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Topic: Emotion drives behavior; humans cannot function on logic. (Read 1163 times) |
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metahuman
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Emotion drives behavior; humans cannot function on logic.
« on: 2003-10-19 17:25:47 » |
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Quote:Originally posted by diplomatic_lies
All those theories - whether drive or incentive or arousal - are simply motivated by emotions. In fact, I believe they *are* emotions!
Its common sense to see nobody can function on logic. Logic justified our emotions. Like I said, give me ONE behaviour, action, or situation, and I'll give you the emotional foundations for it. |
The need to feed. It is a biological imperative and is not founded in emotion. As for your "belief", well, you're wrong.
The Brain, the Mind and Ethics: Ethics in Light of Brain Physiology and Cognitive Psychology by Helmut Schwab, Princeton.
By the way, it is not "common sense" to think that a person cannot function on logic. That's simply not so. Humans function on logic for every action we take. As Kas Graham states in the paper "How To Make Memes and Influence People," "We are all used to algorithmic processes, the vast majority of our interaction with machines is algorithmic, choose the chocolate bar you want, put money in the slot, press the corresponding button, pull the lever, the chocolate falls, take it out of the slot, open the wrapper. Algorithms are substrate neutral: an algorithm can be followed by a person with pen and paper or by a computer program and the same conclusion will be reached." This logic that we use does not only apply to machines, but also to imitation (the process by which humans learn).
Richard Dawkins, in his foreword to Susan Blackmore's book, The Meme Machine, states:
Quote:Here are the first five instructions in the Weismanian meme line of instructions for making a Chinese junk:
1. Take a square sheet of paper and fold all four corners exactly into the middle.
2. Take the reduced square so formed, and fold one side into the middle.
3. Fold the opposite side into the middle, symmetrically.
4. In the same way, take the rectangle so formed, and fold its two ends into the middle.
5. Take the small square so formed, and fold it backwards, exactly along the straight line where your last two folds met.
...and so on... |
We are essentially biological machines that fuction on logic continously. The fact that we subconsciously know what action we are to take several hundred milleseconds before we consciously take the action hints at that hypothesis. Humans are creatures of habit. We execute our habits algorithmically. Take awakening from sleep for a basic non-scientific example: 1. Open your eyes. 2. Sit up. 3. Move feet to the ground. 4. Rest. 5. Stand up. Or brushing your teeth, lifting weights, and reading. At a very basic level, we are executing "programs" (logical sequences of order of actions).
Creativity is another issue. There are many--too many--theories on creativity so I won't get into that. Still, I can analyze my work processes when designing print media for a client, and it is algorithmical.
The idea that humans cannot fuction on logic is preposterous.
The belief that all human drives are founded in emotion is simply wrong.
PS. I'm explaining this very basically to him as I know diplomatic_lies is not one to understand most things scientific if put in scientific terms. The topic title is his hypothesis: Emotion drives behavior; humans cannot function on logic.
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Stev
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Re:Emotion drives behavior; humans cannot function on logic.
« Reply #1 on: 2004-03-28 18:32:59 » |
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there is some basis we can see in this theory, although not in the method he may have stated. Another way to look at it might be through the physical properties of emotion:
1. emotions are specific chemical elevations in the brain
2. all our actions are caused by chemical signals transfering throught the brain
3. actions are caused by emotions
while he was refering to emotions as more or less psychological entities , they can be physically analysed as specific chemical processes designed to sway logic when it may be nessessary to act in a situation. an emotion like fear will no doubt influence your decision to run from a bear that may be chasing you, but how would you know to fear the bear without a subconsious reasoning telling you that it would kill you?
some of these elevations that we can more strongly identify with, such as anger, fear etc, are catagorized due to their appearing more often, but essencially any such mental feeling sparked by a chemical process could be labeled an emotion under the same reasoning, regardless of how perceptible it was.
emotions are simply the logic of the subconsious pushing our consious thought in a desired direction, usually for self-preservation. I would think that, unlike the three statements above, emotion refers specifcally to the processes sparked by the subconsious, and beleive that if the subconsious could be limited to making sure we are breathing and whatnot, we could no doubt operate without emotions pervading out consious logic
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Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies. - Friedrich W. Nietzsche
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Nikolai
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Re:Emotion drives behavior; humans cannot function on logic.
« Reply #2 on: 2004-04-02 20:16:54 » |
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That syllogism doesn't quite work; not every brain-signal is an emotion. An emotion has more to do with the state of your mind than what is happening in your mind. Some actions don't require emotion. The will to survival is instinctive. Eating, breathing, urinating, etc. are all biological functions that operate based on instinct but that can be controlled by meme-driven emotions. For example, there's no meme that governs whether or not you should urinate - you do it because if you don't, you'll be uncomfortable, and the will to physical comfort and pleasure is pre-programmed. However, there is a meme that says to use the toilet. In this case, the biological function is still operating, but the social norm m-plex is influencing it. Emotion doesn't cause these acts, it accompanies them. In fact, you could say that the need to perform these basic functions plays a major role in the cause of the emotion.
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Stev
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Re:Emotion drives behavior; humans cannot function on logic.
« Reply #3 on: 2004-04-03 00:29:45 » |
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I agree that the choices that we make are decided through consious logic, I rather see emotion as a way for your subconsiously engrained memes, or the very ideas you take for granted, as a way to influence that logic.
No human being is an entirely logical thinker, as we are all affected by feelings that we cannot specifially attribute to the current facts of a situation. A good short story on the subject is 'the stranger' by Albert Camus, a french philosopher, about a man without any emotions, whose pure logic drives him to death for a murder.
The idea of The CoV , and all Philosophy is to understand the underlying emotional drives that pervade out thoughts. We none-the-less feel emotional strings pulling our thoughts in a certian direction. picture the neo-nazi's unreasoned hatred of Blacks, fuelled by embedded memes. These memes, when not examined, manifest as pure emotion, in this case hate, or an all encompassing feeling of aggression. This clouds his logical thought process, due to a natural inclination of the subconsious to place itself higher on the survival priorities list then our own thoughts.
Our desire to use the bathroom, i agree, is more of a logical matter of a threat to our bodies well being, rather than subconsious, although our subconsious emotions are factored in. Picture the escillating distress of a person waiting for the bathroom, jumping around and whatnot, created due to the fears of not only nessessity of satisfying instinctual desires to clense and therefore maintain the body, but the memes constructed from social implications of being deined the socially acceptable bathroom. People construct illogical fears about things all the time. Picture the fear of say, spiders. someone might find them frightning simply due to watching arachnophobia one too many times, subconsiously implanting the fear of spiders into their subconsious. This pops up in any situation with a spider, and regardless of the logical impotence of the spider to the person, the fear takes over.
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Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies. - Friedrich W. Nietzsche
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