other involuntary. The
expression of our passions is tied to involuntary bodily responses, and as
such offers an assurance that the emotion which holds my body hostage is no
bluff. Love, too, thrives on the assumption that the person in love can't
help it. But just to complicate all this further, Trivers has theorised
that the brain is capable of self deception, the pay-off being that the
conscious mind is unaware of the deception, therefore does not have to fake
the appropriate emotional expressions. (Some therapists go further - Fritz
Perls would opine that 90% of all we perceive is projection.)
The human emotions are the source of much human tragedy, but it is tragedy
derived from "the cunning designs of the emotions themselves." (p424) The
idea that "the emotions come from nature and live in the body" while "the
intellect comes from civilization and lives in the mind" is a romantic
myth. The emotions have evolved to assist humans to understand their
environment and secure the cooperation of others. But their evolution has
led to complex tactical battles between different parts of the mind, as
well as between different people. The results are often less than happy.
Grief, for example, has no obvious purpose. But it can have a use as an
internal doomsday machine, effective only if it is certain and terrible.
Grief is the price of love.
I do not see any simple way that Pinker's understanding of the emotions can
be incorporated into a Pirsigian worldview. In my view it leads inescapably
to a conclusion that quality, far from being some sort of universal
'phlogiston' that holds everything together (an assumption underlying the
inane comment "It's all good"), is instead very context specific and is
always defined from the point of view of an organism, or as Pinker would
suggest, from one aspect of the brain of that organism (if human). It also
undermines Pirsig's belief that the intellectual level is in some sense
superior to the biological and social levels. Tactical duels between agents
are not played out in the realm of intellect alone.
While I have not attempted to respond to the main issues in your essay,
which would be tedious, I hope the relevance of Pinker's view is clear
enough. We don't educate our emotions, though phobias can indeed be cured.
Our emotions are major and intransigent factors in the huge complexity of
the worlds we inhabit and create.
How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker was first published in 1997. My page
numbers are from the The Softback Preview, 1998 edition.
------- End of forwarded message -------
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:03:25 BST