October 28, 2009
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What is emotion?
We all feel them, we all think we know what they are… but what are emotions, really?
Are they cognitive states? Are they physiological reactions? Perceptions? Behaviors? Motivations?
I know when I am angry or I am sad—indeed I know so deeply no one could ever convince me otherwise—but what exactly does that say about me?
It seems to me that emotions are in fact what makes a sentient being; while a car or a rocket ship could be outfitted with sensors that detect outside objects (perception) or detect damage (sensation), we would not say it actually sees or suffers. But if such a vehicle could be made to feel emotions, to actually hurt when it was damaged, it would seem to me much more like a real sentient being. Similarly if I look at an injured squirrel or even an injured fly, the motions it makes suggest to me that it doesn’t like this experience, that it is hurting in some emotional way. The empathy I feel for these creatures is not due to their cognitive processing or their perceptual acuity, but due to their display of emotional experience.
Yet if I stop to think about just what “emotional experience” entails, I really can’t say. The way I observe it in a squirrel or a fly is in particular behaviors, but these are behaviors that could be easily simulated by a robot or a computer program. In my own brain emotions are accompanied—perhaps even caused—by particular patterns of electrical and chemical activity; but it seems deeply perverse to say that emotion just is a particular chemical, that the essence of anger is C8H11NO3. Indeed it seems obvious to me that other beings—perhaps aliens or AIs—could experience anger without anything remotely like this chemical acting within them; for an ammonia-based lifeform perhaps anger is CO2; for a silicon AI perhaps it is 1011101110101010001011101.
I don’t have an answer. But I think we need one. I think emotional experience is central to what it means to be conscious, and without an understanding of emotion I do not think we can have a coherent theory of cognitive science.
Comments (1)
Emotions are a certain base for higher life on this planet. I view it this way, though: Humans and higher order animals share emotional reactions in common. Animals are urged by instinct, sure, but their instinctual reaction creates emotional responses which is often what they respond to. The difference between humans and animals is that we recognize and name and interact with our emotions in many ways, even change them completely at will, but say, a cat, cannot do so; it can only react.
Sentience is the removal of ‘self’ from the bigger picture, the ability to see self as separate from the whole. Once you have an ego, that ego forms the basis for interacting with your environment in a completely new way. You no longer have to -be- your every emotion and instinct; you can be whatever, or however, you want. You can abstract and think for yourself if you choose. Hence at a certain point of evolution – physical, personal or societal – we may reach a point at which we no longer rely on our emotions, but completely on our minds.