Nice, Curt! Nice!
Nick Thompson <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> thompnicks...@gmail.com <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> On Behalf Of Curt McNamara Sent: Tuesday, August 24, 2021 1:11 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Eternal questions A sciencey view of emotions and where they are located in the body: https://www.pnas.org/content/111/2/646 Search emotions map for visuals that show a ton of different emotions. Curt On Tue, Aug 24, 2021 at 11:54 AM uǝlƃ ☤>$ <geprope...@gmail.com <mailto:geprope...@gmail.com> > wrote: I suppose my problem is that I *do* think we can find "the sadness" inside the brain ... well, not inside the brain, exactly, but inside the *body* ... well, not *inside* the body but peri-body, localized *at* the body, but extending out into the body's context a bit. Just like with one's thumb, sadness comprises a dynamic mesh of interlinked feedback loops. And that dynamic mesh of feedback is *part* of a larger mesh of such loops. (Re: "putting it in a robot" - cf types of attention: soft, hard, self, etc.) Some of those loops *look at* the sadness cluster, register that cluster as "other" in some sense ... just like how I can imagine chopping off my thumb and tossing that object into the woods. Because I do this all the time, it would blow my mind if others did not also do it. I particularly do it with fear. Wake up startled. Think maybe there's someone in the house. Grab the bat. As I'm walking up the stairs, I *reflect* on my registered, now objectified fear. And, in doing so, wiggle my way out of the grip of that fear and think more tactically about how to behave if there's a human-shaped shadow in the living room. I do the same thing with pain, particularly my chronic back pain, but also with things like stubbed toes. It's fscking hilarious how much that hurts ... ridiculously over-emphasized pain for what has happened. To not step outside the pain and laugh out loud would be weird. It's just way too funny how much that hurts. I welcome a lesson in how misguided I am, here. On 8/24/21 8:36 AM, Eric Charles wrote: > So.... This is JUST a question of whether we are having a casual conversation > or a technical one, right? Certainly, in a casual, English-language > conversation talk of "having" emotions is well understood, and just fine, for > example "Nick is /having /a fit, just let him be." (I can't speak for other > languages, but I assume there are many others where that would be true.) > > If we were, for some reason, having a technical conversation about how > the/Science of //Psychology/, should use technical language, then we /might > /also come to all agree that isn't the best way to talk about it. > > In any case, the risk with "have" is that it reifies whatever we are talking > about. To talk about someone /having /sadness, leads naturally --- > linguistically naturally --- in English --- to thinking that sadness is /a > thing/ that I could find if I looked hard enough. It is why people used to > think (and many, many, still do) that if we just looked hard enough at > someone's brain, we would find /the sadness/ inside there, somewhere. That is > why it is dangerous in a technical conversation regarding psychology, because > that implication is wrong-headed in a way that repeatedly leads large swaths > of the field down deep rabbit holes that they can't seem to get out of. > > On the one hand, I /have /a large ice mocha waiting for me in the fridge. On > the other hand, this past summer I /had /a two-week long trip to California. > One is a straightforward object, the other was an extended activity I engaged > in. When the robot-designers assert that their robot "has" emotions, which do > they mean? Honestly, I think they don't mean either one, it is a marketing > tool, and not part of a conversation at all. As such, it does't really fit > into the dichotomy above, and is trying to play one off of the other. They > are using the terms "emotions and instincts" to mean something even less than > whatever Tesla means when they say they have an autodrive that for sure still > isn't good enough to autodrive. > > What the robot-makers mean is simply to indicate that the robot will be a bit > more responsive to certain things that other models on the market, and > /hopefully /that's what most consumers understand it to mean. But not all > will... at least some of the people being exposed to the marketing will take > it to mean that emotion has been successfully put somewhere inside the robot. > (The latter is a straightforward empirical claim, and if you think I'm wrong > about that, you have way too much faith in how savvy 100% of people are.) As > such, the marketing should be annoying to anti-dualist psychologists, who see > it buttressing /at least some/ people's tendency to jump down that rabbit > hole mentioned above. > <mailto:echar...@american.edu <mailto:echar...@american.edu> > -- ☤>$ uǝlƃ - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam <http://bit.ly/virtualfriam> un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
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