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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Ed: Their collective argument is that "mind" is not something that can be described that way.
What is a collective argument, and can there be one if I’m not intentionally oriented to it? (Another interpretation by an individual.)
What MikeL and Largo and others have essentially said is that there is no valid data that informs that question, . . .
Your reading or my writing is very poor. It’s your interpretation, though. I’ve already said what I think about the notion of “validity.” (It seems to me that you’re having an argument with your own mind.)
Dingus channeling Damasio: “Mind begins at the level of feeling.”
Yeah, I’ve heard and read this.
Now all someone has to do is to say what a feeling is. (I think people will find that idea to be about as slippery as “consciousness” is.) While we’re at it, perhaps someone could say what a thought is, too.
I’d say all empirical experiences are incomparable textures. (Scientific, huh?)
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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Mike L
Now all someone has to do is to say what a feeling is.
agree with that 100%
Damasio has a take on it. Busy now will get back on that...
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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MH2: It is no great insight that people make decisions based on emotion and feelings as well as reason.
This is not quite what Damasio found. He claims to have found that people’s mundane decision making were incapacitated. It’s a much stronger claim.
For some of us, it also significantly undercuts the notion that modern, rational man’s most key function / capability is rational conceptualization. Rationality and conceptualization must at least only be equal in importance to emotion if we’re talking about what it means to be human *today.* Non- and even ir-rationality have important seats at the table of consciousness *as it is today.*
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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it also significantly undercuts the notion that modern, rational man’s most key function / capability is rational conceptualization.
Who advocates for this notion? Any names associated with it?
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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I liked that.
The actual presence of a human can help motivate a student, but Jill Watson has advantages, too. A professor once told me that each of my classes cost me as much a a Broadway play.
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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When Damasio dies an autopsy of his brain may prove his work was based on faulty brains if he had such a condition?
Or to say the least maybe he had an imbalance of too much emotion and feeling over reason?
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WBraun
climber
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The living organism is beyond the realm of the modern scientific method of reductionism.
You'll only end up ultimately reducing down to atoms and electrons which have no life at all.
Study the whole, not the part parcel.
But the stubborn gross materialists anchored in their defective mechanistic reductionistic analysis only see dead matter and not life itself ....
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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The living organism is beyond the realm of the modern scientific method of reductionism.
a statement without any support whatsoever
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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MH2: Who advocates for this notion? Any names associated with it?
You’re kidding. Ha-ha . . . just about everyone who posts to this thread.
The brain, cognition, “thinking,” reason, logic, ratiocination, data-collection and -analysis, modeling, conceptualization, etc. are all over-whelmingly privileged in neuroscience, biology, physics, economics, logic, philosophy, etc. ever since the 1790’s, and maybe back to the ancient Greeks. Just about everything in higher education is oriented to gathering appropriate information, analysis, and rational decision making, concepts, and reductionism—certainly over myth, emotion, and even instinct. Hell, read Damasio’s own claims in his books. Or, find a credible, legitimate book to the readers here in this thread that significantly diminishes or subordinates rational conceptualization.
Are you saying you don’t see this kind of privileging? (If not, then what do you see?)
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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MikeL,
I am trying to clarify what you said about Antonio Damasio's finding that "mundane decisions" were compromised in people whose brains had injury to areas associated with emotion.
What are some examples of these mundane decisions, and did people previously, before Damasio, assume that these decisions were purely rational and logical?
I am not trying to deny that reason plays an important part in science. I think emotions and feelings play important roles, too, even in hard science, and am wondering what paradigm Damasio overthrew?
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Just about everything in higher education is oriented to gathering appropriate information, analysis, and rational decision making, concepts, and reductionism—certainly over myth, emotion, and even instinct
That's a darn shame. There was a lot more variety in the middle-ages.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 4, 2017 - 08:32pm PT
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Damasio's work is not really dealing with a theory of consciousness, per se, but rather with what we are conscious of. His is a throry of conscious content. And on that count he has done some pretty sound work, firmly grounded in neurobiology, which is where you look when seeking the source of what we are conscious of.
One of the cardinal errors in these kinds of studies, in my opinion, is to conflate so called information, processing, complexity, and all content by whatever name, with the fact that we are aware of same.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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True enough. But is there any way forward beyond Zen?
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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Largo,
One of the cardinal errors in these kinds of studies, in my opinion, is to conflate so called information, processing, complexity, and all content by whatever name, with the fact that we are aware of same.
Damasio hints in various ways about a [his] concept of conscious awareness but does not say explicitly that what is going on among the modules to form the "awareness experience". He does leave the reader with some pieces to put together of what may be happening during the conscious awareness process.
Here is my take on putting his hints together. i suggest you get the idea of feeling modules:
Dear John, this process is not a simple mechanism [of the "if so explain it" -- type] but a reiterative system within the brain & body. The external sensing organs and the feeling modules of the brain play our conscious over and over. Specifically the feeling modules along with sensory data input [of what is permitted to conscious awareness] are played against the self module again & again. The awareness feeling module is played with sensory data when there is no urgency at hand. When this happens the self feels awareness. A more urgent situation may need fear and then its module is played but not the passive awareness feeling module.
With the advent of words the self module could play the words "I am aware" when the awareness feeling module is active.
In other words the self script module then feels and says I have awareness .
Again, consciousness is that reiterative signaling of very specific signals played over a very specific platform.
Dear John, you may have to get rid of some baggage to see how this is a possible scenario?
Play it again SAM [self awareness module...
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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as for "awareness" perhaps the exercise of assessing what it is we are not aware of would help...
or is the assertion that we could be aware of everything if we just worked on it?
I find it interesting that physical activity is a good way to maintain mental acuity in to old age. One could conjecture that our mental abilities, at least the ones we are aware of, are just a part of what is going on. In particular, until rather recently (less than 100 years) we [all humans] had to work at getting enough food to survive.
The single human organ which uses the largest amount of energy is the brain. So we are constantly feeding it. This is not marginal increases, it is significant.
So the brain is earning its keep in some way, and we are not aware of all the ways it does that. But certainly a large number of physical activities are directly informed by the brain. I've mentioned the example of gait optimization to minimize energy consumption. These "computations" go on without any awareness by people, who's brains are, apparently, involved in a rather complex task. I've also mentioned that asked to describe the task most people couldn't. So the brain seems "smarter" than the people who possess them.
So isn't it obvious that training the brain is related to physical training? And it is the nature of adaptation that such attributes (the complexity of human kinetics and the brain's ability to realize motion) have been appropriated for other tasks.
Why is the "map" metaphor so powerful? Could it be the echo of a much deeper brain characteristic, one we are vaguely aware of, utilized to express a particular abstract idea?
And even the term "abstraction" begs the question, "abstracted from what?"
Crying babies...
A Baby Wails, and the Adult World Comes Running
http://www.pnas.org/content/114/30/8095.full
Genetic identification of a hindbrain nucleus essential for innate vocalization
Luis Rodrigo Hernandez-Miranda, Pierre-Louis Ruffaulta, Julien C. Bouvier, Andrew J. Murray, Marie-Pierre Morin-Surun, Niccolò Zampieri, Justyna B. Cholewa-Waclaw, Elodie Ey, Jean-Francois Brunet, Jean Champagnat, Gilles Fortin, and Carmen Birchmeier
Abstract
Vocalization in young mice is an innate response to isolation or mechanical stimulation. Neuronal circuits that control vocalization and breathing overlap and rely on motor neurons that innervate laryngeal and expiratory muscles, but the brain center that coordinates these motor neurons has not been identified. Here, we show that the hindbrain nucleus tractus solitarius (NTS) is essential for vocalization in mice. By generating genetically modified newborn mice that specifically lack excitatory NTS neurons, we show that they are both mute and unable to produce the expiratory drive required for vocalization. Furthermore, the muteness of these newborns results in maternal neglect. We also show that neurons of the NTS directly connect to and entrain the activity of spinal (L1) and nucleus ambiguus motor pools located at positions where expiratory and laryngeal motor neurons reside. These motor neurons control expiratory pressure and laryngeal tension, respectively, thereby establishing the essential biomechanical parameters used for vocalization. In summary, our work demonstrates that the NTS is an obligatory component of the neuronal circuitry that transforms breaths into calls.
...
hmmm, I wasn't aware of that...
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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My own lab work in neurophysiology was narrowly focussed. My reading and courses gave a wider view.
Most of my knowledge is now decades old (though not obsolete), but I was reading a few journals and doing research for a respiratory medical doctor as late as the mid-90s.
Neuroscience research seems much broader and deeper today.
I believe that there has been progress on the "What is Mind?" theme of this thread. Back in my day it would be odd to find this phrase:
brain regions that check a stimulus for its emotional salience
from Ed's link
And maybe Ed earlier directed us here:
http://med.stanford.edu/content/dam/sm/scsnl/documents/Menon_Salience_Network_15.pdf
We are learning how mind and brain interact with the world around them.
Soberingly, though, an apparently simple act like breathing is still poorly mapped at the neurophysiological level. Breathing is not simple, even though you seldom need to think about it. There are many interacting brain regions involved and things like blood pH, oxygen, and carbon dioxide levels to monitor and regulate.
By gradually accumulating little pieces of the puzzle, how one small brain region affects others and they affect it, we may start to see larger patterns and get a sense of how all the pieces fit together.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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MH2: I am trying to clarify what you said about Antonio Damasio's finding that "mundane decisions" were compromised in people whose brains had injury to areas associated with emotion. What are some examples of these mundane decisions, and did people previously, before Damasio, assume that these decisions were purely rational and logical?
Oy.
In his book, Decartes Error, Damasio introduced the cases of Phineas Gage and Elliot, who suffered brain damage that caused severe impairments of judgment and the general ability to function well in life.
Elliot, a living patient (who underwent brain imaging tests), had damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. His intelligence seemed intact, he passed all of the usual tests used to assess neurological damage, and he appeared normal except for his unusual calm in the face of his misfortune. Elliot seemed completely incapable of making wise decisions—in business and in his personal life he handled affairs disastrously, reported Damasio. Elliot's IQ was way above average, he performed well on the memory tests with interference procedures, the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (frontal lobe tests) and other tests specifically for testing frontal lobe damage, MMPI, etc. Elliot had passed all of the tests for made to pick-up subtle frontal lobe damage. Elliot’s flaws seemed like poor judgement and lack of insight. His actions were unnecessarily detailed. He would plan all day his course of action at work, but get nothing done, said Damasio. Elliot went from being a good husband and father and worked at a business firm to acting inappropriately and ignorantly systematically, said Damasio’s report. Some have said it was unbelievable that there is no existing test that could pick up Elliot's damage. According to all tests, Elliot was fine, but anyone who is observant, would see his inability to function in everyday life.
Gage's injury had much the same effect, according to records kept during his lifetime. Phineas Gage was a goodnatured, rational, hardworking man until a catastrophic accident destroyed areas of his frontal lobe. Damasio pointed out that Gage survived the accident but no longer had the same disposition, dreams, aspirations, Damasio: ”Gage's body may be alive and well, but there is a new spirit animating it" (pp.7).
With Gage specifically, there was a question of whether his full intellectual capacity was intact. Damasio argued that there was this fully functional human (intellectually) who lost most emotional and social capacity. Those that knew Gage felt that he was..."a child in his intellectual capacity and manifestation" (pp.8).
Science / society has divided intellectual thought and emotion for a very long time. However, as might be observed here in this thread, there can be highly intellectual people who cannot function socially and emotionally as in Gage's case (just kidding).
For Damasio, emotion and reason was not at-odds with each other. Pure reason, quite present in Elliot, was not fully sufficient for decision-making. We all casually observe that we do not make our decisions by computing possible outcomes of options, doing statistical analysis, and so on. (Nobel prize winner, Herbert Simon, pointed this out long ago with a notion of “satisfycing,” later augmented by psychological theories of “elimination by aspect” for highly complex decisions.) Damasio noted the impossibility of the strict use of such highly rational methods by pointing out that humans do not have the necessary understanding of statistics at all. So has Daniel Kahneman (another Nobel prize winner).
Apparently to Damasio, body states and emotions are associated with certain outcomes, influencing our decisions. Damasio says that the capability to form and access “somatic markers” instantiated in experience is central to the decision process, and this is why Elliot showed the deficits that he did. The tests that Damasio and his associates developed to examine his hypothesis (which also managed to differentiate Elliot's elusive neurological problems from the function of the normal or nonprefrontal brain) are reported to have been extremely clever, yielding compelling results.
It might be worth noting that the ventromedial and dorsolateral sectors (sparing the cingulate region) of the frontal region were ablated in monkeys in an experiment by R. Myers, who reported that those monkeys could not maintain normal social functioning despite nothing physical in their appearance changed. They did not groom or interact, and they did not survive. (But an animal with an amputated limb will survive in the group.) Complex social interactions appear to prove vital to the survival of monkeys and humans alike.
Damasio’s outline for damage of the patients he studied is that reasoning strategy deficits revolve around goals, options for action, prediction of future outcome, and plans for implementation of goals at varied time scales. This almost amounts to a complete description of rational conceptualization and decision making.
Damasio (and cognitive scientists who favor grounded or embodied cognition models) have resurrected an old idea from William James: we react with the body and then we feel. It’s the body that leads to emotion rather than the brain.
I think Damasio's central points are these: 1) Emotion is fundamental to reason. 2) "The human mind and the rest of the body constitute an indissociable organism, integrated by mutually interactive biochemical and neural regulatory circuits." 3) "The organism interacts with the environment as an ensemble: the interaction is neither of the body alone nor of the brain alone." 4) "The physiological operations that we call mind are derived from the structural and functional ensemble rather than from the brain alone. Mental phenomena can be fully understood only in the context of an organism's interacting in an environment." (The quotes are from Descartes Error.)
Science seems to have been founded upon experiment and ratiocination / reason. Scientists look for insight and a sense for beauty in their fields, and they seem to distrust and avoid emotion in their work. Damasio’s work might suggest that emotionless reasoning may be just plain wrong—maybe even pathological and counterproductive. If emotion is inextricably a part of human reasoning, what then of scientific objectivity?
Pascal said, "The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing." If Damasio is correct, so is Pascal. Ready for that?
(OK, I’ve written enough for a week. My fingers are tired.)
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Science / society has divided intellectual thought and emotion for a very long time. However, as might be observed here in this threads, there can be highly intellectual people who cannot function socially and emotionally as in Gage's case (just kidding).
No ha ha?
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